Faith, Science and God June 26, 2007
Posted by Han in : Relationship with God, Email Collection , trackbackAn atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God. He asks one of his new students to stand and…
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?
(The student is silent)
Prof : You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fellow. Is God good?
Student : Yes.
Prof : Is Satan good?
Student : No.
Prof : Where does Satan come from?
Student : From…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?
(The 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?
(The student has no answer)
Prof : Tell me, son. Do you believe in God?
Student : Yes, professor, I do.
Prof : Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. 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 it’s call ed 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 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 tour 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.
There are quite a number of comments for this article, some supported the student and some supported the Prof (see below). What about you?
This is a very interesting article that I have received from the email many years back. I believe it will definitely encourage and help your Christian faith. Enjoy reading!
Comments»
The words “cold” and “darkness” exist to describe the absence of heat and light, respectively. This is true. However, those things exist as definitive descriptions of states; I live in North Dakota, it is cold here.
This argument made in the first half of the student’s retort, though true technically, is completely irrelevant to the argument that he is trying to make. It’s an indulgence and a play to the reader, trying to make the professor seem a fool by using a semantic trick.
The life-death argument, however, steps past indulgence and into a realm of personal opinion. I’m alive, yes; a state of being. Death, however, is not simply the lack of life; it is another state of being on equal footing with life. I have seen death, and I know it, at funerals, on television, and in newspapers. They’re two sides of a coin, not a full glass compared to an empty.
The student then branches off into a completely different direction, attacking evolution as an unfounded belief akin to the religion that he is defending. No one has been able to witness evolution on the scale described, no; it’s a process that takes millions of years. Micro-evolution, however, happens every day. You have all seen evolution happen in your lifetime; that friend of yours that almost died from a staph infection? That bacteria EVOLVED to become resistant to antibiotics. From microevolution and decades worth of fact-based learning and scientific practice we can logically infer that evolution exists on a large scale.
The crutch argument about the professor’s brain used at the end, the one that brings down the house, is argumentative trickery at its finest. No, no one has seen or felt this man’s brain. But from EVERY SINGLE AUTOPSY performed on mankind, we KNOW that behind the teachings of this man lies a reasoning, intelligent brain. This can be proven in less than an hour in this case; the professor would only have to walk over to the medical school and request a scan of his brain. Proof! This thing, something that should be absolutely critical to devoted belief in anything of consequence, is precisely what is missing from religion. None exists. No fact-based inference, no research, nothing. All that exists are faith and a handful of barbaric oral and written accounts of events that occurred two millenia ago. Instead of advancing society, we perpetuate morals and concepts that were vogue thousands of years ago. That is nonsense, my friends.
Of course the professor couldn’t answer - he was probably completely lost as soon as the student started spouting such abstract, baseless nonsense that doesn’t prove anything other than what a moron he is for thinking he can take on the wit of an intellectual - it’s the same with all Christians.
Wonderful!!!
Perfect example of how persons of a religious persuasion have no understanding of logic or reason.
Thank you!
the problem with this article is that the professor is wrong on several points. The main one being evolution HAS been observed. Two examples that come to mind are antibiotic resistant bacteria, and more specifically Senecio eboracensis, a newly emergent species of plant discovered by Richard Abbott in the UK. Also Good and Evil are value judgments not things, so to say either exist objectively is false. Also Heat and Cold are also value judgments, they are two terms describing the relative movement of atoms, not things.
Using High school level science teachers and students to prove a point about the validity, or lack thereof of science itself is perhaps not the best way to go about it.
1. Evolution has been observed both in and out of laboratories
2. Evolution can be proven to be an ongoing endeavor
3. The fact that no one has seen the professor’s brain and the fact that no one has seen god does not mean that the two are equally likely to exist.
4. All living humans ever observed have had brains, therefore assuming that the professor has a brain is reasonable.
5. Science can explain a thought, has seen thoughts, and can explain thoughts.
Wow can see that there is quite a few logical argument here. Here are some of my thoughts.
For me I do not believe in those evolution thingy. Evolution pre-supposed thing to become better and better. But the honest truth you all can see is that when things are being left alone, it become worse. For example, a bread that left for quite sometime, it turn moldy.
Nothing get better when left alone.
In the above argument with the student and processor, I agree that it is not 100% good example but still there is some truth there.
Infact, science is inline with God’s word which is the bible. Many of the discovery of science actually can be found in the bible.
You see many people try to put God in a box. If God can be reason out in your brain, then I think you are the next God. If you can figure out God, why need a God.
Yes I may not be as brilliant as many of you out there, but one thing I know is that Jesus Love Me, I did experience his love and mercy and is living a bless life. That no one can denied!
How about you? Are you living a blessed life. I can see that some of you are angry when writing the comment here. Do not be angry, you can too live a blessed life through Jesus Christ.
John
http://www.7dollarkillertemplates.com
I live a good life, as do you, John. The difference there, however, is that I don’t require the presence of a faith-based mythical watchdog to live that life.
When logic fails in the case of religion, it is often brought up that religion is justified through the good works that it brings. Yes, religion has been the jumping-off point for some good ventures in the past. More importantly, however, it has been used to commit an equal number of atrocities. The problem is, the people committing these acts AREN’T deviants from their faith; they’re following the scriptures.
As to the bread example… bread is not a living thing, it does not reproduce, therefore it is completely irrelevant to the evolution argument. You, unknowingly, made an argument FOR evolution: the mold on the bread is not caused by a lack of evolution in the bread, instead it is brought upon by the specialized action of bacteria that have become specialized through the process of evolution.