August 04, 2007
I've uploaded a story, which I believe, Christians circulate around the cyber world to convince, educate and inform others that their belief system is correct, logical and yet precise.
I can see the effort these fundamentalists put in to make a great story such as this to show how Atheists are dumb by portraying them to be bombarding stupid yet logical questions. Whereas for the Christian being portrayed in this story, black and white is all they know. And is forever in their mentality.
Heard of the story of "
The Professor and the Christian"? I bet many of you guyz have heard it before and are psychologically convinced that this story, regardless of its religious essence, makes complete sense. Well, whatever that makes you happy! However, if one were to analyse deeper or read in between the lines, one should be able to find loop holes like what I have yet to highlight.
The Atheist Professor is, honestly and in my opinion, an idiot. No one could ever imagine or agree with me more that educated people are always intelligent. I beg to differ. In fact, his arguments in the story were solely based on what he can see, but not what he can analyse out of the whole picture. The whole picture of this story, is not just about how good Jesus is, or how is Christianity able to outshine others, or how God is so mighty to save. The core argument in this story is based on what the professor has mentioned in relation to what he sees, experienced or conceived in his mind.
Here are the loopholes.
First, the professor has personally attacked the weak Christian causing the uproar of another. But all which the stronger Christian did was to use logic to win the professor's straightforward argument. And this is where those loopholes start to fill in.
Secondly, Atheists in this story are portrayed as offensive and rather rude. However in reality, Atheists are generally people who don't really give a damn about religious beliefs unless they are challenged, mocked, tactlessly evangelised or scrutinised by Christians or any other fundamentalists. These people do not believe in any form of gods and have no intention of screwing religious people alive. Believe me... they've got other better things to do.
Thirdly, it is generally the Christians or Catholics who are very fond of evangelism. And during this process, many have fallen short, not because of what they believe, but rather, due to the lack of tact in their approaches. Atheists usually get offended when people of certain strong belief assert themselves upon non-believers as if their doctrine is the one and only solution. At the same time, these fundamentalists (or sometimes, moderates), assert the fact that what they say is right and others are wrong (i.e. darkness is the absence of light). Such behaviour or approach, to Atheists seems rather arrogant, close-minded and ego-centric.
Fourthly, if darkness is the absence of light and evil is the absence of good, then I would like to understand the level of goodness and the brightness of light. How good is good? How bright is the light? If the light is dim, we cannot say that there is absolute light.
One similar example would be this (something to ponder over):
In Europe, a woman was near death from cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. A druggist in the same town had discovered it, but he was charging ten times what the drug costs him to make. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together half of what it cost. The druggist refused to sell the drug for less or let Heinz pay later. So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have done that? Why and why not? (paraphrased from Colby et al., 1983, p.77)Now, don't give me the answer that Heinz should pray for his dying woman without even taking specific action. Even if he did pray for his wife, ran down to the store panting and discovered that the druggist won't sell that drug, does it mean that he has no right to feel desperate and do foolish things out of desperation? According to the law, it is not right. But according to ethics, saving one's wife is morally correct and it is the right thing to do. Here's the clash. Does it means that saving a person's life, however foolish it may be, by risking his own makes him a foolish sinner? Does it means that he is condemned forever? Does it means that he is wrong? What he did was ethical, and deserved to be praised for his courage. However, according to the law, he needs to face its grave consequence. Ethic isn't grace. It is morality. Also, morality or immorality itself do not exist without the presence of amorality. Some things are beyond the black and white. It is the gray area that remains cast away from the eyes of religion.
What religion do not accept is amorality and things of the Gray. Goodness is subjective and so is evil. Heinz wasn't a completely evil man just because he stole the drug, but all these happened because of other factors involved in stirring up the desperation in him. Brightness is subjective and so is darkness. Dimness is the area which we all experience everyday but consistently remain ignorant of that fact. So if Heinz were to steal the drug dashed across the road and got knocked down by a truck, does it means that he's going to hell. O! So much of helping to save his wife from death!
According to Lawrence Kohlberg's (1987) identification of the
cognitive stages in moral development, the first stage of the preconventional level revolves around the absolute right or wrong answer to a specific situation. Such pro-stealing or anti-stealing mentality, according to this psychological theory, exists mainly among very young
children. And basically, all answers from young children are often insisted as either right or wrong and in the absence of reason. Moreover, this stage also applies to adults as well, according to Kohlberg. And I am worried that religion, which emphasizes so much on right and wrong; good and evil; moral and immoral, without considering other confounding or extraneous factors involved, might just have a potentially negative effect that would immunize humanity to the many possibilities of this world.
I do not completely agree that this world and what we are constantly experiencing is totally black and white. There is no absolute in this living world, unless you're dead (and I don't like the idea of the term used "being dead to sin"). How sinful is sin? I know that sin is sin itself. But yet, sin comes many forms and evil deeds (stealing) like Heinz's deserve to be reprimanded by God. But this evil deed has a good intention behind it. Well, like what I've mentioned, O! So much of saving a person's life and risking his own... like what Jesus once did.
Fifth, like what we all see in many Atheist jokes, the inability to see the brain is the conclusion that the brain do not exist. The professor is portrayed as an idiot for coming up with such argument that has driven him to his own grave. The Christian, on the other hand, missed out the fact that the inability to disprove the brain does not equate to the absolute conclusion that the brain does or does not exist. Again, if you can barely spot a Chinese teapot orbiting around the sun, it would be rather absurd to conclude that the Chinese teapot exists because one cannot disprove of its existence (read Bertrand Russell).
Conclusively, whether one is right or wrong, it is not in our full right to assert our conclusive judgements upon those matters. Yet again, there are no absolute right or wrong answers, only opened possibilities such that one may continue to ponder, to discover, to discuss and to question their wonderful existence or non-existence in our everyday lives.
I am not an absolutist. Neither am I a moderate Christian. My belief in Jesus is largely based on the fact that it brings people together (social interdependence and network) and it provides heaven on earth.
Hell is literal. And so is Heaven. Whether Heaven or Hell exists, what truly matters to me now, is that I would rather live a complete and purposeful life (Heaven on earth), instead of a reckless and aimless life (Hell on earth), here on this planet. I won't say that Faith is the answer, for it is also, rather subjective and can be measured (faith the size of a mustard seed, Matt 17:20). I believe in Love, more than Faith, the love of Someone who sacrificed His life, split history into AD and BC, and could indirectly, influenced people of modern society to bring
positive impact and
making a difference by touching and transforming the lives of many. Whether one chooses to embrace Jesus or not, it is a matter of one's free-will. But the transformation and touching of lives through sowing one's time on somebody he or she cares about without ulterior evangelical motives, is the best testimony there is. This is the kind of Christianity I am for. Thus in this circumstance, "religion" is a rather misused word for this type of Christianity.
Last but not least, I believe in love, because love cannot be measured (I'm refering to unconditional love).
In sum, the story of "The Professor and the Christian" is crap. It is another religious and fundamentalist propagandistic approach to indirectly insists to the whole world that Christianity is right and non-believers and Science is wrong. Perhaps Absolutists should examine other possibilities instead.
