New Athiest Needs Help

[Violet]

It's just religious wordplay and nonsense. Using their own logic if "something can't come from nothing" then they need to explain where their "originator" came from.

"God is eternal and beyond space and time" is a copout.

Nothing too is eternal and beyond space and time. Such a being must necessarily come from nothing and to something, lest they to nothing come.

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So since we have established that there is no such thing as infinite that means the universe had a beginning there are 4 logical answers for the beginning of the universe seen and unseen;

1) the universe was created via nothing
2) the universe created itself
3) the universe was created by something which was also created
4) the universe was created by something UNCREATED

Alternately, it could be that 'the universe' was never created. Perhaps it was, is, and always shall be: regardless of time and space, unconcerned with the commonplace... for matter doesn't spark it's interest.

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OP, allow me to introduce you to the most powerful question we have in refuting theists: How do you know?

Same way you do. Same way anyone does: I perceive stuff, start noticing patterns, and finally it hits me: Twinkies taste awful. That then gets put in that weird little knowledge base that is my brain. Not that I am right about it going anywhere... but I believe it does.

Therein: I know it does, however strongly (as per evidence).

How does he know the universe could not have come from nothing? How does he know that there couldn't be an infinite chain of creators, and so on? Hell, more importantly, how does he know he's encompassed every possible solution to this issue?

He's a fool, just as are the rest of us.

Knowledge is demonstrated and not just asserted, so he's going to need to bring some evidence to bear, which he doesn't have. Nobody does, but the difference is that as an atheist I'm more comfortable just leaving that question at the "I don't know" stage and letting the evidence fall where it may. If someone else wants to assert things about something they can't possibly know about, then they'd better get all their shit together before they start spouting off assertions.

Knowledge is also asserted, and not demonstrated. I've never seen a 'real' human brain, I've only been told we have one. Maybe I believe it, maybe I do not... if I crack open a human head, I probably know that that one had one, but really... it could be my consciousness putting something there that isn't (and yet still is). It's experienced no differently for me whether it is, is, or is.

One can know anything. One is 'correct' rarely, and only ever in part.

How does he know? The answer is that he doesn't, and his shell game relies upon you not figuring that out to work. Don't fall prey to the false dichotomy he's trying to introduce.

'The more I know: the more I don't.'

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Let them know that our understanding of cause and effect breaks down when time does not exist. Yes, everything must come from something, something that preceded it. How can one thing come before something else if time literally doesn't exist?

The truth is that the "everything must come from something" principle is a temporal observation that isn't applicable when t = 0.

Try reasoning in a place where logic is in flux.

Oh sorry, we're already in one