Anyways, just yesterday one of those preacher friends on Facebook posted a bit of Christian propaganda. It was a video called "Why God Exists". Unfortunately I can't find it on YouTube or any other video site so that I can embed it so I'll have to do a little play by play with my own commentary on the side. (Or you can read a similar story here.)
[Setting: 1800's school house during winter. Teacher is talking in a foreign language (Russian?) in the front of the class room about how God doesn't exist since evil exists in the world.]Ok, I've just gotta stop there first of all. How many elementary school teachers have you had that actively talked about religion? And how many of them blatantly said, "There is no God"? I don't remember this happening very often growing up, but I didn't grow up in the 1800s in Russia either. Moving on...
[Small child in the third row finally has enough. He stands up and asks the teacher if he believes in coldness. Teacher replies, "Of course." Student replies, "Wrong! There is no such thing as coldness. Coldness is just the absence of heat."]Ok, technically right. Heat exists but coldness and hotness are subjective human inventions. There is no way to accurately measure them because what is cold for one person might be hot for another. This is why me and my wife fight over the thermostat all of the time.
[Student then asks teacher if he believes in darkness. Teacher says yes, again. Student says "Wrong. Darkness is just the absence of light."]Technically right. We can measure light. Blah blah blah.
[Student finally asks if evil exists. Teacher says yes for a third time. Student says, "Wrong. Evil doesn't exist. Evil is simply the absence of God's love." Teacher then looks down sheepishly. The End.]GAHHHH!!!! There are so many thing wrong with this that I don't know where to start. First I should point out the obvious anti-intellectualism that seems to permeate many Christian parables like this. It is always some young and innocent student that takes on Mr. Stuffed Shirt, High and Mighty Liberal Professor. It's rather a weird dichotomy that smart people are always shown as not believing in God until a stupid person "brings them to the light". This also happens in the story about the professor who drops the piece of chalk to prove that God doesn't exist. It's almost like they know that well educated people are less likely to believe in their bullshit until they put an emotional argument into it.
Secondly, they have completely redefined "evil" to suit their own purpose. Going by their definition, "evil is the absence of God's love", then that should mean that Christians could never ever do evil and non-Christians could never do good. Obviously that is not true. Someone could write several volumes filled with counter-examples for both of those. A better definition of "evil" that everyone could agree on is "something that purposely causes harm, injury or pain." There is no need to bring God into that definition because, like I already showed, "god" is a meaningless term that brings nothing to the table.
Thirdly, this doesn't get rid of the problem of evil like it purports to. Evil still exists even if you try to define it away. People are still bastards to one another. Nations still go on mad killing sprees. Carlos Mencia is still allowed to do stand up comedy. And God is standing by doing nothing. As Epicurus pointed out several millennium ago, this proves that God is either not omnipotent or he doesn't give a fuck. In either case, that version of God is not worth worshipping.
And finally, something that bugs me about all of these proofs of God, this does nothing to tell us which god exists. This doesn't automatically prove that the Christian or Jewish god exists. Hell, this doesn't even prove that only one god exists. We could very well be living in a universe with a whole pantheon of gods and evil is just their way of settling their petty differences.
See, this is why I should completely avoid Facebook. The comments section on the video was even worse. Most of them were along the lines of "OMG, This is soooo right. I felt so bad for the professor at the end." And people wonder why I don't like going back home. It makes me feel like the kid pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes on.
"Student then asks teacher if he believes in darkness. Teacher says yes, again. Student says 'Wrong. Darkness is just the absence of light.'"
Actually that's technically incorrect. What we would call darkness is actually permeated with light we can't see like gamma rays, x-rays and UV. Darkness is just a subjective definition based on our eyes' ability to detect a very narrow spectrum of radiation.
So how can darkness be the absence of light if it's still filled with radiation we just can't see because our eyes didn't evolve to detect it? Of course we know these other spectra exist because much of modern astronomy relies on detecting this invisible light.
This entire parable, regurgitated seemingly everywhere to no end, was written by someone who doesn't know anything about physics and already believes in the point that these semantic parables are trying to convey.
If the Creator would intervene and stop actions of the humans there would be no free will.
When humans do evil things to each other, it proves that some humans are evil. It doesn't prove anything else.
In my website there is one formal logical proof: bloganders.blogspot.com (see the left menu)
It proves the existence of a Creator and His purpose of humankind.
Meh. Just the cosmological argument for the millionth time. I'm not tackling that because it's been done to death. Long story short: Infinite regress, multiverse has always existed, natural instead of supernatural cause, doesn't identify which god... Rinse, lather, repeat.