The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. 
-Bertrand Russell

You have your way. I have my way. As for


 the right way, the correct way, and the only 


way, it does not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Professor Teaches About Evil and Christianity

     "LET ME EXPLAIN THE problem science has with Jesus Christ." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand. "You're a Christian, 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 Bible says I'm evil."
     The professor grins knowingly. "Ahh! THE BIBLE!" 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 Christian who died of cancer even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus 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 Christian. "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 Christian's face. In a still small voice, he asked, "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 an 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 Jesus Christ, 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 ever seen Jesus?"
     "No, sir. I've never seen Him."
     "Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
     "No, sir. I have not."
     "Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus... 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 first Christian sits...defeated.
     Another Christian raises his hand. "Professor, may I address the class?"
     The professor turns and smiles. "Ah, yet another Christian in the vanguard! Come, come, young man. Speak some proper wisdom to the gathering."
     The Christian 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 becomes very quiet. The second Christian 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 273 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 -273°C. 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... ohhhhh, explain..." The professor makes an admirable effort to regain control. Suddenly he is affability himself. He waves his hand to silence the class, for the student to continue.
     "You are working on the premise of duality," the Christian 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 Christian 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 Christian 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.¹ What is that work God is accomplishing? The Bible tells us it is to see if each one of us will, of our own free will, choose good over evil."²
     The professor bridles. "As a philosophical scientist, I don't view 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."
     The Christian replies, "I would have thought that the absence of God's moral code in this world is probably one of the most observable phenomena going, 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 preacher?"
     "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 Christian 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 Christian looks around the room. "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's mind?" The class breaks out into laughter. The Christian points towards his elderly, crumbling tutor. "Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's mind... felt the professor's mind, touched or smelt the professor's mind? 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 mind whatsoever. Well, according to the rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science, I DECLARE that the professor has no mind."
     The class is in chaos.
     The Christian sits.

---

If you didn't get it, here is a brief synopsis. The atheist argument is that since God created everything, He is responsible for the creation of evil. However, "evil" is a word that we use to describe certain things that happen to us (most of which are caused by other people). In reality, it is not a physically created thing at all and, therefore, does not fall within the realm of something created by God. So, the argument is fundamentally flawed. As stated on this site, evil is allowed by God so that free will beings can choose between good (i.e., God) or evil (absence of God). Without evil, it is not possible to choose between good and evil, and the universe would have no ultimate purpose.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/33op6A/www.godandscience.org/apologetics/professor.html

SOCIAL JUSTICE

To fight is to stand

To regret is to mistake

And to jump is risk

To see is to know

To smile is to make amends 

And to think is wise

To sing is happy

To sin is unforgiven

And to try is bold

To soar high is proud

To be yourself is unique

And to be alive

To dance is vibrant

To fear is the enemy

And to give is kind

To feel is caring

To seek is the adventure

And to win is strength

To aim high is brave

To understand is clever

And wonder is pure

To dream is to rest

To break is to be broken

And faith brings spirit

To play is to live

To focus brings ambition

And to stare is speech

To trust is secret

To have faith is courageous 

And loss takes you down

National Library of Medicine- Robert Hookes Micrographica

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/26NzGR/archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/hooke/hooke.html

June 5, 2011

Doctors claim to have "functional cure" for HIV

Timothy Ray Brown was diagnosed with HIV in 1995, but is now the first to have the virus completely eliminated from his body

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  Timothy Ray Brown, the first man to have received a "functional cure" for HIV.  (CBS News)

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(CBS News)  

Thirty years ago from Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control issued the first report on the emerging AIDS epidemic. Now, after years of progress in holding back the disease, there is finally an apparent case of one successful cure.

CBS News correspondent Hank Plante, with San Francisco affiliate KCBS, reports that 45-year-old Timothy Ray Brown, now living in the Bay Area, tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but now has entered the scientific journals as the first man in world history to have his HIV completely eliminated from his body. It's what doctors call a "functional cure."

He was living in Berlin, Germany, in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow, stem cell transplant that had astounding results.

"I quit taking my HIV medication on the day that I got the transplant and haven't had to take any since," Brown says, adding that his diseases are effectively gone.

In fact, his only medical problem these days is one involving his speech and motor skills because of neurological damage after the treatment, but that's getting better.

"The Berlin Patient," as Brown is known, received stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV. In fact, about one percent of Caucasians are immune to HIV. Some say it goes back to the Great Plague; People who survived the plague developed an immunity, and that immunity was passed down to their heirs today.

Brown says being the first man to be cured of HIV makes him very, very happy.

Needless to say, Brown is now being monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and here at UCSF, where we sought out a medical opinion from one of the most respected AIDS researchers in the world, Dr. Jay Levy, who was one of the co-discoverers of the HIV virus.

"If you're able to take the white cells from someone and manipulate them so they're no longer infectable by HIV, and those white cells become the whole immune system of that individual, you've got essentially what we call a functional cure," Dr. Levy says.

We also sought out a medical opinion from Dr. Paul Volberding, another pioneering AIDS expert, who has studied the disease for all of its 30 years.

"One element of his treatment, and we don't know which, allowed apparently the virus to be purged from his body. So its going to be an interesting, I think, productive area to study," Dr. Volderding says. "He hasn't had any recurrence now for several years I think of the virus, and that hasn't happened before in our experience."

Timothy Brown's radical procedure may not be applicable to many other people with HIV, because of the difficulty in doing stem cell transplants, and finding the right donor. But this one case does open the door to the field of "cure research," which is now gaining more attention.

"I'm cured of HIV," Brown says. "I had HIV, but I don't anymore."

Those are words that so many in the scientific community are now cautiously clinging to.

The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov

Murray Templeton was forty-five years old, in the prime of life, and with all parts of his body in perfect working order except for certain key portions of his coronary arteries, but that was enough

The pain had come suddenly, had mounted to an unbearable peak, and had then ebbed steadily.  He could feel his breath slowing and a kind of gathering peace washing over him.

There is no pleasure like the absence of pain – immediately after pain.  Murray felt an almost giddy lightness as though he were lifting in the air and hovering.

He opened his eyes and noted with distant amusement that the others in the room were still agitated.  He had been in the laboratory when the pain had struck, quite without warning, and when he had staggered, he had heard surprised outcries from the others before everything vanished into overwhelming agony.

Now, with the pain gone, the others were still hovering, still anxious, still gathered about his fallen body –– Which, he suddenly realised, he was looking down on.

He was down there, sprawled, face contorted.  He was up here, at peace and watching.

He thought: Miracle of miracles!  The life-after-life nuts were right.

And although that was a humiliating way for an atheistic physicist to die, he felt only the mildest surprise, and no alteration of the peace in which he was immersed.

He thought: There should be some angel – or something – coming for me.

The Earthly scene was fading.  Darkness was invading his consciousness and off in a distance, as a last glimmer of sight, there was a figure of light, vaguely human in form, and radiating warmth.

Murray thought: What a joke on me.  I’m going to Heaven.

Even as he thought that, the light faded, but the warmth remained.  There was no lessening of the peace even though in all the Universe only he remained – and the Voice.

The Voice said, “I have done this so often and yet I still have the capacity to be pleased at success.”

It was in Murray’s mind to say something, but he was not conscious of possessing a mouth, tongue, or vocal chords.  Nevertheless, tried to make a sound.  He tried, mouthlessly, to hum words or breathe them or just push them out by a contraction of – something.

And they came out.  He heard his own voice, quite recognisable, and his own words, infinitely clear.

Murray said, “Is this Heaven?”

The Voice said, “This is no place as you understand place.”

Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked.  “Pardon me if I sound like a jackass.  Are you God?”

Without changing intonation or in any way marring the perfection of the sound, the Voice managed to sound amused.  “It is strange that I am always asked that in, of course, an infinite number of ways.  There is no answer I can give that you would comprehend.  I am – which is all that I can say significantly and you may cover that with any word or concept you please.”

Murray said, “And what am I?  A soul?  Or am I only personified existence too?”  He tried not to sound sarcastic, but it seemed to him that he had failed.  He thought then, fleetingly, of adding a ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Holy One’ or something to counteract the sarcasm, and could not bring himself to do so even though for the first time in his existence he speculated on the possibility of being punished for his insolence – or sin? – with Hell, and what that might be like.

The Voice did not sound offended.  “You are easy to explain – even to you.  You may call yourself a soul if that pleases you, but what you are is a nexus of electromagnetic forces, so arranged that all the interconnections and interrelationships are exactly imitative of those of your brain in your Universe-existence – down to the smallest detail.  Therefore you have your capacity for thought, your memories, your personality.  It still seems to you that you are you.”

Murray found himself incredulous.  “You mean the essence of my brain was permanent?”

“Not at all.  There is nothing about you that is permanent except what I choose to make so.  I formed the nexus.  I constructed it while you had physical existence and adjusted it to the moment when the existence failed.”

The Voice seemed distinctly pleased with itself, and went on after a moment’s pause.  “An intricate but entirely precise construction.  I could, of course, do it for every human being on your world but I am pleased that I do not.  There is pleasure in the selection.”

“You choose very few then?”

“Very few.”

“And what happens to the rest?”

“Oblivion! – Oh, of course, you imagine a Hell.”

Murray would have flushed if he had the capacity to do so.  He said, “I do not.  It is spoken of.  Still, I would scarcely have thought I was virtuous enough to have attracted your attention as one of the Elect.”

“Virtuous? – Ah, I see what you mean.  It is troublesome to have to force my thinking small enough to permeate yours.  No, I have chosen you for your capacity for thought, as I choose others, in quadrillions, from all the intelligent species of the Universe.”

Murray found himself suddenly curious, the habit of a lifetime.  He said, “Do you choose them all yourself or are there others like you?”

For a fleeting moment, Murray thought there was an impatient reaction to that, but when the Voice came, it was unmoved.  “Whether or not there are others is irrelevant to you.  This Universe is mine, and mine alone.  It is my invention, my construction, intended for my purpose alone.”

“And yet with quadrillions of nexi you have formed, you spend time with me?  Am I that important?”

The Voice said, “You are not important at all.  I am also with others in a way which, to your perception, would seem simultaneous.”

“And yet you are one?”

Again amusement.  The Voice said, “You seek to trap me into an inconsistency.  If you were an amoeba who could consider individuality only in connection with single cells and if you were to ask a sperm whale, made up of thirty quadrillion cells, whether it was one or many, how could the sperm whale answer in a way that would be comprehensible to the amoeba?”

Murray said dryly, “I’ll think about it.  It may become comprehensible.”

“Exactly.  That is your function.  You will think.”

“To what end?  You already know everything, I suppose.”

The Voice said, “Even if I knew everything, I could not know that I know everything.”

Murray said, “That sounds like a bit of Eastern philosophy – something that sounds profound precisely because it has no meaning.”

The Voice said, “You have promise.  You answer my paradox with a paradox – except that mine is not a paradox.  Consider.  I have existed eternally, but what does that mean?  It means I cannot remember having come into existence.  If I could, I would not have existed eternally.  If I cannot remember having come into existence, then there is at least one thing – the nature of my coming into existence – that I do not know.

“Then, too, although what I know is infinite, it is also true that what there is to know is infinite, and how can I be sure that both infinities are equal?  The infinity of potential knowledge may be infinitely greater than the infinity of my actual knowledge.  Here is a simple example: If I knew every one of the even integers, I would know an infinite number of items, and yet I would still not know a single odd integer.”

Murray said, “But the odd integers can be derived.  If you divide every even integer in the entire infinite series by two, you will get another infinite series which will contain within it the infinite series of odd integers.”

The Voice said, “You have the idea.  I am pleased.  It will be your task to find other such ways, far more difficult ones, from the known to the not-yet-known.  You have your memories.  You will remember all the data you have ever collected or learned, or that you have or will deduce from that data.  If necessary, you will be allowed to learn what additional data you will consider relevant to the problems you set yourself.”

“Could you not do all that for yourself?”

The Voice said, “I can, but it is more interesting this way.  I constructed the Universe in order to have more facts to deal with.  I inserted the uncertainty principle, entropy, and other randomisation factors to make the whole not instantly obvious.  It has worked well for it has amused me throughout its entire existence.

“I then allowed complexities that produced first life and then intelligence, and use it as a source for a research team, not because I need the aid, but because it would introduce a new random factor.  I found I could not predict the next interesting piece of knowledge gained, where it would come from, by what means derived.”

Murray said, “Does that ever happen?”

“Certainly.  A century doesn’t pass in which some interesting item doesn’t appear somewhere.”

“Something that you could have thought of yourself, but had not done so yet?”

“Yes.”

Murray said, “Do you actually think there’s a chance of my obliging you in this manner?”

“In the next century?  Virtually none.  In the long run, though, your success is certain, since you will be engaged eternally.”

Murray said, “I will be thinking through eternity?  Forever?”

“Yes.”

“To what end?”

“I have told you.  To find new knowledge.”

“But beyond that.  For what purpose am I to find new knowledge?”

“It was what you did in your Universe-bound life.  What was its purpose then?”

Murray said, “To gain new knowledge that only I could gain.  To receive the praise of my fellows.  To feel the satisfaction of accomplishment knowing that I had only a short time allotted me for the purpose. – Now I would gain only what you could gain yourself if you wished to take a small bit of trouble.  You cannot praise me; you can only be amused.  And there is no credit or satisfaction in accomplishment when I have all eternity to do it in.”

The Voice said, “And you do not find thought and discovery worthwhile in itself?  You do not find it requiring no further purpose?”

“For a finite time, yes.  Not for all eternity.”

“I see your point.  Nevertheless, you have no choice.”

“You say I am to think.  You cannot make me do so.”

The Voice said, “I do not wish to constrain you directly.  I will not need to.  Since you can do nothing but think, you will think.  You do not know how not to think.”

“Then I will give myself a goal.  I will invent a purpose.”

The Voice said tolerantly, “That you can certainly do.”

“I have already found a purpose.”

“May I know what it is?”

“You know already.  I know we are not speaking in the ordinary fashion.  You adjust my nexus is such a way that I believe I hear you and I believe I speak, but you transfer thoughts to me and from me directly.  And when my nexus changes with my thoughts you are at once aware of them and do not need my voluntary transmission.”

The Voice said, “You are surprisingly correct.  I am pleased. – But it also pleases me to have you tell me your thoughts voluntarily.”

“Then I will tell you.  The purpose of my thinking will be to discover a way to disrupt this nexus of me that you have created.  I do not want to think for no purpose but to amuse you.  I do not want to think forever to amuse you.  I do not want to exist forever to amuse you.  All my thinking will be directed toward ending the nexus.  That would amuseme.”

The Voice said, “I have no objection to that.  Even concentrated thought on ending your own existence may, in spite of you, come up with something new and interesting.  And, of course, if you succeed in this suicide attempt you will have accomplished nothing, for I would instantly reconstruct you and in such a way as to make your method of suicide impossible.  And if you found another and still more subtle fashion of disrupting yourself, I would reconstruct you with that possibility eliminated, and so on.  It could be an interesting game, but you will nevertheless exist eternally.  It is my will.”

Murray felt a quaver but the words came out with a perfect calm.  “Am I in Hell then, after all?  You have implied there is none, but if this were Hell you would lie to us as part of the game of Hell.”

The Voice said, “In that case, of what use is it to assure you that you are not in Hell?  Nevertheless, I assure you.  There is here neither Heaven nor Hell.  There is only myself.”

Murray said, “Consider, then, that my thoughts may be useless to you.  If I come up with nothing useful, will it not be worth your while to – disassemble me and take no further trouble with me?”

“As a reward?  You want Nirvana as the prize of failure and you intend to assure me failure?  There is no bargain there.  You will not fail.  With all eternity before you, you cannot avoid having at least one interesting thought, however you try against it.”

“Then I will create another purpose for myself.  I will not try to destroy myself.  I will set as my goal the humiliation of you.  I will think of something you have not only never thought of but never could think of.  I will think of the last answer, beyond which there is no knowledge further.”

The Voice said, “You do not understand the nature of the infinite.  There may be things I have not yet troubled to know.  There cannot be anything I cannot know.”

Murray said thoughtfully, “You cannot know your beginning.  You have said so.  Therefore you cannot know your end.  Very well, then.  That will be my purpose and that will be the last answer.  I will not destroy myself.  I will destroy you – if you do not destroy me first.”

The Voice said, “Ah!  You come to that in rather less than average time.  I would have thought it would have taken you longer.  There is not one of those I have with me in this existence of perfect and eternal thought that does not have the ambition of destroying me.  It cannot be done.”

Murray said, “I have all eternity to think of a way of destroying you.”

The Voice said, equably, “Then try to think of it.”  And it was gone.

But Murray had his purpose now and was content.

For what could any Entity, conscious of eternal existence, want – but an end?

For what else had the Voice been searching for countless billions of years?  And for what other reason had intelligence been created and certain specimens salvaged and put to work, but to aid in that great search?  And Murray intended that it would be he, and he alone, who would succeed.

Carefully, and with the thrill of purpose, Murray began to think.

He had plenty of time.