It starts:
[:. I don't know if the end of this is true or not, but it does [:. make you think.
 

That seems to be where most people get into trouble. They think, and do it in such a way as to rearrange their thoughts, or to learn which new ideas they need to bar against future intrusion, whether or not they know them to be true.

[:.
[:. This has a thought provoking message no matter how
[:. you believe.
[:.
[:. Does evil exist? The university professor challenged
[:. his students with this question. Did God create
[:. everything that exists?

 

Evil is, of course, not a "thing" but is a condition. I warned you about getting into trouble, right?  

 

[:. A student bravely replied "Yes, He did!"

 

The student was apparently a theist.

 

[:. "God created everything?" the professor asked.
[:.
[:. Yes sir", the student replied.
[:.
[:. The professor answered, "If God created everything,
[:. to the principal that our works define who we are,
[:. then God is evil."

 

The professor was apparently also a believer. This ought to be something. From where did he dredge up that principle?

[:. The professor was quite pleased with himself and
[:. boasted to the students that he had proven once more
[:. that the Christian faith was a myth.

 

The professor was a dummy. It's not his place to prove anything about Christianity, which is a matter of belief and not science. If anything needs proved about Christianity, it is the burden of the Christians to do the proving. Scientists know about the defeasibility principle, of which this professor shows himself painfully unaware.

 

[:. Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask
[:. you a question professor?"
[:. "Of course", replied the professor.
[:.
[:. The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold
[:. exist?"
[:.
[:. The Professor replied "Of course it exists. Have you
[:. never been cold?"

 

See, I told you the professor is a dummy. A smart and informed professor knows that cold is a condition and not a thing. In fact, cold is only a condition relative to human sensitivities, the same as is evil.

[:. The students snickered at the young man's question.
[:. The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not
[:. exist. According to the laws of physics, what we
[:. consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every
[:. body 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 (-460
[:. degrees F) is the total absence of heat. Cold does not
[:. exist. We have created this word to describe how we
[:. feel if we have not heat."

 Hey, that's what I said. Apparently the student also realized the professor is a dummy. This professor must not have been a scientist. He even failed to catch the student's mistake in his reference to heat being the cause of energy. The opposite is true.

[:. The student continued. "Professor, does darkness
[:. exist?"
[:.
[:. The professor responded, "Of course it does."

 

Wrong again, professor. See above about cold.

[:. The student relied, "Once again you are wrong sir.
[:. Darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality
[:. the absence of light. Light we can study, but not
[:. darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break
[:. light into many colors and study the various
[:. wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure
[:. darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world
[:. of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how
[:. dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of
[:. light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term
[:. used by man to describe what happens when there is no
[:. light present."

 

Which once again shows the student to be better educated than the professor, about whom I have not changed my mind.

He is a dummy.

[:. 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."

 

Alas, the professor stays a dummy. Evil is a condition of a process that affects human sensibilities. Like light or cold, the absence of that which enables our survival and comfort is regarded to be inhumane. The presence of other humans upon whom we can depend, with whom we can cooperate for our mutual good, and work toward better days for ourselves as members of a group are generally regarded as "good". The presence of other humans intent on doing us harm, who want to enslave us and make us answer to their wills, who want to steal our dignity and possessions and harm us in other ways, we commonly regard as evil, whatever words we choose to use to express that. The question about existent evil is what is called a 'logical red herring' when it gets used to decoy an opponent away from the central topic of a discussion.

[:. 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 not light."

 

Didn't I tell you the student was a theist? He used science to make his points, but still had to get his message across by avoiding science. That's how theism promotes itself as "scientific" instead of religious. Science requires verification before it will pronounce anything as true or correct. That evil is what human perceptions render as "bad" can be verified. The absence or presence of a God has never been, but falls under the same fallaciousness as demanding ¹proof of negatives.

[:. The professor sat down. The student's name was ---
[:. Albert Einstein

 

Ah, I see: Now we introduce an "Appeal to Authority" fallacy. The authority appears to be untrue until the writer of this message offers a reference by which his claim can be verified.

Let me see if I can find an appropriate quote to put here:

From John David Garcia, "When a Rabbi asked Albert Einstein if he believed in God, Einstein answered that he believed in the God of Spinoza. Einstein carefully studied the ethics of Spinoza, which have implicit in them the concepts of relativity, as well as many of the fundamental concepts of modern quantum mechanics, such as the

wholeness and unity of God and the Universe…"

 

Mostly considered to be Jewish, Einstein aligned himself with pantheism in that statement, a religion that generally considers God and The Universe to be one and the same.

Reference: Garcia, John David. Creative Transformation:

A Practical Guide for Maximizing Creativity. Box 10851, Eugene, Oregon 97440: Noetic Press, 1991. Is Garcia's quote true? Other of Einstein's quoted sayings make it appear to be so, and cause us to discount the fallacious claim made by the writer in his message.

Good and evil are referents of internalized concepts, many of which remain from childhood and cause us to respond inaccurately to situations and conditions that arise during our lifetimes, and to misjudge others who inherited different referents. What we regard to be evil stirs up the same reactions as fear and fright, and induces the 'fight, vomit or flee' response. Awareness of that can enlighten one about the internal, mental states of the moralists always found in any society, who seek to shed their fears by imposing their own internalized childhood referents onto all the rest of us.

Do I believe the above event ever took place, or that Einstein ever said what the message claims? Refer to the Principles of Atheology and see if you can figure out why my answer has to be "No."

FOOTNOTES                        

(1) About proof of negatives: Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of caloric energy. In the same way that darkness gets recognition from the absence of light (photons) and cold gets recognition from the absence of heat, an existent god, including the god named God, would get recognition from the absence of some alternative, opposite form. If God's opposite is Satan, and Satan is the proponent and deliverer of evil, the fact that nature is filled with what the religious regard to be evil justifies disbelief in their insistent claims that a god exists. That atheists cannot believe a Satan exists, however, renders this unsatisfying, for both would fill the same category and would be more alike than opposite. Both are proclaimed to be members of an immaterial nether world we cannot directly perceive, and must logically be described as such. The opposite of immateriality would, of course, be materiality, of which we sense the abundance all around us and can describe as complete. That fact, to be consistent across the board, requires that Satan and all the gods proclaimed to exist are false and illogical constructions originated in the human imagination. They, therefore, do not exist.    RETURN

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