Agnostics .. What do think of think of this writing? What are the flaws in the argument placed by the student?

Question

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty. 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?
(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...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, smelled 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 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 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?
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 endeavour, 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 smelled 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 & god is FAITH. That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

That young man was ALBERT EINSTEIN.......

I received this piece as a forward, i too doubt if the student was Einstein but it did make for interesting reading.

I directed my question to agnostics because i know that the atheists would rubbish this and the believers (in any religion) would tend to be swayed with the students words..

I thought that the agnostics stand on this writing would be the most interesting ...

Answer 1

Don't know. Fell asleep half way through thank god.

Answer 2

The student's argument is basically sound, given what the professor has said. However, the story doesn't really get us anywhere with regards to the question of God's existence, because the professor's argument is so weak. Of all the arguments against the existence of God, those raised by the professor are right down there with the sorts of things children argue about in the school playground on the same issue.
The story is basically a ditty in favour of God, and certainly not a true story - how many professors do you know who would deliberately set themselves up in this way, and be that obnoxious (picking on a Christian student to crticise their beliefs) while surely knowing that they had a useless argument? Also, while Einstein WAS religious (he struggled for much of his life to reconcile his belief in God with the implications of his own research into quantum theory), he was never a particularly focussed student, and famously only an average one, so the chances of him producing such an eloquent and cutting rebuttal as a young man would have been unlikely (all his life Einstein was shy of speaking up if he didn't have to).

The internet is full of stories like this which purport to demonstrate some kind of truth but are really just rhetorical tricks. For a proper look at the issues around God's existence or lack of it, look up Bertrand Russell's debates with Father Copleston (below).

Answer 3

yes a logical argument, and the professor got punked.
Now if you do further readings on Einstein you will find out that his God is the God of Spinoza, and not the big guy in sky god.
He makes the point very clear with his statement of the invalidity of dicotomy.
But this is still not a proof of god.
It is only a proof that such argument depends upon faith and not reason.

Also as an aside evolution is observable and is a continuing process, it was just not well enough researched or recorded at the time of Einstein. And even when Darwin wrote his theory of how selection and variation might give rise to species nothing was known of genetics. We have learned much more. This has resulted in not only better theories but better proofs. Many people get confused about facts and theory. Light is an observable fact. There are many theories about how it works. The most useful theory is counted as the truest. There are very strict rules about how to vaidate a theory.
In Science, unlike religion, there are no absolute truths.
Just best guesses so far.

edit:
I do not believe your story to be true. it has too many features of fiction, the reading of the professor's mind by the author, the reactions of the student, the triteness of the composition.
you should be crediting the author.
I would like to know who the preacher who wrote it was.

Answer 4

You mean as in the flaw of the equivocation the student uses w/r/t hot & cold, light & dark?

Or the student's odd notions about empiricism requiring direct sight, sound, taste, touch, or smell, whereas things that aren't directly observable can still be accurately measured through their action upon their environment?

Or the said little claim, that religion must be true if there's anything science can't explain? Or that some smart alec kid's belief that there's no evidence for various scientific ideas stems from his utter failure as a student to do any research, and that that somehow abbrogates the need to provide any actual evidence of his own?

Or that both characters are straw men, designed to serve a role that only works if you already agree with the student?

Or that this story is designed for no purpose than to play on the faithful's vanity rather than reach anyone outside of the faith, and to explain away an apparent conundrum that the only the faithful have (ie, why do bad things happen to good people)?

Or the fact that this entire story is false?

Answer 5

TLDR (too long didn't read) answers are always funny...

anyway, firstly I'm quite sure I read that it was in fact not a real thing.... and definitely not really einstein.

I'm not agnostic, but I would imagine the agnostic viewpoint, would be that even with those ideas, you still can't observe God's existance affirmatively.

>>"ME: We have those terms, because they are used to describe the absence of something else. Therefore to say that God can exist, you would first have to prove to me what his opposite is."<<

actually I think the premise of the whole "debate" is that God = Good(light/heat) and Evil = Dark/Cold, debunking the "god is good so the presence of evil is contrary to the idea of an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent entity.

>>"one flaw i came up with after reading it is that regardless of whether or not electricity or magnetism can be seen, they can certainly be tested."<<

could color be proven to exist, or be tested by technology developed by a society of people with no functional visual perception at all? even if people in that society started appearing that could perceive it... none of the technology would be designed with parameters to consider color.

its not that it can't be tested, AS SUCH, but that traditional science and the parameters accepted as givens, are such that metaphysics are almost entirely outside the scope of traditional science.

another detail, is that while einstein was jewish by blood, from my understanding his personal beliefs were in more of a distant generic deism sort of line of thought, rather than a religious interactive God.

Answer 6

Wow! I had fun reading it. Well, about the flaw, I had one.

The boy here is telling the proffesor that evil is not the opposite of good rather it is the absence of good as he explain it using the heat and old and light and dark. And the world is filled with Immorality, Hatred, suffering and other evil things, doesn't that make God absence in the world? Since God is Good! But then there is still goodness in the world...where does it came from? Isn't it from ourselves?

If you don't agree then are you telling me that we are not good? Humans are not good? That we need God to be good?


I know that the thing about the brain is a joke so no problem with that!

Answer 7

What is your source for this? There's language and argument in there which are definitely coming from the Christian fundamentalist camp and weren't used during Einstein's day. I seriously have to question the accuracy of the text.

I also deeply bothered by the way the piece uses Einstein's reputation for genius -- if he said it, it must be right, yes?

No. He didn't understand quantum mechanics. He was, at the end of the day, one man, with a finite life and a substantial but finite intelligence.

This writing is tautological. misleading and manipulative.

Answer 8

Two things on the student's viewpoint. Firstly, the student is being hypocritical in his denounciation of the view of God as a finite entity. By looking closely at his perspective, you can see that he has an existing image of God, limited by his own human perspective and governed by his own mind. He does not have the higher ground on the scientific assignment of properties to concepts because he, by virtue of being of limited mind (as all men and women), practices it.

While the Professor's discussion of science is indeed flawed, the student's is just as much so. Cold, Darkness and the Mind are all realities in the realm of the Idea. Similarly, undeniably, so is God. The lack of physical, tangible form does not deny to an idea its existence. Just like we can be hurt by the words hurled at us by others, so too does the darkness creep, the mind ponder and the cold chill. Concepts are powerful even when they are fiction, and power necessitates existence.

However, I believe this entire work to be fiction trying to pass itself off as fact, and for this I am forced to denounce the whole thing as an attempt at deception. Albert Einstein did not study Philosophy, the Professor is attempting to use "scientific" reasoning in his discussion, and both Professor and Student in this scenario are far too closed to the prospect of the metaphysics of Conceptual Engineering to be in any way related to the study and history of thought. Thanks for the discussion, but that last line was entirely malicious in intent.

Einstein had a profound notion of what God was; much more so than the majority of the evangelical masses would hope to understand. I would appreciate it if he were not used as an advertising tool.

Answer 9

Just in case anyone missed it, the whole thing is a lie which is a pretty big flaw in my opinion, but a very typical one when it comes to religious argument.

When you take away the lies there's nothing left and, therefore, this question doesn't exist.

I see that dishonesty exists and I recognise it as Christian.

The logical extension of the argument is that since knowledge exists, ignorance doesn't, which I'm sure is a great comfort for fools.

Answer 10

Bit long for Yahoo! answers but it's not your own so hey.

Problems with the student's argument? WEll it does demonstrate the age old feud very well but there are some discrepancies. Firstly the duality absence cannot really be cmpared to God because there is no measurable thing in the Universe that can be said to be either product of a god or lack of such god. While indeed lack of heat cannot really be measured or thought of conceptually, how do we find a duality to apply to theism?

This is the age old problem of these two schools, between the scientists and the theists. If you disprive one school using the methods of your own school then your excercise is useless. Example: Using logic to disprove god such as in this demonstration. Because the foundations of each school are built on largely incompatible methods of thought and oppinion the opposite school's philosophy holds no meaning over the other. And neither school is without both realms of thought, logic and faith. Scientists see mounds of evidence left behind from the ancient world about evolution, but they msut have faith. Not in evolution, but in the idea that physical proof and evidence equals truth. Same deal with the professor's brain, physical evidence exists that it is there and when he dies his head can be cut open to present more evidence, but scientists must take the evidence they have and trust in the process of evidence and matter as a foundation for truth.

Similary theists rely on proof all the time. Their holy text for example, seen as the word of their god or the teachigns of their deity are filled with examples of miracles and events shaped directly by that god. They quote it to back up their beleifs. And asking scientists to discount faith in their methods of science because it is the realm of theism is to ask religious people to give up their holy texts and churches because it is evidence and the realm of science.

Human beings are creatures of both rational thought and beleif in what they cannot prove exists. If we did not have both these qualities warring within us there would not be the conflict that we see every day, particulary on here. Over the course of our lives we choose sides or some of us abstain depending on what we feel is closer to our personal beliefs, but still it keeps going. As an atheist I came to this because I feel a closer affinity to what I can prove exists, but more importantly I feel that organized religion not only contradicts many beleifs held by religious people but causes much harm and dissension amoungst people and I wish to form my own beliefs aobut the world and oppinions aobut others without being beholden to anyone else, whoever it may be: preacher, Pope or even a man that lived 2000 years ago. I choose what to beleive in and I'm accountable for that. But I don't begrudge people who have faith in things they can't prove are there. I can't prove where electrons are or that that evolution happened. But I believe they're there. And I tihnk the best way forward right now is for people to agree to disagree. That's all. No hating of the "heathen" or picketing those with different lifestyles then the ones you were brought up on, no spitting venom at people "blind" to your thinking. Agree to disagree.

Answer 11

These rhetorics are based on given and unproven heritage from war between religion and science ...
I would in the same way ask : "Is it science that is guiding G.W.Bush to do the mess he is doing around the globe, or is it faith ?"...
And... by all means ... how did Albert Einstein's fantastic discoveries have contributed to make this world more peaceful ???
The most beautiful thing in your text is that it gives the proof that the human mind is great whether it is oriented to religion or to science.