Do you see this jug of pennies?  It's big.  It was awfully hard to lift.  Can you tell me how many pennies are in there?  Go ahead.  Make a guess.  



How big is the container?  Looks like about five gallons to me.  It's a standard water-cooler jug.  So how many pennies do you think there are?

30,000, you say?  Hah!  You're not even close.  Want to guess again?  35,000?  Nope. You don't know, do you?

I believe there are 329,004,031,749 pennies in this jug. 

I haven't counted them, but you said that you don't know, therefore my belief is just as good as yours.

You say that's crazy?  OK, look, I'm a reasonable man.  I'll meet you in the middle. There are 164,502,001,000 pennies in the jug.  That's exactly halfway between my answer and yours.  Fair and balanced.

What do you mean, it's impossible?  You're going to get all science-y on me?  Yeah, yeah, a penny is about .03 of a cubic inch, there are about 1,150 cubic inches of area in this five gallon jug, so there's no way that there can be over 38,800 pennies in there even if there were no space between them, is that your proof?  Fat lot you know. They're quantum pennies.

What's a quantum penny?  It's invisible.  You can't see it.  It transcends our meager physical limitations, so it has no mass in this dimension.  

Do you have a PhD in physics?  I didn't think so. They're invisible, immaterial pennies.  They're dark matter pennies. That's how come so many of them can fit in this jug.  

How do I know?  I see them through the eyes of faith.  My parents and teachers and friends at church all believe in them.   It’s written down in that old book over there.  In fact, a whole lot more people believe in my quantum pennies than your egghead number crunching dirty metal pennies.  

Here's a book by Doctor Professor J.B. Fraudqack explaining it.  What did he get is degree in and where did he get it?  I don't know - he's a Doctor, isn't that enough? Or do you believe that everyone has to go to some kind of liberal elite Eastern Ivy-League school to know things?  

Besides, people who don’t believe in quantum pennies believe only in themselves and therefore have no moral compass or external basis for morality.  They can't be trusted.  They're nihilists and sybarites and probably homosexual. Non-believers are bad people who will be punished forever and ever after they die.

Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider your answer?  Are you claiming to be wiser than my parents and the elders of my church and the people who died to defend that old book over there?  Are you sure you want to risk eternal torture?

Your problem is that you lack humility.  You're saying you don't know what you don't know and that if my trans-dimensional pennies existed you would know about them. Who do you think you are, God?  I think it's pretty arrogant of you to claim to "know" that that my quantum pennies don't exist.  At very least, it's silly.

How many pennies are in this jar?   You don’t have to count them.  Just believe.