There were two men in the garden, both of them resolute. One was eating an apple. The other stood with his hands in his pockets.
“I do not believe God exists,” said the man who didn’t believe.
“I know,” said the believer, and bit into his apple.
“Prove to me that God exists,” said the one who didn’t believe.
“I can’t,” said the believer. “It is not something that can be proven. If you want to see God, you must believe in his presence.”
“I can’t accept that,” said the disbeliever. “How can I believe in something which you can’t prove? It is unscientific.”
“You will find proof when you believe,” said the believer who had stopped to pick the seeds out of his apple.
“Hah! Nice try!” said the one who didn’t believe, somewhat triumphant.
The believer looked up and said, “I can only tell you that this apple is sweet. Whether you believe me or not is up to you. But your refusal to believe that the apple is sweet without even tasting it, is unscientific.”
“Nice try!” said the disbeliever, sounding slightly less triumphant this time.
Self contradictory? When the believer says u will find proof once u believe. So the believer would have found the proof, thought he says earlier it can’t be proven. Or does he intend to say that the proof that he has can only come with belief.
Anyways, I settle with the First Law of Thermodynamics and leave it to a person to decide for themselves whether there is God or not.
I believe you mean the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law is basically Conservation of Energy, which does not hold in the quantum world somewhat.
I’ve been looking for an edible god all my life. That’s all that keeps me from believing in Him.
PS. The disbeliever didn’t ‘refuse to believe the apple is sweet.’ The disbeliever didn’t even get a chance to get a word in, in the midst of all that rattle from the believer!
Well,if the disbeliever is an atheist, the point is well taken. If the disbeliever is an agnostic, on the other hand,he would be open-minded enough to try eating the apple to find out whether it is sweet or not.
It is a different matter that the believer will never have the apple itself in his hand to ask this question in the first place. He will just say “I just had an apple, and it was sweet. You should believe it.”. Because if he has the apple in his hand, he has the proof of the faith in his hands!
During the last two years of school, our Hindi literature teacher was a learned man, although quite the cynic. He told the class – mostly blearily sleepy students – about Truth defined by the Vedas and the nothingness that is the “Brahman” that we know about. The 33 million Gods and Goddesses of Indian mythology are imaginative equivalences of this One Spirit, as he told us.
Now, I am not very learned in matters as deep as this, however it did pique my interest, and it is related in the way the Believer in your story tells the non-Believer what or who God is. I could very well vomit the entire treatise (about forty minutes in its length, I vividly remember!) but that would not be very interesting since I only remember points, and not the complex links between them in a way that I can spread that information.
One of the points he told us was that this entity called Brahman was indescribable – a long and complex Sanskrit word told us that whatever word we use to describe him/her/it was utterly false. Is the Brahman a man? No. A woman? No. Is it an object? No. Is he/she/it white, black etc.? No. And so on.
So it was very hard for those first saints who attained the state of nirvana to describe this Brahman to their followers and so they ended up imagining human/animal like characteristics closely befitting this Brahman, but eventually utterly false – something like how the education system works!
Interesting post!
I believe you mean the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law is basically Conservation of Energy, which does not hold in the quantum world somewhat.
You could just believe that the apple is sweet. Or you could taste the apple to find out whether its sweet or not. Or you could just calculate its sugar over water content using a few scientific tools.
With the 3rd way – no belief is necessary. And you won’t get hurt if the apple turns out to be poisonous.
But I won’t hound you – as I see you have a lot of agnostics / atheists as your readers :p
I’ll just leave with: you can do better – come up with a better story for your side of things (because – you’re an awesome story teller.)
Tasting the apple, in this case believing, is exactly what the atheist refuses to do. And agnostics are WAYY better. They at least have humility.
Testing the apple is believeing ? After tasting it i can go either way sweet or not sweet.So it is again an experiment . a doubt. Not faith.