"Is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"

[feelgud]

Why Science fails to explain God.
--------------
"LET ME EXPLAIN THE problem science has with God."

The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks

one of his new students to stand.

"You're a Muslim, aren't you, son?"

"Yes, sir."

"So you believe in God?"

"Absolutely."

"Is God good?"

"Sure! God's good."

"Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?"

"Yes."

"Are you good or evil?"

"The Koran says I'm evil."

The professor grins knowingly. "Ahh! THE KORAN!" He considers for a moment.

"Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help them? Would you try?"

"Yes sir, I would."

"So you're good...!"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Why not say that? You would help a sick and maimed person if you

could...in fact most of us would if we could... God doesn't.

[No answer.]

"He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Muslim who died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. How is this God good? Hmmm? Can you answer that one?"

[No answer]

The elderly man is sympathetic. "No, you can't, can you?"

He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. In philosophy, you have to go easy with the new ones.

"Let's start again, young fella." "Is God good?"

"Er... Yes."

"Is Satan good?"

"No."

"Where does Satan come from?" The student falters.

"From... God..."

"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he?" The elderly man runs his bony fingers through his thinning hair and turns to the smirking, student audience.

"I think we're going to have a lot of fun this semester, ladies and gentlemen."

He turns back to the Muslim. "Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?"

"Yes, sir."

"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? Did God make everything?"

"Yes."

"Who created evil?

[No answer]

"Is there sickness in this world? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All the terrible things - do they exist in this world? "

The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."

"Who created them? "

[No answer]

The professor suddenly shouts at his student. "WHO CREATED THEM? TELL ME, PLEASE!"

The professor closes in for the kill and climbs into the Muslim's face.

In a still small voice "God created all evil, didn't He, son?"

[No answer]

The student tries to hold the steady, experienced gaze and fails. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace the front of the classroom like a aging panther. The class is mesmerized.

"Tell me," he continues, "How is it that this God is good if He created all evil throughout all time?"

The professor swishes his arms around to encompass the wickedness of the world.

"All the hatred, the brutality, all the pain, all the torture, all the death and ugliness and all the suffering created by this good God is all over the world, isn't it, young man?"

[No answer]

"Don't you see it all over the place? Huh?"

Pause.

"Don't you?" The professor leans into the student's face again and whispers, "Is God good?"

[No answer]

"Do you believe in God, son?"

The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor. I do."

The old man shakes his head sadly. "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you? "

"No, sir. I've never seen Him."

"Then tell us if you've ever heard your God?"

"No, sir. I have not."

"Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God or smelt your God...in fact, do you have any sensory perception of your God whatsoever?"

[No answer]

"Answer me, please."

"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."

"You're AFRAID... you haven't?"

"No, sir."

"Yet you still believe in him?"

"...yes..."

"That takes FAITH!" The professor smiles sagely at the underling. "According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son? Where is your God now?"

[The student doesn't answer]

"Sit down, please."

The Muslim sits...Defeated.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another Muslim raises his hand. "Professor, may I address the class?"

The professor turns and smiles. "Ah, another Muslim in the vanguard! Come, come, young man. Speak some proper wisdom to the gathering."

The Muslim looks around the room.

"Some interesting points you are making, sir. Now I've got a question for you. Is there such thing as heat?"

"Yes," the professor replies. "There's heat."

"Is there such a thing as cold?"

"Yes, son, there's cold too."

"No, sir, there isn't."

The professor's grin freezes. The room suddenly goes very cold.

The second Muslim 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, sir, just the absence of it."

Silence. A pin drops somewhere in the classroom.

"Is there such a thing as darkness, professor?"

"That's a dumb question, son. What is night if it isn't darkness? What are you getting at...?"

"So you say there is such a thing as darkness?"

"Yes..."

"You're wrong again, sir. 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 darker darkness, professor?"

Despite himself, the professor smiles at the young effrontery before him.

This will indeed be a good semester. "Would you mind telling us what your point is, young man?"

"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with and so your conclusion must be in error...."

The professor goes toxic. "Flawed...? How dare you...!""

"Sir, may I explain what I mean?"

The class is all ears.

"Explain... oh, explain..." The professor makes an admirable effort to regain control. Suddenly he is affability itself. He waves his hand to silence the class, for the student to continue.

"You are working on the premise of duality," the Muslim explains. "That for example there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science cannot even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism but has never seen, much less fully understood them. 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."

The young man holds up a newspaper he takes from the desk of a neighbor who has been reading it. "Here is one of the most disgusting tabloids this country hosts, professor. Is there such a thing as immorality?"

"Of course there is, now look..."

"Wrong again, sir. 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 Muslim pauses. "Isn't evil the absence of good?"

The professor's face has turned an alarming color. He is so angry he is temporarily speechless.

The Muslim continues. "If there is evil in the world, professor, and we all agree there is, then God, if he exists, must be accomplishing a work through the agency of evil. What is that work, God is accomplishing? The Quran tells us it is to see if each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good over evil."

The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist, I don't vie this matter as having anything to do with any choice; as a realist, I absolutely do not recognize the concept of God or any other theological factor as being part of the world equation because God is not observable."

"I would have thought that the absence of God's moral code in this world is probably one of the most observable phenomena going," the Muslim replies. "Newspapers make billions of dollars reporting it every week! Tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"

"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."

"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"

The professor makes a sucking sound with his teeth and gives his student a silent, stony stare.

"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?"

"I'll overlook your impudence in the light of our philosophical discussion. Now, have you quite finished?" the professor hisses.

"So you don't accept God's moral code to do what is righteous?"

"I believe in what is - that's science!"

"Ahh! SCIENCE!" the student's face splits into a grin. "Sir, you rightly state that science is the study of observed phenomena. Science too is a premise which is flawed..." "SCIENCE IS FLAWED..?" the professor splutters.

The class is in uproar. The Muslim remains standing until the commotion has subsided.

"To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, may I give you an example of what I mean?"

The professor wisely keeps silent.

The Muslim looks around the room. "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?"

The class breaks out in laughter. The Muslim points towards his elderly, crumbling tutor.

"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 Muslim 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."

The class is in chaos.

The Muslim sits... Because that is what a chair is for.

[anajmi]

I have seen this example elsewhere but a Muslim replaced by a Christian. Although I am not sure if the original is a Christian or a Muslim, I think the point explained is universal.

[kalim]

The statements in the above fictional piece being attributed to a Muslim is quite ironical but appropriate. It does display a 7th century understanding of science and the scientific method, no doubt picked up from ancient scriptures, tafsirs and hadiths collections. Not surprising that bulk of the Muslim world is still stuck in darkness. Actually, there were many Muslims in the early period who did a lot of pioneering work in experimental and observational sciences (Ibn Haytham and Ibn Yunus in the Fatimid empire are examples) but by the turn of the 12th century C.E such efforts were mainly replaced by rationality-killing navel gazing of the ulema. I do not blame feelgud or anajmi though, the former is simply cutting and pasting someone else's mistaken thoughts and the latter just being a reactionary. A common tendency of ideologically straitjacketed people who have lost the ability to think on their own. Such people always need the crutch of dogma to support everything they do and will cling to any straw that would re-float there sunk beliefs.

The issue of evidence in science is very complex. In ancient times when science was primitive, visual observations could directly refute or prove a theory. In modern science this is no longer true. One no longer needs to actually directly "see" something to prove its existence. We have very sophisticated instruments which do the seeing for us. As an example I will use the Chandra X-ray space observatory. It is well known that cosmic X-rays do not penetrate the earth's atmosphere and hence we need orbiting X-ray telescopes to look into that part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Chandra streams data to earth, studying which helps us learn about the early times in the universe. Now if scientists were obstinate and insisted on actually seeing with their eyes the X-rays to believe that they exist we would not have ever discovered X-rays in the first place (human eyes do not see X-rays) and never learned of the violent cosmic processes which create them. Further, almost all cosmic X-rays we see today were emitted many years (sometimes a few million or billion years) ago. No one was around to "see" these violent phenomena from happening, yet we can quite accurately predict they happened, pin point to the physical processes which caused them and even where and when they occurred. So it is a blatant lie that scientists insist that one must see with their own eyes to accept something.

The issue of evidence is further complicated by the mathematical complexity of modern physical theories, specially physics. As an example I will use classical electromagnetism. One can write down on a single sheet Maxwell equations of electromagnetism. These equations involve electric and magnetic fields and provide a very complete description of electromagnetic phenomena. Many modern devices, from cell phones to computers chips are designed using numerical Maxwell equation solvers. Now, inspite of all this, we can not directly "see" electric or magnetic fields. We can only determine their existence indirectly, for example a deflection of a compass needle. However, the reality of the electric and magnetic field is universally accepted, at least in the classical picture of physics.

The understanding of evolution in the above piece is also deeply flawed. First, humans did not evolve from monkeys. Humans and monkeys (and all other creatures for that matter) share a common ancestor. Also, as I pointed out above one does not need to actually be around to "see" the several billion years of evolution to prove it. There is a lot of evidence to show that evolution occurs and is the cause of the variety of life on earth. Till the early part of the last century the evidence was mainly from the fossil record but now we have much more sophisticated means (directly studying DNA of creatures) to show that evolution actually occurs. In a sense the paradigm shift in going from fossils based to DNA base evidence is like that of going from simpler visual observation to obtaining data from an orbiting space telescope.

Also, evolution is quite evident around us. One example is the evolution of dogs from wolves. This is not evolution by "natural selection" but by human selection: humans picked those wolves which were docile and gradually over several thousand years we now have various varieties of dogs. Another example of such human selection is the evolution of domestic animals and plants. Wheat, for example has gradually evolved from its wild variety to what we consume today. Finally, we all have actually seen evidence of evolution in our own lives: the evolution of drug resistant bacteria. Over use of anti-biotics for this reason can make them ineffective.

In fact, evolution is the central organizing principle of modern biology. Without it nothing in biology would make sense and no advanced drug research would be possible.

Now, science does not directly have anything to say about the existence of one or more gods. What it can do, however, is eliminate some kinds of gods once they are defined. Unfortunately most religious people, specially Muslims, claim that one can't define what a god is (for the fear of commiting shirk), so it is quite impossible to discuss the scientific truth of god claims. However, what science can do is refute silly creation stories in scripture. I know that many nut cases claim that all modern discoveries are written in Quran or Bible or that the Imam knows everything. However, not once, ever, has anybody actually done any real science using these sources.

One thing that modern logic can help with is a proper reformulation of the problem. The question about the existence of god is usually stated in very muddled language and this can lead to spurious "proofs" of existence. One such muddle comes about by thinking that "existence" is an attribute. In reality "existence" is a predicate. I have described this in detail before.

Anyway, I suggest that if Muslims are to really progress and stop being "humiliated" by those who have embraced the scientific method, they stop being mere consumers of science and technology and turn to being producers. This is not going to happen if one obstinately insists on rejecting findings of modern science and having an extreme anti-intellectual and anti-rational mind set. Muslims need, as I have submitted before, an Enlightenment, in which we first catch all our ulemas by their fist-long beards and toss them into the closest garbage heap. Then, looking at our scripture in a rational and intellectual manner (rather than fossilized 7th century thinking displayed in the above piece) will help pave the way to progress. Simply cutting-and-pasting is not going to get us anywhere. One needs to think for ones self. I sincerely urge everyone to try this: it is a very exhilarating and liberating experience.

(I am planning to write and post here a couple of articles on evolution, cosmology and the scientific method in a week or two. Unfortunately, as I am not a keyboard monkey, cutting-pasteing stuff, this takes time. So one should not construe silence and delay as weakness on my or any other serious reformists part.)

[anajmi]

kalim,

You seem to be suffering from Islamophobia. No wonder scientific morons think it is ok to humiliate the muslims.

One point I would like to add over here, which might answer a majority of your post is that there is nothing in Islam that refutes evolution. Unlike Science which refutes creation. Both can exist side by side. I was created by Allah and you have evolved from a monkey.

[Average Bohra]

Originally posted by Wahabanajmi:

No wonder scientific morons think it is ok to humiliate the muslims.

Muslims have humiliated muslims; science simply refutes some of its beliefs.

[anajmi]

Actually that is a lie. There isn't anything Islamic that science has refuted. Looks like even science couldn't cure ignorance!!

[anajmi]

One needs to think for ones self.

However, you need to think exactly like I do otherwise you are one of the ideologically straitjacketed people who have lost the ability to think on their own!!

[anajmi]

No one was around to "see" these violent phenomena from happening, yet we can quite accurately predict they happened, pin point to the physical processes which caused them and even where and when they occurred. So it is a blatant lie that scientists insist that one must see with their own eyes to accept something.

I don't understand how you can "predict" something that already happened? Besides, I can argue with you till judgment day that whatever you are suggesting happened, is only a theory and not proof. For eg, can you show me what the sun looks like this very second? Nope, you can only show me what the sun looked like eight minutes ago. So I can tell you that the sun doesn't exist right now and there is nothing you can do to prove me wrong except wait eight minutes and then I can still say that the sun does not exist right now.

I am sure that sounds really stupid. That was the point.

Only a couple of posts ago you said that you cannot believe in the hereafter till you see it with your own eyes or some dead person comes back to life and tells you what it looks like (of course you can still call him a zombie and insist on wanting to see it yourself).

I have nothing against science and believe in science just as much as the next guy, but I believe (and I have enough proof) that the most idiotic of scientists are those that try to argue against religion on the basis of science.

I am unable to respond to everything you said in one post and will need multiple posts over multiple sessions. I may even decide not to respond to the rest of the crap that you posted, or I may decide to take a shot at you while responding to someone else on some other topic. This should not be construed as weakness on my or any other serious believer's part.

[anajmi]

This is not going to happen if one obstinately insists on rejecting findings of modern science and having an extreme anti-intellectual and anti-rational mind set.

I am unable to figure out which findings of modern science have the believers rejected? I hope you are not counting pre-marital sex as one, are you?

[anajmi]

Just had an epiphany. Every finding of modern science is based on either faith or accident and not on proof.