PROFESSOR VS STUDENT

There is a story going around in the form of an email and Facebook posts and then forwarded on to others who, with the name dropping at the end, have bought the story hook, line and sinker without questioning it and then forwarding it on once more.  The story is about a conversation between a professor and his student, the topic being the belief in or faith of god and at first it sounds like the professor has the upper hand.  Soon, however, the student starts to ask the professor some things that he cannot answer and wins the so called argument along with the admiration of the classroom.  Lets have a look at that particular story...

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?

(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.

This story has been addressed by both URBAN LEGENDS and SNOPES, both of which have stamped it false and it was also my first impression of this particular story.  They both also offer some great insights into the story, which I'll try not to rehash.  

In the beginning I am going along for the ride as the professor brings up some good points and they are points that I have brought up myself on a number of occasions so I follow his logic through to when he believes he has the upper hand and the student has lost.  Things suddenly turn around.

The low hanging fruit; heat and cold.  There is indeed such a thing known as heat and cold.  Arguably, cold is just the absence of heat and is a description thereof.  You can feel cold.  It is relative but it is as much of a "thing" as gravity.  This is where the professor made his first (fictitious as it was) mistake by not explaining what heat and cold actually were and, in fact, can be subject to all the scientific tests, all you have to do is grab a thermometer and you can see the temperature and the relative effect it will and does have one the environment.  Does water freeze because it's too hot or too cold?  Does water evaporate because it is too hot or too cold?  It's all relative.

Now to answer the burning question of whether the professor has a brain or not... the assumption is that a living breathing human has a brain, why?  Because without a brain the body could not function.  How do we know?  Science.  We asked the questions and we found the answers.  If the professor is walking and talking and breathing he has an operational brain and to disprove this scientific fact all you have to do is open his head though we need not do this because it has been done so many times in the past that said fact is assumed with no known exceptions, ergo, the professor has a brain.  God cannot be put through the same logic.  At all.  Nor can god be put through any scientific tests therefore the students premise is an argument from circular logic and doesn't hold water.  You cannot assume the existence of god because of many thousands or successful scientific tests in the past.

The final mistake the professor made was to call that assumption faith and the student used another logical fallacy, the argument from authority where he used the bible (and therefore church) as the authority that faith in god is what keeps things moving which in itself in a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument.

The last indecency was the fact that to make it more believable the student turned out to be non other than one of the greatest minds in the 20th century, Albert Einstein.  This is, of course, complete bullshit as Einstein was an open agnostic who knew there was no way to prove the existence of god;

I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

That was from the book "Einstein: His Life and Universe" by Walter Isaacson in 2008.

I write this blog because it is a passion of mine to explore the myth of god and along the way I may even learn some cool stuff but it takes a lot of time and energy to write so if you enjoy reading this blog please make a donation by clicking the DONATE button on the right so I can put more time into creating a better blog.

Thank you all

Justin