Owens Tryptic of Ignorance

I hold this to be an original device of my own invention.

This could be formed as an argument about the nature of the universe; however, we can expand it to include anything that exists outside of the universe (for example a multiverse, or a multiverse of multiverses) such that we could label it as a description of what is, or "reality" itself.

Form

1. Reality is necessarily infinite, finite, or something else.
2. I cannot understand:

1. An infinite regression of past events. Why should such a reality exist?
2. A finite reality, with a prior or post-reality state, from which nothing could come. Why should such a reality exist?
3. Something that is neither infinite nor finite and is itself a third state of being. I don't even understand what this could be.
   3. I do not and cannot understand reality.

Use

The point of the tryptic is that my incomprehension is total and even-handed. I cannot understand an infinite past, but I cannot understand a finite one either, so the fact that an infinite past is hard to imagine (Hilbert's Hotel) is no reason to prefer a finite one and the creator that is supposed to come with it. Incomprehension is not evidence (Personal Incredulity). The honest answer to "why is there something rather than nothing?" is that I do not know, and neither does anyone else; "God" is a label for the gap, not an explanation of it (Appeal to Ignorance).

Also see

• Kalam Cosmological Argument
• First Cause Argument
• Hilbert's Hotel
• Personal Incredulity
• Münchhausen trilemma
• God