Atheists,how do you interpret this story?

I've seen much shorter versions.

Anyway, it's bullshit for several reasons. Firstly, science does not state that anything that cannot be directly perceived does not exist. That's just a lie. The professor's brain could be seen using modern technology, but that's irrelevant. The existence of the professor's brain is evident from his ability to move and think.

Secondly, just because darkness is the absence of light does not mean that evil is the absence of good. The student merely presents a false analogy. Christians do that a lot.

Thirdly, the Christian suggests that evil exists so that God can find out whether humans will choose good over evil. Here he is characterising God as having limited knowledge. According to the mythology, God is omniscient. An omniscient being has no need to test people, as it would already know the outcome of the test.

I could probably come up with more, but I only skimmed through the story. It isn't worth more than a moment of my attention.

So to answer your question, I interpret this story as poor quality Christian propaganda.

Edit: You're seriously convinced by this story, aren't you? Okay, well you say you answered my first point, but really you only made a predictable demonstration of creationist hypocrisy. You say that the professor's brain cannot exist according to science unless it can be observed with one of our 'five senses'. You then say that God can be said to exist because we can observe the effects of his existence. But obviously we can also observe the effects of the professor's brain's existence, can't we? He's able to put words together to make sentences, for example. This is scientific evidence that the professor has a brain.

As for the idea that we can see the effects of God's existence, the same effects can be explained scientifically. Of course, as you've probably pointed out already, theories like 'macro' evolution, abiogenesis and the Big Bang haven't actually been observed directly. But neither has the existence of your God or any other god. So for you to say that the creation of life and the universe proves God's existence is just as stupid as someone saying that the creation of life and the universe proves the relevant scientific theories. This is, of course, not what scientists claim. They present evidence to demonstrate that it was one process rather than another. They don't just say "the universe was created, therefore my theory of how the universe was created is correct".

As for my second point, you didn't counter it very well, but that's fair enough since I didn't explain it very well in the first place. Allow me to do so now: darkness is the absence of light. If something isn't light then it is, by definition, dark. Therefore everything must be either light or dark, yes? This is the same for heat and cold. Everything either does have heat or does not have heat, therefore everything is either hot (to some extent) or is cold, with cold referring to absolute zero rather than the colloquial meaning which actually relates to 'hot' things that aren't as hot as we'd like or expect them to be.

This simply doesn't hold true for good and evil. For example, I made a cup of tea earlier. I didn't help or harm anyone in making the tea. It could be argued that buying the tea helped various industries, but they would have been helped just as much if I bought it then threw it away. Making the tea helped no one but myself. So making the tea was not an act of 'good'. Using your 'evil is the absence of good' theory, that means that making tea is evil. But making the tea was not evil, since I didn't harm anyone. See how that works? Me making a cup of tea was neither good nor evil. Therefore both good and evil were absent from the act of making tea, which would be logically impossible if one were the absence of the other.

As for God creating evil so humans have a choice, your counter argument falls into the same fallacy of ignoring God's omniscience. An all-knowing God would not need to actually create evil to know whether or not we would choose it over good. The story includes the concept of 'free will', which I assume is what you propose to be the reason why an actual choice had to be made, rather than just predicted. But when you're dealing with an omniscient being, free will is an illusion. Everything you do, everything you say, every choice you make is the result of something. Your genes, your upbringing, the combination of chemicals in your brain, how much sleep you got last night, and literally billions of other factors come together to create the illusion of free will. This illusion works because to us, these factors are far, far to complex to consider, and in most cases we don't have the information anyway. But God would have the information and would be capable of considering any number of factors instantly with absolute accuracy. So to God, there should be no free will. Even if you make a decision based on the flip of a coin, an omniscient being would be able to predict exactly what sort of coin you would use, exactly how it would sit in your hand, exactly what angle your thumb would hit it at, exactly how hard you'd hit it, exactly how far you would let if fall before you caught it, the wind speed, etc.

So what possible reason could God have for giving us the opportunity to choose either good or evil? He should already know what we'll choose, so the actual choice is pointless. If he created evil just to make us choose when he already knew what we would choose, then how is the creation of evil anything but an evil act? Keeping in mind that, for the reasons outlined above, evil is a quality in and of itself, and is not merely the absence of good.

By the way, the coelacanth is not a 'prehistoric fish'. Firstly, it's an order, not a specific fish. And the two species of coelacanth that exist today are not prehistoric. To define any currently-living organism as prehistoric is inaccurate, since the fact that the organism is currently living means that its existence is not confined to prehistory. They also haven't 'stopped evolving'. The only organisms that have stopped evolving are those that are extinct.

You even say that it stopped evolving and decided to 'remain a coelacanth'. That's like saying that turtles stopped evolving and decided to remain testudines.

In the various parts of Victoria Australia that I have lived in (nearly all within the Kulin nation area - ie area of the first peoples of the middle of Vic) Christianity was the main religion with many denominations . The overwhelming views & teachings of the Noah story were that the story as written in English texts is a very liberal (irony!) explanation of something calamitous that could very well have occurred. "All the animals" at this ancient time meant all the land animals in that region - ie the known world of that era - not the entire globe. This story teaches the ethic of 'care for life' - ie that our survival & happiness & other species survival & wellbeing is intertwined. No Christians I know now or then, believed that all animals derived from the Ark animals. Only children are supposed to believe in the literal interpretation of this and most other Bible stories, until they accept the weight of the moral story inside the textual framework. I suppose that some people are struggling to grow up. Summery Answer: I estimate that in Australia over 90% of people raised as Christians realize that morals on 'care for the community of life on Earth' are the most important aspects of the Bible stories, including Noah & the Ark . The USA may well be more along the lines of 70% or less .

I'll tell you how I interpret it. It's Christian propaganda of the Jack Chick style featuring a really dumb atheist and a Christian that's seemingly smart but only in comparison to the atheist caricature.

The entire story features logical errors from the atheist and the Christian, which shows that the person that crafted the story isn't very good at reasoning.

In the very last paragraph, the student says science is flawed because he cannot prove that the Professor's brain exists. However, a pathologist could (after the Professor is dead). A doctor with an MRI scanner could. All the student has done is proved that he is incapable of proving the Professor's brain exists, not that science is incapable of doing so.

WOW....that has got to be the most biased, propaganda filled story I have ever read, a fairly long boring one also at that. First off, i have to ask a question, was that story written by someone without any prior knowledge of science? Just because we cannot see the professor's brain now, does not mean that we cannot scan it and view it with a PET scan machine or any other machines used to see the brain. We can feel it, taste it, and see it if we wish, but this would be unfortunate for the professor. Secondly, this story makes the reader view the professor as some mad, anger ridden human being with no sense of accepting someone else's view, while they shower the Christians students with a shining light. How much more biased can this story be? Third, sure, we cannot "prove" now that man has evolved from apes, but evidence strongly points to that evolution, whereas the Bible points to us being created in a garden....enough said....Fourth, sure, this story's fallicy of duality of being good and evil, is so flawed I dont even know where to begin. First off, heat and cold is all controlled by energy, better known as Joules. More joules means more pressure, creating more "heat", and less joules means less pressure, creating "cold." This can be measured, and can be proven. There is no limit on how much pressure we can appy to ANYTHING, so please check error in the story and change it, because I bet the person who wrote this story hasn't even graduated High School yet. And to my next argument, the absence of of a presence. Sure, cold just means the absence of energy, but good and evil is TWO DIFFERNT THINGS. Good is what is defined by what happens in nature, so is evil. One can cause evil without the need of good, and vice versa. The logic that the THIS IDIOT WHO WROTE THIS STORY was trying to make is so wrong that he should just go back his trailer.

No, Evolution does not state that men evolved from monkeys. Monkeys and humans both evolved from a common ancestor. They are related, but one does not come from the other. And science is so much more than simply the study of 'observed phenomena'. Since the student is arguing from a flawed premise and such a discussion would never take place in an actual college classroom, what do you want me to say?

Addtionally, How can we offer a counter-argument to an argument which is bad to start with?

Scientists have observed the process of evolution at work. Your story proves nothing. A philosophy teacher doesn't generally bash someone like that, and why did he turn from an intelligent man to a babbling idiot at a convinient point. Any scientist would tell you that cold is the absense of heat, darkness the absence of light.

This is the biggest straw man piece of crap I have ever heard. You can observe a person's brain. You cannot observe god. Rubbish and long at that

I read it all, wonder why actually, what's your point? That people have different points of view...I'm with the professor on this one. And by the way you can see a brain, just take a CAT-scan or open up the skull if you're really mean but no scan or dissection can prove God. People will always have their points of view, if we all believed the same things the world would be a boring place.

It's too long, for one thing, it repeats the same Christian line of bs as all the others similar to it, and one glaring error -- NO professor would have reacted that way. I also find some of the way the professor is described as rather ridiculous - elderly crumbling tutor? Gimme a break. If the Christian in the story is so faithful, and so against science, why isn't he at a Christian college? It's outside the realm of reasonable expectations.

Who wrote that, by the way? I'd like to send him some hate mail.

when is someone going to counter it? This story has posted here over and over and countered many many times...it's about as monotonous as "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" or, "why is the sky blue?" or, "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys"?

People are geniunly tired of such nonsense

EDIT:

I came back to this...and what? the sky is blue because the sun shines through dust particles? Dayum, If I gave a response like that in one of my papers, I'd receive a big fat "F"!

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, and had it not been for the fact that you insulted me, I wouldnt even have responded to such gibberish...

and your knowledge of evolution is rather poor..

.I've just read another of your questions basically wondering why atheists mock, ridicule and insult religious people...isnt that a little hypocritical considering you just insulted me by saying that your story was too intellectually advanced for me?

Immorality is NOT the absence of morality is IS the opposite of it. A lack of morality is amorality

For instance, say I sit at home all day watching TV. In itself, this isn't moral. But the fact it isn't moral does not make it automatically immoral. Immorality is an active choice - it is a thing in itself, rather than an absence.