The Worst God Argument

I remember just prior to this school break, we had one interesting Malay period. It was a Thursday afternoon, 1:20p.m. was the time. We were in the chemistry lab for what will be the last class before our holidays began.

Our Bahasa Melayu teacher was teaching Malay Literature, and the particular poem he taught that day was the heated topic of discussion.

The poem goes like this, it talks about an old man who is trying to find religion because he had lived in the darkness of having no religious faith for all the years. He realised that he had sinned greatly for not having enough religious education throughout his life, and is feeling guilty with a little bit of worriness. His old age hampers his efforts to learn more about religion, but he swears all his heart that his faith to Allah is undivided.

Well... It's a pretty decent piece of poem I'd say, but being in our class, religion topics will always be subjected to debates. Then the teacher went on and talked a bit about religion, well, in fact, he talked quite a lot. He said that God is the supreme almighty being that is always watching over us, and we should be nice, even though we can't see him, etc...



Alright, I'mma pause it there and talk a bit about the religious beliefs in our class. For those who doesn't know, there are 3 major groups of religious views in this world, according to my interpretion.

1. Theism - The belief that there's a God(or many deities) out there and is constantly monitoring us. The God(s) is/are all powerful and has the ability to interfere and alter our lifes.
   
2. Deism - The belief that God created the universe and seeded the universe with life but does not interact with the universe in any ways.
3. Atheism - The belief that there's no God ever.

Okay, in case any of you guys are wondering, I belonged to the second group - The deists, even though I'm a Buddhist. My belief is that the existence of God itself is a hypothesis, and until now, yet to be genuinly proved or disproved. So I'm actually open to the views that God exists, but I'm sceptical(note: doubt) that the Almighty himself/herself/itself(If God beared any gender at all) had actually interacted with humans. I mean (I know this will sound a bit arrogant, so sorry if you decided to take it seriously), why would an all powerful God care how we live in Earth anyway? We're so small in this universe that God created, so minute that God himself will have trouble finding us everytime he decided to give us a visit. But don't get me wrong, I do believe in God, but not in a way that I would pray to him asking for favor, because I know he wouldn't care. Even if he does, God would seem unfair, unjust, and I would look selfish for getting the favor when others don't.

Alright, as far as I'm concerned, there are a few other deist/atheist in our class, notable ones including Esmond and Yin Pin, maybe Zhong Xin LOL!. And Song Guang being known by us as "The Holy One" XD, but it's all good intention la, he knows the most about The Bible(I think :P) among the students in our class ma.



The few of us created a mildly heated debate with our teacher. It was when he started to say that God exists even when we don't see him. That I understand, that's his point of view, but it got worse when he decided to emphasis on his point.

He said," God is just like air, you can't see it, but it exists."

I went "OMFGWTFPWNZOR!!!"

Of all the religious arguments about the existence of God, this is REALLY REALLY the WORST one I've ever heard. I've seen many documentaries, debates in this topic and this is just the most ignorant statement a person has ever made in advocating the existence of God.

Then we started to debate with him. Actually, what we're trying to say is that you can't compare air with God. But being the Bahasa Melayu teacher he is, I accept his ignorance lar, because by explaining further we'll move into the realm of science where he'll start to look awkward.



So let me get this argument straight. By saying you can't see air and therefore it doesn't exist, he is actually forgetting the fact that humans have 5 senses. We can feel the air, we can smell the air in form of scents, we can hear the air in form of winds, we can even taste the air given it is saturated with some other compounds.

On the contrary, we can't feel God by touch, we can't smell God, we can't hear God, we can't taste God, and we can't see God. The only way we know God exists, some people claimed, is through the special 6th sense, which until now is not truly proven to exist. Therefore we can't prove that God exists, but we can't disprove it either.

AND!!! He was wrong, we can in fact see air, how? Dry Ice is a very good example. Dry ice itself is frozen carbon dioxide, which is a component of the air. There you go, we can see air, but only not in it's gaseous form. And there are many other "see-able" airs like liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen, they're in liquid form and we can see it. That's why I said teacher gave the worst comparison of something with God I've ever heard.



Then we discussed with him about a few other religious topics too, including Song Guang who asked him a funny yet sensitive question. But I'll leave the details for another day when I'm free to talk about it again, it should be interesting for me and you :)

So, until next time, cheers~