myths and downright lies

Skepticism General Skepticism
1

Here’s an old chestnut that keeps popping up and I would like to knock it off the pedestal some xtian has created in a pathetic attempt to justify religion:

Does anybody know the origin of this myth (obviously the student in question is Einstein)? As far as I am aware he never studied philosophy (I could be wrong)but he is known to have stated that he rejected a personal god at age 12 …long before he went to university. (wtf!!)

An Atheist Professor of Philosophy was speaking to his Class on the Problem Science has with GOD, the ALMIGHTY. He asked one of his New Christian Students to stand and . .

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 ?
Student : Sure.
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?
(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 ?

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)

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 GODfor that matter?
Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.
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?
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.
Student : No, sir. There isn’t.

(The Lecture Theatre 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.

(There was Pin-Drop Silence in the Lecture Theatre )

Student : What about Darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as Darkness?
Professor : 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, NormalLight, 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, were you would be able to make Darkness Darker, wouldn’t you?
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.

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?

(The Class was in Uproar )

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?

(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.

That is all that Keeps Things Alive and Moving.

NB: Guess who the student was ?See more

2

Snopes says it is false

I trust snopes :smiley:

3

Ditto.

And then you get that tedious one about the flowering apple tree in some late atheist’s garden - story goes he told his wife/son that if there is a god he’d make the tree flower to prove it. Or some bullshit like that.

And Darwin asked for forgiveness on his deathbed and accepted god. Blah.

4

dis genoeg om van te kots! thanx…I’ve been able to knock the silly little woman off her comfort zone (only temporarily of course)

5

I wrote the following response to this very thing some time ago:

There is a story, very likely an apocryphal one, about an atheistic philosophy professor who confronts his Christian students on various questions of faith and theology centring on the origin and nature of good vs. evil. After some incredibly superficial “debate,” one student offers the thesis that evil doesn’t exist in its own right but that it is the result of a god not being there. Exactly which god that might be isn’t specified, but given the context, the Christian one is a sound inference. The story makes it seem like the professor capitulates at the end for not being able to meet his student’s “brilliant” exposition. (You can read the full story here.) I recently received an e-mail with this story from a concerned acquaintance. It was meant to convince me that I had made a grave mistake in my youth when I jettisoned The Greatest Superstition in the World, a.k.a. “religion.” Instead, the twee vapidity of the story annoyed me just sufficiently to frame a reply.

There can be little doubt that this little “bad stuff equals god’s absence” puff piece will fill Christian hearts that share a taste for pedagoguery with smug contentment. There are a few obvious problems, though. Firstly, the bible describes Satan, the alleged supreme malefactor, together with his cohorts as a band of fallen angels, not as the absence of god, so the “absence of” analogy doesn’t even accord with the fundamentals of religious doctrine. Dogma and the bible itself say that evil properly exists as a separate entity, and so this “absence of” thesis is a big swindle. Plus, it’s a double swindle when one considers the theological precept that this god is supposedly omnipresent. In case it’s not clear, “omnipresence” means that this god supposedly is everywhere all the time, so how is one to reconcile this with the proposed absence?

Secondly, the whole elaborate storyline is contrived to obfuscate the obvious. The professor begins by asking germane “what if” questions that can reasonably be asked, assuming the existence of a god with the presupposed attributes. Reductio ad absurdum is a very useful weapon in the arsenal of the logician, be s/he professional or merely aspiring. Instead, the storyline surreptitiously changes so that no one, including the professor, ever confronts this a priori assumption – viz. that a suitable god exists. The reader hardly notices said narrational subterfuge (it’s a story, remember?), and uncritical heads will surely nod their eager agreement as if some great truth has found dazzling vindication – i.e. where the student’s arguments actually persuade the professor rather than, say, incurring a bray of derisive laughter.

Thirdly, is a natural disaster like a tsunami that wipes out a large number of people in one fell swoop also the absence of god? Are the thirty to forty million human foetuses who are miscarried annually also the absence of god? Are the Aids orphans and droughts and crop failures affecting millions also the absence of god? Is the genocide and large-scale slaughter of people also the absence of god even when the victims are devout and committed believers? Assuming this god to exist purely for the sake of argument, one must conclude that if these things are as they are owing to an absence of this god then this god is clearly a shirker and possibly a malingerer, too. If it’s not shirking, this god is either powerless or purposely evil, possibly both.

Fourthly, the analogy relies on a deeply naïve conception of physics. For example, there is no difficulty in reversing the heat/coldness situation to claim that heat is merely the absence of coolth without substantively affecting the physics – in fact, the air-conditioning industry often does just that for reasons of convenience. This means that one could just as well reason that the presence of good is merely the absence of Satan, not the presence of god. Moreover, the mechanisms of many physical phenomena are well understood. Such understanding allows us to establish reliable protocols and procedures for detecting the presence or absence of various things. We have no reliable criteria of such a kind to apply to god (or Satan), which means that “good” or “bad” can be whatever suits someone’s momentary perceptions and circumstances because god’s presence or absence cannot dependably be ascertained.

Finally, direct sensory perception of a phenomenon is hardly necessary when a reliable facsimile is available whose origin is causally bound to that phenomenon. To illustrate: the presence of the professor’s brain can reliably and repeatably be confirmed through an MRI scan or similar. An EEG will also do the trick, and several other techniques, e.g. the Turing Test, can be applied that will produce results in direct conflict with the “no-brained-professor” hypothesis. The operative concept here is that of scientifically compelling evidence. There is none such in support of any kind of omni-everything personal god, and much evidence that speaks against it. Therefore, to draw parallels between physical phenomena that are well understood like heat, light and electromagnetism, and some amorphous, indefinable, ineffable hypothetical deity is seriously to overstep the line of plausibility.

The only lessons to be drawn from the above concern the logical consistency of apologetics: (1) Apologists will say literally anything to preserve the illusion of respectability for their mythical absurdities, and (2) they will insist that their argumentation is perfectly rational when in fact it cannot be simply because it is predicated on fundamentally incomprehensible tenets to begin with.


'Luthon64

6

That should be framed and nailed to the wall :smiley:

Have you a blog or website where you post (other) such writings?

7

agreed…with your permission could I use it?

8

Mefiante’s well reasoned response to the original drivel is like casting pearls to the swine. Beyond the irrational arguments in the OP, it is also clear that the author goes out of his way to vilify his fictional professor, attributing condescending references such as “son”, “young fella” etc to his speech before his heroic student knight unsheathes his shining sword. The gullible might applaud, but in fact his hero and villain turn out to be equally stupid. Not recommended for a prize in philosophy, science or literature.

9

To be fair, the evil professor outwits our heroic student before the student can even mount his steed. In making his “observable” argument he can already dismiss the student’s bad arguments…

Therefore, to draw parallels between physical phenomena that are well understood like heat, light and electromagnetism, and some amorphous, indefinable, ineffable hypothetical deity is seriously to overstep the line of plausibility.

I find it laughable that the student’s rebuttal uses these in spite of the fact that these are all provable, observable, directly verifiable phenomena. His god is not, not even same ballpark.

If I were the professor I might’ve pointed this out at the end and called the student an obvious dumbass for not realising that everything he says I can’t prove, I can, through direct observation. In fact he should listen more closely, because it was stated up front:

Professor : Science says you have 5 Senses you use to Identify and Observe the World around you.
.

Things I can observe with my 5 senses:
heat, cold
light, dark
magnetism
electricity (unpleasant in high doses)
The professors brain (hand me an axe)

The professor is not the smartest, but he’s still completely bashes this students’ theories in with a single sentence, stated pre-maturely.

10

Yes, certainly you may. In any case, it’s in the public domain already merely by being published here. Still, it’s polite of you to ask. :-*

'Luthon64

11

Hear ye Hear ye Hear ye!
This is the response I get on the Mefiante OP:

…but I can not resist to say that “you will never understand” or " it is just incomprehensible" with all the theories and philosophies you will not understand.

And above all we are not …in “heaven” or in a" perfect world" we are on earth in a fallen world. So don’t expect a perfect world, that is not in existence, it is due to disobedience that we are in this “fallen world” or “destructive world” Everyday’s life is evidence that the human kind is destroying themselves and the environment around us, it is not getting better it is getting worse. Chemicals are destroying our planet, power is destroying people, disasters happen, but it is everyone’s choice how you see it, and what you do about it.

Everything has a beginning and an end, everything started somewhere, where you and I may disagree, but the end is also coming.

I prefer to follow the oldest book that has ever been written rather than all kinds of theories. It’s my choice and I BELIEVE in creation, I believe in a creator and I believe in the Almighty YHWH! I know Him, I know His character , I love Him, He is my Father,…

Believing is seeing or seeing is believing, two different school’s, that’s what it is.

So true Hermes ::slight_smile: and this neice of mine has two small sons…suffer the children! WQe have been warned…the end is nigh!

12

I am afraid I also “will never understand” the “just incomprehensible” theories and philosophies which you will never understand. (wtf!!)

How does our imperfect world tie in with the argument?
Do circles have a beginning and an end?
Isn’t the “oldest book” your niece refers to a collection of books written at different times?
Did your niece have English as a subject at the “school’s” she attended?

I don’t want to insult your family member, but I suspect that she found Mefiante’s well reasoned argument “just incomprehensible”.

13

AAARGH. All your arguments/questions count for nought as people like these are not prepared to listen.(pearls??) She’s unfortunately a victim of a totally cuckooo mother and while she has a B.Com from Maties, an honours in transport economics and she’s also a PhD (if there’s such a thing) in, you guessed it, Homeopathy! Make sense? Ek gee fokken op! Just goes to show that qualifications are not evidence of intelligence >:(

To add to the family embarrassment on this particular side (my wife’s): her brother (my nephew) posted the question this morning on FB: “Were the whites a superior race?” (wtf!!)
Of course I’m the embarrassment to to them…

14

I can relate to that. I have a brother who attends a church where they allegedly perform spiritual healing. When I commented that it is a load of crap, he told me about a child with one leg that was shorter than the other and how the leg grew longer while they prayed and the child walked out of the church without a limp. This brother is also a well qualified guy.

When religion walks in the front door, logic walks out the back door. Try to show them evidence, and they refuse to look at it.