Ovi Magazine : Atheists Don't Exist by Jack Wellman

Newsletter

Contact

BBC News : -

iBite : -

Atheists Don't Exist
by Jack Wellman
2007-11-05 10:34:02

Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author

There can be no such things as an atheist. This is why: Let's imagine that you are a professing atheist. Here are two questions for you to answer: First, do you know the combined weight of all the sand on all the beaches of Hawaii? We can safely assume that you don't. This brings us to the second question: Do you know how many hairs are on the back of a fully-grown male Asian yak, now extinct? Probably not. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that there are some things that you don't know. It is important to ask these questions because there are some people who think they know everything.

Let's say that you know an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. To know 100 percent, you would have to know everything. There wouldn't be a rock in the universe that you would not be intimately familiar with, or a grain of sand that you would not be aware of. You would know everything that has happened in history, from that which is common knowledge to the minor details of the secret love life of Napoleon's great-grandmother's black cat's fleas. You would know every hair of every head, and every thought of every heart. All history would be laid out before you, because you would be omniscient (all-knowing).

Bear in mind that one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, Thomas Edison, said, "We do not know a millionth of one percent about anything." Let me repeat: Let's say that you have an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. Would it be possible, in the ninety-nine percent of the knowledge that you haven't yet come across, that there might be ample evidence to prove the existence of God? If you are reasonable, you will be forced to admit that it is possible. Somewhere, in the knowledge you haven't yet discovered, there could be enough evidence to prove that God does exist.

Let's look at the same thought from another angle. If I were to make an absolute statement such as, "There is no gold in China," what is needed for that statement to be proven true? I need absolute or total knowledge. I need to have information that there is no gold in any rock, in any river, in the ground, in any store, in any ring, or in any mouth (gold filling) in China. If there is one speck of gold in China, then my statement is false and I have no basis for it. I need absolute knowledge before I can make an absolute statement of that nature. Conversely, for me to say, "There is gold in China," I don't need to have all knowledge. I just need to have seen a speck of gold in the country, and the statement is then true.

To say categorically, "There is no God," is to make an absolute statement. For the statement to be true, I must know for certain that there is no God in the entire universe. No human being has all knowledge. Therefore, none of us is able to truthfully make this assertion. If you insist upon disbelief in God, what you must say is, "Having the limited knowledge I have at present, I believe that there is no God." Owing to a lack of knowledge on your part, you don't know if God exists. So, in the strict sense of the word, you cannot be an atheist. The only true qualifier for the title is the One who has absolute knowledge, and why on earth would God want to deny His own existence?

The professing atheist is what is commonly known as an "agnostic" - one who claims he "doesn't know" if God exists. That is having “no knowledge” of something. Mussolini once stood on a pinnacle and cried, "God, if you are there, strike me dead!" When God didn't immediately bow to his dictates, Mussolini then concluded that there was no God, only because God did not answer him immediately. However, it was that very same year that he died.

Polls have shown that about 40% of scientists acknowledge a supernatural power and 90% of astronomers, likewise. But the majority of the scientific community still hold an atheistic worldview. As support for their anti-supernatural worldviews, these scientists need mechanisms for the origin of life, especially humans. This is rational, so they say.

Atheism needs evolution to escape from any implications regarding a creator. If one starts with Darwinism, certainly it is easy to escape from any obligation to God. Those opposed to their reasoning are branded as obscurantists who are trying to intrude religion into science.
Dr. Emery S. Dunfee, former professor of physics at the University of Maine at Farmington: One wonders why, with all the evidence, the (Godless) theory of evolution still persists. One major reason is that many people have a sort of vested interest in this theory. Jobs would be lost, loss of face would result, text books would need to be eliminated or revised.

Evolutionist Richard Lewontin in The New York Review, January, 1997, page 31: We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our “a priori” adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.

Moreover materialism is an absolute, for science dare not allow a Divine Foot in the door. That would place the creature below the Creator. Rather, the material world and all it’s scientific axioms, principles and knowledge are worshipped. It occurs to me that it takes more faith to believe there is no god, than to believe in an Intelligent Designer.

Humans are not qualified to make absolute statements such as, “there is no God“. Mankind’s finite lack of knowledge, as Einstein put it, is not enough. So the self-proclaimed atheist ignores the gigantic elephant in his living room [complete lack of all knowledge]. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. Yet the atheists claim, absolutely God does not exist. You can call black, blue, but it changes not the color. You can call yourself whatever, but atheist does not exist.

humanity Ovi_magazine Ovi-lehti Religion

Print - Comment - Send to a Friend - More from this Author


Comments(47)
Get it off your chest
Name:
Comment:
(comments policy)

Asa	2007-11-05 11:07:37
As you say, if it is reasonable to conclude that there are some things that you don't know, how can you then say there are no atheists or that a god even exists? I can't see how knowing how many grains of sand sit upon this planet proves that there is a God. Howeevr, Mankind didn't know many things at one time but now we do, so surely there will come a time when even sand can be counted. Where would that leave God?


Thanos	2007-11-05 11:19:31
Jack, I have no idea how many hairs are on the back of a fully grown male Asian yak and definitely I have no idea the combine weight of sand in my own garden but that doesn’t prove that there is god. I wish I had the knowledge of one millionth of common knowledge but I don’t and the only thing I’m sure I know; to quote the greatest ancient philosopher is that ‘I know one thing, that I don’t know anything.’ That means that I’m constantly learning and hopefully I will learn till I die but that has nothing to do with believes. To give you an example, I believe that there is life in space but I don’t believe that any form of this life has ever visited earth and I cannot make an argument on that on a scientific base because I don’t have enough data to support my argument, is just something I believe. To take it a bit further, a few thousand years in the past humans didn’t have enough data to explain hurricanes, thunders even the simplest natural phenomenon so they turned them into …gods. They believed that Zeus sends the hurricanes that Iphigenia brought the spring every time she visited her mother Demeter and Poseidon created storms when he was angry. That’s believe, faith! In this base that you cannot count the hairs on the back of a yak doesn’t prove that there is god, you have faith, and you believe that there is god, I’m an atheist, I believe in human power as Shakespeare often mentioned in Hamlet this beautiful human power. And a personal …anecdote. The last few months I’m dealing with a serious medical situation and one of the doctors I visited asked me if I believe in god. I insure you that this scared me more than my condition. That was an absolute statement!!! What was my fate? Instead of searching a therapy starting praying? Of course I never visited that doctor again. I didn’t need faith, I needed medical scientific help. To say that there are no atheists is an absolute statement and that from an atheist who accepts that he knows only one thing that he doesn’t know anything, an atheist that leaves space for others to have faith and wanders what will happen when a scientist find a way to count how many hairs there are in the back of a full-grown male Asian yak now extinct?


Sand	2007-11-05 11:27:06
The point missed is that an atheist believes that there is no God. He cannot prove there is no God any more than a person of faith can prove there is one. The very word "faith" indicates belief without proof.


Thanos	2007-11-05 11:38:19
I do agree Sand


Paparella	2007-11-05 11:50:17
Mr. Kalamidas, let me recount my own personal anecdote with my latest doctor which it turns out is the flip side of yours. It may reveal something. As you know, in the US health care for most people is administered via HMOs, which means one is not absolutely free to choose one’s doctor; initially one is assigned to you; at best you are restricted by a limited list of doctors which you don’t know in any case. Recently the doctor I consulted, and with which I was happy, retired and another one took over. By default I became one of his clients. On the very first visit with him it took me some two or three minutes to realize that he was one of those doctors that believes that a human being is nothing but his/her body and that the body is nothing but a complicated machine that needs fixing and maintenance from time to time just like a car needs a mechanic occasionally. How did I know that, you may ask. Well simply by comparison with the previous doctor who besides thoroughly examining my body and dishing out diagnosis and prognosis would also ask questions such as: how is your family life, are you happy with your present occupation, besides exercising your body, do you exercise your mind, what have you written lately, how is your relationship with your students, do you have a spiritual life, and so on. You get the drift. I never resented those questions; in fact I welcomed them. As Jung well taught us, a doctor (which he was) needs to be more than a mechanic of the body. The fact that there are still doctors who consider themselves such is a commentary on the rationalistic times we live in which consider Man nothing but the sum of his parts. To finish the story: I changed my doctor.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 11:59:38
By the way, the word "faith" in Hebrew means "trust in the future," which says a lot. Let me suggest that when a scientist goes to his lab to do find evidence and proofs for whatever he is looking for, he has trust in the ability of the human mind (i.e., reason correctly understood) to find the truth. Withouth that initial rock bottom "faith," which cannot be proven, he would not even begin to do science.


Sand	2007-11-05 12:15:53
Although scientists undoubtedly operate under the faith that proofs will be found and industriously search for them, religious people in general feel the proofs are superfluous and not worth the effort or even deny that they are necessary.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 12:46:01
Mr.Butcher, are we dealing with a red herring here? I may be wrong but what Jack Wellman may be saying is that since we have not made nature we will never know it 100%, try as we may. A more reasonable intellentual position would be Vico's who says that we may know much more surely and exhaustively what we ourselves have made than what we have not made. Of course there are people like Emperor Caligula who declared themselves a god who nade nature but by all the historical accounts and evidence he was plain deranged abd was killed by hiw own Pretorian guards. There was another man in Palestine (whom Chesterton calls the Everlasting Man)who also so declared himself such("Before Abraham was I am")and we also killed him, but by all the written evidence of his utterances he was not crazy as even the deist Jefferson aknowledges. Which leaves us with a perplexity and with a Gordian knot of sort to untie. I don't think caricatures will do the trick either.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 15:25:04
Jack, “And then we shall know the mind of God” writes Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time. In the preface to the same book Carl Sagan announces that since the universe, in his opinion, is eternal with no beginning and no end, it will contract and expand eternally and therefore it is hard to see what God’s function in it might possibly be. He might as well start collecting unemployment checks, I would add. It never dawns on Sagan that the cosmos has become his god. How does Sagan know that the universe is eternal? He does not know. It is a “faith” of his needed to support his belief that there is no God. Be that as it may, both men are laboring under the same great delusion: that the material is primary and spirit is superfluous or at best secondary, and until one puts spirit under the microscope and proves its existence belief or meets God and shakes hands with him in outer space, it befits only ignorant little old ladies to believe in him or to worship. But there is another even more misguided assumption in Hawking’s statement: once we know the mind of God (meaning, as you point out, that Man knows everything there is to know) then Man is no longer a creature but God with the same powers. There is a myth in Greek mythology which explores that kind of hubris: it is that of Zeus killing his father Cronos (time) and usurping his power. It may be worth reareading it.


Sand	2007-11-05 15:29:09
The second law of thermodynamics


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 17:39:56
Which law Stephen Hawking once declared superseded by his “enlightened” discovery of black holes. He considered it superseded because black holes devour information and a singularity is the most ordered form of matter possible and should have an entropy of zero. He has now changed his mind about that and has joined his colleagues in believing that the entropy of matter absorbed by a black hole is stored in the surface area of its event horizon and as such is released back in the universe as the black hole decays. So much for the objective truth of nature known by scientists! It appears that it will take a very long time before scientists know everything there is to be known in the universe. Meanwhile neither Hawking nor Sagan have been able so far to answer the questions “Why is there is something rather than nothing?” and “what, if any, is your personal purpose within the cosmos?” They cannot because in a Cartsian paradigm one takes oneself out of the phenomenon; or they will eventually answer them when they know everything and get to “know the mind of God.” Meanwhile Vico and Heidegger, the philosophers, have done a much better job in posing those questions and attempting an answer. Indeed, there are two cultural worlds and to remain trapped in one or the other without at least imagining the other and attempting a bridging of the two is to be clever by half.


Sand	2007-11-05 18:08:24
That science moves from one concept to another is indicative that scientists are willing to accept new input and revise their view of the universe if the new observations indicate it makes sense in direct opposition to religious doctrine which contains a set of concepts that are totally frozen and unable to adjust to new data until their fixed dogmas reveal them as complete fools.


Sand	2007-11-05 18:19:23
Beyond that, the concern of human purpose within this vast universe is so monstrously idiotic that it is totally beyond me how insignificant bits of life residing on what can only be termed a minuscule bit of unnoticeable solid particle in even so tiny a bit of the cosmos as our galaxy can even contemplate itself as being important.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 22:40:51
Three quotes from the other world of humanities: “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed” "The heart has reasons that reason cannot know." Blaise Pascal quotes (French Mathematician, Philosopher and Physicist, 1623-1662) "The change of Western man's interest from the slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things" (Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas) to mathematically precise knowledge of lesser things...marks a shift from what we might call 'science for understanding' to science for manipulation. The purpose of the former was the enlightenment of the person and his liberation; the purpose of the latter is power...In its more sophisticated development 'science for manipulation' tends almost inevitably to advance from the manipulation of nature to that of people." E.F. Schumacher in A Guide to the Perplexed


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 22:49:53
And then Bacon declares that “knowledge is power.” Enter Nietzsche with his “God is dead” and his “will to power” soon followed by the nihilists and the logical positivists and their cohorts who proceed to declare Man insignificant within the cosmos, with no destiny and his life without purpose within the cosmos. But of course some men will remain more significant than others, those with power. They will have the power to declare the others insignificant, exterminate them by the millions and even make lampshade with their skins. Why are we so surprised to see young skin-heads in our midst with swastika on their skin?


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-05 23:40:34
Jack, before we all go to bed and join the dream-world, there is a caveat that in fairness ought to be added to your contribution on “The atheists do not exist” (we found out otherwise that indeed they exist and are alive and well) to give truth an equal opportunity and to warn the believers among us not to be too smug and complacent. I mean those believers who use religion as a sort of political tool and cultural imperialism as unfortunately it is the case among many Christians in the US (especially those of Fundamendalist persuasion). The caveat is this: if I read Scriptures correctly, at the end times there will be many surprises, as Christ hints at when he says that some who believe they will be on the right hand will find themselves on the left hand, but the biggest surprise of all will be that the denial of God is not so much predicated on one’s rhetoric philosophy or ideology but by “what you did do the least of my brethren.” That kind of denial, even if accompanied by attendance at Church (as some Nazis indeed did when they went to church on Christmas and Easter and then went to do their “duty” in the lagers) may well be revealed as the greater denial by far. Food for reflection, or as Kierkegaard put it, for fear and trembling!


Jack	2007-11-06 00:58:24
Size or proportion do not decrease value. A tiny baby is loved regardless of insignificance to it's overall surroundings. It is important only that the baby is highly significant to the parents. Size had nothing to do with this baby's purpose or it's intrinsic value..it's purpose is realitive: to the parents. Size has nothing to do with it's significance, in fact on the contrare. Being less or more of something, i.e. humans compared to the universe, does not de-value it. The fertilized egg is unknown of it's host (mother), yet it certainly is not insignificant. The greater does not diminish the lesser nor is it inferior.


Jack	2007-11-06 01:11:22
Faith is something every driver who ever drove over a bridge. The driver's faith is strong enough that no thought is actually given. Generally, the vast majority of people believe bridges are safe (not always the case, i.e. Minnesota Interstate collapse). They cross them every day, perhaps several every day. They have not looked under the bridge to see the supporting pylons, the weld on the tressels...etc. They likely don't have a high degree in engineering nor could they build a bridge. Yet, they nonetheless cross it. In faith. That is faith in action (the driving)! Certainly not useless (or highways would shut down). How then is this "belief without proof"? They have proved believed it by driving over it. If you drive over a bridge without seeing anyone plunge over the side or through the road, you have belief "with proof". They have faith the bridge will hold them, regardless of holding no engineering degree. It doesn't matter...they believe it with experience. This is provable. It is faith in something, and it has been proven to them. It is not a blind faith.


Jack	2007-11-06 01:30:09
Pray should never be a substitute for medical care, a doctor's visit, etc. One of the Apostles (Luke) was a physician. Anyone who relies solely on prayer without seeking medical help can not tell me where it is in the Bible. It is not there. There are criminal charges, rightly enforced, for parents who refuse, for [unprovable]religious reasons, treatment or hospitalization for minor children (under 18). And, for the atheist to say that there is absolutely no God is logically wrong; by necessity. This knowledge is not possible for finite, human minds. They can not know all dimensions throughout all the universe and where everything that has ever existed and even now exists. It is not possible for humans to make such statements. They are not qualified, by necessity, of making such statements. Just because you believe something does not make it true. Children believed in the Tooth Fairy but it certainly is not true...therefore, atheist's belief that there is no god has no affect on it being true or not. Your believing it does not make it true (only subjectivly..open for error...it is not objective knowledge). My not believing in something also does not prove anything, whether something is false or true. Conversely, what you believe has no impact on something you are not aware of...like the deer heading for your car at night. The deer doesn't care what you believe, regardless, it is heading to the highway. It is true nonetheless, even if you don't believe a deer's about to run toward your car. The universe is so vast and unknown and our limited dimensions, it is strategically impossible to know.


Jack	2007-11-06 01:45:15
There is such a thing as being "blinded by science". It has become a god in itself. So blind that it can not see that Cause and Effect demand all matter and motion coming from a beginning. Matter can not create itself, again out of nothing. Something can not be caused by nothing at all. This is really "faith without proof". What a crumbling house of cards is evolutional theory. The proof was never a solid foundation at all, thus scientists abandone it daily, this theory and unproved fact. It takes more faith to believe in evolution that in a Creator. Why is the scientific community, after more than 120 years, still calling it a theory. The evolutionists need lots and lots of faith for their theory for they are severly lacking in proof.


Sand	2007-11-06 07:28:08
Evidently there are some minds so limited that further comments are totally useless.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-06 14:58:42
Evidently the issue has been already tried, judged, properly bashed and is now officially dispatched and declared closed with a closing comment by none other than the one who has appointed himself the “intellectual hygienist” of this magazine after a hyatus of three months. So much for free thinking and open-minded dialogue. Jefferson must be turning in his grave.


Sand	2007-11-06 15:28:51
Do not despair, Paparella, each human being has many capacities of a unique capability. I would not attempt higher mathematics or acrobatics. I would not attempt to teach a grasshopper to play baseball or coach a rosebush to sing opera. I'm sure you and Jack have hidden capabilities. Unfortunately they have yet to be made obvious here. I encourage you two to diversify your search. Something surely will turn up.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-06 16:15:00
I am wandering now, to whom, besides yourself do these capabilities have to be made obvious? So far you are the only one that I am aware of who insists on being the Grand Inquisitor of Political Correctness about what others (who don't happen to agree with your otrhodoxy)opine and reflect upon in this forum; and this despite the fact that quite a few readers have expressed their annoyance and seem to see your antics as funny and ludicrous.


Eero Nevalainen	2007-11-06 16:26:43
This is a trivial logic error that is often employed by people who have run out of reasonable arguments... they must debase logic itself in order to "leave the door open" for "open-minded" people to "believe" in nonsense and not be "restricted" by something such as what actually makes sense. Simply: For a positive argument to be accepted valid, there has to be positive proof for it. When there is no proof, you simply can't argue that a reasonable person should still prepare for all possible outcomes -- I have no reason to believe in a universe-dominating cult of aliens living on the dark side of the moon simply because it's still pretty badly known. Conversely, proving negatives is impossible and should not be a requirement in any argument, as the "not enough information" stunt can be pulled ad infinitum. Witness global warming deniers. A funny example of such a belief system are our local Fenno-Swedes for whom no evidence is ever sufficient for them to accept the existence of Finnish-speakers... certainly, everyone must just have FAITH in everybody's bilinguality and this faith must spread, and questioning the faith is intolerance... :-)


Sand	2007-11-06 16:37:48
I concur, Paparella, that it can be dispiriting to see all that intellectual offal you and your buddy Jack strew over the pristine intellectual topology of this site and no one but me and one or two others to clean it up. Perhaps your appeal will stimulate the local intellects to speak up for reason and basic good sense. I have a basic faith in humanity that in the end, intellectual sanitation will overcome.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-06 17:41:56
I see that you are back to your preferred poetics of defecation which would be ok as another personal opinion in a magazine which cherishes diversity. What is puzzling however is that self-declared position as keeper of the gates of political correctness and intellectual pooper skooper for the magazine. I keep wondering. Has anybody appointed you to such an exalted position and with what credentials?


Sand	2007-11-06 17:53:36
There again you openly demonstrate the puerile power of your vaunted Ph.D. You cannot even distinguish between defecation and offal. A good janitor is quite effective in cleaning up after sloppy people with over rated education certificates. You yourself openly presented that the people who devised the holocaust were Ph.D.s. Shouldn't that give you pause about degrees?


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-06 18:02:38
Mr. Nevalainen, I concur that logic is part of reason and to reject it is also to deny that reason is part of being human. Aristotle in fact defines man as a rational animal. However, both he and Plato, with all their divergent views, believed that rationality by itself does not exhaust our humanity. Aristotle for one wrote a treatise on the soul. They both believed that natural theology, or thinking about God was the hightes form of human thinking and were aware as most sensible people that to reduce Man to simple rationality and ignore imagination, myths, poetry, tales, the ethical, the emotional, the aesthetic is to become a truncated man; men without chest C.S. Lewis called them. Or as the English aptly say, clever by half. C.S. Lewis talked about two worlds in his The Two Worlds which need to become complementary and not mutually exclusive if we are to keep a holistic humanity. Some of the greatest ethical monstruosity of human history were committed in the century proud of its logical positivism, the 20th. Have you noticed that in this very forum there is a "barbarian of the intellect" (as Vico would dib him)that has taken it upon himself, as a sort of rationalist's burden, to be jury, judge and executioner of what he perceives as politically incorrect by the light of his misleading and shallow assumptions, and he does it in the name of reason and logic, a clever by half reason, that is.


Sand	2007-11-06 19:15:05
It is only just for Mr. Nevalainen to respond to Paparella's post but it might be useful to lay out how typical Paparella has been. Primarily, like a well trained housedog, he presents the rollover or grovel response. All people of faith, of course, grovel before their deity since any other reaction, according to their doctrine, evokes a lightning bolt or some other non-electric horrific response. But the grovel is ingrained in many religious people from childhood which is why they object to logic and reason. Logic and reason might inspire a raised eyebrow at a few of the idiocies and mindless violence in the Bible and eyebrows are forbidden to rise amongst the faithful. Rather, inspiration should be taken from folk tales and myths so that the appearance of a candle would bring out the Jack-be-Nimble response and quickly jump or the Hansel and Gretel response and shove any old lady with a black cat quickly into a convenient oven if witchery is suspected. If Plato or Aristotle demands that theology takes precedence over good sense, by cracky, we must grovel and watch our eyebrows.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-06 21:59:54
Jack, concerning the intricate matters of theories and facts you may wish to look at two recent columns by Dr. V.V. Raman in Global Spiral as indicated below: 11/06/2007 - Hypothesis and the So-What Criterion in Science: There is much truth in the quip, attributed to Edward Teller: “A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. “ More 10/26/2007 - Theories in Science In scientific literature, and especially in physics, theory has a clear meaning and function. Yet, here too there are philosophical debates and disagreements as to what constitutes a theory. More


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-07 06:21:21
Serendipity? Surfing the internet I bumped in this relevant story which I'd like to share. It is the flip side of "religion is only for old ladies": Over a hundred years ago a university student found himself seated in a train by the side of a person who seemed to be a well-to do peasant. He was praying the rosary and moving the beads in his fingers. "Sir, do you still believe in such outdated things?" asked the student of the old man." "Yes, I do. Do you not?" asked the man. The student burst out into a laughter and said, "I do not believe in such silly things. Take my advice. Throw the rosary out through this window, and learn what science has to say about it". "Science? I do not understand this science? Perhaps you can explain it to me.", the man said humbly with some tears in his eyes. The student saw that the man was deeply moved. So to avoid further hurting the feelings of the man, he said: "Please give me your address and I will send you some literature to help you on the matter." The man fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat and gave the boy his visiting card. On glancing at the card, the student, lowered his head in shame and became silent. On the card he read: "Louis Pasteur, Director of the Institute of Scientific Research, Paris."


Sand	2007-11-07 07:01:47
Not only are you devoted to myths, you can fabricate them at a moments notice. A useful trick for a snake oil salesman.


Sand	2007-11-07 08:21:36
Incidentally this is another blatant example of the grovel syndrome. There is no exposure of any principles which, upon consideration, might influence an opinion. It merely permits us to grovel before the exalted name of Pasteur whose every spoken word must provoke the bended knee.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-07 12:20:47
So much the worse for reality say the voices in the rationalist's mind denying not only the veracity of the story which is verbatim taken from the internet but more disastrously denying that that a holistic reason which preserves our humanity science and religion can, and in fact need to be bridged and they always have by the most brilliant minds in Man's history.


Sand	2007-11-07 13:05:11
It speaks clearly of the veracity of a so-called historian if he merely lifts an urban legend from the internet and proclaims it as truth.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-07 22:01:28
The grovel syndrome epithet belongs more properly not to those who admire and even imitate the great minds and spirits of mankind but to those who having denied the Creator grovel before their own self whom they eventually end up worshiping. All one needs to do is count hom many times the word "I" appears in their writings. Indeed the greater sin in the Scriptures is not sex as many misguidedly assume, it is idolatry, especially idolatry of oneself, otherwise known as narcisism.


Sand	2007-11-08 06:25:26
You really do have a voracious appetite for bullshit. Your whole approach in every part of your writing is an obeisance to some authority or other with little or no actual display as to why this particular character should be admired. And this is true from your god all the way down. As with anybody in a trance over authority you don't question or analyze, you merely present these authorities to be viewed with wonder and to subjugate criticism.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-08 10:19:00
The poetics of defecation again? Oh well, they seem to have become a permanent fixture of your perfumed responses. But if you stopped for a moment to admire your own image in the pond you'd realize that those authorities that you so cavalierly smear simply because they disagree with your viewpoint are giants that would allow you to see much further than you actually see on your own in your restrictive rationalistic horizon. All you have to do is stop looking in the pond and read somebody like Carl Jung rather than smearing him with "bullshit," to use your flowery scholarly language. Jung will be read even one hundred years from now. The one who remains smeared, I am afraid, is merely yourself. A pity.


Sand	2007-11-08 13:48:12
"One can expect with considerable assurance, that a given well-defined psychological situation will be accompanied by an analogous astrological configuration." - C.G. Jung The man was obviously a nut with some interesting ideas.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-08 16:27:40
Point confirmed!


Sand	2007-11-08 19:09:14
From this, I take it you believe in all the ancient gods plus whatever residual gods are hanging around plus astrology. No wonder you are fond of Jung.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-08 23:08:09
Whatever the voices in your head tell you.


Sand	2007-11-09 07:59:47
I appreciate your confirmation of my estimation.


Emanuel Paparella	2007-11-09 12:04:27
It is not me I am afraid, it's the voices in your head...


skeptic	2008-08-08 20:26:42
This is typical christian logic. If variable a might not be correct, then it has to be variable b. Assuming that atheists were wrong, you can't automatically assume that your religion is right. There are thousands of religions and each of them says they have proof. So even if atheism isn't correct, the Muslims or Buddhists could be correct also. Ever thought of that?


whatsittoyou	2008-12-09 09:16:15
You really should factcheck. Emery Dunfee has been dead for years and if he was alive today, he'd be suffering from dementia and over 95 years old. He is/was no resource for this sort of blog...he never would have agreed to this.