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Source: www.rationalresponders.com/debunking_an_urban_legend_evil_is_a_lack_of_something

Dialogue with a young theist (longer version)
A philosophy professor challenged his students
with a form of the Euthyphro dilema: Did 'God'
create everything that exists?" A student replied,
"Yes, he did!" (The 'bravely' part is removed: civil
disagreement is the very point of philosophy
courses, no bravery is required for dissent! Civil
dissent is rewarded! Agreement is the death of
philosophy, disagreement is its life's blood.)
"God created everything?" the professor asked.
"Yes," the student replied. (The 'sir' part is
removed: no college student in the 21st century
addresses a college professor as 'sir' - which
demonstrates that whoever it was that made up the
original story never went to college. In addition,
the use of 'sir' is just a pretense of 'respect' - it
comes off as passive aggressive anger more than
anything else.)
The professor answered, "Well then, here's a
logical puzzle for you: If God created everything,
then God created evil; Therefore, according to the
principal that 'our works define who we are', 'God'
is evil."
The student became silently enraged over his
worldview being 'attacked'. He began to project
out his feelings of inadequecy as smugness coming
from the professor.
The student then said: "Can I ask you a question
professor?"
"Of course," replied the professor. That's the
point of philosophical discourse. (The writer of the
original story clearly has little experience with a
real college classroom. The whole point of a
philosophy or theology course is to foster
discussion.)
Student: Is there such thing as heat?"
Professor: Yes, the professor replies.
Student: "Is there such a thing as cold?"
Professor: "Yes, there's cold too."
Student: "No, there isn't"
The professor doesn't grin or frown or react with
any emotion other than curiosity. After all, he's
heard bad arguments like this for more years than
the student has been alive. (The desire to see the
professors 'smug smile wiped off his face' is just
another projection of the feelings of inadequecy
found in theists who aren't able to argue their own
points well...)
The student 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 can hit 458 degrees below zero,
which is no 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. 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, just the absence
of it"
Professor: (Nodding his head in dismay, and
working out how many times he's heard this bad
logic by now. 100 times?). Do you remember the
section in your workbook on semantic fallacies?
Student: ( gives a confused look a dog might make)
Professor: Let me give you a quick review. Both
'heat' and 'cold' are subjective terms... They are
what the philosopher John Locke properly called
"secondary qualities". The secondary qualities
refer to how we humans experience a very real
phenomena: the movement of atomic particles. The
terms 'heat' and 'cold' refer to an interaction
between human nervous systems and various speeds
of atomic particles in their environment. So what
we 'really' have is temperature.... the terms 'heat'
and "cold' are merely subjective terms we use to
denote our relative experience of temperature.
So your entire argument is specious. You have not
'proven' that 'cold' does not exist, or that 'cold'
somehow exists without any ontological status,
what you have done is shown that 'cold' is a
subjective term. Take away the subjective concept,
and the 'thing in itself', the temperature we are
denoting as 'cold', still exists. Removing the term
we use to reference the phenomena does not
eradicate the phenomena.
Student: (a bit stunned) "Uh... Ok.... Well, is there
such a thing as darkness, professor?"
Professor: You are still employing the same logical
fallacy. Just with a different set of of secondary
qualities.
Student: "So you say there is such a thing as
darkness?"
Professor: "What I am telling you is that you are
repeating the very same error. "Darkness" exists as
a secondary quality.
Student: "You're wrong again. 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 darkness, professor?
Professor: Sure, right after you give me a jar of
light. Seriously, "light and dark' are subjective
terms we use to describe how we humans measure
measure photons visually. The photons actually
exist, the terms 'light' and 'dark' are just
subjective evaluations, relative terms... having to
do, again, with an interaction between our nervous
systems and another phenomenon of nature - this
time, photons. So again, doing away with a
subjective term does not eradicate the actual
phenomena itself - the photons. Nothing actually
changes. If we humans tend to call 'x number of
photons' 'dark' (while cats refer to it as 'bright
enough for me&quot those number of photons we
denote as 'dark' exist, and they continue to exist
even if we do away with the term 'dark.'
Do you get it now?
Student: (gives a look not unlike a 3 year old trying
to work out quantum physics)
Professor: I see your still struggling with the
fallacy hidden in your argument. But let's continue,
perhaps you'll see it.
Student: Well, you are working on the premise of
duality, the christian explains.
Professor: Actually, I've debunked that claim two
times now. But carry on.
Student: "Well, you assume, for example, that
there is a good God and a bad God. You are viewing
the concept of God as something finite, something
we can measure.
Professor: Be careful. If you want to place your
god beyond the grasps of reason, logic, and science
and make him 'unmeasurable', then you are left
with nothing but a mystery of your own devising. So
if you use this special plead your god beyond
reason to solve the problem, you can't call your god
moral either. You can't call 'him' anything. You
can't say anything else about something that you
yourself have defined as beyond reason other than
that the term you've created is incoherent. So your
solution is akin to treating dandruf by
decapitation.
Student: (Gulps. Continues on, oblivious to what was
just said) Sir, science cannot even explain a
thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has
never seen, much less fully understood them.
Professor: You just said that science cannot
explain a thought. I'm not even sure what you mean
by that. I think what you mean to say is this: there
remains many mysteries in neuroscience. Would you
agree?
Student: Yes.
Professor: And, along the same line of thought, we
accept that there are things like thoughts, or
electricity or magnetism even though we have never
seen them?
Student: Yes!
Professor: Recall the section in your textbook
concerning fallacies of false presumption. Turn to
the entry on 'Category error'. You'll recall that a
category error occurs when an inappropriate
measure is used in regards to an entity, such as
asking someone what the color of a sound is...
Asking someone to 'see' magnetism directly (and
not just its effects) commits such an error.
However, there is yet another error in your
argument: your assumption that empircism or even
science is based on 'real time observation' alone.
This is false. Sight is not the sole means of knowing
the world, nor is science merely the study of
whatever we are currently looking at. We can use
other senses to detect phenomena. And we can also
examine their effects upon the world.
Furthermore, you are importing yet another
erroneous presumption into the discussion: you are
conflating the fact that science is incomplete with
the implication that a lack of an answer from
naturalism automatically means that your theistic
assertion is correct. So you'll also want to review
the section on 'arguing form ignorance.'
Do you have more to say?
Student: (The student, continues, mainly unfazed,
due to the protection his shield of ignorance
affords him.) .... Um....... 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"
Professor: You are really in love with this
secondary quality fallacy, aren't you? You are
again confusing a secondary quality with the
phenomena in of itself. "Death" and "life" are
subjective terms we use to describe a more
fundamental phenomena - biology. The phenomena in
question, however, does exist. Biological forms in
various states exist. Doing away with the
subjective term does not eradicate the existence
of death.
Nonplussed, the young man continues: "Is there
such a thing as immorality?"
Professor: (Reaches for an asprin in his desk)
You're not going to again confuse a secondary
quality for an atttribute, are you? Please... what
can I do to help you see this problem?
Student: (Continues on, fueled by ideology and
oblivious to reality) 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?"
Professor: So, if someone murders your mother
tonight, nothing happened? There was just an
absence of morality in your house? Wait, I forgot...
she's not dead... she's just experiencing an absence
of life, right?
Student: Uh.....
Professor: You're beginning to see that something
is missing in your argument, aren't you? Here's
what you're missing. You are confusing a secondary
quality... a subjective term that we can use to
describe a phenomena, for the phenomena itself.
Perhaps you heard me mention this before? (The
class erupts in laughter, the professor motions for
them to stop laughing.) 'Immorality' is a descrptive
term for a behavior. The terms are secondary, but
the behaviors exist. So if you remove the
secondary qualities, you do nothing to eradicate
the real behavior that the terms only exist to
describe in the first place. So by saying that
'immorality' is a lack of morality, you are not
removing immoral intentions and behaviors, or the
problem of immoral intentions and behaviors from
existence, you are just removing the secondary
attribute, the subjective term.
And notice how dishonest your argument is on yet
another level... in that it speaks of morality and
immorality devoid of behavior, but 'evil' exists as a
behavior, evil is an intent to do harm and an act
commited with such an intent.
By the way, are you really trying to imply that
immorality or evil are merely subjective qualities?
Student: Gulp! (Reeling from the psychological
blows to his corrupt worldview....) Have you ever
observed evolution with your own eyes, professor?"
The professor soothes his aching forehead, and
prepares for the 1 millionth time that he will be
subjected to the 'can you see the wind' argument.
Professor: What an interesting turn this
conversation has taken. Can I advise you to read
Brofenbrenner's suggestion against arguing over
subjects over which you are uninformed? It's in
your textbook. Page 1.
Student: "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?
Professor: Interesting indirect comment on the
priesthood. But let's leave that aside... We do
observe the process of evolution at work, for the
process works at this very moment. As for the
implication in your argument that one must 'be
there' to observe a process at it occurs, surely you
realize that we can infer the process through
examining the evidence that these processes leave
behind? In a sense, we are there when we observe
artifacts.
Consider for example the science of astronomy.
How do we know about super novas? Because we can
observe diferrent supernovas in different stages
of super nova, by observing their 'artifacts' in the
night sky. The same stands for any historical
science. Your mistake here is that you think science
is merely 'real-time-observation'. This is a
strawman of science. By your logic trees can't grow
- after all, who's actually witnessed a tree
growing?
Science is both direct and indirect observation... it
also allows for inference. If, for the sake of
consistency you were asked to follow your own rule,
you'd have to concede that we have no evidence
tree growth, or mountain formation - after all, I've
never actually seen a seed grow into a tree, I've
only seen it in stages.
Student: "But professor! You stated that science
is the study of observed phenomena.
Professor: No, this is a strawman of what science
is... Science is more than just real time observation,
we also observe artifacts and make inferences. But
continue....
Student: (Responds to this as a goat might respond
to a book on calculus) May I give you an example of
what I mean?"
Professor: Certainly.
Student: "Is there anyone in the class who has ever
seen air, oxygen, molecules, atoms, the professor's
brain?"
The class breaks out in laughter. The christian
points towards professor, "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!"
(So much for the student's pretense of respect,
clearly his goal is to ridicule).
Professor: You mean, according to your strawman
view of science. I am glad that you are here in my
class so that I can help you better understand
what you criticize. Science is not merely 'looking'
at things. Science is empirical, but also rational.
We can make inferences from evidence of things
that we do see, back to phenonema that we might
not be able to directly see. Such as a functioning
brain.
And one inference I can make from observing your
behaviors here today is that you've wasted the
money you've spent on your logic textbook so far
this year. I strongly advise, for your own sake, that
you crack open that book today, and start reading.
From page 1.
Those who know the good, do the good. - Socrates

dorox: If that thing has a beginning, then it must have a source. But God has no beginning as I tried to show you earlier, hence He does not have a source.

source and beginning is the same, nothing spontaneously exists, except, God has decided to go against his own rule

dorox: Can you be more clear please? I am not quite sure of the point you are trying to make

am asking if you agree with me that for anything to exist it must have a source

alexleo: You played wayo here you know. .
This wasn't the original post you made earlier. You don adjust am bros. .

God or the creator(whichever one you choose to refer him) is not mortal and physical. He is super natural, a spiritl and invisible to the natural eyes. I can't tell his shape. I just used air to explain his invisible nature. Not that he is like air. Air is not supernatural, air is not a spirit being.

but moses saw something(I think glory) when he went to the mountian to collect commandment from God, and he is even said to have been the only man to see God

dorox: If we accept the premise on which you made your argument as true, that is; if God exists, there is a source behind his existence, then it will also be true that there is a source behind the source of God's existence, and a source behind the source that is behind the source of God's existence, and on and on indefinitely. My mathematics was just a way of showing that this will lead us back to the idea that God has no beginning.

if I agree with you that God has no source but he exist, but anything that exist must have a source

dorox: Let us suppose that you are right that some entity created the universe, and another entity created the creator of the universe, and another entity created the creator of the creator of the universe,.... and so on and so forth without end.
Let E1, E2,E3 and En be entity 1, 2,3 and n. Where n is any real positive number.
The sum of this chain is E1+E2+E3+...+Einfinity. Now if you substract E1+E2+E3+...+En from the sum of the chain, you will have
E(n+1)+...Einfinity.
This would imply that there does not exist a time t =0 that marks the beginning of the chain of creators, because the chain is infinite.
So God does not have a beginning.

but he exists and what ever exists has a cause ( thou I don't understand your mathematical jumbo)

alexleo: The source here is a total package. Everything that surrounds it is what makes It the source. That is the way am viewinng the issue. And of course we cannot know everything that surrounds it. But the basic thing is that creation came out from a source.

what surrounds it? And why shouldn't we know everything

The purpose of this thread isn't to ask for the source but the source of the source itself

mazaje: The big bang isn't an atheistic proposal, it is a scientific explanation. . . . .

if I may ask, apart from there is no god, what is th atheist proposition

The theologians belives the World was created by God... how did that God come to be?......... So atheist believe the world started with a big bang, how did what ever exploded to cause the big bang came to be? The question is a variant of who designed the designer

Emmalot121: What do you mean by wrong password?Because from what I know is a password only becomes wrong when it is NOT RIGHT for a particular function as the password can be just right to steal millions through ATM.
You no fit defeat me

enough said, my aim was to show d loopholes in the prof vs stu argument, and I think have archive that

Emmalot121: What do you do when you taste food on fire,is it not to measure its saltiness.Taste unlike sorrow can be regulated and exist independently(does not occur due to absence of one another.) Total sorrow like total Darkness cannot be measured and cannot be deepened and are mere oxymoron existing due to absence of something.Yes total sorrow cannot be deepened because you have no joy left.If you want to feel the fact that TOTAL SORROW (TOTAL ABSENCE OF JOY EXIST),burn everything you have,go to a prison in Egypt,where you have little food to eat a day and you are in a single sound proof room,where you can neither communicate or be communicated to,where you are molested day and night for like 30 years,that is when you understand total Sorrow exist,a state where there is no joy and your sorrow cannot be deepened.
DO YOU BELIEVE SWEET FOODS AND BITTER FOODS DON'T EXIST AND CANNOT BE TAGGED WITH ONE ANOTHER?Bitter foods are caused by certain enzymes and elements and sweet foods are caused by different enzymes and elements,it is the reaction of the brain to these enzymes and elements that causes the sensation of bitterness and sweetness.

like you said "Total absence": darkness isn't even the absence of light, how do you justify when a place is dim, is that also absence of light, or partly light and partly darkness, same as your food can be a bit salty or very salty...

Emmalot121: You keep twisting same question.The fact is that wrong password does not exist.It is just the term we say whenever you fail to write the right password i.e. Wrong password is not the opposite of Right password,but the absence of it.

isn't the right password also the absence of the wrong password? I'm programming if seun hadn't created a page where u would be redirected to when you wrote the wrong password then you would have be re-directed to a blank page

Emmalot121: Taste is finite so one taste is the opposite of another,but like Einstein said sorrow is infinite so can only exist when there is no joy.

taste isn't finite and Einstein never said sorrow is infinite.

What am saying is
good and evil are two instances they
complement each other, just like nairaland if
you typed the wrong password a page comes
out that tells you that; you type the wrong
password, while if you typed the right one
your profile open; those are two instances, if
the programmer didn't create the instance
when you typed the wrong password to take
you to another page where you are told the
password you typed is incorrect, then you
would have been directed to a blank page,
same applies to the concept of good and evil,
hope I answered you

Emmalot121: "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.The earth was without form and void and DARKNESS was upon the face of the deep... "
An intelligent man would quickly say:"If God created everything,did he create darkness as the world would have been in a state before he created our world."

so there are things God didn't create and one of dem includes our previous world(the one he meet darkness in) before he terraformed it

Emmalot121: "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.The earth was without form and void and DARKNESS was upon the face of the deep... "
An intelligent man would quickly say:"If God created everything,did he create darkness as the world would have been in a state before he created our world."But the interesting part is that darkness is only an oxymoron,it is just the word we say when 'there is no light.' So was bitterness(Absence of joy) and evil(Absence of good) not created.
Bitter Foods you see is not tantamount to bitterness and bad as you have used it as bitter foods are good for the body as you have seen through that LINK I gave to you and helps to balance the sweet foods we take which on the long run is harmful to us. YOUR BITTERNESS IS EQUAL TO SORROW,MINE IS TASTE WHICH IS ONE OF THE FIVE BASIC SENSATIONS ON THE TONGUE http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste

am not talking about sorrow, am talking about taste, the fact is one taste is the absence of another taste

Emmalot121: God created happiness,the absence of God and faith created sadness like you read in Einstein's arguement.I think you have seen the link I forwarded to you about the benefits of bitter fruits.

I didn't ask for the benefits of bitter fruits, am only telling you if God created bitterness the absence of sweetness den he created evil the absence of good

Emmalot121: You tickle me . Urheme come answer this question ooooooooooooo

isn't bitterness the absence of sweetness

Emmalot121: I really can't comprehend this question.

what I meant is who created the presence of something and the absence of something..... Like who created happiness and sadness something like that

10kgod: Wao! I have missed a lot sha. Pls help me check mine o, 47234160GH.

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Emmalot121: Debunk it again cos i wish to learn

who created the sweet fruit and the bitter fruit

Emmalot121: Debunk it again cos i wish to learn

who created presence and absence

Toyolad: @capslocked,with that,it's safe to assume that you now get my point.


Read gen 1:1-3...Even His own spirit was hovering on the face of the waters.NB:this was before creation started.

so God didn't create all things?

Toyolad: @capslocked,with that,it's safe to assume that you now get my point.


Read gen 1:1-3...Even His own spirit was hovering on the face of the waters.NB:this was before creation started.

my error again, I wanted to write wasn't

Maybe hell fire, am sure that goat that scattered my plate is going to hell fire

As the title of the thread says

Toyolad: sir,think abt this...

When the water gathered,automatically Land appeared bt the land was WET(can anything grow on a wet land?) So He said "Let DRY land appear"..when He was creating d sun,did He say "let HOT sun appear"?..the fact is:there was land where d water moved away from bt being a God of orderliness,He made a DRY LAND appear.


Wait!!!...are u telling me God created water?.lol

rice grows on wet land, d question is dis did he create land or not? Now you re telling me he created dry land, and not wet land, remember he said let ALL THE WATER, you don't expected a single drop to remain on the ground if water obeys a God... So the water in that context would have all gathered in on place, but because there wasn't a land, he now commanded dry land to appear... And also who now created water? If God didn't

Toyolad: Gen 1:9 "let the water under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the DRY LAND APPEAR" N:B He didn't say let there be,He said let d water gather and let the dry land appear frm where the water moved away.

he said let the dry land appear because there wasn't any dry land (a supreme being with word of authority), if dry land was to be really existing, then he wouldn't have bothered to command it to appear, when water gathers into one place, automatically dry land will appear, but in the creation story's case, there was no dry land and God commanded it to appear. Unless you are telling me God didn't create all things (including land and water)

Toyolad: Gen 1:9 "let the water under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the DRY LAND APPEAR" N:B He didn't say let there be,He said let d water gather and let the dry land appear frm where the water moved away.

so who created the dry land? (is it the heart of man?)

Toyolad: Bro,in your heart,it's either u av good in there or evil.
You can't have an empty heart.
Now Good is the absence of evil;Evil is the absence of good.just as a land is a place where there's no water and if water evaporates we av land.

both the water and the land was supposedly created by a supreme being; that's just what am trying to tell u