cont. part 3 mwehehehe
Suddenly, Patricia stood up and faced Phil. Tom wasn't sure what to expect. Was she going to pour more hot coals on the professor's head?
"Phil," she said softly, "Your whole line of argumentation has been flawed from the very beginning."
Phil was startled. He had not expected to be challenged so soon after destroying the professor. He know Patricia, but he never had a clue that she was an atheist, so why would she be challenging him? Maybe she was a believer and in the spirit of love was going to point out some flaws in his reasoning. But why would she do that now, in front of all the other students, in his moment of victory?
He gulped, and waited for her to present him with where he went astray with his argumentation -- although he would never admit this, he had a gnawing sense of dread that it would be the same flaws that Tom had pointed out to him in a earlier debate.
Patricia, known for her quiet demeanor and gentle spirit, had caught the attention of the entire class.
"Phil, she said, you claimed that there is no such thing as cold because we could not measure it. You stated further that it was merely the absence of heat. What you don't seem to understand is there is nothing in the definition of 'cold' that states there can be an infinite amount of it. You are correct in saying it is simply the absence of heat, but the fact that cold does not extend to infinity does not indicate 'cold' does not exist."
Phil started to reply, but Patricia waved him off and said, "Let me finish. You had your say. When I am done and you wish to reply by all means do.
"You stated further that there was no such thing as darkness. You made a . . . I'll be charitable, a rather odd challenge to Professor Jones to present you with a jar of darkness. Your question was whether there was such a thing as darkness. There most certainly is; it is characterized by the absence of light. Just because you cannot have an infinite amount of it does not mean that darkness is a meaningless concept. If a container is completely empty, then we say it is empty. It cannot get any emptier, but it does not thereby cease to be empty.
"You said that death was simply the absence of life. That is hardly the case. A rock is absent of life, yet we would hardly call it dead, would we?"
There were a few snickers from the class. A young man slapped his knee. Patricia continued.
"That word 'dead' carries with it the assumption that whatever is dead was once alive. You continued to persist in such questions, using the bait-and-switch routine, and succeeded in making yourself look silly to those who know better."
Phil was slack-jawed. He was speechless.
Patricia looked around. She had the full attention of the class. Even the professor was watching her closely, yielding the floor as it were, watching the lioness devour her prey.
"Let me explain the problems with your argumentation and your good-evil analogy," she said calmly, with a sense of authority and assurance that can only come with experience,
"First, most of the analogies you attempt to use deal with quantitative states rather than qualitative. Light, for instance, can be measured in photons and wave-lengths; heat in calories and degrees. There is no scale for measuring good and evil.
"Second, evil is not simply the absence of good; it is by definition more than simply a neutral state. A rock is not inherently good; yet we do not say it is evil. There is much substance in evil as there is in good, just as there are equal amounts of substance in the concept of left and right; right is not simply the absence of left."
Tom looked admiringly on Patricia. She was really laying it on the Christian.
Patricia was not finished. "You made a statement to the effect that the Bible tells us God must be accomplishing a work through the agency of evil and it is for the purpose to see if each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good over evil . . . now, could you tell me where in the Bible it says that?"
Some students nodded their heads in approval. Tom just smiled. This was going to be good.
"Uh," Phil stammered, "it would take me a minute to look it up . . ."
Patricia nodded "I'll give you a minute. In fact, if Mr. Jones has no objection, I'll give you--" she glanced at the clock "--forty-eight minutes before the class ends." She looked at the professor, who only nodded in concession. She turned back to Phil. "We will wait."
Phil stammered, "Well, uh . . . I am really not sure where in the Bible it says that . . ."
"Could it be," ventured Patricia, "that it does not say that God values what you say he values anywhere in the Bible?"
Phil was silent.
"I am well studied in Christianity, Phil, and I can tell you for a fact that it does not state anywhere in the Bible that God wishes people to choose good of their own free will. In fact, in many places in both the Old and New Testaments, God is portrayed as actually interfering with people's free wills in order to cause them to choose certain things.
"Also," continued Patricia, "there are natural evils which claim millions of lives every year, which are by no means the result of mankind’s decisions. Did crime and immorality cause the big earthquake last year? Of course not -- yet many, many lives were lost as a result of it. The free will theodicy leaves natural evils unexplained."
Phil seemed to be shrinking with each passing minute. Tom was smiling. This was getting really good.
Patricia took a sip out of her water bottle then continued, "You said that the absence of God's moral code in this world is the most observable phenomena going. I find that funny. Haven't you heard of the Inquisition? What about the Crusades, the witch hunts, the dungeons for those that spoke contrary to Christianity during the dark ages, the persecution of those who went against the church's geocentric and flat-earth world views?"
Phil was already defeated. He knew he had met his match. It annoyed him it was a woman that was doing this to him. She'll burn one day in hell, he thought to himself, and she'll regret every word she ever said to me this day. And I'll look down from Heaven and tell her 'I told you so!'
Patricia caught on to his look. "I know what you're thinking, Phil," she said. "You're thinking that I'm going to burn in hell for my heresy. And you actually look pleased with the thought. What does it say about God's moral code that he would allow me to be physically tortured for anything? And what does it say about your own that you apparently like that idea?
Tom couldn't help it -- he gave a loud chuckle. Patricia glanced at him with a slight grin on her face, before turning back to Phil and continuing:
"Your question about whether man evolved from a monkey just shows your ignorance. Any scientist worth his salt, especially one in the field of biology, would never make that claim. And anyone who has studied one semester in biology -- in fact, one week --would be knowledgeable enough not to ask such a question. I would recommend a course in biology while you are here. It might do you some good. You'll learn, among other things, that monkeys and man both descended from something else entirely -- a common ancestor.
"You also asked Mr. Jones if he didn't accept God's moral code to do what is righteous. I can't speak for him but I do accept many tenents of what Jesus taught, but I do not acknowledge them as being the result of Jesus and the Christian God. The so-called Golden-rule, for instance, predates Christianity by centuries; it is found in Buddhist and Confusianism texts. I also use reason to determine which rules of the Bible I will follow and which ones I will not follow. If it benefits me, my family, and my country, I will use it. If using one of those codes brings pain to me, one of my family members, weakens my country, and even the human race, I will reject it."
"But . . ." Phil finally managed to produce noises from his throat. "You cannot judge God. You cannot just pick and choose which rules you will follow and which ones you will not. God has not left that choice open to us."
"Before I accept any book as God's word," said Patricia, "I must have an external criteria with which I will judge the book before me. I will not just blindly accept any book as infallible and authoritative without subjecting it to reason. If it were valid to accept a book totally on faith without being permitted to judge the author, we could not rightly condemn those who hold the Koran in high esteem, for they use the same approach that you do. And if reason ultimately fails, then it fails. Until I am shown something better than reason, I will stick with it."
Phil started to say something, thought better of it, and let Patricia continue.
"You asked whether the professor had a brain?" Patricia phrased it like a question, wanting to draw an affirmative answer from Phil.
"Yes," Phil said. "I said since we could not feel, smell, or see his brain then he must not have one."
"Well then," said Patricia, "if you had just proven the professor did not have a brain, then why were you talking to him? Did you think you were talking to an inanimate object, perhaps? Would an inanimate object be empowered to give you course credit for this class?"
"That wasn't my point," Phil protested. "I'm not saying that the professor doesn't have a brain; only that science can't prove that he does!"
"And what is a brain?" asked Patricia.
"The brain . . . well, its the thinking center of the body---"
"Well then, " Patricia said with a smile, "I'm afraid you yourself have proven that he does, in fact, have a brain."
"What . . . !" It was the Christian's turn to sputter.
"By talking to him, by attending his class. You assume that he has a thinking center, which is a brain."
"But no one has seen his brain!" Phil protested.
"Nobody has ever seen your brain either, Phil . . . but I'm sure we'll all give you the benefit of the doubt."
The class roared with laughter. Tom laughed so hard he was coughing. This was something to behold.
"You see," she said, "you cannot sense his or my brain with the unaided senses, but the physics department has a device which will, if you'd like, give you a photographic picture of his brain as he speaks to you. This device was constructed through man's reasoning, and, ultimately, from his unaided senses. In other words, science."
A long silence.
Finally, Phil sat . . . because that is what a chair is for.
And the chair collapsed under him.
Phil looked around, startled, as the class started laughing at him. Tom was doubled over. He was laughing so hard it was beginning to hurt. Patricia only smiled and shook her head, a little sadly.
Before she sat down, she turned to Phil and said, "You see what happens when you try to attack science -- you cut your own throat. You affirm the fact that science works every time you sit in a chair, every time you type on a computer, every time you put in your contacts -- every second of every day, your actions betray your words."
The Christian was silent, red-faced among the debris of his chair.
"Let me ask you something Phil," Patricia said quietly. "Do you really think you had scored a big one against the atheists? Do you really think you know more than we do? Your effort was valiant, but it was dead in the water thousands of years before either of us were born.
"You have every right to believe in your deity, and I believe in freedom of religion as strongly as the next person. But when you try to excuse that belief in the name of reason and moral necessity, then you simply insult us, and you insult your own intelligence. You ruin any testimony you may have -- any credibility you have earned goes down the drain.
"The fact is, Phil, there is no God. And if you choose to believe that there is, you do not do so because of Truth, but in spite of Truth."
The class erupted in applause. Some stood, including Tom.
It was going to be a good day.
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Just wanna share it too
if your too lazy to read everything, check the ending part...
*i'm guessing you got yours from an apologetic source....be careful those apologetics tend to bullsh*t alot.hahaha
Re: Do you believe in God? If so/if no, WHY?
Originally Posted by mr.ho_chia2
? if you dont then thats fine with me everyone has their own freewill and not believeing in him is not disrespectful, thats your faith and thats what you chose to believe in but for me in some unexplainable way i do believe that there truly is a god.
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