Who throws the dice for you?

[tor]

Explain in detail each of the 4 options.

[Heywood]

But I'll bite: I'll go ahead and grant you a control mechanism. Please show how this would be evidence for 'god'.

If God exists you would expect events to happen which do not have local physical causes.

[RobbyPants]

And if we don't have the answer, then... God of the gaps?

No God of the gaps for reasons already explained in this thread.

You have 3 options.

1. A supernatural dice roller.
2. Bell's theorem is somehow wrong.
3. Randomness is not a function of ignorance but a property of the universe.

I'd dismiss 2 before I dismiss 1. I don't like 3 very much because it completely contradicts my experience.

So, option 1 is your favorite? That is a God of the gaps argument. Your stated position* is "you don't know of anything physical that creates randomness, and theism solves this quite nicely, but you can't explain how it works.". That's what that means.


* supporting evidence:

If I roll dice, the out come of the roll is completely random to me. However If I looked at the dice roll in sufficient detail....noting the initial point of contact, velocity, angular momentum, coefficient of friction, etc. the outcome becomes predictable. It would seem then that randomness is really just a function of ignorance.

This LaPlacian view holds true until you get to the quantum level. At the quantum level events happen which physicists tell us are fundamentally random. Fundamentally random is a hard pill to swallow when randomness appears to be a function of ignorance.

If a supernatural God is throwing the dice for us, I would expect that from our perspective randomness would just appear to be. As this happens to be the case in my mind a quantum mechanical world fits very nicely with theism. If I were an atheist, I would be stuck with super determinism.

[Ben Davis]

If God exists you would expect events to happen which do not have local physical causes.

Fallacy: begging the question.

Define 'God'. What are its attributes? How is it complicit in the creation of non-local, physical events? What is the methodology? Is there a model from which we can derive tests?

These are the types of questions that you must be able to answer before you can use 'God' as a starting assumption. Until then you may not include God in a hypothesis.

Your statement is really nothing more than poor, vague speculation.

[Mudhammam]

So who or what is throwing the dice for you atheists?

Wait, wait, I think I know the answer to this.. it's coming..okay. Yep. It's ZEUS isn't it?!?!?! hock:

[Fidel_Castronaut]

If God exists you would expect events to happen which do not have local physical causes.

Fallacy: begging the question.

Define 'God'. What are its attributes? How is it complicit in the creation of non-local, physical events? What is the methodology? Is there a model from which we can derive tests?

These are the types of questions that you must be able to answer before you can use 'God' as a starting assumption. Until then you may not include God in a hypothesis.

Your statement is really nothing more than poor, vague speculation.

Thank you.

[Anomalocaris]

If everything were truly innately random, probability wouldn't exist.

Incorrect. An event outcome can be random within a predictable statistical distribution.

[Heywood]

If God exists you would expect events to happen which do not have local physical causes.

Fallacy: begging the question.

Define 'God'. What are its attributes? How is it complicit in the creation of non-local, physical events? What is the methodology? Is there a model from which we can derive tests?

These are the types of questions that you must be able to answer before you can use 'God' as a starting assumption. Until then you may not include God in a hypothesis.

Your statement is really nothing more than poor, vague speculation.

Negative Ben,

A begging the question fallacy requires the assumption of a conclusion. I reach 4 conclusions(which I weight differently for reasons I have yet to explain) none of which is an assumption I make.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Fallacy: begging the question.

Define 'God'. What are its attributes? How is it complicit in the creation of non-local, physical events? What is the methodology? Is there a model from which we can derive tests?

These are the types of questions that you must be able to answer before you can use 'God' as a starting assumption. Until then you may not include God in a hypothesis.

Your statement is really nothing more than poor, vague speculation.

Negative Ben,

A begging the question fallacy requires the assumption of a conclusion. I reach 4 conclusions(which I weight differently for reasons I have yet to explain) none of which is an assumption I make.

Oh so your lack of explanation as to how one reaches these conclusions suddenly makes your obviously fallacious reasoning not fallacious?

Pull the other one mate.

[Heywood]

Negative Ben,

A begging the question fallacy requires the assumption of a conclusion. I reach 4 conclusions(which I weight differently for reasons I have yet to explain) none of which is an assumption I make.

Oh so your lack of explanation as to how one reaches these conclusions suddenly makes your obviously fallacious reasoning not fallacious?

Pull the other one mate.

Here is an argument:

Premise 1: We will see events which cannot be explained by local physical causes only if God exists.
Premise 2: We do see events that cannot be explained by local physical causes.
Conclusion: Therefore God exists.

Now you can argue that premise 1 or premise 2 is not true. But if premise 1 and premise 2 are true then the conclusion follows.

In order to "beg the question", the conclusion would have to be contained within one of the premises. This is not the case here.

For the record...I think premise 1 is not true....but that's besides the point. The point is that when Ben claimed I was begging the question....He was talking out of his crack.