Math needs all its laws to be able to cohere. Throwing one mathematical principle out overthrows the whole thing. A principle of math is not like a marble in a jar that you can discard or rearrange without anything happening. It is a thread in a tapestry. Everything unravels in the end. The coherence falls apart. Nobody knows what to believe or trust. You cannot treat math as a menu. It is a very big web, but it is one thing ultimately. It all holds together. It is the same with any system that is factually correct. If you cause confusion about some of it or even call that material false, you are saying, “Trainwreck is fine.” And there will be a trainwreck eventually. You should be regarded as a danger zone.
Here is one of the most important rules of math. In fact, there would be no math without it and, again, all principles are tied up in it. The dice coming up with a six forty times in a row does not mean AT ALL that it probably will come up a six the next time. It would be a sort of near miracle if it did that forty times.
Another shocker is that it does not matter IN THE SLIGHTEST what the number of continuous throws is.
Is it a countless trillion trillion trillion? It is just as much a sort of near-miracle as forty times would be. Some would just call the dice principle a miracle outright. If you assume miracles can happen, then why not?
We miss that amazing super-wonder. I'll call it the dice principle. Affirming it is counter-intuitive and thus a warning that we are not reliable if we call anything a possible miracle, a near-miracle, or an actual miracle. [God, if He exists, would be to blame for all of us having a lying intuition—so what does that say?]
A miracle is something like Jesus' mother appearing to a child thousands of years after her death—and how the child sees her and nobody else sees a thing! [Logically, the invisibility is the biggest miracle! You are not told about that!]
The miracle of Jesus being alive today, as a resurrected being, is regarded by Christians as a gold-standard and central miracle. It does not matter if you mean miracle as something dramatic—such as a man coming back from the dead—or something more subtle, such as the man slipping into a coma and recovering. Or something that we will fail to see as important, such as a brick levitating for a few minutes. Intervention is the topic. It is the miracle.
[In reality, believers do not care about any miracle; they care only about a miracle that they can use to convince themselves that they have some higher power watching over them, ultimately saving them from death. The paradox is that they frame it as respect for the power of God when it is about themselves, not God.]
So, when you think about it, the dice principle is more amazing than anybody coming back from the dead. Math is more basic than any dead man resurrecting. Even Jesus had to die and supposedly rise within a mathematical universe. Even a God cannot change 1 and 1 being 2. He cannot change the dice principle. He didn’t create the rule. It does not need anybody to create it. If something can be so wonderful without being made by God, then that makes us less impressed with His supposed miraculous prowess.
The resurrection miracle would be a miracle within that math dice principle miracle. If there has to be a choice, then the latter comes first. That shows its importance.
I’d be reluctant to call the dice a miracle. It definitely is a “miracle.”
If it is a "miracle" rather than a miracle, then who cares? It really is amazing even if we cannot work up the feeling. It is, in fact, more stunning than any miracle. It shows that we are making ourselves amazed that Jesus rose and calling it a miracle on that basis. The resurrection is a superstitious notion based on selectiveness, prejudice, and the desire to believe. It is irrational to pick it out as anything special even if it did happen. We have no reason to consider the grass growing any less a sign from God than a man rising from the dead. It is propagandist to say otherwise. Yet Christians say the resurrection is the main miracle, though some modify that by saying the biggest miracle is creation, then the resurrection. A small difference.
Those believers who seek to centre on evidence for the resurrection of Jesus look objective. They are still motivated by wishful thinking. If somebody is talking about evidence, you need evidence that they really care about it. You get the charlatan who throws evidence at you but who is not throwing it from the right place and who is ridden with bias. You have enough bias of your own, so don't let yourself inherit somebody else's. Just because you can give evidence does not mean that you are about truth and not what you would like to think. You will want to hide that selfishness, that dishonest yearning. The use of evidence does not mean you really listen to it. You only listen to it to manipulate others to listen to you.
Back to the dice principle. The philosopher David Hume has been accused of violating this principle of math. His view was that, say, if nobody has ever risen from the dead, we have no reason to think that might change tomorrow. Hume knew that the future will not be the same as the past. He was not stupid. He just thought that nature should be assumed not to allow that kind of change.
Critics say, however, that it is a circular argument—for there is no reason why tomorrow has to be in any way similar to yesterday. The religionists, however, do not extend that to, “Adultery or murder were wrong up to now, but tomorrow could be a different story,” or to, "I can take as many illegal drugs today as I want, for nobody knows if they will kill me like they have done everybody else." They should, if it is true that everything Jesus did was tied to morals, teaching them, and representing them—so in that way, the resurrection has a moral side and is related to bans on adultery and murder.
Hume does not need an argument here. It can be a pragmatic or practical thing. It remains pragmatic or practical to assume the dice will be six the next time. He was about the past most of all. His argument was that we need more than hearsay for being told that a man rose years ago from the dead when all the dead we see have stayed dead. Even if somebody could rise tomorrow, that is a different subject—tomorrow, not yesterday.
Religion does presume that God is the ultimate mathematician. The practical then is defiant of God, oddly enough. Having no right to assume that the dice will be six the next time—or will ever be six again—overthrows the idea of a miracle standing out from the ordinary as a special sign and communication from God. It casts God out. Think about it. What can be more amazing than a dice giving six every time for countless billions of years and still leaving you without the slightest right to assume that it will be six the next time? Get that?
Even the Bible in Deuteronomy 18 says that the wonder of a prophet being always right in reporting truths that you would expect only a God to know is not from God if there is one error. That clearly supposes that a prophet being correct all the time does not mean at all he might be correct tomorrow. He might have to be discarded altogether tomorrow. A wait-and-see attitude contradicts the faith in prophets and in Jesus that the Bible asks for. To us, his being right would be an amazing miracle, but now we have even God telling us to be sceptical!
If I choose to harm, nobody can prove this is immoral, for they cannot prove anybody will still be alive next week. The dice principle would say that if people have been alive for countless billions of years, that has nothing at all to do with suggesting they will be alive in a second. The argument that bad consequences prove your deed to be evil is a fallacy. They would, if you were sure there would be any. It is not enough to speak of the intention being bad. That closes you off too much into yourself. If all you worry about is your intentions, then what about the damage around you?
Religion says that forgiveness is the only way to stop an evil progressing or continuing. It connects it to letting God in to heal. The argument that forgiving too often leads to empowering the abuser to do more harm would be correct unless there is some magic or divine power in forgiving. This is morally dubious, for you need to prove a God first of all and secondly that He is involved in this case. And it is not about you necessarily—softness means the abuser, because of your weakness, is going to target somebody else. Faith cannot be a licence for recklessness.
The secular version says that forgiving is good for your health and appeals to studies that supposedly show that. It is too subjective and hard to dissect, so the studies have limited value. Most, however, deny that forgiving is a panacea and has a bad and good side. There are people who are made to feel they are evil for refusing forgiveness to an abuser. You can withhold forgiveness and move on, so it is not doing you any emotional harm. Failing to forgive only harms if you are living among moral sadists, people who want you to feel bad for not pardoning your rapist or whatever. These things show that God, and a God who would be primarily about forgiveness, is really not about a credible or wholesome concept but about people trying to pretend they have the answers. The other thing is that the dice principle tells you that nobody can accuse you of fostering evil by not forgiving.
You may talk about choosing the lesser of two evils and you will be told, "That sounds mercenary. It seems better to talk about lessening evil." Aside from the fact that evil is evil and always tries to look better than what it is, the dice principle overthrows it.
Morality says you cannot accuse people of being evil or bad and need grounds, but it gives no grounds, so it does not agree with itself.
The idea of a moral God, or a God of justice and compassion and love, who can really inspire our lives is therefore fallacious. Remember that even God cannot change the dice principle. If He takes action so that the random might make the dice five the next time so that it will be six instead, He is overruling the dice principle. He is tampering. The change depends on the principle and does not prove it wrong. It upholds it. It is because the principle is right that He has to try and get around it.
CONCLUSIONS
A dice coming up six for countless billions of years does not mean AT ALL that it probably will be six the next time. That is amazing whether we feel it or not, and is greater than any alleged supernatural miracle. We can affirm miracles, yes, but this is not about concern for truth or evidence. It is bias that is behind it.
The dice principle is why you cannot argue that if adultery is wrong or murder is wrong, that they will probably be wrong the next time they are done. It even shows you must not trust any prophet or Messiah, for you might find errors start in his messages tomorrow. It shows that Christianity is being disingenuous by treating Jesus and other figures such as Moses as settled authorities from God.
The dice principle overthrows miracles and revelations - and God as a moral authority.