Evolution/Creation

by FrightMare 7 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  FrightMare

  A professor is debating with one of his students, a Christian:

  PROFESSOR: "LET ME EXPLAIN THE problem science has with Jesus Christ." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand. "You're a Christian, aren't you?"
  STUDENT: "Yes, sir."
  PROFESSOR: "So you believe in God?"
  STUDENT: "Absolutely."
  PROFESSOR: "Is God good?"
  STUDENT: "Yes."
  PROFESSOR: "Are you good or evil?"
  STUDENT: The Bible says I'm evil."
  PROFESSOR: The professor grins knowingly. "Ahh! THE BIBLE!" He considers for a moment. "Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help them? Would you try?"
  STUDENT: "Yes sir, I would."
  PROFESSOR: "So you're good...!"
  STUDENT: "I wouldn't say that."
  PROFESSOR: "Why not say that? Would you help a sick and maimed person if you could...in fact most of us would if we could...God doesn't"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: The elderly man is sympathetic. "No you can't, can you?" He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. In philosophy, you have to go easy on the new ones. "Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?"
  STUDENT: "Er... Yes."
  PROFESSOR: "Is Satan good?"
  STUDENT: "No."
  PROFESSOR: "Where does Satan come from?"
  STUDENT: The student falters. "From... God..."
  PROFESSOR: "That's right. God made Satan, didn't he?" The elderly man runs his bony fingers through his thinning hair and turns to the smirking, student audience. "I think were going to have a lot of fun this semester, ladies and gentlemen." He turns back to the Christian. "Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"
  STUDENT: "Yes, sir."
  PROFESSOR: "Evil's everywhere, isn't it? Did God make everything?"
  STUDENT: "Yes."
  PROFESSOR: "Who created evil?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: "Is there sickness in this world? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All the terrible things - do they exist in this world?"
  STUDENT: The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."
  PROFESSOR: "Who created them?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: The professor suddenly shouts at his student. "WHO CREATED THEM? TELL ME, PLEASE!" The professor closes in for the kill and climbs into the Christian's face. In a small voice: "God created all evil, didn't He, son?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  STUDENT: The student tries to hold steady, experienced gaze and fails.
  PROFESSOR: Suddenly the lecture breaks away to pace the front of the classroom like an aging panther. The class is mesmerized. "Tell me," he continues, "how is it that this God is good if He created all evil throughout all time?" The professor swishes his arms around to encompass the wickedness of the world. "All the hatred, the brutality, all the pain, all the torture, all the death and ugliness and all the suffering created by this good God is all over the world isn't it, young man?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: "Don't you see it all over the place? Huh?" Pause "Don't you?" The professor leans into the student's face again and whispers, "Is God good?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"
  STUDENT: "Yes, professor. I do"
  PROFESSOR: (The old man shakes his head sadly) "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you seen your Jesus?"
  STUDENT: "No, sir. I've never seen Him"
  PROFESSOR: "Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
  STUDENT: "No, sir. I have not."
  PROFESSR: "Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus... in fact, do you have any sensory perception of him whatsoever?"
  STUDENT: [No answer]
  PROFESSOR: "Answer me, please."
  STUDENT: "No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."
  PROFESSOR: "You're AFRAID... you haven't?" (The professor glides his bony hands through his balding head)
  STUDENT: "No, sir."
  PROFESSOR: "Yet you still believe in him?"
  STUDENT: "...yes..."
  PROFESSOR: "That takes FAITH! (The professor smiles sagely at the underling) According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son? Where is your God now?"[The student doesn't answer]
  PROFESSOR: "Sit down, please." (The Christian sits...Defeated…. Another Christian raises his hand)
  OTHER STUDENT: "Professor, may I address the class?"
  PROFESSOR: (The professor turns and smiles) "Ah, another Christian in the vanguard! Come, come, young man. Speak some proper wisdom to the gathering."
  OTHER STUDENT: The Christian looks around the room. "Some interesting points you are making, sir. Now I've got a question for you. Is there such a thing as heat?"
  PROFESSOR: "Yes, son, there's cold too."
  OTHER STUDENT: "No, sir, there isn't” The professor's grin freezes. The room suddenly goes very still. The second Christian continues. "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, 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, otherwise we would be able to go colder than 458 - You see, sir, and cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it." Silence. A pin drops somewhere in the classroom. "Is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"
  PROFESSOR: "That's a dumb question, son. What is night if it isn't darkness? What are you getting at...?"
  OTHER STUDENT: "So you say there is such a thing as darkness?"
  PROFESSOR: "Yes..."
  OTHER STUDENT: "You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it 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 called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, Darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker and give me a jar of it. Can you...give me a jar of darker darkness, professor?"
  PROFESSOR: Despite himself, the professor smiles at the young effrontery before him. This will indeed be a good semester. "Would you mind telling us what your pint is, young man?"
  OTHER STUDENT: "Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with and so your conclusion must be in error...."
  PROFESSOR: The professor goes toxic. "Flawed...? How dare you...!"
  OTHER STUDENT: "Sir, may I explain what I mean?" The class is all ears.
  PROFESSOR: "Explain... oh, explain..." The professor makes an admirable effort to regain control. Suddenly he is affability itself. He waves his hand to silence the class, for the student to continue.
  OTHER STUDENT: "You are working on the premise of duality," the Christian explains. "That for example there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science cannot even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has never seen, much less fully understood them. 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, merely the absence of it." The young man holds up a newspaper he takes from the desk of a neighbor who has been reading it. "Here is one of the most disgusting tabloids this country hosts, professor. Is there such a thing as immorality?"
  PROFESSOR: "Of course there is, now look..."
  OTHER STUDENT: "Wrong again, sir. You see, immorality is merely the absence of morality. Is there such a thing as injustice? No. Injustice is the absence of justice. Is there such a thing as evil?" The Christian pauses. "Isn't evil the absence of good?"
  PROFESSOR: The professor's face has turned an alarming color. He is so angry he is temporarily speechless.
  OTHER STUDENT: The Christian continues. "If there is evil in the world, professor, and we all agree there is, then God, if He exists, must be accomplishing a work through the agency of evil. What is that work, God is accomplishing? The Bible tells us it is to see if each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good or evil."
  PROFESSOR: The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist, I don't vie this matter as having to do with any choice; as a realist, I absolutely do not recognize the concept f God or any other theological factor as being part of the world equation because God is not observable."
  OTHER STUDENT: "I would have thought that the absence of God's moral code in this world is probably one of the most observable phenomena going," the Christian replies. "Newspapers make billions of dollars reporting it every week! "Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"
  PROFESSOR: "If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."
  OTHER STUDENT: "Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir? (The professor makes a sucking sound with his teeth and gives his student a silent, stony stare) Professor, 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 now not a scientist, but a priest?"
  PROFESSOR: "I'll overlook your impudence in the light of our philosophical discussion. Now, have you quite finished?" the professor hisses. I believe in what is - that's science!"
  OTHER STUDENT: "Ahh! SCIENCE! (The student's face splits into a grin) Sir, you rightly state that science is the study of observed phenomena. Science too is a premise which is flawed..."
  PROFESSOR: "SCIENCE IS FLAWED?" (The professor splutters…. The class is in uproar… The Christian remains standing until the commotion has subsided)
  OTHER STUDENT: "To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, may I give you an example of what I mean?" (The professor wisely keeps silent. . . The Christian looks around the room)
  OTHER STUDENT: "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" (The class breaks out in laughter. . .The Christian points towards his elderly, crumbling tutor) "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain... felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain?" No one appears to have done so. (The Christian shakes his head sadly) "It appears no one here has had any sensory perception of the professor's brain whatsoever. Well, according to the rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science, I DECLARE that the professor has no brain." (The class is in chaos…The Christian sits... Because that is what a chair is for)
• 

  hillary_step

  Frightmare/Nightmare,

  To your own admission you came on this Board to cause trouble and indeed did so, resulting in an account being de-activated.

  Please do not be surprised if people do not bother repsonding to you or your semi-baked viewpoints.

  HS
• 

  sunstarr

  I imagine there will be plenty of people on this board who don't agree with that line of reasoning. Nonetheless, I like the story. Thanks for the post FM.
• 

  Naeblis

  My god, not THAT tired propoganda piece. *sigh*
• 

  AlanF

  This little piece is wonderfully illustrative of extremely bad Christian arguments. Let's see where it goes wrong.

  It is true that darkness does not exist as a physical entity, since light is comprised of physical entities called photons that travel at "the speed of light". We can measure various characteristics about them, and so we can observe them. Indeed, we use photons as the medium for our sense of sight.

  Similarly, heat is a measure of the energy contained in the motion of molecules. We can measure it with a thermometer, we can observe that it flows from higher concentrations to lower, and so on. Cold is indeed a relative lack of heat energy.

  No problem with the arguments presented so far, in the sense that the 2nd student showed that heat and light are physical entities. The problem comes in with the use of fuzzy language. The student mixes everyday language with the more precise language of science.

  In everyday language darkness and cold certainly exist. In the precise language of science, they don't exist, since they're the absence of physical entities that are measureable.

  The 2nd student's argument goes wrong when it dives into the topic of "duality", and gets into areas inherently much fuzzier than observations about heat and light. First he mentions the dual notions of life and death, good God and bad God, morality and immorality. Death, he says, is the absence of life. Here he has made his first mistake, and has used his lack of clear definition of terms to do it. Using precise language, death is not the absence of life, but the cessation of life. One might speak of a dead squirrel in the road, but it's not particularly sensible to speak of that dead mountain over yonder. Using the student's reasoning, you can't hand anyone a jar of life, or a jar of death, so neither life nor death exists, right? Wrong, and this shows why the 2nd student's argument is wrong. He has mixed up everyday and precise definitions of language so as to confuse the poor, dumb professor.

  So it is with morality and immorality. In precise language, both certainly do exist even though you can't hand anyone a jar of them. Both are acts. Morality is acting in accord with some some standard; immorality is acting not in accord with some standard. The application to justice and injustice is obvious.

  Finally we get to the question of the existence of good and evil. Having used invalid argumentation to get to a certain point in his argument, the 2nd student uses the poor, dumb professor to 'establish' that evil is the absence of good. Unfortunately he has again failed to define his terms. What comprises good? What comprises evil? There are any number of definitions, but a set that works for most people is simple: good is 'what I like' and bad is 'what I don't like'. Thus the concepts are completely subjective. And of course, in this sense, both good and evil exist. Thus the 2nd student's argument is completely flawed.

  Having established no base for further exposition, the 2nd student makes a major jump, quite disconnected from what he has said so far, to an exposition on a popular Christian theme about God's purpose for "evil". The giant disconnect in logic in the following statement is simply breathtaking:

  "If there is evil in the world, professor, and we all agree there is, then God, if He exists, must be accomplishing a work through the agency of evil. What is that work, God is accomplishing? The Bible tells us it is to see if each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good or evil."

  This statement simply assumes that God exists, and that the Bible is God's Word, and that certain popular interpretations of the Bible are not arguable. This is not argumentation -- it is mere declaration.

  The 2nd student goes on to pull the usual fundamentalist Christian trick of misrepresenting the scientific method. The professor is made to say that science only accepts what is observable, then later the 2nd student argues that because no one has seen the professor's brain he has none. Thus the scientific stance is made to appear ridiculous. As a corollary, evolution is false. The problem here is that science does not say that things not directly observable with one's eyes are not acceptable evidence. Indeed, observation includes many indirect methods. Most of what is scientifically "observed" is done through indirect methods. In the case of this post, the professor's brain is most certainly indirectly observed because we know that lack of a brain results in a dead man.

  This piece is fairly representative of the horrible argumentation, the emotional claptrap, that is so common to fundamentalism. Thinking persons should reject such fundamentalism because it inevitably leads to loss of freedom to think, and often to the kind of fanaticism we've seen with the WTC disaster. Indeed, fundamentalism is defined by its rejection of facts in favor of a predetermined view.

  AlanF
• 

  FrightMare

  A fine post indeed Alan.

  I'm assuming you're an atheist because most here are, that's what it seems to me at least. If that's true of you, I would like to know what your take of good and evil is, especially since the common consensus among the high priests of materialist reductionism insist that free will does not exist.
• 

  FrightMare

  My thoughts about the "debate":

  I love the caricatures. The professor jumps in his class's face without provocation. He is described with such evocative phrases as "The elderly man runs his bony fingers through his thinning hair and turns to the smirking, student audience." (His bony fingers and baldness are described twice, just to make sure we get the point.) He shouts at his student for no reason at all, then sticks his face in front of the student. He's always smiling, smirking, and generally acting like a comic book villain. But when reacting to the other student, he sucks, hisses, freezes, gets angry, "goes toxic", etc. One wonders how in the world he ever got his Ph.D when he obviously has never received any criticism in his life and doesn't know how to deal with it.

  The heroic Christian, of course, gets described with neutral words like "explains", "replies", "continues", "looks around". Unlike the prof, his physical features are never described, except that he grins once.

  But the most salient feature of the story is that neither the professor nor any of his students have an adequate grasp of the most basic concepts of science. What kind of idiot is this professor, whose idea of science is that if you can't smell it, taste it, feel it, hear it, or see it, then it doesn't exist? If that's the case, then what happened to electrons, cells, Newton's laws of motion, living dinosaurs, black holes, photons, magnetism, infrared light, and general relativity? For that matter, what about abstract concepts like "harmonic chords" or "Thursday"?

  Science isn't about what we can perceive with our five senses. If that were true we wouldn't need scientists, because most of us already HAVE those five senses. It's about organizing facts about the known world into descriptions that can explain the way things happen. These descriptions make predictions which can be tested, repeated, and falsified if they're wrong.

  Of course, science can't actually prove that the professor has a brain. Just because every human or animal body that has ever been dissected and analyzed has always had a brain; just because countless experiments have demonstrated that the brain controls an organism's ability to move and speak and reason; just because an animal with a damaged brain becomes an inanimate mass of carbon... these things are hardly conclusive proof. What science can do is make predictions with confidence and high accuracy; it can prove things beyond reasonable doubt but it can't prove anything with 100% certainty. The fact that it is able to change and correct mistakes is part of what makes it a powerful tool.

  If the professor had any kind of clue what he was on about, he could have explained all this. Of course, the problem isn't with the professor, who is after all only a fictional character. The problem is that the author of the story has never heard of or simply doesn't understand the scientific method. It's easy to make up little stories where the opposition is always an evil overlord who doesn't know how to argue and your side always wins. It's also easy to win at chess when you control both sides of the board.

  Oh, and one final point...

  OTHER STUDENT: "Wrong again, sir. You see, immorality is merely the absence of morality. Is there such a thing as injustice? No. Injustice is the absence of justice. Is there such a thing as evil?" The Christian pauses. "Isn't evil the absence of good?"

  No, evil isn't the absence of good. An empty universe would be devoid of both good AND evil. A universe with no life or intelligence would not be good or evil. "Good" and "evil", assuming they exist, are not passive activities or "absence" of something else. A professor of philosophy should have seen through that immediately. But he doesn't because he, like the story's author, is completely out of his depth.
• 

  Naeblis

  Good posts both Alan and Frightmare