I have procrastinated my blogging for the longest time.  My hesitation comes from the fact that I am wary about my rusty journal writing skills, as I have not written anything for a couple of months aside from Java code.

Though it may be customary for people to describe themselves on their first blog entry, I am uncomfortable with an autobiographical account with a splattering of narcissistic adjectives, which I have seen on some blog entries.  But of course people are entitled to their own fancies.

So I've decided to post a short story I've composed a few years back.  Methinks this is a better self-introduction to my readers because the story shows a part of who I am and how I think.

The composition was inspired by a story against atheists forwarded to me by a friend through email. So here I present the anti-atheist story followed by my reply in the form of a sequel to the original story.

"LET ME EXPLAIN THE problem science has with Jesus Christ." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.

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

"Yes, sir."

"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. "Ahh! THE BIBLE!" He considers 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 them? Would you try?"

"Yes, sir, I would."

"So you're good...!"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Why not say that? You would help a sick and maimed person if you could...in

fact most of us would if we could... God doesn't."

[No answer.]

"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer even though

he prayed to Jesus to help him. How is this Jesus good? Hmmm? Can you answer

that one?"

[No answer.]

The elderly man is sympathetic. "No, you can't, can you?" He takes a sip of

water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. In

philosophy, you have to go easy with the new ones.

"Let's start again, young fella."

"Is God good?"

"Er... Yes."

"Is Satan good?"

"No."

"Where does Satan come from?"

The student falters. "From... God..."

"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he?" The elderly  man runs his bony

fingers through his thinning hair and turns to the smirking, student audience.

"I think we're going to have a lot of fun this semester, ladies and gentlemen."

He turns back to the Christian.

"Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"

"Yes, sir."

"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? Did God make everything?"

"Yes."

"Who created evil?"

[No answer.]

"Is there sickness in this world? Immorality? Hatred?

Ugliness? All the terrible things - do they exist in this world?"

The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."

"Who created them?"

[No answer.]

The professor suddenly shouts at his student.   "WHO CREATED THEM? TELL ME, PLEASE!"

The professor closes in for the kill and climbs into  the Christian's face. In a

still small voice: "God created all evil, didn't He,  son?"

[No answer.]

The student tries to hold the steady, experienced gaze and fails. Suddenly the

lecturer breaks away to pace the front of the classroom like an aging panther.

The class is mesmerized.

"Tell me," he continues, "How is it that this God is good if He created all

evil through all time?" The professor swishes his arms around to encompass the

wickedness of the world.

"All the hatred, the brutality, all the pain, all the torture, all the death

and ugliness and all the suffering created by this good God is all over the

world, isn't it, young man?"

[No answer.]

"Don't you see it all over the place? Huh?"

Pause.

"Don't you?" The professor leans into the student's face again and whispers,

"Is God good?"

[No answer.]

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"

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

The old man shakes his head sadly. "Science says you have five senses you use

to identify and observe the world around you. Have you?"

"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 smelt your Jesus... in

fact, do you have any sensory perception of your God whatsoever?"

[No answer.]

"Answer me, please."

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

"You're AFRAID... you haven't?"

"No, sir."

"Yet you still believe in him?"

"...yes..."

"That takes FAITH!" The professor smiles sagely at the underling. "According to

the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God

doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son? Where is your God now?"

[The student doesn't answer.]

"Sit down, please."

The Christian sits...Defeated.

Another Christian raises his hand. "Professor, may I address the class?"

The professor turns and smiles. "Ah, another Christian in the vanguard! Come,

come, young man. Speak some proper wisdom to the gathering."

The Christian looks around the room. "Some interesting points you are making,

sir. Now I've got a question for you. Is there such  thing as heat?"

"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."

"Is there such a thing as cold?"

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

"No, sir, there isn't."

The professor's grin freezes. The room suddenly goes very cold.

The second Christian continues. "You can have lots of heat, even more heat,

super-heat, mega-heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat but we don't have

anything called 'cold'. We hit 458 degrees below zero,

which is not 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 458 degrees. -

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. A pin drops somewhere in the classroom.

"Is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"

"That's a dumb question, son. What is night if it isn't darkness? What are you

getting at...?" (the professor starting to be impatient)

"So you say there is such a thing as darkness?"

"Yes..."

"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 and give me a jar

of it.  Can you...give me a jar of darker darkness,  professor?"

Despite himself, the professor smiles at the young effrontery before him. This

will indeed be a good semester. "Would you mind telling us what your point is,

young man?"

"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical

premise is flawed to start with and so your conclusion must be in error...."

The professor goes toxic. "Flawed...? How dare you...!"

"Sir, may I explain what I mean?"

The class is all ears.

"Explain... oh, explain..." The professor makes an admirable effort to regain

control. Suddenly he is affability itself. He waves his hand to silence the

class, for the student to continue.

"You are working on the premise of duality," the Christian explains. "That for

example 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 cannot even explain a thought. It uses  electricity and magnetism but

has never see, much less fully understood them. 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, merely the absence of it."

The young man hold up a newspaper he takes from the desk of a neighbor who has

been reading it. "Here is one of the most disgusting  tabloids this country

hosts, professor. Is there such a  thing as immorality?"

"Of course there is, now look..."

"Wrong again, sir. You see, immorality is merely the absence of morality. Is

there such thing as injustice? No. Injustice is the absence of justice. Is

there such a thing as evil?"

The Christian pauses. "Isn't evil the absence of good?"

The professor's face has turned an alarming color.

He is so angry he is  temporarily speechless. The Christian continues. "If there is evil in the

world, professor, and we all agree there is, then God, if he exists, must be

accomplishing a work through the agency of evil.  What is that work God is

accomplishing? The Bible tells us it is to see if each one of us will, of our own

free will, choose good over evil."

The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist,   I don't vie this matter

as having anything to do with any choice; as a  realist, I absolutely do not

recognize the concept of God or any other theological factor as being part of

the world equation because God is not observable."

"I would have thought that the absence of God's moral code in this world is

probably one of the most observable phenomena going,"

the Christian replies.

"Newspapers make billions of dollars reporting it every week! 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 makes a sucking sound with his teeth and

gives his student a silent, stony stare.

"Professor. 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 priest?"

"I'll overlook your impudence in the light of our philosophical discussion.

Now, have you quite finished?" the professor hisses.

"So you don't accept God's moral code to do what is righteous?"

"I believe in what is - that's science!"

"Ahh! SCIENCE!" the student's face splits into a grin.

"Sir, you rightly state  that science is the study of observed phenomena.

Science too is a premise which is flawed..."

"SCIENCE IS FLAWED...?" The professor splutters.

The class is in uproar.

The Christian remains standing until the commotion has subsided. "To continue

the point you were making earlier to the other student, may I give you and

example of what I mean?"

The professor wisely keeps silent.

The Christian looks around the room. "Is there anyone

in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?"

The class breaks out in laughter.

The Christian points towards his elderly, crumbling

tutor. "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain... felt

the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain?"

No one appears to have done so.

The Christian shakes his head sadly. "It appears no-one here has had any

sensory perception of the professor's brain whatsoever. Well, according to the

rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol,  science, I DECLARE that the

professor has no brain."

The class is in chaos.

The Christian sit... Because that is what a chair is for.

>*********************************************************

When God created the heaven and the earth, the land and sea, animals, day and

night, man and woman, and so many other things, the Bible ended with this same

statement - And God saw that it was good  (NIV).

"God saw all that He had made and it was very

good."

(Gen 1:31 NIV)

The choice of evil was made by man when he ate the

fruit of good and evil, even

when God told him not to.

I thank God that I was not made to behave like a

robot. I have made my choice -

to seek forgiveness for my sins and continue to

walk under the grace of a

merciful God. How about you?

God bless.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Life is like a box of chocolate you'll never know

what you gonna get --

Dear XXX (name withheld),

What a very interesting story, and I am so in the mood for philosophizing! Though I was so annoyed with the grammar of whoever wrote this interesting story.

First of all, I must agree that the professor shows a lack of a brain (as with the two students who spoke).

But the story has not ended yet. I have provided the continuation.  I could not bear to have the story end with the class in chaos.  The protagonist has yet to arrive. Let us continue with the story...

OWIE

p.s. forgive my sarcasm.

And as the class was in chaos a student majoring in engineering, all the while staying quiet, raises his hand to be called by the humbled professor.  The student's eyes were intent but his whole face was indifferent, to the point of boredom.  And as the class settled down the student spoke.  "Since the two parties insist on the narrow path of duality, I have questions to ask the class."

"Go on." the humbled professor said.

"Well, it seems to me that your assumptions are inherently flawed. First of all, you assume that the concept of 'good' is universally uniform, irrespective of culture and points of view.  I don't think goodness can be treated as an absolute thing like heat or light which are empirical regardless of culture or point of view.  What I mean is that the speed of light in a vacuum remains the same and the energy released by the movement of electrons from one energy level to another is quantized (energy released may manifest as heat energy).  While the concept of good is hopelessly arbitrary, depending on the culture."

The triumphant Christian student, upon hearing this, freezes his grin and makes a clumsy effort to object and butt in.

"But goodness is absolute, you just need to read the Bible and obey the Holy Church to know what is good."

The engineering student's eyes squinted, then he posed a question.

"You believe that killing a person is evil, right? Or let me put it in your line of reasoning: you believe that killing a person is the absence of good right?"

"Of course." the Christian replied.

"Then how do you explain the passages in the Bible condoning the killing of people like when Moses, a prophet of God, ordered the killing of people who chose to worship another god?"

There was an eerie silence, and the Christian removed his grin.

"Not very absolute, huh?" the engineering student said.

The professor, all the while scratching his chin, was wondering why his vastly limited brain had not thought about questioning his assumptions.

The engineering student again posed a question.

"How do you also explain the Holy Inquisition by the Church which condemned people to be burned at the stake?"

"But the Church has already apologized for its past mistakes."  The Christian said in defense.

"Yes, but that is not the issue.  The mere fact that the Church has inconsistencies in judging between good and the absence thereof proves how the concept of good can be arbitrary.  This also goes to show how reliable the Church is in judging about goodness."

Another deafening silence. You can even hear the whisper of students cheating on their test from the next classroom.

"Since the concept of good is hopelessly tied with the concept of morality, then morality is also not absolute and again depends on people's culture."

"And since you insist in your faith and belief in a God, may I ask which God do you propose I believe in?  The Christian God?  Allah?  Zeus? Bathala perhaps? How would you know which one is the 'right God' since as the class has pointed out God is not observable?  What would be your basis for choosing then? How are you so sure that your god is the true God (if there is indeed a god) and that Allah or Bathala or Zeus are just figments of the imagination?  Perhaps, you might say that all these cultures are referring to the same God?"

The confused Christian student hesitates, but makes a shy nod.

"Then don't you think it funny how God sends a prophet in Israel to preach one set of morality and then sends another prophet in Asia to preach another set of morality?  Then when these two cultures of different religions meet, they kill each other.  Take note that both parties die for the sake of the same GOD!"

The students were all looking down on the floor, guilt ridden. The professor all the more was speechless, angry at his own stupidity.

"Religious institutions make billions of dollars preaching doctrines that differ from one religious sect to another, in the process creating war among countries and cultures.  Tell me, why do you insist that your religion is a religion of peace, of forgiveness, and of love when its history is full of murder and power plays?"

"You're an agent of Satan!" The Christian student hissed.

"Oh, so now I'm evil for saying such 'heretic remarks.' The engineering student was amused and laughed very loud.

"So you're saying that if I mention facts against your religion, then I'm evil but that your Church is 'holy' despite all the murders it did because after all, the Church apologized centuries after committing the murders, is that right?"

The Christian student was on the brink of tears.  He tried to pray.

Then the engineering student calmly said:

"I do not claim that God (a conscious, all knowing, all powerful entity who created the universe) does not exist, nor do I claim that God exists.  I am just appalled that most of you Christians accept all the premises and assumptions fed to you by society and the church without even questioning their validity."

"Is there a heaven?  Do we have an immortal soul?  Do we need salvation in the first place?  Salvation from what?  Are the messages of these so-called prophets really from God? How would we know for sure?  How would you know that these so called prophets are not like the cults we see on T.V. or read in the newspapers, brainwashing their followers?"

"I do not claim nor promise to have the answers to these questions.  These questions have no definite answers since these refer to things which are not observable and therefore can't be proved or disproved. All I'm saying is that believing or not believing in a God should NOT at all matter.  Life is not about professing a faith.  Life is about living it to the full, seeking your own happiness, and creating meaning in your own life. Ideological differences should not be made an excuse for discrimination or using violence on others.  Even in the name of a god."

With this, the whole class and the professor were approvingly silent.  The whole class was in complete order. They felt a sense of peace that comes from enlightenment- a different religious experience!

"Now I really think we are going to have a very exciting semester filled with lots of learning experiences." The professor remarked, silently promising to study his lessons and not cause humiliation to himself again.

The engineering student sat back on his chair and gave an amusing smile, peering through narrowed eyelids which manifested his superior thinking ability, because that is what the brain is for.

The End

************************************************************************

A group of scientists have discovered signs of life on mars, found on a meteorite. Religious groups especially the Roman Catholic Church feel threatened by its implications. I smell another papal apology, this time to a scientist named Darwin who died ages ago.

It is no longer heretic to think that the sun is the center of the solar system. As the Promil kid in the commercial would attest.

People get surprised when they find out that Greek mythology was something of a religion to ancient Greece.  They think the Greeks as ridiculous. Makes you wonder how future generations would think of our time thousands of years from now.

We have not seen stars nor black holes nor quasars for that matter.  But we KNOW that they EXIST because of implied evidence: stars emit light which may travel thousands of light years toward earth; black holes cause the warping of the space-time continuum which bend the path of the light emitted by nearby stars- this detected by high technology machines created by man; quasars, though billions of light years away from us, are detected because of the vast amounts of electromagnetic energy they emit. But I do not need faith to believe in the existence of stars, black holes and quasars, even if I don't see them.  So goes with my brain. Though I can have a CT scan.

Many scientists believe that the universe is teeming with life spontaneously sprouting in different galaxies. As a star system of one of these galaxies collapses, so goes the lives of these extraterrestrial creatures, possibly intelligent creatures. But in another part of the universe, another star system is forming, possibly creating a planet that favors the spontaneous formation of hydrocarbon compounds that resemble the basic components of carbon-based life form. Back here on earth, people await the second coming of Christ. Repent! The end is near, or so I was told.

I am not a robot (thank God!), but ask the followers of a certain religious group.

Unfortunately, I don't have a comeback for 'life is like a box of chocolates.'  I liked the movie.

Tags: philosophy, religion

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