Faith! An Interesting Read!

[BigPapaDean]

TAKE TIME TO READ. It's worth reading it. Trust me

 

 

 

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.

 

[BigPapaDean]

Can anybody tell me who this student was?

[DramaLlama]

einstein is the student.

but the whole thing is false. http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp

 

but it is nice to see someone stick it to a know-it-all professor.

[Astronomer]

I am sooooo tired of this sort of tripe. Evolution (a series of successful adaptations leading to successful reproduction) has been proven by so many independent vectors that it's just not up for discussion. It's even been observed in real-time over long-term experiments with microbes, fruit flies and birds, and so much more. Human evolution over the past several million years has been proven in the fossil record (a museum in Ethiopia has many fossil skulls covering many intermediate steps to Homo Sapiens) human DNA, DNA of human parasites etc ad nauseum.

 

As for the know-it-all professor, Richard Dawkins recounts a story from his university student years where a professor taught that X was truth and that thus shall it ever be! A visiting lecturer to that professor's class showed that new data had disproved X and that Y was the new, tested and proven paradigm. The professor walked up to the visiting lecturer, shook his hand warmly, and thanked him for showing him the error of his ways. THAT is science in action and practice: an exacting methodology that is open to examination, to being tested repeatedly as being true or false by anyone interested in doing so, and adding to the volume of knowledge.

 

Science is honest in that theorems are accepted provisionally, i.e. they are considered the best description/predictor until better data and better theorems emerge. Newtonian gravity will still get us to the moon and beyond, but Einstein's theorems are much more accurate and are considered better (your GPS would be miles off if it did not take Relativity into account in it's accounting). Every scientist with a Nobel Prize in his/her sites would love nothing more than to disprove currently-accepted theorems. Can any other method of explaining the natural world claim to be as honest and open to facts that contradict what is accepted and moving the goal-line forward?

 

Discuss.

[Jud1]

I am sooooo tired of this sort of tripe. Evolution (a series of successful adaptations leading to successful reproduction) has been proven by so many independent vectors that it's just not up for discussion. It's even been observed in real-time over long-term experiments with microbes, fruit flies and birds, and so much more. Human evolution over the past several million years has been proven in the fossil record (a museum in Ethiopia has many fossil skulls covering many intermediate steps to Homo Sapiens) human DNA, DNA of human parasites etc ad nauseum.

 

As for the know-it-all professor, Richard Dawkins recounts a story from his university student years where a professor taught that X was truth and that thus shall it ever be! A visiting lecturer to that professor's class showed that new data had disproved X and that Y was the new, tested and proven paradigm. The professor walked up to the visiting lecturer, shook his hand warmly, and thanked him for showing him the error of his ways. THAT is science in action and practice: an exacting methodology that is open to examination, to being tested repeatedly as being true or false by anyone interested in doing so, and adding to the volume of knowledge.

 

Science is honest in that theorems are accepted provisionally, i.e. they are considered the best description/predictor until better data and better theorems emerge. Newtonian gravity will still get us to the moon and beyond, but Einstein's theorems are much more accurate and are considered better (your GPS would be miles off if it did not take Relativity into account in it's accounting). Every scientist with a Nobel Prize in his/her sites would love nothing more than to disprove currently-accepted theorems. Can any other method of explaining the natural world claim to be as honest and open to facts that contradict what is accepted and moving the goal-line forward?

 

Discuss.

 

DISCUSS????? ....

 

You gotta be shitting me!!!! Anything that has "X and Y" in it followed by the word "Paradigm" is WAY outta my leauge

I couldn't figure that shit out 25 years ago and I killed a lot of brain cells since then!

[simplemod]

I believe God created scince, and He can use it however He wants.

[DEEJAYKEG]

As it's a banned topic on this forum, I do not propose to evangelise.

Those that know me know well my personal faith or can deduce it from the posts

I make when people are in distress of some kind.

 

However, to the scientists who claim that science has all the answers, can explain everything, prove or

disprove everything and assert that anything that can't be observed doesn't exist, I would like to quote

one of XI's own philosophers (my apologies I cannot attribute this to the intellectual we are lucky enough

to have amongst our number as I have forgotten who it was...):

 

"We don't know shit!".

 

From the movie Contact : Ellie challenges Palmer to prove the existence of God] Palmer Joss: Did you love your father? Ellie Arroway: What? Palmer Joss: Your dad. Did you love him? Ellie Arroway: Yes, very much. Palmer Joss: Prove it.

[loaderXI]

Darkness is in fact faster then light....Where light goes darkness has already been....Darkness is by far greater then light and more vast

[Astronomer]

Science does not have all the answers - in fact one could argue that it has none. Science is a rigourous methodology, a process for better understanding the natural world. Any hypothethesis has to be rigourous and testable. Any results must be open for reproducing by other scientists to test the validity of the assumptions and conclusions, to either prove or disprove them. Once a hypothesis passes muster and can not only explain but also predict, it graduates to being a theory (gravity, evolution, relativity etc).

 

I don't believe that science and religion have to be naturally at odds, but if religion makes a testable statement about the natural world (i.e. age of the planet, origins of homo sapiens), it must expect that it will scrutenized against the evidence. Other than that, science has nothiing to being to the table in regards to theology and moral frameworks (Though Sam Harris and Steven Pinker are researching the origins of mind and morality and even faith from an evolutionary perspective).

[HarryWeezer]

Well said Astronomer!!!

[hxtr]

i believe in evolution... it just does not make sense to think it any other way.

 

As for god.... I dont speak to it anymore.

 

Mother Nature is who I admire. Without MAN Mother Nature can get back to doing what she does best. Repairing what MAN has so fucked up.

 

Not talking about climate change bullshit either. The climate has always been changing. Talking about the land....... no place for much else than man. That cant be good.

Edited April 17, 2012 by hxtr

[Pharticus]

This topic can't legitimately be discussed here because as soon as the "religious right" voices their opinion this thread will be locked away. Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't been already.

[BigPapaDean]

I didn't post this as a religious post. My thought was the application of faith regardless how you believe! It takes faith for scientists as much as it does for religion and the spiritual side of life! Now I believe just because anybody believes something does not necessary make it true or so. Having said that I believe in reality we all believe in something that we cannot prove or disprove. Evolution is in fact a reality. I lived in and area where I saw evidence everyday of it being real. That had no bearing on my belief in the creation. I studied more and found a compromise that suited my need! Remember without faith we really don't have anything to hold on to.

 

Don't take whatever anyone says here as a personal attack but consider with your screen up so you know where you stand on your own convictions. That's what I do with whomever I discuss topics like this with!