Quote:demaura wrote[/quote]
(qoute)
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.
You are right that we see every time the impact of an event but the same event, taking place in space-time coordinates, is preceded by another event which is it's cause.
The world is essentially deterministic although because of an indefinite number of causes which precede an event it appears in a lot of times in a dual form of previsibility and randomness.
So what I was saying was that from the point of view of the existence of God if we look to the event which preceded his appearance we really
can find reasons in the spiritual evolution of mankind which generated him.
By the way, being an atheist does not mean that we have to deny the positive role which religion,along with negative ones,played in the evolution of our spiritual world.
Even these days the majority of mankind believe in a form or other in the existence of God .
We are denying the existence of God but we are not denying the right of each human being to believe in what he feels is right for him.
Now,coming back to the jar what I was saying was that although we are not aware of the existence of that transcendent dice we can not accept the idea that it appeared in the jar out from nowhere but that someone or something has put it there with a certain purpose the same way as it happend with the appearance of the belief in God.
