Dropping an Egg (Big Pic) (717 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.67 on 10 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Chronic Master Baiter (View user info) at 2005-10-20 01:16:49 EDT
I came an across Urban Legend on the internet a while back about Theology Professor at USC. As a side thing to his class everday, he tried to dissaprove the notion of God. It has been said that many students would not stand up to him for many years. Anyways, as tradition holds in his class, he would do an interesting thing at the last class in front of a group of 200. He would hold out a piece of chalk (Depending on which version of the legend you are reading, it's a beaker or egg, hence the title of this piece). He would then ask someone in the audience to stand up if they still believed in god. No one would (Again, it depends which version you have come across).
As the tale goes, he would then tell the audience that's fine, they can silently pray to god so that the chalk does not break when he drops it. Anyways, he would drop the chalk, and it would break. This would draw silence from the crowd.
However, after many years of such a practise, someone eventually stood up at the last class and said they still believed in God. The Professor would tell him to pray that the chalk doesn't break. As the Professor was about to drop it, the chalk slipped out of his hand, dropped on top of his shoe laces and landed uncracked on the floor. Of course, he was in an awkward position, so he did what any pissed of professor would do: he stormed out of the room.
Now, even if this is an urban legend, the idea behind such a story is grandose. You see, by allowing his subjects to pray to God so that the chalk doesn't break, he essentially ignored many philosophies of god in many religions, and essentially reduced god from a three dimensional point, to a flat point. Now, let's get to the meat of the situation. Even if the chalk doesn't break, does that mean if there is a god? The problem with such a logic is that it's inconclusive. So, you are given two events, A and B. B turns out to be inconclusive. Does that mean A is inconclusive. Think about choice A (The chalk breaking).
Feel choice A people. Are we judging it by our own bias? Are we willing to believe that it's conclusive, eventhough it's direct counterpart is inconclusive? What I am trying to point out is that how can one event be defined as true, if it's counterpart can either be true or false. The question is, is event A true? Is it false to a certain degree because it does not take everything into account?
The problem is, can this be expanded to a global perspective....that an athiest can't prove a believer wrong, where a believer can't prove a athiest wrong..
They both work with faith. An athiest has a different faith. A faith in perception and observation.(I am committing a fallacy here, but's it is true to a certain degree). A believer might believe in something that our perception fails to grasp.
Here is the thing. I consider myself a believer. However, after thinking about this...I have come to the realization that let people be people. Why convert? The best conversion is showing your faith not in words...but in actions.
Again, these are some thoughts, nothing close to a master's degree :)
(Source on the Image...via Google)
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Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2005-10-20 05:22:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Ghey said:
"Atheists, in refusing to believe in god, are no better then christians who fail to believe in the lack thereof. They are just as militant in their beliefs, etc. To concede the possibility of god would be a major step for the atheists, just as conceding the possibility of evolution would be a big step for the christians. Who says there can't be a combination of the two (in any proportion)?"
Atheists, in refusing to believe in God are FAR better than Christians. How you can say an Atheist is "militant" in their belief is beyond me. Atheists change their beliefs daily, with the progression of science. The fact that a formative entity happens to stay outside of that belief system doesn't mean it is unchanging.
Christians not only believe in a formative deity, they ascribe very precise characteristics to it. If they just said "Maybe something built the universe" THEN they would be on the same level as atheists, but they don't. No, they claim to know what this being is, where it is, what it wants and other patently ridiculous claims.
It is very nice to fall back on an "everyone has faith" argument but when you claim to know details of a creative entity, and to prescribe suggested behaviour towards it you are taking irrational, unprovable steps that no atheist tries to do.
The idea of a God is utterly nonsensical, and the fact that the Christian God so accurately reflects human behaviour almost irrefutably proves that God is a human construct.
Christians use God to explain how the universe exists. Apparently, however, nothing created God. How they can believe in a non-causal entity so flippantly, yet not believe that the universe had no intelligent origin, is utterly beyond me.
It seems irrational to say that the Universe came from nothing, but it is far worse to claim that it was created by some ineffable creature that ITSELF had no creator. Ockham's razor can be applied here to good effect.
It seems the only possible explanation is that our conception of time is somehow flawed. It seems that the Cause/effect progression is in someway flawed, as any approach to it involves a fallacy (either nothing made something or nothing made god).
Fortunately, recent thought has postulated this exact thing. In "A Brief History of Time", Stephen Hawking" outlines a theory whereby space-time is a fixed, curved, finite but limitless construct. As such, there is no "start" of the universe and the need for something coming from nothing disappears. The universe just is. Nothing made it, because it was never "made" in time.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2005-10-20 05:19:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
An athiest has a different faith. """"
um no.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2005-10-20 05:16:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
heh heh, "piss filter"...
I'm too dixie fried to contemplate the existence of God right now.
<insert inevitable Douglas Adams quote here>
Submitted by Fabit (user info) at 2005-10-20 05:05:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"i came an across Urban Legend on..."
OH NOES - YOU CAN'T PUT THAT!!! YOU WRITE URBAN AND THAT IS A BIT LIKE URBANE. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY MAKING FUNNY OF HER CANCERS IN HER PISS FILTERS!! YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!!!11
Submitted by Fabit (user info) at 2005-10-20 05:05:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"i came an across Urban Legend on..."
OH NOES - YOU CAN'T PUT THAT!!! YOU WRITE URBAN AND THAT IS A BIT LIKE URBANE. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY MAKING FUNNY OF HER CANCERS IN HER PISS FILTERS!! YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD!!!11
Submitted by ChronicMasturbator (user info) at 2005-10-20 02:34:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Sorry for the poor grammer, I wrote this in quite a hurry.
I usually write on the spur.
Submitted by forensicgirl3 (user info) at 2005-10-20 02:23:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You got me thinking....
I'll have to search it out again, but I found a logic excercise that will either prove or disprove the existance of God. It really just came down to semantics.
I can't see protons (w/the naked eye of course but for a simple argument, it'll do) either but that doesn't mean they aren't there. I can't see the wind but that doesn't mean I can't witness its effects.
Believing or disbelieving, its a personal choice.
Submitted by ghey (user info) at 2005-10-20 01:58:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You need to work on your grammer and flow a little (as I do too), but you are absolutely correct!
Many atheists use the "invisible pink unicorn" (look it up on wikipedia) philosophy to explain their disbeleif in god. However, that's not exactly a valid point: No society in history has ever believed in 'Pink Invisible Unicorns', in fact the name itself is an oxymoron, yet every society in the world, at least their majority, has beleived in some sort of higher being.
Atheists, in refusing to believe in god, are no better then christians who fail to believe in the lack thereof. They are just as militant in their beliefs, etc. To concede the possibility of god would be a major step for the atheists, just as conceding the possibility of evolution would be a big step for the christians. Who says there can't be a combination of the two (in any proportion)?
For society, this brings up the issue of Free Will. If there is a god, are we free to do with our lives as we please? If there isn't a god, what's to stop us from killing ourselves off? The answer is in the harmony between those questions. We have free will, yet we aren't dead yet. Of course, we're still young as a species, there's still plenty of time...
I heard the same urban legend a while back, yet as I heard it: The professor said "if anyon here believes in god, let him pray to strike me down now". At which point, this big ass black quarterback stands up, walks down to the preacher and knocks him out cold. Self-fulfilling prophecy, or God working in mysterious ways?
Whose god?
Submitted by ChronicMasturbator (user info) at 2005-10-20 01:34:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Phallic I should have seen that between A and B.
However, I appreciate your comments.
Submitted by Phallic_Cymbals (user info) at 2005-10-20 01:27:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
There is no reason why A and B would share features (in this case "truthfulness"). The events are arbitrarily attached, not causal, and so there is no reason why the inconclusiveness of one would define any similar property in the other.
"They both work with faith. An athiest has a different faith. A faith in perception and observation.(I am committing a fallacy here, but's it is true to a certain degree"
At least you acknowledged the fallacy, but this comparison is highly irritating. This is due to the fact that "faith" has multiple definitions.
According to dictionary.com, faith is:
1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
As such, atheists do have general faith in observation and rationality in terms of definition 1, but religious types often try to imply that this faith is more like the second definition, which is incorrect.
Also, an Atheist's faith in perception is nowhere near as concrete as a Christian's faith in God.