Same experience. Right down to debate watching hoping for something to hang on to!

I only recently tossed a Handbook Of Christian Apologetics by Tacelli & Kreeft. I was never devout, let alone outright brainwashed into anti-science nonsense, but at the cusp of my reddit atheist phase I figured a question this big deserved a fair shake. So I got a big ol' book of the best arguments anyone had. They all sucked. So that was that.

The one that made me put the book down and go 'yep, atheist' was "the argument from magic." You think about moving your hand. Your hand moves by thought alone. Magic! Therefore, Jesus. I fucking wish I was exaggerating.

Took another decade to figure out the people pushing these arguments don't actually give a shit about being right. The point is performing loyalty to the ingroup. There's a conclusion, and it comes from people above you, so your job is to make whatever mouth noises get there. A monotheistic god is only the purest expression of that tribalist worldview.

Interested in reading more, can you mention the textbook(s) your course uses?

Subatomic particles act in insane ways that are absolutely not mechanical or predictible. A very limited size of object behaves "normally". I think believing that the universe mostly acts like our everyday objects is the skewed perspective.

Here's the thing, though: it's doesn't matter if free will is real or not.

Why do people always stop one step too short?

If there is no free will, the concepts of justice, blame, etc. still survive funtionally intact. If "chemical you" commits a crime, "you" are only not responsible if "you" is a metaphysical entity separate from (and that cannot control) the chemical you. But there's no evidence that "you" aren't simply the "chemical you", and therefore fully responsible for your crimes. If "you" are a metaphysical entity separate from the chemical you, then "you" do actually have free will.

This is only not true if the metaphysical you exists but cannot control the chemical you, which seems reasonable but like... you can move your arm right now, by willing it to be so. Either metaphysical you has free will, or your conscious experience is the chemical you. Either way, your conscious experience is either the same as or commands your physical form, and therefore is responsible for the actions that you take, and can be blamed and given justice.

I dislike the conception of Free Will that asserts will is only free if it is not deterministic. Any system dictated by the law of Cause and Effect will necessarily be deterministic, given knowledge of First Cause. Together, those premises imply that the only way to be truly free is in a chaotic universe, i.e. one without a relationship between Cause and Effect, where decisions are completely arbitrary and have no predictable outcome anyway.

The fact of the matter is that you're already free to do whatever you want, even if that's shooting yourself in the foot or refusing the choice entirely and running off to live in the woods, and that's freedom enough for all practical meanings of the word.

There's a really good Kurzgesagt (in a nutshell) about this topic. (Also their videos are excellent in general, highly recommend their YouTube channel).

My thoughts on this are: we may not have free will but it still feels like we make choices so I will continue to choose to do things which matters to me and enjoy my time in the universe.

That's actually my favorite parasite! Toxo really wants to live inside a cat's digestive tract, so much so that, when a rodent gets it in their blood, the baby toxos produce cysts in the brain (and liver and muscles) that hypnotize the rat into being attracted to cat poop. This leads to the rat hanging around where cats poop, and therefore getting eaten by the cat, and ending up happily back inside the cat's GI tract.

Oh I've been there too! Read about it while planning my pregnancy. It made me feel so paranoic that I got the test done twice just in case. I never got sick with it, but paranoia was a removed.

Since then I have gotten mental health help to deal with anxiety etc.

In the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, there was mention of a Shawken Device which, if operable, could destroy the universe.

This has led me to conclude that the universe probably isn't infinite.

In an infinite universe, all possible things should be happening at the same time. This would necessarily mean that someone invented a device/mechanism/reaction that could destroy the universe, and successfully activated it, thus ending the universe.

There are only two possible conclusions that I can draw from this thought experiment, which are not mutually exclusive:

1. The universe is not infinite, and/or
2. It is not possible to destroy the universe.

I just think:

how many living species have been on earth? Millions probably

How many of those species are intelligent? 1

How long have this intelligent species been around? Nothing at a cosmic timescale.

How many of this intelligent species have become "interstellar"? 0

I don't think those numbers can be extrapolate, even to the observable universe, to ensure that there are any species capable of interestellar travel around. Living species and even intelligent ones? Maybe. But a long lasting inteligent and interestellar species? We are not an example of that, so we have 0 examples to extrapolate. Only our wishful thinking that humanity will last longer and keep progressing, but that is just a hope, not real yet.

Give it time, we started emitting radio 80 years ago. When aliens look our way, they probably still see the dinosaurs or something.

This is a fascinating one.

Some things to consider, a toddler can easily defeat a baby but a 40 and 45 year old are evenly matched. There's also the question of how much is there to learn, at some point the tech tree is pretty much done - iron is much stronger than brass but maybe light-speed heavy plasma guns are pretty much maxed out and physics simply doesn't allow more.

This could result in interesting stalemates, a natural limit to the size of conflicts for example if it's possible to maintain a defensive sphere that can withstand the maximum level of abuse that a circle of attackers can provide - any weapons platform too far back being unable to increase the force applied. We might get technologically perfect civilizations effectively combined to bubbles of influence around their power sources.

What is possible is that at a certain level of tech we discover how to tap into the universal internet, aliens give us the rest of the answers to physics and philosophy then show us how to build VR gear so we can explore the cosmos in perfect VR and no one ever needs to build Dyson spheres or hyperwarp megastructures because we can do anything with a dark matter powered computanium smart phone.

Your last line about hiding reminds me of a peaceful species, the Nox, from Stargate SG-1, who had many abilities one of which was to become invisible and shield their community from detection. But funnily enough, they were so powerful and advanced they may has well have been treated like gods by anyone else.

I thought that was Harambe. Or was he the first sign of deviation?

I call it Gödel's curse

Tri-omni God problem. The God that we are told is worthy of worship is

1. Omniscient, and
2. Omnipresent, and
3. Omni-benevolent.

The presence of evil in the world demonstrates that no more than two out of those 3 can possibly be true at the same time. Thus if God does exist, he's not all that and a bag of gummy bears.

Smart astrophysics people I've talked to are excited when we see gamma bursters further out in the universe than before, because that means that the universe is bigger than previously known.