The Ballot Box

[Afghan]

Argument from analogy is always fraught with danger but I'm an adrenalin junkie...

Science, at its very foundation, seeks to provide a coherent explanation of the sense data our minds receive. The analogy is a homunculus crouched in ballot box. Every now and again somebody pushes through a card - for the sake of argument lets say they push through a playing card.

Our homunculus, let us say, is of a scientific bent, and wants to understand the playing cards he receives somewhat better. By examining each playing card he starts to formulate a scientific theory. Such a theory should have predictive power (that is, the homunculus knows what the next card will be before it is posted) and explanatory (the homunculus has an idea of why the cards are posted in the order that they are).

This is, very loosely, science at work.

The reason many of us conclude that there is no God is because we have no sense data which cannot just as easily be explained without God as with. In other words, there is no evidence for God.

But what if theists have access to a completely different category of sense data that can be better explained by the existence of God? In other words, what if one day, somebody posts a Tarot card into the ballot box. Or a better analogy, what if some homunculi get Tarot cards and others don't.

Now, I'm not saying there is any evidence for this. I'm not saying any theist has ever made such a claim explicitly. I'm not even suggesting that theists who do receive such hypothetical sense data ("being moved by the Holy Spirit" perhaps) have the best explanation for it. But what if, fundamentally, we're missing a trick here?

It's stupid, I know. I'm just musing.

[graymouser]

Ah, a religious experience example. The fundamental r.e. dilemma is that there is no way of knowing that r.e.s do not come from an evil being or from a trickster. This fundamentally disqualifies all religious experiences from being informative about the existence of a good God.

-Wayne

[Yannis (J'ohn)]

Even assuming that your analogy is a good one (I don't think it is, but then again I don't think there can ever be a perfect analogy), there are several problems there. First of all, science and theism are not personal practices. In your analogy, homunculi keep chattering with one another, exchanging theories on the origin and nature of the cards, and so on. A large group of homunculi can investigate a ballot box on the same time, in order to get reliable result. So it is not as simple as your belief versus mine, or whatnot.

Worse still, in your analogy, homunculi have no desire or intent to misinform. That is not the case with humans. Imagine that, whether deliberately (wanting to be famous) or not (being myopic), a homunculus claimed that a playing card is a tarot card. And after other homunculi examine it, they find that it is indeed a playing card, although it still looks like a tarot card in the eyes of the first homunculus.

For better or for worse, I don't think the situation is so easy to understand, Afghan... Good try, though.

SBS :)

[Ellis14]

The problem is that your analogy implies in the end that science cannot understand "God".

Theists might have a different way of knowing about God and understanding him, but your analogy implies that this isn't accomplished by science.

So either science is capable of proving God or it isn't. If it is, then it doesn't matter if you're a theist or an atheist. If God cannot be proven by science then we must accept this and reduce him to the realm of faith. This isn't to say that he doesn't exist though.

[Afghan]

Oh don't get me wrong. I fundamentally believe that any Tarot cards are posted by Yog Sothoth (an omnipotent being that condemns anyone who believes in omnipotent beings to hell). But I don't think that the possibility can be so readily dismissed.

It is a problem. Other empiricists come to a different conclusion. How do we know we have all the data? We could be blind. I think that anyone adopting theism on the basis of access to such data holds a perfectly valid scientific position. However, I have yet to encounter a theist who does argue in such terms.

I'm just trying to pre-empt here.

Yes there is communication between homunculi - let's say they have cell phones. But some homunculi have access to another class of evidence. Generally, homunculi have no experience of Tarot cards. Their response is along the lines of... "What the fuck are you talking about?" Even those homunculi that do have access to such evidence do not have the language to adequately express what they have found. Their missives are along the lines of... "Today, the Holy Spirit moved me."

[The Bearded One]

This analogy works just as well -- perhaps even better -- with psychic phenomena. In particular there are many "psychics" who claim that their powers are inhibited by the presence of skeptical observers.

But back to theism: It is certainly possible that God only reveals Itself to a select few, but that would argue against most of the typical ideas about what God is and what God wants. Use the Argument from Divine Hiddenness to defeat this idea of God. I wonder if this is the sort of God-idea that 7th Day Adventists adhere to...?

-- The Bearded One