Me, Myself & I

The World the way I see it

Does evil exist?

Posted by Luminus on June 14, 2006

This has a thought provoking message no matter what you believe or what thought line you tow.

Does evil exist?

A university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?

A student bravely replied “yes, he did!”

“God created everything?” The professor asked.

“Yes, sir,” the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil.”

The student became quiet before such an answer.

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.
 
Another student raised his hand and said, “Can I ask you a question professor?” “Of course”, replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, “Professor, does cold exist?”

“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?” The students snickered at the young man’s question.
 
The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have too little heat.
 
The student continued. “Professor, does darkness exist?”
 
The professor responded, “Of course it does”.
 
The student replied, “Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.”
 
Finally the young man asked the professor. “Sir, does evil exist?”

Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. “These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”
 
To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”
 
The professor sat down.

The young mans name — Albert Einstein

While I can’t confirm that this can really be attributed to Uncle Albert, I agree whole heartedly with the direction of this argument. Take a minute, think about it and let me know what you think.

Shalom

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21 Responses to “Does evil exist?”

  1. Boso said

    Nice one….!!

  2. smiley said

    Great post, it really does shed some light in these days where there’s so much evil in the world and you wonder why?

  3. Luminus, you have again blown my mind. I wonder how this solves the question inherent in the minds of atheist but this surely re-enforces the believe system of an average believer.
    Thanx again, u have surely made my day….

  4. Oni Oghogho said

    Wow, I think ur article “Does Evil Exit” is great.It is something like what I meditated on recently after I talked with a Professor at UNICAL who told me the word ‘believe’ was his hated word.Afterwards believe God wanted me to Know that those who do not believe are only being hypocitical and closed minded becos’ they believe many other thing of which they have no proof eg.Abont their ages they belive their parents. They cant really prove how old they are.

  5. Ajay said

    This is one story I have read, reread and loved always!

  6. robert said

    Hi. I came upon this randomly because I was searching with google for something else, then decided to comment since I remembered this being on the snopes website: http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp

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  8. […] Like good Jewish form, a question can contain more answers than a statement. I found this great post from a blog here. It relates to a topic that I strugle with a lot, “The 4 Axioms of God,” and how there seems to be a conflict, between the existance of evil and God’s all powerfull, all present, all knowing, and all good characteristics. This question might offer some insight to an answer. I wonder if this story really does involve such a famous student? This has a thought provoking message no matter what you believe or what thought line you tow. […]

  9. Leon said

    Excellent one … i dunno if evil exists but there definitely exists a probability to make mistakes that when compounded can cause humunguos problems 😀

  10. […] enough with the mushy stuff, am leaving you with food for thought from this site i came across, a leturer seem to think that he has proved that there is no God.. interesting how he is put down by the students…. Posted by mugithi Filed in […]

  11. Peter said

    Cold and darkness do exist, they are abstractions based on things that physically exist (certain abouts of light, certain ranges of temperature). Good and evil exist in the same way, they are abstractions that are used to describe certain states of afairs. Of course cold and dark aren’t primatives, and neither are good and evil, but if one was to state that only primatives exist then people wouldn’t exist either.

  12. sorasky` said

    the existance of light prove darkness exist..
    the existance if god n good prove tt evil exists..

    darkness is a measure of the amt of light present
    evil is a meaasure of the amt of gd present…

    so conversely… if evil do not exist n dark does not exist…
    then good n god n light has no reason to exist too…

    hmmm

  13. Einstein was pretty smart. Nobody really liked him too much until he astounded the world with his Theory of Relativity.

    It’s funny. Most people think he had a laboratory and performed experiments like Madame Curie. He didn’t. His laboratory was a row boat. He loved to waste time rowing a boat. He thought of the theory of relativity while rowing a boat.

    When asked how he discovered the Theory. He said he didn’t. It discovered him. He was inspired.

    The conversation he had with the professor was obviously inspired as well. I would not under-estimate Einstein. He knows stuff.

    A man like Einstein only comes along every thousand years. When he speaks – listen and learn.

  14. Luminus said

    Peter, Sorasky,
    I guess it’s just your own view of things, much like whether the glass is half empty or half full. But in a way it’s a little deeper.

    Sorasky,
    you just flipped the post other way round.

  15. just wanted to add something to the story.

    Einstein was so completely unqualified to discover the Theory of Relativity that he had to have his friend help him work out the mathematics behind it. He admitted that without his friend’s help he could have never presented his theory in a way that would be accepted by the scientific establishment.

    Just shows you that there is a source of knowledge in the universe that is not of man. Some men can tune into that knowledge, like Michael Angelo and Albert Einstein.

  16. Luminus said

    Alphonso,
    I feel you man. That is just so true.

  17. oddmix said

    Excellent!

  18. HellCat said

    Feh! I pretty much answered that stupid story two years ago!

    Here it is

  19. mdfriedman said

    Great story. Albert rules! Indeed inspirational.

  20. Joom said

    Folks, seriously, this story is an urban legend.

    You should read the Snopes debunking that appeared earlier in the comments:

    http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp

    Luminus, if you decide to keep this post up, please disclaim this story as fictional. I know you mean well, but this story dishonors the memory of a great physicist. You shouldn’t use Einstein’s name as a cheap trick to give credence to an otherwise ridiculous argument.

    As for why this story is ridiculous, that would take a while to explain, but please consider that the ability to attribute a bad argument to atheists, and then defeat said argument, is not proof of believers’ superiority. This argumentative technique is called a strawman, and it’s actually a logical fallacy. You shouldn’t do it. For details, please see:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman

  21. Luminus said

    Joom,
    I hear you. If you read the last paragraph of the post, you’ll realise that I said I can’t confirm that this can be attributed to him.

    Thanks for the info on Strawman, really enlightening. At any rate, let’s continue this discussion at my new blog.

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