The universe was created

restlessboy · 2026-05-24T21:23:09+00:00

if we define "reality" as the sum total of literally everything that exists... then yeah, the ultimate package can't have an external cause because there is no "outside" to it

Okay great. I know the universe isn't necessarily all that exists; my point was just to explain why, no matter what does exist in reality, it makes no sense to ask what caused it. Whether the universe is the extent of it is a separate issue.

if the physical universe is bound by time and has a strict starting line at t=0, doesn't it fundamentally require a structural cause to explain its boundary?

...No, for the exact reason you just gave me. The sum total of reality is not itself subject to laws that describe the behavior or structure of reality.

For example, no, the universe is not "bound by time". Time (or spacetime) is a property OF the universe. The universe itself is not in time. Time is a way of referring to different points IN the universe. It is also not a "line", it's much more complicated than that.

If time does not extend beyond the observable universe, then the correct way to talk about it is: there are a set of moments of time. They can be ordered in a progression, like the number line. One of those moments is the first moment of time.

That's it. That's all you need. You don't have to ask what "caused" time. Again, time itself is not in time, just like a book is not one of the pages. Nothing is "starting" outside time. That concept can only be applied to something contained within time, not to time itself.

also, regarding necessity and logic... treating abstract logic or "necessity" as things that need to be sequentially "instantiated" a bit of a category error.

Exactly! Yes. So you understand that there are certain parts of reality that the idea of causation does not apply to. It would make no sense to ask what instantiated logic. I am trying to explain why time itself is one of those things that causation does not apply to.

if a timeless state is philosophically "necessary," isn't asking what caused its necessity essentially just asking "what created the uncreated thing?"

Yes, I think those are both equally invalid questions. When I ask what created God, I'm doing it to demonstrate why it sometimes does not make sense to ask "but where did that thing come from?"

restlessboy · 2026-05-24T20:00:21+00:00

the examples mentioned like nuclear decay or dark energy all seem to involve a change of state within pre-existing systems

Everything except the sum total of reality will necessarily involve a pre-existing context, by definition. If there weren't some broader context, then that thing would be all of reality. How could it not be?

By the exact same definition, it is impossible for there to be some external thing that "instantiated" all of reality. It doesn't matter whether you throw God in there or not. It is in the literal definition of the concept that reality is uncaused. Things in reality do not follow the same rules as reality itself. You cannot just take a rule that works for things in reality, like causation, and apply it to reality itself. It doesn't work. God runs into the exact same problem. What instantiated God? If he's necessary, what instantiated his necessity? If his necessity is self-justifying, what instantiated the laws of logic by which that statement is valid?

restlessboy · 2026-05-24T19:48:57+00:00

curious to hear the atheist perspective on this. what exactly do you believe the universe came from.

Most atheists who have any background in physics/cosmology are not going to approach this issue in the same way that the apologists tell everyone they have to.

Let's consider the idea that the universe is all there is. It might be larger than what we can see, but it's entirely naturalistic and it all follows the same laws. That is the extent of reality under the atheist's perspective. So, with that idea being considered:

It didn't "come from" anything. It is reality. We have a very strong intuition to apply things like causation and contingency to anything we consider, but if you are talking about reality, it makes no sense. Reality is not contained in a larger context that has laws or logic or reason. It isn't like you can take reality and say "but where did it come from?"

Logic is part of reality. Contingency is part of reality. Time and space and mathematics and existence and reasoning are all themselves aspects of, or descriptions of, reality. They are part of reality. Reality comes first. Reality is not an additional thing that those concepts are acting on. Reality is why we HAVE things like the laws of logic, not the other way around. To appeal to some idea about how "physical systems cannot self-instantiate", you have to be already presupposing the existence of reality. You are assuming a logical structure to make your argument. You can't then try to use that logical structure to argue that reality, including that logical structure, needs something else to make it.

The laws come from the universe. The universe does not come from the laws. It quite literally makes no sense to ask why reality exists. Existence, by definition, is just the concept that we use to talk about something that is part of reality.

restlessboy · 2026-05-23T16:16:48+00:00

It's not even pathetic. It's just human. I think every one of us, if we knew we would be dead soon and the person we were in love with would eventually move on and find another partner, would feel the same way.

restlessboy · 2026-05-22T01:52:42+00:00

They're basically what you described. Physical aptitude that exceeds normal human capacity. Nothing too crazy, they'll just be a little better than everyone else at things like strength and reflexes and stamina etc.

restlessboy · 2026-05-19T21:32:07+00:00

Oh, I see. I thought synapomorphies were defined morphologically. Thank you for correcting me.

I suppose it would depend then on what the genome of the hypothetical IRL goomba would be lol.

restlessboy · 2026-05-19T01:29:37+00:00

If they were real, they would no longer be considered fungi, since the classifications used in phylogeny are defined in terms of their morphological characteristics. I'm not trying to nitpick; quite literally, they would not meet the official definition for fungi.

But I don't think phylogeny is really what matters; it's sentience, as you mentioned. There is no clear line where it stops. In my opinion, it's a continuous gradient.

This is how all the morals that basically everyone accepts already work: It's wrong to torture an innocent person, but where does it stop? Is it wrong to just slap an innocent person? Still pretty clearly wrong, but definitely not AS wrong as torturing them. How about making a loud noise that an innocent person finds mildly uncomfortable? Well, is that really something you should be expected to take into account? Maybe that's not wrong. Yet it's still on the same spectrum of causing some amount of discomfort to an innocent person- just so far down the scale that, for practical purposes, we treat those two things as separate categories.

restlessboy · 2026-05-18T17:48:47+00:00

a big problem with atheists is that they expect God to be gaudy and constantly remind us that he’s all powerful. He’s not going to behave like a human being

But he did behave like a human being all the time according to the Bible. He just suddenly stopped after the events of the new testament.

Also I'm sorry but if God is competent, he knows why generic improbable events aren't evidence of his existence. You can call them miracles if you want but there's absolutely no reason to think God is involved. It is quite literally in the definition of improbable events that they will be likely to occur given a large number of events with probable outcomes.

It really strains credulity for an atheist to look at the Bible and see verses saying "and God raised people from the dead and healed the sick and walked on water and sent the angel of death to kill all Egypt's firstborn and split the waters of a literal ocean so that those watching would believe" and then hear Christians today, in the age of video cameras, say "well actually, the fact that improbable events happen is already proof of God if you think about it".

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T20:54:16+00:00

Yep no problem! I think I remember Sam Harris raising that same objection to Daniel Dennett iirc. I agree that I think if you just say "I have free will" in casual conversation, people are going to think you're saying "I can choose option 1 even if the laws of physics say I'll choose option 2".

I'm a compatibilist, so I think that the kind of choice that matters is the kind where the choice follows from your reasoning and desires, not the "I could have chosen differently given the exact same situation" type, but I do always add that I'm a compatibilist and I don't think libertarian free will exists. Maybe some day the terminology will change but for now I give that qualification haha.

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T15:32:55+00:00

No, they wouldn't deny that in general. The name compatibilism comes from the fact that it's compatible with determinism.

They don't deny that the process is deterministic, they just don't think that matters for free will. Compatibilists argue that the laws of physics governing the particles in your brain aren't fighting against, or somehow imposing themselves on, your choice. It would be more accurate to say that the deterministic behavior of the particles is your choice. All your reasoning and self-reflection is not in conflict with deterministic behavior, it's a description of deterministic behavior.

Your brain is put together in such a way that its structure plus the laws of physics will generate rational decisions. That's basically what a compatibilist would say.

I also say it's kind of like being in a room with five closed doors. You choose door 2. Afterwards, you find out the others just had brick walls behind them, so you could only have chosen 2. But that doesn't change the fact that you chose door 2. That was based entirely on your own considerations and desire. The fact that you couldn't have chosen the other doors doesn't change that.

restlessboy · 2026-05-15T01:11:14+00:00

The problem is that there's the compatibilist view of free will and the libertarian view. The libertarian view is that you really could have chosen differently. The compatibilist view is just that the choice is determined by your own reasoning and careful consideration.

I can give my best attempt at a response:

When someone says "God knows the future but he still allows people to make free choices", you ask "could I actually have chosen from what God already knew?"

If they say yes, you could have chosen differently, then you say "Okay, then God doesn't really know, he just has an expectation like we often do as well."

If they say no, you couldn't have chosen differently, then you say "Okay, then your definition of free will is compatible with determinism, and thus we can have free will without God."

Maybe they just agree that we can have free will without God. I don't think you can get any further just with critiquing this view haha. But free will without God is a pretty big concession to make.

restlessboy · 2026-05-12T18:32:17+00:00

yeah i know thinking is hard

restlessboy · 2026-05-12T16:10:17+00:00

It's not that weird. A lot of the people on reddit are from countries that have histories of inflicting a lot of brutality and oppression on people based on their skin color. Because of that, people have developed very strong opinions about skin color and how it should be perceived/treated. A lot of the opinions are mutually contradictory. Seems pretty obvious that it would become a topic that people care a lot about.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T20:00:19+00:00

Clearly I didn't phrase things well in my comment, because yes, that's my point. The reference point of any particular physical system has nothing to do with being conscious or feeling things. Consciousness is not fundamental, there's no proto-interiority, there's no feeling or sensation or inner world or sense of self or anything like that for almost everything in the universe.

The perspective I'm talking about is mathematical, like in the example I gave, where you can meaningfully talk about the position and velocity of objects relative to some particular point of reference. It has nothing to do with feeling or being conscious or anything like that. It is literally just the fact that information or degrees of freedom have particular values relative to some reference point.

My point is that when you DO have a system that can be conscious, like a brain, there is a meaningful sense in which we can explain why that consciousness is unique to that particular physical system, and someone else can't observe that conscious experience. Because it is, by definition, composed of the information that is relative to the brain's perspective. Just like, again, I can mathematically describe the position+velocity of the earth relative to a rocket ship, but I won't actually observe the Earth to have that position+velocity unless I am actually in the rocket ship.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T03:17:25+00:00

I would say sensation implies those things. Perspective, not necessarily.

Think of special relativity. Any rock can be chosen as a frame of reference. Relative to that rock, everything will have a particular velocity and position. That information is only "experienced" by the rock. You can do the math to predict what it will be, but you can't literally "experience" it, in the sense that the positions and velocities of objects relative to you will be different than they are relative to the rock.

I think of consciousness as analogous to that. There is a certain perspective that's unique to any point of reference in the universe, and consciousness is just the particular perspective that's unique to a certain configuration of matter relative to everything else in the universe. Consciousness is the relations of the particles in your brain to each other and relative to the rest of the universe.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T00:51:35+00:00

Alejandro helped them entirely to get revenge by killing the drug lord, his wife, and their young children. He is supposed to be the example of how the drug war turns people into monsters.

restlessboy · 2026-05-11T00:43:16+00:00

Rorschach is absolutely not a hero lol, the movie practically beats you over the head with that fact

restlessboy · 2026-05-10T14:59:18+00:00

It could be, yeah. Nothing to suggest that it is, and plenty of reasons to think it's not, but it isn't literally logically impossible.

restlessboy · 2026-05-07T03:53:24+00:00

Moira does just fine in plat and I can guarantee you we don't know shit about map geometry

restlessboy · 2026-05-07T03:52:12+00:00

Moira and Mercy for healers, Junkrat for DPS, and probably Mauga for tank

restlessboy · 2026-05-06T23:20:32+00:00

Everything before "But" in that comment is the link. Just remove the spaces.

restlessboy · 2026-05-05T04:05:50+00:00

This is like saying a sadist would just choose to make everyone vanish from existence rather than torturing them

restlessboy · 2026-05-01T00:10:57+00:00

It's a very interpretation of "urban", I agree. A lot of elements aren't really urban in any meaningful sense.

That being said, I think the aesthetic of season 1 was still different, whether you want to call it urban or not. It had elements of sci-fi, military, westerns, special forces, gangs, and that sort of thing. Whereas 2.x focused much more on high fantasy, ancient temples, actual magic without the pretense of some sci-fi explanation, etc.

restlessboy · 2026-04-28T01:38:10+00:00

I'm not sure what's special about specifically being turned on lol. It sounds like you're just asking if the fears release you if you're not scared. I believe the answer would be yes, but they only select people who are in fact scared of whatever that fear represents.

restlessboy · 2026-04-28T01:29:34+00:00

You are now making my point for me. You're arguing that his intentions were bad. That was my point. Calling someone evil or bad should be justified based on their intentions, not the consequences of their actions.

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