Re: Professor vs. student: Discussion on God
My comments in blue
Your's are in red
***Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son ?
Student : Yes, sir.
Professor: So, you believe in GOD ?
Student : Absolutely, sir.
Professor : Is GOD good ?
The Christian concept of God is an easy target let’s reclassify that pseudo-definition…
Student : Sure.
Whatever God Wills comes to pass … nothing can trump the Will of God. To say God is good is to say that “God belongs to the class of good things” – this is drawing a similitude and presents a logical dilemma regarding evil. We say God is beyond both good and evil and they both come from Him.
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?
The assumptions made here are that:
Dying of cancer is worse than other forms of death
Praying averts death,
Prayer is the sure way to being healed
The idea of “helping others” is taken as being “good” by appealing to numbers and yet not justifying this position properly.
The idea that God doesn’t help sometimes is assumed as being an “evil” or “not good” disposition. But whatever God does is meant to be and beyond good and evil and He cannot be held to ransom under the criteria that we hold each other to.
See this is my problem. You're reaching. Helping others is considered "good", by conventional logic as well as all religions. This is a repeating theme. God appears indifferent, therefore He cannot be considered wholly "good".
(Student was silent.)
Professor: You can’t answer, can you ? Let’s start again, young fella. 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 ?
God – of course
(Student did 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 had no answer.)
God – of course
Why?
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.
Yes – We can feel the presence of God although critics explain that away, but those who believe in Him can feel Him. It is not done with our 5 senses.
This is just wrong. The schizophrenic also thinks that there are things in the world that others can't see or hear. Have you heard of the placebo effect? One person claiming something is not "true". It has to be repeated and verified.
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?
Actually this is wrong … according to science – the presence of God is inconclusive, it cannot negate what it cannot measure. We can only say something does not exist if we first specify the conditions for that thing that allegedly exists are met. Let’s say light bends with gravity, in order to say either way we need to set up a falsification test that if it passes it will affirm the said hypothesis and if it fails it will negate it, but only within the confines of the original hypothesis.
Well since religions refuse to give any bounds of measure, we CAN say God doesn't exist. The onus of proof is on you. Until YOU prove, with repeatable tests, test which are repeatable by others, it is reasonable to argue that God doesn't exist.
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.
A professor in science would not make this mistake!
Student : No, sir. There isn’t.
(The lecture theater became 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.
Therefore, cold is the absence of heat. It is a "thing". The absence of heat exists, therefore "cold" exists. Illogical argument.
Actually the student is more accurate than Ghost14. Heat is a tangible measurable phenomenon, although the concept of “cold” exists – in practice cold is merely a concept of heat which is delta minus from a nominal value of heat. Cold is not measured it is derived from two point measurements of heat. Heat is tangible and measurable but cold is calculated. It exists in the mind and not in practice, whereas heat exists. Heat in philosophy is classed as “a concrete entity” whereas cold is classed as “an abstract entity”
You are going off topic again. Does it matter how cold is measured? The point of contention is that there is no such thing as the idea of cold. This is incorrect. You can look up any scientific definition. They will mention that cold is subjective (no arguments there), and in mammals, is considered to be any temperature below body temperature. Therefore, the idea of "cold", while simply being a measure of heat, exists. Therefore, cold exists.
(There was 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?
No, a professor would not make this mistake
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 is, well you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?
Again, not sure what the point is. Darkness is the lack of light.
Again the student wants to impress the point that light is measurable and darkness is merely a light level which is less than an arbitrary nominal. Like in the examples before … light is a tangible concrete entity whereas darkness is an abstract entity – darkness does not exist like light exists.
You just defined darkness again. Answer this: what do I call a light level which is less than an arbitrary nominal?
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.
This entire section is flawed. The questions the professor asked about God are meant to ask a simple thing: why is there misery in the world? What did the AIDS baby, born into a life of poverty, do to deserve its fate?
The student's idea about the premise of duality sounds impressive, but it again, makes no sense. What does duality have to do with how finite God is? The professor is not arguing for a good God and a bad God (except for the part about Satan, which is trying to ask why God would create evil) he is arguing about why there is an indifferent God. Maybe there is no God. That would make more sense, in that the AIDS baby simply had bad luck. There was no grand architect that decided to doom the baby, it was just the roll of the dice. I'm not saying these are my views, I'm saying this is an easier explanation to accept than to say that there is a God, He is loving and all-powerful, but he lets all this misery occur in the world to people who are innocent.
Bad luck and Good Luck is all relative – To a suicidal person the infant who died young is considered lucky to a person who is loving this life that infant may be not have been so lucky.
The flaw in the argument above is in both the questioning and the responses. At least from an Islamic point of view if not from a Christian point of view. Is God indifferent? I don’t think we can make that conclusion from the idea that God makes both good and evil. We can say God favours good by legislating good, but God gives freedom of choice by facilitating both good and evil for those who choose it. The idea of postulating “no God” as a result of how we view anguish and suffering – is itself flawed. If anguish and suffering is merely an exhibition of behaviour just like happiness and wellbeing then neither of these are good or bad and hence at least from an atheistic perspective God cannot be held to account for what is neither good nor bad – i.e. suffering of children. It is just a possible outcome, we should not deem it to be evil and we should be unmoved by it ... ironically the atheistic mindset sympathises with these unlucky possible outcomes blames God for them and confirms their disbelief in the process. Surely ... the atheistic mind should view the situation with indifference or at least subject the idea of God to the same indifference they show to probability.
God is constantly labelled as all loving and all powerful. This is God's world...but God is not held accountable for the actions in it. God created man...but God cannot be held accountable for the evil side of human nature. This is flawed logic. If Shaitan exists, why does God allow him to exist? And as I said before, at best, we can say that God is indifferent, which is in conflict with what religions say, that God will intervene in our lives.
As for the idea about science being unable to explain "thought"...uh what? A thought is an idea. It doesn't exist in the real world. It is an abstract idea. You can't see it. What you can see however, is your brain light up in an MRI, as you think or do different things. Therefore, you obviously can't "see" a thought, but you can see the brain in action. These actions result in ideas and viewpoints, which we call thoughts.
Yes, a “thought” is an abstract entity – it exists in the mind, but it cannot be measured, signs of its existence are measured to suggest the presence of that thought. More completely the mind cannot be scientifically associated with the brain. In many cultures to memorise, have emotions and consciousness are associated with the heart and not the brain. In the MRI scan, the brain shows reactions to thoughts and not the thoughts themselves. People could imagine something or see a picture of the same thing and it would be impossible to know whether the mental response was a result of an imagined idea or an image seen by the eyes. If I think of a universe – that would be a thought with no electronic difference from thinking of a tiny gnat – if it were that thoughts are equivalent to neural activity.
If we can't see it, we take steps to see if there are signs of its existence. Those signs exist. Therefore, thoughts exist. That entire paragraph is unnecessary, unless you're saying that you don't believe that thoughts exist, in which case, there is no point in continuing this as we've entered the domain of the unreasonable. You cannot equate the metaphysical with the physical. There will never be proof for God. Only word of mouth that He exists.
Lastly, the student is ignorant of the fact that death can be both the opposite of life, as well as the absence of light. As we established above, cold is the absence of heat. Cold is also the opposite of heat. Therefore, death is both the absence of, and the lack of, life. QED.
Cold is not the opposite of heat – in real terms cold is experienced when the environment takes heat away from the specimen at a faster rate that the environment can replenish that heat. Also, I disagree with the student that death cannot exist without life … and at the same time disagree that death is the opposite of life … Life is about being given a soul and death is a transition from one form of life to another.
Being dead is the absence of life, and the “dead” condition is not the same as the “death” process.
Those are nice philosophical sentiments, but once again, in the real world, life is fairly obvious. We are referring to living things. When those living things are no longer living, they are dead. Therefore, death, or the state of being dead, is the opposite of life.
As for death: it IS substantive, which means it has a firm basis in reality, and is therefore, important, meaningful, and considerable. This entire part was nonsense, meant to sound impressive.
No comment
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 shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument was 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?
If the student knows anything about evolution, then you know that inherent in its definition is that the change occurs over millions of years. How the hell are you going to see it? Oh wait, you could find archeological and biological evidence that shows the common ancestor from which apes and man diverged. So I guess we can see evolution. And guess what, this has nothing to do with religion. For all you know, evolution is the method by which God created man.
No we cannot see evolution and the archeological evidence is merely a possibility in scientific terms, but not a definitive yes … not in any stretch of the imagination. Evolution is problematic at scientific levels that is conspiratorially being kept away from the public eye … with the onset of removing the capability to thinking critically people have bought in to the idea of evolution wholesale.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
This is just paranoid. And this is why people mock religions. To my knowledge, no religious theory has ever been put up for peer review, to be judged by others on its scientific merit.
(The class was in uproar.)
Cute.
Agree
Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor’s brain?
(The class broke 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?
This seems to be a very confused student. He or she needs to check an MRI and "see" a brain. Better yet, stick a metal rod through someone's head and notice how their mental capacity is suddenly reduced. That would indicate, to me at least, that there is something inside the head which governs our thoughts and intelligence. But hey, that's just me.
This is one of the logical fallacies and not considered sound proof. The only way to prove the professor has a brain is to open his head up. There are ways to vastly reduce the likelihood that he does not have a brain – such as the MRI … or by taking another person’s brain out, but because person A has a brain it does not mean person B has one too. A sensible person will say yes it does mean that but a pure logician will not be allowed to draw that conclusion. It is hence true that humans form beliefs around evidence much more readily than we think – we often conflate evidence as proof … and reason as logic. So long as there is no proof of evolution then it remains a belief and not a matter of logical fact.
Evolution is not a belief. This is crazy talk but that's off topic. As far as the brain goes, yes, in the worst of cases, we can crack open the professor's head and check for a brain. Therefore, the student's intent of equating the lack of evidence that the professor has a brain, with the lack of evidence that God exists, is wrong. The student is wrong. That was the intent of my original post.
Going back to the professor's idea about not being able to prove that God exists: well he's right, you can't. You can't see, hear, touch, smell, or taste God, nor can you demonstrate that God exists through experiment, ex: If you pray for something, it may or may not happen, and you have no way to know if it was God or random chance.
The point is that there is a hypocritical approach or at least an unfair bias present where believers are expected to PROVE God exists, whereas atheistic scientists do not do the same with their own beliefs and try to draw the veils over our eyes by calling their own beliefs – facts, logic or scientific proof. Let’s compare both beliefs with the same yard stick … shall we?
The fact that you think scientists use "beliefs as facts" is astounding. The onus for proof is always on the person claiming to know something. Also, many scientists are not atheists. They are simply scientists, who need to prove something for others to accept it, and they do. Any professor publishes their work in scientific journals, journals which review and check the work, and any published conclusions are open for challenge. This is not how religion works. So yes, let's use the same yard stick. Let's make it safe, and legal, for me to call BS on religious text where applicable.
(The room was silent. The Professor stared at the student, his face unfathomable.)
Professor: I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.
Student : That is it sir … Exactly ! The link between man & GOD is FAITH
And this brings me to a more important point. There is nothing wrong with having faith. But you have to admit that it is faith, that you are believing in spite of a lack of evidence, and should be willing to accept that for some, faith is not enough. Therefore, no religion is "obviously right" as they all rely on faith. Equating faith and religious doctrine, which, if challenged, is considered haram, is not the same as scientific discourse, in which new ideas are often denied and shot down until a consensus is built. This is the opposite of religion which says that this is the world of God, accept it.
I have no idea why some religious people feel the need to belittle science. It is entirely separate from religion. Religion is about ideas and philosophies, which can obviously exist outside of any doctrine. Science is about the physical world around us.
No there is plenty of empirical evidence in faith of God just as there is evidence of evolution. Rather arguing there is no God when the test conditions themselves are wrong is a huge fallacy. Just imagine I use a 1500x magnification microscope and analyse a cell and then conclude that atoms do not exist, because I could not see them (atoms would need electron microscopes to convert the energies back in to imagery on a computer screen in order to be seen).
So I can’t argue atoms don't exist when my apparatus was not up to the task. The test was wrong … It so appears that the test for the existence of God is not one embedded in proof, but in empirical evidence. So why are we trying to prove the existence of God when we are not even saying that there is objective proof of God … For those who believe in God they do so with certainty and that stems from a series of subjective proofs that no one can deny and if they do deny it then they are assuming and arrogating that they are the authority of perception and others are not and hence wrong.
<!-- google_ad_section_end -->There may be empirical evidence for faith in God, but there is no evidence for God. Show me, without typing 5 paragraphs, where I can go to see, objectively, that God exists. As for not being able to see atoms, yes, initially we were unable to see them. But numerous **observed **phenomena led to the fact that they existed. Ex: Brownian Motion.
Also, subjective proofs are just that, subjective. Science attempts to be objective. The fact that you just admitted that religion is subjective just disproves your entire argument.
At the end of the day, my original post was that the student was not logical. I think I have proved that easily. He makes non sense comparisons, like equating the brain with God, to show that science is "wrong". If you think science is just lying and beliefs, then you must think that the computer you're typing on, or the internet you're using, are miracles of God. Do not equate science with God. There will never be any objective, measurable proof for God. And for some reason, religious people take offense at that. I myself, am not atheist, and even I can see the non sense arguments made above. All we can have are philosophical arguments for God.
… This thread has woke me up temporarily from my GS slumber … It is despicable that we don’t know our own faith well enough nor logic for that matter to argue against this simplistic scenario …
