Posted on 01/28/2005 6:19:28 AM PST by JFK_Lib
OK, here is the scenario:
Its a poker game in a virtual world based on the American Western frontier, circa 1880. You are playing poker and the object is to win money. Now sometimes the virtual dealer cheats, but if you catch him cheating and shoot him, the game gives you your money back. But if you get it wrong and he is innocent, your online character avatar gets hanged for murder.
You sit down to play and the first hand the dealer deals himself a royal flush in spades.
The second hand, he again deals himself a royal flush in spades.
The third hand, he does it again, and so on.
How many royal flush poker hands does the dealer have to deal himself before you shoot the dealer?
None, or define a more "loose" definition of the word "cheat."
I'd shoot him after the third hand. What's up with those keywords???
”Unleash the Hogs of Peace.”
P.J. O'Rourke Parliament of Whores
I suppose I should clarify. I do not mean shoot the dealer right away and not wait for any flushes to be revealed, but rather there are not grounds on which you can shoot the dealer. Cheating is not defined as the end but by the means used to attain a desired end.
No option to move to another table?
NeverGore :^)
Shoot him before he deals the first hand, he's already a known cheat
Given the bizarre keywords, I presume the answer is 50, 491 or 4901, depending on which translation of the 'how many times shall I forgive my brother, Lord?' passage from the Gospel you use.
Of course, a virtual dealer existing only in a computer fantasy world is not my brother and virtually shooting one is not murder, so I'd be inclined to virtually shoot him on the second or third virtual royal flush it dealt to its virtual self.
OK, so far we have"
0 1 hand,
2 2-3 hands,
0 4- 10 hands,
0 11 - 50 hands,
0 not possible for any certainty, and
3 that are attacking the hypothetical question, lol.
There is enough information given in the scenario for an honest response, methinks.
The dealer does not always cheat as the game will present you with a new dealer each time, who may or may not be a cheating dealer. I think that is fairly clear, but just for the slow section, there it is, maybe some of you can answer the question now. (But I wont hold my breath).
Never...the deck is stacked and it's not the dealers fault.
Heh, a fourth ducking the question, but this time by ignoring its parameters and trying to redefine it.
So, 2 answered and 4 ducked.
Anyone seeing a pattern yet?
Well, it has been a day now and I suppose it is time to cut to the chase.
I used keywords denoting this related to apologetics because it is related, but not in the way most might assume.
The point is to illustrate something I saw when I was first returning to the church after years as an agnostic/atheist in my teens. The atheists/agnostics repeatedly demonstrated from what I observed little to ZERO honesty and frankness about anything.
If you asked them a question they would avoid giving an answer if they thought it might lend support to theistic belief and if one kept returning to the main point, they would attempt to disrupt the conversation with endless questions not regarding the subject at hand, then about the certitude of what one knew and then whether one had the authority to make such a judgement. In short they engaged in obfuscation in most of these discussions.
When one puts an atheist/agnostic in a situation where an answer is called for that might suggest any legitimacy to theism, they will avoid the question or attack it, or even insist that the most absurd thing is true. But they will not give an honest answer.
Anyone with a smidgen of common sense knows that if a poker dealer deals himself three Royal Flush hands in a row, that dealer is cheating, and would be suspicious with the first hand. But the atheist/agnostic, fearing the obvious analogy to an argument for design, will duck the question because it makes it so plain how they are deliberately ignorant on the subject of Gods existance.
Today we see that so much that was disputed a century ago has been decided in Christianity's favor (by Christianity, I refer to main stream Christians and not fringe fundamentalist elements).
We see that:
1. the Shroud of Turin is proven to date to the First Century (dispelling any reasonable doubts about the historicity of Jesus),
2. we have the Big Bang (dispelling any notions that the universe is eternal),
3. we have the well documented 'Fine Tuning' of the Universe for life (dispelling any reasonable doubt about the purpose of the universe),
4. we have the fact that the material world is almost entirely a void and the appearance of material solidity is essentially an illusion of energy fields and extremely little is actually matter.
5. we have retro-causality and Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle that disprove determinsim and thus the notion that what has happened is unguided but fated from the beginning by hypothetical causes that would make this plain if they were known. (It also dispells any quaint notions regarding the perfectability of man, but thats a different subject).
In short, we have seen the establishment of everything needed for Christians to demonstrate the scientific consistency of their world view and the utter failure of a deterministic-materialism that is the predominate view among atheistic/agnostic skeptics.
And so they deny the obvious, obscure what should be apparent, and engage in systematic prevarication where it suits them.
But the facts are in, and one cannot be an educated and informed person in the 21st century and still remain a deterministic-materialists that denies the existance of God.
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