Quoted below is a ‘parable’ that has reached me a few times now via the seemingly unending supply of religious chain spam.
The story revolves around a theist student who apparently out wits and out debates he’s atheist professor of philosophy on the question of the existence of god and the problem of evil.
For the most part it is almost not worth responding…but since it reached me a few times I thought I’d try to point out a few things…
An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty.
He asks 1 of his new religious students to stand.
Professor: You are a religious person, aren’t you, son?
Student: Yes, sir.
Prof: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.
Prof: Is God good?
Student: Sure.
Prof: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.
Prof: 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.)
Prof: You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?
Student: Yes.
Prof: Is satan good?
Student: No.
Prof: Where does satan come from?
Student: From uhh God.
Prof: That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.
Prof: Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student: Yes.
Prof: So who created evil?
(Student does not answer.)
Prof: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don’t they?
Student: Yes, sir.
Prof: So, who created them?
(Student has no answer.)
Prof: 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.
Prof: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No, sir.
Prof: 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.
Prof: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student: Yes.
Prof: 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.
Prof: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.
Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof: Yes.
Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.
Student: No sir. There isn’t.
The lecture theatre 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 theatre.
Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof: 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 its called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?
Prof: So what is the point you are making, young man?
Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof: 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 1. 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?
Prof: 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.
Prof: 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 and alive.
The student tries to address the problem of evil (if the good god is omnipotent, how can it let the bad exist) by paralleling the definition of evil as the absence of good with that of cold as the absence of heat and darkness as the absence of light.
“ There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat.”
“ In reality, darkness isn’t. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?”
Boils down to: “Because darkness is absence of light, darkness does not exist”..(ditto with coldness). One might also then conclude that say a hole in the ground, since it is only absence of ground, does not exist.
Presumably the student concludes that because evil can be seen as the absence of good, evil does not exist so the problem of evil disappears. Even if one is to consider evil simply as the absence of good, this still does not answer the question of why god created evil…it simply uses an alternative definition of evil so only restates the question as something like “Why did god create a world where there exists absence of good?”
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.
The premise of duality (good vs evil), a common premise inherent to most religions, especially Christianity and co. (e.g. God vs Satan; Heaven & Hell; Angels & Demons), lie at the core of the paradoxical problem of evil. What he accuses the professor of doing (premise of duality) is actually the very problem he is trying to explain away for religion…which the student actually failed to ever do as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
The student goes on to attack science using magnetism and electricity as an example of how science knows nothing about what we can not “see”. If the student really thought that science knew nothing about electricity, he need only stick his fingers in a power socket to experience a shocking revelation. The fact of the matter is that science knows a great deal about electricity and magnetism (and all the other fields of science) and we are constantly learning more and adjusting our understanding accordingly. Science is not perfect, not complete and does not claim to be either but is still by far the best picture of reality that humanity has ever painted. But the fact that science does not explain everything does not mean one can declare any old concept beyond the reach of science and untouchable without some kind of sound justification.
Then, unlike what the student asserts, evolution is not based on faith, but fact. Huge amounts of scientific enquiry and experimentation confirms evolution.
We have actually “seen” evolution in many instances, including but not limited to: fossils; viruses; pepper moths, animal breeding; bacteria and more. It has also been rubber stamped by genetics..our understanding of genes alone proves evolution. Evolution is a fact, like gravity, and people who try to use it in an argument for god are always either ignorant, uninformed or devious.
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?
This highlights the student’s misunderstanding (or misrepresentation) of how the scientific method works. Science does not say that only things that our crude and basic human senses can experience exist and empirical does not mean only things we can see with our own eyes and feel with our physical senses; It means things that we can define, test and measure. We have acquired enough empirical evidence by cutting open people’s heads (amongst other things) to conclude that it is overwhelmingly likely that every healthy human’s head has a functioning brain in it. It’s not a faith thing, its a verifiable fact thing… we can cut open the professor’s head and confirm that he has a brain… religious people are yet to find something to cut open (so to speak) to prove that there is a god.
For reference, the scientific method:
To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[2] The Oxford English Dictionary says that scientific method is: “a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses. [.....] Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable, to predict future results.
To sum it up. There is really not much of a point made here by the student. He pretends to explain the problem of evil away by word play and tries to discredit science to rationalise religious faith (a kind of ad hominem). He tries to bring science down to religious faith’s level of certainty and tries to make religious faith look as rational as trusting the laws of gravity, which is well off the mark. The things that science have us believe in are testable, based on evidence and repeatable experiments… religious faith is pure faith with no evidence (apparently some kind of virtue within a religious context). The fact is that religious people have faith not because of evidence or proof (since there is no evidence or proof) but mainly because the faith was installed before the need for evidence or proof was ‘required’ to justify belief, via childhood’s religious indoctrination.
