GOD AND SCIENCE -- AN EXCHANGE!

GOD AND SCIENCE -- AN EXCHANGE!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 11, 2009

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge. In this sense I believe that the priest must become a teacher if he wishes to do justice to his lofty educational mission.”

Albert Einstein

* * *


A WRITER WRITES:

Gee, Jim,

I thought the student was you?

Phil

REFERENCE: The God vs. Science debate!

* * *

The atheist Professor of Philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.

'Let me explain the problem science has with religion.'

'You're a Christian, aren't you, son?'

‘Yes sir,' the student says.

‘So you believe in God?'

'Absolutely.'

‘Is God good?'

'Sure! God's good.'

'Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?'

‘Yes''Are you good or evil?'

'The Bible says I'm evil.

'The professor grins knowingly.

'Aha! The Bible! He considers this 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 him? Would you try?'

'Yes sir, I would.'

'So you're good...!'

'I wouldn't say that.'

'But why not say that? You'd help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn't.'

The student does not answer, so the professor continues.

'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? Can you answer that one?' The student remains silent. 'No, you can't, can you?'

The professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. 'Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?'

'Er..yes,' the student says.

'Is Satan good?'

The student doesn't hesitate on this one. 'No.'

'Then where does Satan come from?'

The student falters. 'From God'

'That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me, son. Is there Evil in this world?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything, correct?'

'Yes'

'So who created evil?' The professor continued, 'If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.'

Again, the student has no answer.

'Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?'

The student squirms on his feet. 'Yes.'

'So who created them?'

The student does not answer again, So the professor repeats his question. 'Who created them?'

There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. 'Tell me,' he continues onto another student. 'Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?'

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. 'Yes, professor, I do.'

The old man stops pacing. 'Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen 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 smelled your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?'

'No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't.'

'Yet you still believe in him?'

'Yes' 'According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, Son?'

'Nothing,' the student replies. 'I only have my faith.'

'Yes, faith,' the professor repeats. 'And that is the problem that science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.'

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. 'Professor, is there such thing as heat?'

'Yes.'

'And is there such a thing as cold?'

'Yes, son, there's cold too.'

'No sir, there isn't.'

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain.

'You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit down to 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 the lowest -458 degrees. Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat.

'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 pervades across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

'What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?'

'Yes,' the professor replies without hesitation. 'What is night if it isn't darkness?'

'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'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, wouldn't you?'

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. 'So what point are you making, young man?'

'Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed.'

The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time. 'Flawed? Can you explain how?'

'You are working on the premise of duality,' the student explains… 'You argue that there is life and then there'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 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?'

'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 begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.

'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 preacher?'

The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. 'To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.'

The student looks around the room. 'Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?' The class breaks out into laughter.

'Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelled the professor's brain? 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, with all due respect, sir.'

'So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?'

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. 'I guess you'll have to take them on faith.'

'Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,’ the student continues, 'Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?'

Now uncertain, the professor responds, 'Of course, there is. 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 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.'

The professor sat down.The student was Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein wrote a book titled "God vs. Science" in 1921.


* * *

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Phil,

As you know by year 1921, Einstein was near the end of the most creative period in science in the twentieth century. In the golden year of 1905, the 26-year-old Einstein wrote four major articles that forever altered physics. The most famous is “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which introduced the special theory of relativity. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921

You flatter me, however, associating me with this particular dialectic, but you've known me all my life and have that advantage.

I enjoyed this amusing piece, and thought I knew the source as I read it, which was confirmed at the end.

What a beautiful man is Einstein. I’ve often referred to this summary of his:

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

He often displayed humor regarding our limitations, writing, "All men dance to the tune of an invisible piper,” as our inner experiences consist of reproductions and combinations of sensory impressions through the use of this instrument called “a brain.”

As I was reading this, I could not help but think of the struggles of Aquinas. He argued:

"Philosophy examined the supernatural order in the light of reason, and theology examined it in the light of revelation. Although reason was used in theology," he concluded, "revelation did not fall into the province of philosophy. And philosophy could not contradict theology because truth could not contradict truth."

For Aquinas, then, faith and knowledge were not mutually exclusive. Belief took over at the point where knowledge ended. He summed it up: To believe is to think with ascent.

* * *

I also thought of the struggles of Augustine with "duality." Born of a Christian mother and pagan father, he first followed the Manicheans, an extreme form of Gnosticism, which looked at things with religious dualism.

Augustine never outgrew this influence as he had bias towards dualism all his life.

Incidentally, I can recall my first introduction to dualism during summer vacations at Higgins Lake in Michigan, when my uncle, the professor at the University of Detroit, a Jesuit school, tired of listening to his son, Robert and me arguing baseball, and decided to lecture us at lunchtime on the great religions of the world.

What made an impression on me from these sessions was his description of Zoraster's struggle between good and evil, lightness and darkness, and concluding in the end that good would banish evil and universal lightness would banish darkness.

Since Zoraster walked the planet six centuries before Christ, it was heady stuff for a ten-year-old to hear, but somehow it stuck. Imagine years later my reading Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and the whole thing coming back to haunt me again.

As Einstein shows in this piece, there can be a fallacy in arguing the "God thing," yet the argument springs eternal with questioning man.

For some reason reading this, I was thinking of thermochemistry in thermodynamics, which I studied so long ago, realizing how our little minds absorb information in a certain way in our long struggle towards awareness.

There are readers in my email address book who are atheists and agnostics, renegade Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and also devout members of these three great religions, and all of them caught up in the mythology of time that Einstein also explained so well.

Three months ago, I spent three weeks working on a piece on the mythology of time in the context of the space-time continuum, explaining Einstein and Godel as I understood their work, and then contrasting this with how we are slaves to chronological time as opposed to psychological time. I pushed the wrong button on my computer and lost the essay!

I was so depressed that I told myself I would never write another essay, but, alas, I continue to do so. It is my way I procrastinating from writing A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA on South Africa in 1968.

Good to hear from you, and

Always be well,

Jim


* * *