Upon reconsideration of Darren’s point, I revise my original comment
By analogy - trees form a somewhat coherent group (perhaps as coherent as the group “theists” is - after all, how much in common do Christians and Buddhists really have), with various subgroups (oaks, pines, elms) and edge cases (yews). But “non-trees” have nothing in common at all in common except for not being trees. A duck, a star, a lake, a person and a suitcase are all “non-trees” - but there’s nothing about “non-trees” that makes them a remotely coherent set, and looking for any aspect other than non-treeness that these “non-trees” have in common is doomed to failure.
begbert2, from the way the marble scenario was being described, I took it to mean this:
I can believe there is an even amount or marbles, or I can believe there are an odd amount of marbles. I thought this was meant to describe the degree of uncertainty between two states. If I cannot observe the marbles, and can only take the word of the marble keeper that he has marbles, then I’m making a decision before I make the observation. Therefore, it parallels with the Schrodinger’s Cat model, in which there are two possible states of the cat, alive or dead, that I cannot verify until I observe the cat. That model is meant to illustrate how the principles of the micro universe differ from those of the macro universe, by defining the cat as half alive and half dead until it’s observed. I inserted God into the equation because I thought that was what the marble scenario was driving at.
If you’re saying that this is the type of conundrum one encounters when one seeks to properly identify as agnostic or atheist, it seems to imply that one is basing his opinion on the truth that the marbles exist in the first place. I am the identity seeker, and you are the keeper of the marbles. If you ask me whether I believe you have an even or odd amount of marbles, the first thing I’m going to think is “Where are these marbles,” not “I believe in one marble state so I don’t believe in the other marble state.” You’re essentially directing me to choose between two states, and you’re using my answer to define the degree of my agnosticism/atheism. My choice is based on personal observation, not playing the odds.
“The Schrodinger’s Cat model” was a deliberately absurd scenario crafted by Schrodinger to highlight the questionable aspects of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. it’s not something that is presumed to be possible on the macro scale; quite the opposite.
If the point that you were trying to make was that prior to you personally counting them the marbles are in a state of quantum superposition and lack a number at all, I think that the best response I have is to simply disagree with you, and back away slowly.
By my read of it, in the marble scenario the jar is right in front of your face. You are looking right at it, so there is no doubt that the marbles exist. It’s just that you’re unable to count them, and thus their actual number (and their even/odd state) is unavailable to you.
And you’re completely missing the point - the purpose of the marble analogy is prove that agnosticism is possible, when BigT implied he thought it wasn’t. If you already accept that it’s possible to not have an opinion about the answer of a question due to lacking sufficient information to form such an opinion, the analogy was not meant for you.
Supposing you do say, “Where are these marbles?” and I respond with an elaborate story about how the jar was broken many years ago by the first man ever showed them to, and so, after sacrificing my own son to put that jar of marbles back together with a magic paste formed from his blood, I now no longer show off the re-formed jar of marbles to anyone who does not firs believe that I have a jar of marbles on faith alone. How, then, would you answer these questions:
Do you believe I have an even number of marbles in a jar of marbles?
And if you say no, can I take that to mean that you believe I have a non-even number of marbles in said jar?
Or are you going to be so bold as to claim that I could not possibly have a jar of marbles, even in the most mundane sense of the words “jar” or “marbles”?
This has nothing to do with probability or odds.
ETA:
To be clear, begbert2 is correct in this. One would think that it is understood, for the purpose of this scenario, you know with metaphysical certainty that the jar exists and has marbles in it. But KO’s continued questioning, while I think missing the point, does open up some additional avenues for discussion if we do take a step back and pretend that maybe—just maybe—the scenario doesn’t demand you grant metaphysical certainty in the existence of the jar and included marbles.
Keeping in mind that if the jar and marbles don’t exist, and thus there are zero marbles, which is an even number of marbles, it actually doesn’t change the scenario at all - except that the odds of whether the number of marbles is even or odd become incalculable.
Unless, of course, the pedant you’re talking to insists that you’re asking him how many marbles are in the jar, and then segues from there to the fact that unless he grants the veracity of the jar the question is technically nonsense, while simultaneously recognizing that the sentence is not nonsense even if he denies the veracity of the jar, at which point he corrects himself and states that even if the jar is imaginary, it is still a conceptually coherent object that has been defined as an imaginary jar with some number of imaginary marbles in it, and that that number must be either even or odd, while simultaneously recognizing that since it’s an imaginary jar you may not have decided how many marbles are in it, but despite that it is known that that number, whatever it eventually ends up being, must be either even or odd, not both or neither. At which point he reaffirms that he could form a belief about whether the number of imaginary marbles in the jar are even or odd, but his guess would be based not on a 50/50 chance but on his estimation of how likely it is that you would imagine up an even or odd number. All factored into his estimation of the odds that you are lying about the jar in the first place, for it might in fact exist in which case the odds would be 50/50.
Somewhere around this point, of course, you hit him over the head with the jar just to shut him up.
If you are skeptical about not stating beliefs without evidence, it just means you are rational. That’s not something you need to defend. Or, like any good scientist, you can say that a belief is conditional on finding evidence, and that you are willing to change the belief.
While many gods cannot be disproved (ones whose characteristics are logically inconsistent can be) any god worth his salt can be proved, by him showing up. Or proved to a reasonable level of proof, like the existence of Paris.
In the marble case - which is nicely simple - you can believe or the other possibility, but you’d be hard pressed to have a justifiable belief in either.
I agree that if you weren’t allowed to see the marbles you might have cause to lack belief in their existence, but that’s not the case here.