emmanuelchux:
Back in school there were sometimes we skip classes only to hear rumours of Test to be written next day. It's always better to do something about those rumours. It's better you read as much as you can and find out there's no test than to disregard the rumours only to find out there's test that morning when you're seated.
Same thing with these atheists. It's better I believe in God, then I find out in the after life there is no God actually. Than to disregard and oppose his existence only to shout oooops! when I've crossed over to the other side.

emmanuelchux:
Back in school there were sometimes we skip classes only to hear rumours of Test to be written next day. It's always better to do something about those rumours. It's better you read as much as you can and find out there's no test than to disregard the rumours only to find out there's test that morning when you're seated.

Same thing with these atheists. It's better I believe in God, then I find out in the after life there is no God actually. Than to disregard and oppose his existence only to shout oooops! when I've crossed over to the other side.

joseph1013:
[b]SALINE BATH TO PREVENT EBOLA INFECTION ANNIVERSARY

Exactly a year and one day ago, in Nigeria, some people had a saline bath to prevent ebola infection. Happy anniversary to that stupidity!

Thinking back on that experience, I could glean some lessons.

There were 2 groups of people

A) those who were absolutely sure by reason of their scientific knowledge that a saline bath could NOT prevent ebola infection. I belonged here.
B) those who were not sure.

Let's focus on group B. Group B could be divided further into 2:

B1) those who were not sure but were ready to VERIFY before going ahead with it &
B2) those who were not sure but didn't bother to VERIFY before going ahead.

I remember that some folks in group B1 called some medical practioners to find out about the hoax. They were the wise ones. Group B2 folks just went ahead perhaps because of natural incapability or fear of the unknown.

This fear of the unknown is also called Pascal wager. It says: if you say XYZ is true and it ends up being untrue (false positive), you have nothing to lose but if you say it's untrue and it ends up being true (false negative), you have everything to lose. That's why some people fell into group B2. In fact, some people planned to have the saline bath first before calling to verify and they did just that.

The fear of the unknown is not a proof that anything is true. Fear can't be a proof. The only way to be sure if anything is true is to verify. While there are answers already to some questions, the whole humanity still doesn't have answers to some questions. Most of such questions form the bedrock of religious belief. Concerning such, we're all in group B. We're uncertain. We don't know. But why some people will recklessly go ahead & practise what they believe without evidence (B2), some others will be circumspect to VERIFY before practising (B1).

Hoaxes build up over time. We finally discovered that the saline bath was invented by just 2 people who started it on social media & by 24 hours, thousands of people had had a saline bath. Now imagine a hoax that has perhaps lasted for thousands of years! Hoaxes also consolidate with time. Any lie can become the 'truth' if it stays around long enough.

People start rationalizing it and it becomes difficult to break. I remember how it later became difficult to convince people against the saline bath.

I even came across a highly placed, educated, individual who became so attached to the saline bath hoax that he started justifying it despite all contrary evidence. If that could happen for a cheap hoax that only existed for 72 hours, imagine a hoax that has grown over thousands of years!

Pascal wager fails & concerning beliefs, why do we need to belong to B1? 2 reasons:

1) Because the whole belief may be a hoax. The saline bath was a hoax invented by some people for whatever reason.

Reasons similarly exist for people who invented beliefs too. Would you rather try to verify a belief or would you be content to have fallen for someone else's cheap hoax?

2) Pascal wager talks about a false positive as if it's innocuous. But it isn't. Those who had the saline bath because of Pascal wager suffered a lot. In fact, a number of people died & another sizeable number were only saved by emergency care in the hospital. That's apart from the inconvenience in those who didn't even fall sick.

So doing false positives — doing something just to be on the safer side without evidence — comes with its negative effects too.

Moral:
It pays to have some evidence for anything before engaging yourself in it.[/b]

okuneddie:
Whether all these quotes are true or not, I cannot say for sure. Some God-haters today will deny that such things were ever said. I am not a personal witness to them, but none of them would surprise me. Don’t wait until YOU are in the place these people were before you decide to believe in a Holy God who requires that you humbly accept His terms of salvation.

Voltaire famous anti-christian atheist: “I am abandoned by God and man; I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life.” (He said this to Dr. Fochin, who told him it could not be done.) “Then I shall die and go to hell!” (His nurse said: “For all the money in Europe I wouldn’t want to see another unbeliever die! All night long he cried for forgiveness.”)
Thomas Hobbs political philosopher “I say again, if I had the whole world at my disposal, I would give it to live one day. I am about to take a leap into the dark.”

Sir Francis Newport, the head of an English Atheist club to those gathered around his deathbed: “You need not tell me there is no God for I know there is one, and that I am in His presence! You need not tell me there is no hell. I feel myself already slipping. Wretches, cease your idle talk about there being hope for me! I know I am lost forever! Oh, that fire! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell! …Oh, that I could lie for a thousand years upon the fire that is never quenched, to purchase the favor of God and be united to Him again. But it is a fruitless wish. Millions and millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity forever and forever!, Oh, the insufferable pangs of Hell!”

David Hume, atheist philosopher famous for his philosophy of empiricism and skepticism of religion, he cried loud on his death bed “I am in flames!” It is said his “desperation was a horrible scene”.
Caesar Borgia: “While I lived, I provided for everything but death; now I must die, and am unprepared to die.”
Thomas Payne the leading atheistic writer in American colonies: “Stay with me, for God’s sake; I cannot bear to be left alone , O Lord, help me! O God, what have I done to suffer so much? What will become of me hereafter? “I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. 0 Lord, help me! Christ, help me! …No, don’t leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of Hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.”

UyiIredi:
I don't believe this nonsense. And there are many examples of atheists who died peacefully. Tai Solarin for instance.