Anti-Freeze and Shovels

Philosophy: Where Nothing Exists

In my philosophy class today we were talking about what arguments can be made to prove or disprove the existence of a creator.  Now, normally this would be a hot button issue, but it is an early class and there are laptops sitting in front of each student, making it difficult for the majority of the students to pay attention.  Well we were talking about how things have always been one way, or something along those lines, (I might have been using the laptop at this particular moment) when my professor used the analogy of a man buying bread at the grocery store.  The man picks up a loaf of bread and a passerby tells the man he should not be buying bread at the store.  The man asks the passerby why he should not be buying the bread at the store, and the man replies, “Because it could be poisoned.”  The professor then pointed out that is not sound reasoning for not buying bread at a store because, in all likelihood, that man had probably bought 1000’s of loaves of bread from the store previously in his life.  My professor was using the story to illustrate the point that just because something could happen does not mean it is very likely to happen.  He then started talking about how anything we buy could be poisoned.  He started talking about sugary drinks and then said something along the lines of, “You do not know that your diet coke is not poisoned, do you?  Someone could have put anti-freeze into your drink.  If you want to kill someone you can just pour anti-freeze into their drink and that will do the trick.  It’s a good way to kill someone.  It tastes awesome."

I could not help but raise my hand and ask if he had ever tasted anti-freeze because he seemed to know so much about the product.  He said he had not and asked me if I wanted him to go and try a glass of anti-freeze.  I told him no, that I did not want him dead, but that if I did he had just taught us “a good way to kill someone.”  We all had a laugh and he clarified that he meant that it was an effective means of murder, but that he did not mean to be advocating anti-freeze poisoning as an action in itself.  Anyway, a couple minutes later someone asked him a question and he used an analogy involving shovels.  Midway through the analogy he stopped and more or less said, “A shovel is another good way you could kill someone.”

It was the most lively philosophy class to date.

JB