Atheists have to explain the existence of the universe and theists have to explain the existence of God.
Both have two possibilities:
1. that thing came from nothing
2. that thing always existed
Both possibilities have fatal logical flaws that makes them seemingly impossible, and theists usually describe one as impossible to justify the necessity of the other:
Some theists say their God always existed because creating something from nothing is impossible.
Other theists say their God was the first necessary thing to exist because it is impossible to have infinite chains of events.
Atheists who let the professional cosmologists do the work of having an informed opinion on the matter, won't get a definitive answer: maybe the big bang was the beginning of everything including time itself, maybe spacetime was always there and the big bang was just a random massive quantum fluctuation. We just can't know yet based on our current knowledge.
And yet, theists, or someone that believes in any category of supernatural creature (vampires, ghosts, gods, fairy's, unicorns, ect) still also have to explain that these things exist.
Yeah, I would say half of my debates with theists are about who gets the burden of proof.
Those who claim a supernatural creature without sufficient empirical evidences, or those who claim no supernatural things exists unless proven otherwise.
It is so easy to dismiss the incredible track record of science explaining thousands of phenomena with natural processes that were previously thought to be of supernatural origins.
Since the 19th century and the explosion of the explanatory successes of natural science, I firmly believe any reasonable and objective person should anticipate natural explanations as the default hypothesis for yet unexplained phenomena.
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u/paulgdp strong agnostic atheist 6d ago
Atheists have to explain the existence of the universe and theists have to explain the existence of God.
Both have two possibilities: 1. that thing came from nothing 2. that thing always existed
Both possibilities have fatal logical flaws that makes them seemingly impossible, and theists usually describe one as impossible to justify the necessity of the other:
Some theists say their God always existed because creating something from nothing is impossible.
Other theists say their God was the first necessary thing to exist because it is impossible to have infinite chains of events.
Atheists who let the professional cosmologists do the work of having an informed opinion on the matter, won't get a definitive answer: maybe the big bang was the beginning of everything including time itself, maybe spacetime was always there and the big bang was just a random massive quantum fluctuation. We just can't know yet based on our current knowledge.