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Alroyfonseca via Wikimedia |
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An atheist professor of philosophy was speaking to his class on the problem Science has with God, The Almighty.
He asked one of his new students to stand and the following conversation began…..
Professor: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.
Professor: Is God good?
Student: Sure.
Professor: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.
Professor: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is this God good then? Hmm?
(Student is silent.)
Professor: You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fellow. Is God good?
Student: Yes.
Professor: Is Satan good ?
Student: No.
Professor: Where does Satan come from?
Student: From…God
Professor: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.
Professor: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student: Yes.
Professor: So who created evil?
(Student does not answer. )
Professor: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?
Student: Yes, sir.
Professor: So, who created them?
( Student has no answer.)
Professor: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son…Have you ever seen God?
Student: No, sir.
Professor: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No, sir.
Professor: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student: No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.
Professor: Yet you still believe in Him ?
Student: Yes.
Professor: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn’t exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student: Nothing. I only have my faith.
Professor: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.
Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Professor: Yes.
Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Professor: Yes.
Student: No sir. There isn’t.
(The lecture theater becomes very quiet with this turn of events .)
Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat,
but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theater.)
Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Professor: Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?
Student: You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light…but if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it is called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?
Professor: So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Professor: Flawed? Can you explain how?
Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.
To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?
Professor: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.
Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)
Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?
(The class is in uproar.)
Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?
(The class breaks out into laughter.)
Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?
(The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable. )
Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.
Student: That is it sir… The link between man and God is FAITH. That is all that keeps things moving & alive…
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Food for thought!
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ReplyDeleteMy Friend,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry it took so many tries to get this right.
My Criticism of The Student's First Point:
The student is clever, but not correct. He thinks that the examples of labels applied to conditions of absence as opposed to opposites is analogous to saying the existence of something is the opposite of its non-existence. It isn't, in the case of "God". 'God' must be defined to be talked about, just as in the argument for there being no opposite quantifiable condition of heat called 'cold' (except in terms of language); however, the opposite concept of heat IS cold, because heat exists, whereas it is asinine to say the opposite condition of the existence of "God" is a non-existence of "God", as 'God" has not been proven to exist.
Explained another way, the flaw is to say the opposite of "god" is non-god. This presupposes there is a definable, existential entity called "God" in order to argue there could be a state of 'non-God' to refute. There isn't.
"God"--for lack of a better definition, is the satisfaction of the primitive and unsatisfactory condition of confusion, which was created when early people could not explain the formation of the universe and what is in it. In short, it is (until proven otherwise) a figment of the imagination, perhaps at best posited to explain things. In other words, it is not a thing, except insofar as it is the opposite of the observable reality of there being no "God". This is entirely different from saying heat exists, which can be proven, and cold does not--except in semantic solution of the problem of what to use as a shorthand for the absence of heat. Therefore, because heat exists, we can say 'cold' is not its existential opposite (only its abstract, lingual one).
The erroneous analog in our "god" problem would be, As God is existential reality, non-god is a refutable quantity. But as I have labored to say and will say again for clarity, "God", thus far, is as non-quantifiable as "cold", because it is not even the real literal opposite of anything to refute. It is like saying you cannot prove there are not basketball people living on Mars. Of course you cannot, but not because you couldn't send a probe there and discover basketball people do not live on Mars, but because basketball people are not in existence, and more so because they are not plausible, except in the imagination.
First up - this is a good read - logic and counter logic have rationale and belief.
ReplyDeleteMethinks : There is or could be a third dimension to this all. Simply put - it could well turn out that science is God or vice versa. They are two sides of the same coin. The understanding of this is only separated by time. Its a matter of time before it becomes clear that science is the explained version of God's existence or the other way round.
It could well be that the third dimension controlling this is perhaps extra terrestrial in origin - who sets up a perfect artificial intelligence scientific project called Earth, with project managers like Jesus, Allah or Ram or Buddha sent to monitor, guide or protect the end users of the project. And over the years when there are too many bugs in the system, its perhaps time for a reboot.!
So, in conclusion I submit that assuming God and science to be two different ends of a spectrum could lead to an infinite loop of argument and counter argument.
The problem with stories such as this is that they begin with a great LIE. No professor has (or ever would) waste time in a religious argument with a student in front of class. The phrase is it's "off task". So this incident never happened except in the imagination of the writer's mind. Since when does Truth need a Lie to support it? From the get-go it is a turnoff to thinking people.
ReplyDeleteThe second problem is that it sets out the Lie that religion and science are natural enemies. That creates a hostility of religious people against science. Yet, there is more False Religion in the world today than there is False Science. True Religion and True Science have one common enemy: Falsehood.
So where does a false story like this fit into God's plan for human behavior? It creates a myth of a science professor (as if a professor of science has never contemplated that the human brain is a mystery) and it creates a myth of a brave, young Christian who is randomly called upon and outwits the great professor in a public debate. If this kid existed he should have been in seminary not in a science class.
But it is all a make-believe story. And make-believe (when used to promote religion) must be ok. Let us do evil that good might come from it. Right?