trancendent dice

[Demonaura]

I wanted to bring up a quick topic before bed, it was an argument presented by Jen Peeples on the Atheist Experience which I'm sure many of you are familiar with.

The model she was presenting comprised of three jars, one jar had a set of dice in it, another had nothing at all and the third had 'trancendant dice'. Of course it is only a model, you won't likely find Trancendant dice at Wal-mart but, if you do phone the cops.

The trick was, when she told you what jar had what it was easy but, if she switched them up on you, you could not tell which jar had nothing and which jar had 'trancendant dice' in it. You had no tools or tests that could possibly determine the difference.

Obviously I don't need to beat around the bush, the 'trancendant dice' represented god. And to assume that those dice, or god exist you have to change the definition of existance to include things that you cannot know if they exist, thus destroying the meaning of the word.

The jars make it evident that in order to say god exists, one must be willing to knowingly change the meaning of the word existence, to include it's opposite because we have no way on this earth to tell the difference between a trancendant or invisible god, from absolutely nothing.


So, does anyone have any comments on the subject? Things you would add to the model or flaws you found in it. It seems sound to me but, I'd be interested to find flaws to see if they can be corrected or if the model fails in it's objective.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well I would say that we already know that someone put dice in ONE of them at least.
If we had no reason to think there was dice in ONE of them; then why should we look?

Would we go searching the planet for trancendent dice? I Don't think so.

The thing is if this is meant to be an analogy it is a false one because the default position in it is to assume that there is trancendent dice in one of them. Or at least SOMEWHERE.

With God however; untill there's any evidence or reason to think there's a God ANYWHERE. Why would we assume that maybe there IS a God but perhaps we just can't detect it?

Unless I have misunderstood?

We may not be able to tell the difference between a trancendent invisible God and no God...but there's no way we can tell the difference between a trancendent invisible FSM and no FSM either.

Until there is any evidence of God why think there is one? And if there is no evidence of God or his effects; practically there's no difference anyway.

trancendent dice on the other hand. DO exist. Whether we can tell exactly where they are in that test...or not.

[Kyuuketsuki]

So, does anyone have any comments on the subject?

Apart form to say that I like the analogy no ...nice one

Kyu

[josef rosenkranz]

I wanted to bring up a quick topic before bed, it was an argument presented by Jen Peeples on the Atheist Experience which I'm sure many of you are familiar with.

The model she was presenting comprised of three jars, one jar had a set of dice in it, another had nothing at all and the third had 'trancendant dice'. Of course it is only a model, you won't likely find Trancendant dice at Wal-mart but, if you do phone the cops.

The trick was, when she told you what jar had what it was easy but, if she switched them up on you, you could not tell which jar had nothing and which jar had 'trancendant dice' in it. You had no tools or tests that could possibly determine the difference.

Obviously I don't need to beat around the bush, the 'trancendant dice' represented god. And to assume that those dice, or god exist you have to change the definition of existance to include things that you cannot know if they exist, thus destroying the meaning of the word.

The jars make it evident that in order to say god exists, one must be willing to knowingly change the meaning of the word existence, to include it's opposite because we have no way on this earth to tell the difference between a trancendant or invisible god, from absolutely nothing.


So, does anyone have any comments on the subject? Things you would add to the model or flaws you found in it. It seems sound to me but, I'd be interested to find flaws to see if they can be corrected or if the model fails in it's objective.

I believe that you mean transcendent dice and not trancendant dice.
The word "existence" reffers to real things as well as to unreal ones and that's what really matters when it comes to the notion of God because we perceive for everything the thought of existence versus inexistence including the notion of God ,whereas the god believer does not accept apriory the inexistence of God.
Now, the notion of existence is strongly related to the time and the event which preceed a particular existence of any event.
Here lays one of the essential differences in the conception of atheism versus religion because for religion the basic question of who created god is a blasphemy which is strictly forbidden to be asked,nor to be discussed.
The a bit more enlightened god believer who will have the courage to think of such a question will reply with a question asking "so who created nature?" hoping that you will be cornered to answer that nature exists forever and he will then say "OK God exists also forever ".
The Vatican has accepted with joy the theory of the Big Bang wich seemed to confirm the creation of the World at one time by God.
Science has still no answer to the question what premerged the Big
Bang as well as the basic question why the singular point exploded then and there.
These are limits of atheism to which we have no answer than that nature exposes her secrets to us humans only in the wake of our evolution as self consciuos beings.
I have said in many topics that in my opinion an efficient argument aginst the limits of atheism is the evidence that Goe is a creation of mankind for most provable purposes .
This is the answer to the transcedent dice :it has no appeared in the jar from nowhere and by nobody but someone and in sometime has put it in the jar a certain purpose.

[Demonaura]

"I believe that you mean transcendent dice and not trancendant dice." Yes, spelling fails at 4AM, nice catch.

The thing about the dice was that the only thing we had to go on was that Jen said there were dice in the jar. When put right beside an empty jar though we had no method, no tools to figure out the difference between nothing, and the supposed dice.

Josef, I don't know if I see what you are saying quite right. to define if something exists, or has ever existed one looks for the impact it would have, or is making. If I told you a meteor hit the earth you wouldn't ask when you would ask where, because then you could check for a crater. If theres no evidence of the earth being displaced, as you would expect from a meteor hit then you could resonably say I was mistaken about the meteor. In the case of the dice, we know dice make noise when put in a jar and shaken, we expect to be able to feel them. But this jar that supposedly had dice in it made no such sounds, nor could we see or feel anything inside the jar, it was as if nothing was there.

In the case of god we apply the same methods, if a god exists who, for example answers prayers and intervenes on behalf those who pray. We would expect some measurable difference between those who pray for help and those who do not. Of course we see no such difference so we are justified in the conclusion there is not likely a god who intervenes on behalf of people who pray in this fasion. (this should sound familiar to the book club)

I think it's your last line that's throwing me off, I feel like I should know what your saying but, my minds just not making the connections.

[fr0d0]

Here lays one of the essential differences in the conception of atheism versus religion because for religion the basic question of who created god is a blasphemy which is strictly forbidden to be asked,nor to be discussed.

I strongly disagree. Faith = doubt = questioning.

Re phrased: This is the answer to the transcendent dice: it has not appeared in the jar from nowhere by nobody, but someone at sometime has put it in the jar.

That's brilliant, and funny. Nice one.

If Jen put it in there then Jen has extra perception, and knows where it is after it's moved. If Jen doesn't know where it is, she knows somehow that an extra sensory force put it in there.
As we can't know the same as Jen in either scenario, we must conclude that Jen is mad. Well I would LOL

[Edwardo Piet]

Faith=doubt=questioning? Huh? How on earth does belief without evidence=questioning?

EvF

[Tiberius]

I strongly disagree. Faith = doubt = questioning.

Now I'm going to be the one to pull out the dictionary:

faith -noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

How do any of those mean "doubt" or "questioning". Faith is the opposite of doubt, it is believing something even though you have no evidence to back it up. Hence why when we ask Christians "but why believe in God?" they reply "You just have to have faith".

[fr0d0]

"How on earth does belief without evidence=questioning?" - how DOESN'T it? LOL *winks*

"How do any of those mean "doubt" or "questioning"" - I was paraphrasing from another post. The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's fear.

To have faith in something means you can't be absolutely sure. Otherwise you'd move from faith to fact.. something you need no faith for. If you're not sure of something then you are in doubt. To be doubtful implies questioning.

Faith implies trust. An object of faith becomes such when a level of trust is reached. In no way do you trust something you're scared of. Quite the opposite. Fear is the opposite of trust.

You can only believe in God through faith, yeah, because there can be no empirical evidence. To scientific questioning this is useless. And you'd be right to mock the non answer if it were a scientific question IMHO. So either it's a non answer or it isn't a scientific question. To admit that would be to admit that science doesn't have questions about everything we experience. Unless you know better....

[Kyuuketsuki]

"How on earth does belief without evidence=questioning?" - how DOESN'T it? LOL *winks*

You gotta be joking here. As Adrian has already said faith (belief in something without evidence) is the very opposite of doubt and questioning.

"How do any of those mean "doubt" or "questioning"" - I was paraphrasing from another post. The opposite of faith isn't doubt, it's fear.

Um, no ... it's not. That implies that you think atheists are afraid to embrace faith in a god and I can assure you that the virtually none of us are afraid of your god or any other. Tell me ... are you afraid of Quetzalcoatl?

To have faith in something means you can't be absolutely sure. Otherwise you'd move from faith to fact.. something you need no faith for. If you're not sure of something then you are in doubt. To be doubtful implies questioning.

Again, no it doesn't ... faith religious or otherwise implies a degree of confidence. There are no absolutes in science therefore you are implicitly always question ... that's the nature of inductive reasoning.

Faith implies trust. An object of faith becomes such when a level of trust is reached. In no way do you trust something you're scared of. Quite the opposite. Fear is the opposite of trust.

See above and no, fear is not the opposite of trust for reasons already explained.

You can only believe in God through faith, yeah, because there can be no empirical evidence. To scientific questioning this is useless. And you'd be right to mock the non answer if it were a scientific question IMHO. So either it's a non answer or it isn't a scientific question. To admit that would be to admit that science doesn't have questions about everything we experience. Unless you know better....

In order for your god to affect this universe it must do something to it, if it has done something to i6t then it must leave a trail of evidence, if that evidence does not exist then, whilst we cannot be sure, we can reasonably assume that god DOES NOT exist. It rally is that simple.

Kyu