Oct
8
As my regular readers know, I am a conservative Christian with an interest in Christian apologetics. It is both interesting and frustrating to see some of the stuff that well-meaning people have put on the internet in order to answer a challenge to their “faith” and/or to put an atheist or other non-Christian in his/her place.
Some anecdotes used for this purpose have been around for a couple decades or more, usually with some variation. I came across one of these in an extended form about a decade ago, and I had a number of “concerns” about it, so I’d like to comment on it below. But first, the anecdote…
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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 GOD for 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 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.
(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?
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?
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? [That last question is awkwardly phrased.]
(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.
P.S. I believe you have enjoyed the conversation. And if so, you’ll probably want your friends / colleagues to enjoy the same, won’t you? Forward this to increase their knowledge … or FAITH.
By the way, that student was EINSTEIN.
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The problem with this anecdote — well, one of the problems — is that there is no evidence that the conversation ever happened. We cannot assume that the originator (whomever they may be) intended to pass this off as a real confrontation rather than hypothetical, let alone one involving Albert Einstein. It is not uncommon for an anecdote like this to have a popular figure injected into it somewhere along the way, presumably to lend it more of an air of familiarity and authority. (After all, that Einstein was a really smart guy!)
I believe I came across the anecdote as told above (though I cleaned up the formatting) in a thread on Facebook or some other online forum, with a request for readers to comment on what they thought of it. In any case, here is a “revised and expanded” version of the response I originally wrote up back in 2013, well before I even checked into the story’s validity….
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OK, I finally had time to put something together. My first thought, though, was that it’s rarely a good idea to challenge the person with the mic (and some authority), ‘cuz they usually “win” or at least can shut you down, as Krystle experienced.
My responses to the story and comments, so far:
1) The professor’s first issue is, of course, the “Problem of Evil” — both natural “evil” and moral evil. It’s an emotion-laden subject, and good answers aren’t always emotionally satisfactory. But, there ARE ways to answer it from within a Christian context. The atheist/naturalist has to deal with the same problem, of course. But, their response basically amounts to “$#i+ happens, sorry.”
The second aspect of this is the origin of evil itself. Some (including Augustine) have theorized that evil, or “sin”, if you will, is not a thing in itself. It is the absence — some refer to this as a “privation” — of good, righteousness, or holiness. This is precisely what the student was getting at — cold is the absence of heat, darkness is the absence of light, etc. (Although, the stuff cosmologists and astrophysicists call “dark matter” might be another type of “darkness” that is physical, and therefore a thing in itself.)
As I have implied, earlier versions of this anecdote were shorter. The emphasis was originally just the Problem of Evil and ended following the heat/cold & light/darkness bit with something like the following:
“Finally the young man asked the professor, ‘Sir, does evil exist?’
Now uncertain, the professor responded, ‘Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.’
To this the student replied, ‘Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.'”
Part of God’s eternal plan was to conquer evil, which comes about when moral free agents — including angels like Satan and humans like us — inevitably rebel against God’s will. (Here, I am speaking of God’s moral will — i.e., those things he prefers we do but does not coerce — rather than His sovereign will — i.e., that which He has preordained to happen, good or bad, in the ultimate accomplishment of His master plan. We cannot thwart his sovereign will.) So, God didn’t “create” evil, but He allows it to occur. We may not always see the good in it, but He deems it acceptable — perhaps even required — for the Big Picture, ultimate good.
2) The professor’s second issue deals with proving God’s existence. But, of course, he assumes a strong methodological naturalism and empiricism. As Joe indicated, science is the wrong tool for “proving” the existence of something/someone that is by definition not part of this physical reality. Put another way, the professor is a physicalist, which is why his “god” concept is necessarily detectable with the five senses. But, the Judeo-Christian concept of God is “spirit” by nature and therefore non-physical.
To the extent that science DOES point to God, and I firmly believe it does, it is through indirect evidence, not direct detection. Furthermore, I would add that a) not all knowledge comes from science, and b) we all acknowledge the existence of non-physical things.
3) The professor’s area of expertise seems to be in the life sciences and evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, although he is not in the physical sciences, he should not have been surprised by the concept that cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light. I suspect the account was written this way to make the professor look more ignorant.
4) Not sure I totally agree with the student’s reasoning about the professor’s assumption of “duality” — particularly, the “a good GOD and a bad GOD” part. Don’t know where that came from. But, as indicated before, I do understand what he meant by death being an absence of life, rather than a substantive thing on its own.
5) (Neo-)Darwinian evolution does not teach that modern humans evolved from monkeys. If I recall correctly, it teaches that both had a common ancestor among early primates, from which both lineages originated. Common mistake, but if this is based on a true story, the professor should have known better and corrected the student at some point.
6) The student opened himself up to a problem when he implied that a preacher merely teaches his opinion. Fortunately for him, this wasn’t pursued.
7) The part about taking it “on faith” that the professor’s brain existed was not only cheeky but didn’t quite work for his argument. The professor’s brain is a tangible object that can easily be investigated with the five physical senses by cracking his skull open. (Not that anyone but a surgeon should do so, and only for valid medical reasons.) If he had no brain, he would likely be in Congress, not teaching at university. (Bdump-bump!)
However, I do agree that the professor’s teachings about evolution should be taken with a grain of salt. The professor has chosen to accept certain interpretations of genetic, anatomical, and fossil data. But, other than showing “change over time”, I don’t believe that said data proves large-scale, Neo-Darwinian evolution, either.
8) It is not man’s faith in God (or in the existence thereof) that keeps things alive and moving (Acts 17:28). Rather, it is God’s sovereign power and will that does so.
9) This leads into my final concern, and that is the need for a bit of clarification about the word “faith”. Sometimes, we speak of our “faith” and what we mean is our set of religious beliefs and (hopefully) behaviors. I think that was implied in at least one instance in the anecdote. Non-religious people (including atheist professors) typically define “faith” as irrational belief or belief without proof. Something along those lines. But, based on the Hebrew and Greek words used in early manuscripts, a biblical understanding of “faith in God” and “faith in Jesus” refers not to irrational or blind faith but rather a trust put in someone who has proven to be trustworthy.
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There are other things that could be said about the anecdote in question, but that should be sufficient.
I understand the desire among followers of Christ to defend their beliefs and point out weaknesses in challengers’ arguments. That is what apologetics is about, after all. But, in my opinion, this anecdote leaves a lot to be desired in regards to both content and attitude — and that is even aside from the controversial use of attribution to Albert Einstein.
