₦airaland Forum

I'm not saying anything about you silver or elpaso, but there are many other ppl who espouse similar sentiments.

My statement to some of them is: If you participate in disenfranchising a woman of her virginity, you cannot and should not fully expect to be able to marry virgins. Its like I expect to have a pet dog after I've spent five years exterminating as much of the species as I could.

goodguy:
Allonym, as a 'Christian', do you pray?

Yes

Your next question is, well, do you get a response. Sure, I could say I get a response, but someone could easily show that to be my interpretation of events following my prayer.

I think Nnenna1 said it best in another thread - having "faith" is like being in love. There is no real concrete way to describe it. You cannot really "prove" it to someone. (She didn't add this, but you can easily extrapolate And other people in the same situation as you can readily understand your situation. Other christians may be able to understand my unexplainable belief in God; however, Nferyn may not. I however am in a position where I can understand both sides (or rather, the many sides to this coin).

wow.

It never ceases to amaze me how men of no faith are dismayed that they cannot find any women of faith once they are finished removing said women of the faith.

goodguy:
Pastors are humans who preach the word of God. They are otherwise known as the annointed of God.

There are many who preach the word of God who are not doing so under God's guidance.

goodguy:
Out of man's knowledge, he has taken time to disprove the existence of THE ONE who gave it to him. What a pity...

In as much as you say there's no God, you can never disprove his existence.

When people see visions, you say it's a psychological disorder.
When people receive miracles, you say it has to do with the body's immunity.
When people profess being witches/wizards, you say they're trying to get attention.

The answers are right there staring at you. OPEN YOUR EYES.

To those of you who say there's no God, have u ever prayed once in your life? If yes, who did you pray to?

Other than your disagreement with those answers - are they wrong? If someone tells me the see a vision, should I assume its from God or is it more likely they have a disorder? Where are there documented cases of people who claim to be witches/wizards displaying any powers? There are very few documented cases of miracles (outside the catholic church). Why? If so many people are being miraculously cured, how come they disappear whenever someone tries to investigate?

nicetohave:
I'll prefer to remain stupid until a plausible explanation can be given why a man who is scheduled for a nephrectomy (removal of the kidney) for an advanced stage of cancer was healed without any trace of it anymore, i prefer to remain stupid until an explantion can be given for a man who is clinically blind from glaucoma regained his sight...............all these and many more, i prefer to remain stupid until an explanation is given, until then i hold on to my stupid faith that it is God's handiwork, at least i have an explanation no matter how stupid, which one do you have?

Can you give me a reputable source where I can read about these people. For all I know, you could be making this up. So, something like names, dates, I can do the rest of the research myself.

mmomi:
Where is guiness book of records!! From papa to husband, abomination of highest order.If this happens to appear in website it will read www.error-error........wonders shall never end

christyne:
Yea i agree with u.He's a foolish old man,he deserve to be buried alive.
Ohun ti o da o loruko meji,koda lo nje (what is bad does not have two names,its always bad.)

yemstrad:
Please, don't make it more ridiculous than it is presently. How on earth can this be morally acceptable? Infact, i feel like Government should just go and put this man into KiriKiri maximum prison in Apapa.

Let him start experiencing hell from this earth. He is a foolish old man

So pretty much nobody has any reason for why they feel the way they do.

Funny how everyone wants to kill the man, what about the woman? I don't remember her being forced into a marriage.

panthress:
if the doctors say im alive, im alive so when im dead my blood will stop flowing

This doesn't quite make sense and/or you're avoiding the question. There is no question of your body still being alive. But you are brain dead with no hope of revival (in the example).

nferyn:
Hi Allonym,

In the argument from causality, there are a lot of implicit assumptions on the nature of reality that should not be taken for granted.
1. Ultimate causality comes from a universe in which time is linear and unidirectional. It appears that way because that is the natural human interpretative framework. We are not certain that this is indeed the case, some recent research in physics seems to point at the possibility of a bidirectional time dimension (I just started listening to The Fabric of the Cosmos audiobook, that's why I mention it)
2. Postulating an uncaused cause only makes sense in a linear, unidirectional time. If time were to be circular, there would be no need for an uncaused cause.

I agree - this argument requires an assumption of linear unidirectional time (in fact, almost all logic based arguments for the existence of God depend upon linear time. If time were circular, then it is possible for us (humans) to have created ourselves, or any number of [then plausible] scenarios)

nferyn:
3. All the talk about man's spiritual nature is just psychobabble.What is labeled as spiritual is always founded on a basis in the material. It is just a problem of representation, where the representation is seen as independent from what represents.

Could you point out which part of this raised this comment. I think I know but I want to be sure.

nferyn:
4. By associating spirituality with intelligence and free and then using the label spirituality to the first cause, the author is using an imperfect pars pro toto construct. This is a very loose association and does nothing to validate the statement of an intelligent first cause, let alone a supreme being or a personal God.

Totally agree here, when I read through this, I was immediately struck by the weak connection the author attempted to make for an intelligent first cause.

So, issues with the argument aside, how far back in time could we go till we'd encounter intellectuals who could accept most of this argument without question? Or how far back in time would we have to go to find someone who wouldn't question the assumption of linear unidirectional time?

Here is a preface to this sites: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/certs2e1.htm presentation of the teleological argument - "intelligent design"

The teleological argument, or argument from design, says that the universe possesses so integrated a complexity that it must have been designed by an intelligent mind. Members of monotheistic religions identify this posited architect of the universe with the God of whichever religion they happen to profess. Thus Christians think that the God who is revealed in the New Testament designed the universe, whereas muslims think that Allah did it. The central, and in my opinion conclusive, argument against this can be found in Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion": the architect of the universe must have possessed as integrated a complexity as the universe itself, yet He had no designer; this implies an acceptance of the principle that an integrated and complex system either can create itself or has always existed; which makes the hypothesis of an intelligent designer of the universe unnecessary, for it allows the logical possibility that the universe may simply have organised itself in that way.

The shortcomings of the argument are clearly noted ahead of time. I like them .

The general form of the teleological argument is analogical: the universe is supposed to resemble something that has been designed, so by analogy we are supposed to assume that the universe was designed.

Like all arguments for religion, the argument from design is primarily emotive rather than ratiocinative. The universe, and especially its living content, just 'looks' as if it has been designed. Consider, for instance, the mammalian eye: it defies the imagination to envisage its evolving by random mutation and Darwinian selection. Therefore, Hume's logical attack on this argument is not as effective as it should be. Rather more effective, in practice, are the explications of the evolutionary process to be found in the works of popular science writers, such as Hawkins (as in "The Blind Watchmaker".

here is an exert from one source using causality as an argument for the existence of God. I think it might be among (if not the only, since I have little knowledge of other intellectual arguments) the best intellectual (though perhaps not indefensible) arguments for the existence of God. This argument though cannot be extended to prove that the Christian or Muslim God actually is the one in existence, that argument, I believe is impossible from any logical standpoint.

In a previous thread I'd mentioned having heard some of this on a radio show. In any case, I present it now (or at least this version):

We must start by assuming the objective certainty and validity of the principle of causality or sufficient reason -- an assumption upon which the value of the physical sciences and of human knowledge generally is based. To question its objective certainty, as did Kant, and represent it as a mere mental a priori, or possessing only subjective validity, would open the door to subjectivism and universal scepticism. It is impossible to prove the principle of causality, just as it is impossible to prove the principle of contradiction; but it is not difficult to see that if the former is denied the latter may also be denied and the whole process of human reasoning declared fallacious. The principle states that whatever exists or happens must have a sufficient reason for its existence or occurrence either in itself or in something else ; in other words that whatever does not exist of absolute necessity - whatever is not self-existent -- cannot exist without a proportionate cause external to itself; and if this principle is valid when employed by the scientist to explain the phenomena of physics it must be equally valid when employed by the philosopher for the ultimate explanation of the universe as a whole. In the universe we observe that certain things are effects, i.e. they depend for their existence on other things, and these again on others; but, however far back we may extend this series of effects and dependent causes, we must, if human reason is to be satisfied, come ultimately to a cause that is not itself an effect, in other words to an uncaused cause or self-existent being which is the ground and cause of all being. And this conclusion, as thus stated, is virtually admitted by agnostics and Pantheists, all of whom are obliged to speak of an eternal something underlying the phenomenal universe, whether this something be the "Unknown", or the "Absolute", or the "Unconscious", or "Matter" itself, or the "Ego", or the "Idea" of being, or the "Will"; these are so many substitutes for the uncaused cause or self-existent being of Theism. What anti-Theists refuse to admit is not the existence of a First Cause in an indeterminate sense, but the existence of an intelligent and free First Cause, a personal God, distinct from the material universe and the human mind. But the very same reason that compels us to postulate a First Cause at all requires that this cause should be a free and intelligent being. The spiritual world of intellect and free will must be recognized by the sane philosopher to be as real as the world of matter; man knows that he has a spiritual nature and performs spiritual acts as clearly and as certainly as he knows that he has eyes to see with and ears to hear with; and the phenomena of man's spiritual nature can only be explained in one way -- by attributing spirituality, i.e. intelligence and free will, to the First Cause, in other words by recognizing a personal God. For the cause in all cases must be proportionate to the effect, i.e. must contain somehow in itself every perfection of being that is realized in the effect.

- source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608b.htm

There are other arguments which have been made where the originators or . . . for lack of a better word . . disciples of the idea have dveloped with the goal to inductively prove the existence of God without reliance on the conterversial book known as the Bible (or any related superset or subset of books). There is the "intelligent design" argument, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~ursa/philos/certs2e1.htm, morality argument http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/, and others http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/argument.htm. There are plenty of sources online and probably more arguments. The initial source (and the last one) I cited show multiple approaches for "proving" the existence of God. To some degree, those two also evaluate their arguments though it is probably a biased evaluation.

The last site (cite?) has a section where some arguments against the existence of God are listed. Those are the really simple arguments that foil most Christians. The problem is that there is an actual difference between what Christians would define as God and a pure . . . intellectual . . . definition. For example, the Christian God is by definition, good. That is not necessarily a quality you can ascribe to a being that we would deem God. At best, humans could describe God as capricious - in that we cannot understand why God does something and so God's actions occur irrelevant to our worship of him or our relative good or evilness.

B.T.W is there a personal pronoun I can use for God? Its not that i'm trying to be politically correct by avoiding a dependence on "he" as the pronoun, I actually would rather use "it". However, "it" seems to be a weird term. Perhaps I've inculcated an aversion to the pronoun since one always is told not to use "it" to describe people or using "it" to describe a person is demeaning. (I'm not implying God is a person, in fact, God would be greater than a person, thus making using "it" even worse).

PS. I must warn that these sources can be incredibly biased. For example, the only evaluation the first source does is to acknowledge contra arguments and indicate unilaterally without offering good explanations that the contra arguments are wrong. So, if reading it, try to evaluate the arguments by themselves, and not the text surrounding it.

goodguy:
Allonym, you're gradually becoming an atheist.

I wouldn't say that

panthress:
God giveth God taketh i believe if i am still alive, i shld die naturally with a condition like thatenwayz ill die soon and i don't need someone to kill me, when i don't wannabe killed

but you are already dead. All that is alive is a mindless body. I personally will not want money wasted on keeping my body alive any longer than necessary to do something like an organ transplant.

yemstrad:
Bro, it is a bad thing. Period.

The woman is about 40 - 45.

he entire family members have deserted the old man already.

What is bad about it?

prettyH:
@ allonym,

what concerns age and the man's action? Its simply wrong. Can't he cater for her without marrying her? And u mention the fact that cultures permit such a ludicrous act. Sorry to burst your bubble, mine doesn't .

Why can't he marry her? What is your culture - where are you from, your tribe etc?

Advinchi:
father marry his daughter inlaw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that's punishable by death.
How would the father feel? doesn't he have any consience? It totally wrong.

Punishable by death under what law or under which culture?

lagerwhenindoubt:
Nigeria shall not win the Nations Cup 2006.. will even go further to tell you how far they will go, they shall not make it to the quarter final.. how's that for a prophecy and no amount of prayers can forestall the inevitable.. cause we did nothing.

Amen.

nicetohave:
Well according to the bible definition, a fool is one who says there is no God, that makes you and the author of your references fools (remember this is not an intellectual definition) It will interest you to know that the pioneers of the works of medicine are not people who say there is no God, infact time and again the works of medicine lay credence to the fact that "there has to be a God somewhere" when on a daily basis we see people who have no reason anymore to continue to live physiologically being snatched from the jaws of death and come back to life, how do i explain that, science? no i will be a megafool to say that, something brought them back not medicine anymore, we only become living testimonies of what we have seen, the works of the living God! and that goes for my predecesors in the profession who have certified countless miracles.at least medical records don't lie and can't be altered. The anatomy of the human body alone makes foolishness of evolution, what archeaologist do is compare fossils that are merely imprints of the remains of carcasses, how does that animal function physiologically beyond its remain? does its cells, organs and systems and physiologic functioning bear any semblance to man's? why then are zoonotic transplants so unsuccessful if there are similarities in them? all we hear is they evolve, even if we evolve.by what mechanism? has science explained it? or we are yet to get there yet? who set does mechanism in motion? or are they "auto-controlled? give me a break folks, what are we arguing for and against here?

This doesn't make sense. I don't believe some of the poems I've read were written by God just because we cannot discover any evidence as to the actual human writer.

In any case, the mechanism currently proposed to explain evolution is called "natural selection".

In your posts, your main topic is - if we cannot understand it, it must be God. That is pure ignorance. People KNEW for a FACT that the world was flat. . . until about 1492 when Columbus managed to sail around the world - yeah - he went to the edge and didn't FALL off the earth!! Amazing what a little knowledge, experiment, and studying can do for you. The church STATED as FACT that the earth was the center of the universe. They even put Galileo under house arrest for proving that it was the sun revolving around the earth and not vice-versa. There are so many examples of thing that human beings did not understand or ever think they could possibly explain in one century and a couple years later, some scientist finds the solution. Doesn't it seem pretty stupid to say just because we don't fully understand something today, we never will and thus it's being done by God?

nicetohave:
Seek to know the truth before you discard it, i still keep searching and nothing has proved to me that we are all genetic/moleculr accidents, it proves we are created by a supreme being who deserves our honour and worship.

Exactly what proves that we were created by a supreme being?

wow, so if I was a man of God - well, in a position of a pastor etc,

I could tell my congregation - remember last year, the couple weeks I went on vacation - there were supposed to be 14 plane crashes in 14 days. However, since I returned early to you all, we were able to pray and avert 11 of them.

panthress:
my parents don't believe in euthanasia my mum doesnt indulge in that stuff at work including abortion they r both against it, so i think they'll keep me alive.
president bush is a dickhead

So, though there is no hope of bringing "you" back, you would want your parents or family to waste money to keep your body alive? What is the point? If they want your body, couldn't they just freeze it?

goodguy:
Why have you all (Nferyn, allonym, Ijebuman) chosen to ignore this one: ??

Check those letters in bold and tell me what you think. Give explanations I mean.

Actually goodguy, I did not let it go. I posted some sarcastic replies to it. If you look back about a page, you'll see.

kaylala:
Atleast he was killed

So was Jesus Christ.

panthress:
man nfern what did the white pplz in belgium do to u, what u think of euthanasia. i bet u'll tell me its right for someone to decide to take person life

I suppose if someone cut off your head, but somehow, your heart continued to beat and the rest of your body was alive, you'd want to bankrupt your parents so they could keep your mindless body alive?

ijebuman:
I'm enjoying this thread but this is just FALSE
Lennon was killed in December 1980. He made that statement in 1966. he was killed by a deranged fan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_lennon

The rest is urban myth and i won't bother providing a response to them, unless you can provide the evidence to back it up

Woot? It is wrong? No way. I can prove it to you:

Allonym - ate cookies that were forbidden. The bible says thou shalt honor thy mother and father. Alloynm dies afterwards. (of course, many years afterwards, but ONLY after I defied the Lord)

Its like that time I beat up this kid at school and then later on I won the science fair. . . .(at a different school in a different year. . but that doesn't matter does it?)

kaylala:
Mayb this will make u have a re-think

JOHN LENNON
Some years before during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
"Christianity will end, it will disappear. I do not have to argue about that. I am certain. Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, Today we are more famous than Him" (1966)".
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.

TANCREDO NEVES
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before being made President, then he died.

CAZUZA
During a show in Canecão ( Rio de Janeiro ), whilst smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said: God, that's for you.
I can't even explain how he died.

THE MAN WHO BUILT TITANIC
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be. With an ironic tone he said: "Not even God can sink it"
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic.

MARILYN MONROE
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show. He is a preacher and Evangelist and the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
"I don't need your Jesus"
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment.

BON SCOTT
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:
"Don´t stop me, I´m going down all the way, wow the highway to
hell".
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his vomit.

CAMPINAS/SP IN 2005
In Campinas, a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend. The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter - holding her hand, who was already seated in the car: "MY DAUGHTER, GO WITH GOD AND MAY HE PROTECT YOU",
She responded: ONLY IF HE (GOD) TRAVELS IN THE BOOT, COZ INSIDE HERE IT'S ALREADY FULL"
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died, the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the boot was intact.
The police said there was no way the boot could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the boot was a crate of eggs, none was broken.
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus. Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive. UP JESUS!!!

Andrew Maspiche

- he said, if God is real, let him strike me down with lightning. He died 60 years later of natural causes.

goodguy:
Someone created this topic, made two other posts and since then, we've not heard from her. Isn't that funny?

Not really, it happens in 70% of all the threads here.

goodguy:
Man, you're confusing me. You call yourself a Christian, yet to look for ways to disprove God's existence?
Anyway, Noah's ark has been found by archaeologists.

I'm not looking for ways to disprove God's existence, those already exist. Christians are taught that they should not just blindly believe, but they should educate themselves about God. Christians are also taught to not be bound by one persons interpretation of the Bible, but to discover and learn what it really means. So, I'm not bound by the teachings of my church, denomination, convention, etc. Instead, I seek the truth.