That was a good read...
Ito pa isang version debate pa more....
God Bless you all!!
NC
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,
son?"
"Yes, sir."
"So you believe in God?"
"Absolutely."
"Is God good?"
"Sure! God's good."
"Yes."
"Are you good or evil?"
"The Bible says I'm evil."
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?"
"Yes sir, I would."
"So you're good...!"
"I wouldn't say that."
"Why not say that? You would help a sick and maimed person if you
could.........in fact most of us would if we could... God doesn't."
No answer.
"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer
even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good?
Hmmm?
Can you answer that one?"
No answer.
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 with the new ones. "Let's
start again, young man."
"Er... Yes."
"Is Satan good?"
"No."
"Where does Satan come from?"
The student falters. "From...God..."
"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 we're 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?"
"Yes, sir."
"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? Did God make everything?"
"Who created evil?"
No answer.
"Is there sickness in this world? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All
the terrible things - do they exist in this world?"
The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."
"Who created them?"
No answer.
The professor suddenly shouts at his student. "WHO CREATED THEM? TELL
ME, PLEASE!" The professor closes in for the kill and climb into the
Christian's face.
In a still small voice: "God created all evil, didn't He, son?"
No answer. The student tries to hold the steady, experienced gaze and
fails. Suddenly the lecturer 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?"
No answer.
"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?"
No answer.
"Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"
The student's voice betrays him and c.r.acks. "Yes, professor. I do."
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 ever
seen your Jesus?"
"No, sir. I've never seen Him."
"Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
"No, sir. I have not."
"Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your
Jesus...
In fact, do you have any sensory perception of your God whatsoever?"
No answer.
"Answer me, please."
"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."
"You're AFRAID... you haven't?"
"No, sir."
"Yet you still believe in him?"
"...yes..."
"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.
"Sit down, please."
The Christian sits...Defeated.
Another Christian raises his hand. "Professor, may I address the
class?"
The professor turns and smiles. "Ah, another Christian in the
vanguard!
Come, come, young man. Speak some proper wisdom to the gathering."
The Christian looks around the room. "Some interesting points you are
making, sir. Now I've got a question for you. Is there such thing as
heat?"
"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."
"Is there such a thing as cold?"
"Yes, son, there's cold too."
"No, sir, there isn't."
The professor's grin freezes. The room suddenly goes very cold.
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, 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.
The professor replied,"First . I have never said that cold is the
opposite of heat. By your implying that that I did, you are putting
words in my mouth. Cold is a relative measurement of heat especially
below zero. Any temperature of heat under zero can be described by the
definition of cold. As I said that cold is not the opposite of heat,
it is merely a description of heat in relation to its relative state
to absolute zero. Furthermore, I can extend the premise of your
arguement and apply it to the description of size. There is no such
thing as shrinkage because being small is just the absence of being
big or absence of positive growth in size.
The smallest particle in this universe is electron that resides in an
atom, Since anything that shrinks will eventually end up not going
any smaller, can we say that the process of shrinkage never exists?"
The Christian is perplexed and confused. This Christian is really
ready to give up knowing otherwise that he would make a scene out of
himself and be the laughing stock of others for the rest of the
semester.
Silence sweeps through the room. After a brief pause, the crowd is
thrilled and thrown to the edges of their seats between this
exchange of words.
A piece of paper drops from the Christian's hand. On the paper is a
list of questions that the Christian has prepared previously which he
perceives now to be too ridiculous to bring up. As the Christian is
almost ready to make his way back to his seat, he is asked to stay
further more to challenge the professor. He reluctantly obliges.
"Is there such a thing as darkness, professor? I know it is now a
stupid question."
"That's a dumb question,right on, son. What is night if it isn't a
state of darkness? What are you getting at...? Didnt God say in your
Bible,' let there be dark' Are you getting at denying this so-called
act of God?"
"So you say there IS such a thing as darkness?"
"Yes..., speaking in your own term as according to your Bible....and
No
in the sense that darkness is a state and not a thing."
"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 is what I said, you idiot. I said that darkness is not a thing
just as
being hungry,being small, being rich,being poor, being dark, being
light is not a thing. Well darkness can be the state of relative
presence of something."professed the professor.
"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?"
"Of course, only idiot like you would come up with the question of
misleading somebody into acknowledging that darkness is a thing. Can
you give me a jar of "small", "hungry". How about your God which
claims to be omnipotent?"
Despite getting the upper hand, the professor smiles at the young
effrontery before him.
"This will indeed be a good semester. Would you mind telling us what
more you have got in your magic box, young man?"
"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to
start with and so your conclusion must be in error...."
The professor goes toxic. "Flawed...? How dare you...!"
"Sir, may I explain what I mean?"
The class is all ears.
"Explain... oh, explain..." The professor makes an admirable effort to
help the Christian regain control because he is suffering from an
unstable state of mind after being overwhelmed by the professor's show
of intelligence.
As usual, he is affability itself.
He waves his hand to silence the class, for the student to continue.
"You are working on the premise of duality," the Christian explains.
"That for example there is life and then here'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."
"Did I say life is the opposite of death? Did I say that I am viewing
things in duality? There is no such state as being in the opposite.
Just as there is no such thing as baby being the opposite of old man
or healthy new-born baby girl being the opposite of old woman with
cancer. All things only exist in a state along a line of continuum.
Human is a continuation of four-legged animal and plants.This is
evolution, the science of the respect for growth. You never witness
the folks compling the Bible, can we say that Bible can be written by
aliens from outer space?"
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?"
"Of course there isnt, experience and facts are only as good as the
meaning we attach to them. Nothing is immoral just as nothing is moral
"
"Wrong again, sir. You see, immorality is merely the absence of
morality. Is there such 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, immorality is not the abscence of morality. Immorality is
morality in the eyes of the beholder.PERIOD"
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 over evil."
"Evilness and righteousness is a zero-sum game. They cancel out each
other in principle. One's act can be considered as evil and righteous
at the same time. They co-exist and can not be mutually exclusive.
What makes you think that God is accompishing something even if he
exists? This is just your assumption that God can not stand doing
nothing and sitting around. If evilness is the agency then its purpose
is to combat the so-called righteousness because it is again a
zero-sum game. "
The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist, I don't vie this
matter as having anything to do with any choice; as a realist, I
absolutely do not recognize the concept of God or any other
theological
factor as being part of the world equation because God is not
observable."
"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.
"What makes you think that there is no moral code in this world just
because it is not coming from the Bible?"
"Newspapers make billions of dollars reporting it
every week!"
"How about newspaper reporting Christians acting in voilence? We read
news like that all the time.Those are people mind-controlled by God's
will."
Tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they
evolved from a monkey?"
"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young
man, yes, of course I do."
"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?"
"Well, can you prove that your stomach really absorbs your breakfast
today.
How about the breakfast 50 years ago? Can you prove that the world is
round with your ***** eyes without any scientific instruments? If you
eye-witness someone fires a gun at a victim, can you prove that the
victim is really killed by the bullet because you can never see the
bullet after its
entrance in the victim's body. If you testify in court that you
witness A firing a gun at B ,are you not just offering an opinion
only. Furthermore,the bullet sweeps across the air so fast that you
will never even see it as an object after it is propelled from the
barrel of the gun.
If we cannot even trust our observation, what makes your spiritual
connection with your God any more trustworthy. I'll overlook your
impudence in the light of our philosophical discussion. Now, have you
quite finished?" the professor hisses.
"So you don't accept God's moral code to do what is righteous?"
"If anyone can belive in any sets of moral code ,he can just be easily
swayed into believing in any other moral codes - I choose science!"
"Ahh! SCIENCE!" the student's face spits into a grin.
"Sir, you rightly state that science is the study of observed
phenomena. Science too is a premise which is flawed..."
"SCIENCE IS NOT FLAWED,ONLY OUR CURRENT STATE OF THE UNDERSTANDING OF
SCIENCE IS. Science exists long before man roamed the world.All
answers are already out there, they are just awaiting discovery and
the right piece of invention to dig them out. " the professor
splutters.
The class is in uproar in reaction to the professor's insights. The
Christian remains standing until the commotion has subsided.
"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.
"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, testable, demonstrable
protocol, science says the professor has no brain."
The professor replied:" Well, let me rectify your flaw. Let's say a
blind person never sees you as an entity, can you say that you never
exist.
The world can see but can be blinded by their obesession over
some sugar-coated misleading propaganda released by some unscrupulous
politicans or religious leaders.
The class is in chaos and cheers for the professor in ecstasy.
The Christian sits in shame... Because that is the state in which he
is originally to be there for.
*******
I cannot quite understand the reason for the last paragraph :-
> The Christian sits in shame... Because that is the state in which he
> is originally to be there for.
Is the Christian ashame of himself? I think he has been doing well in his
discussion with the professor.
> The world can see but can be blinded by their obesession over
> some sugar-coated misleading propaganda released by some unscrupulous
> politicans or religious leaders.
... is the conclusion by the professor. This conclusion just explains the
reason why the professor (and many of us) cannot see God - because we are
blinded by our sins.
What I interpret is that the Christian sits in shame because he already
knows before he goes out for the discussion that such debate cannot make
people change. No matter how much evidence and how many arguments we can
have, people will choose their own way of thinking and doing.
The only thing that can change people is our prayer. Only by the Holy
Spirit we can let others know the Father, and only through Jesus can we
come to Him.