₦airaland Forum

@ sexkills:
What a terrible disease you have.  What a terrible burden you carry trying to prove to YOURSELF that your god is real. Good luck. If you succeed, we might learn something.

Cont:
And that is clearly what has happened with religious faith. Nothing good has ever come out of it. What cure for any disease has ever come out of a  church chapel or mosque, what great ideals of freedom and human dignity has ever come out of a religious alther? what luxuries that we enjoy today and take for granted came out of a religious vision or revelation?
Jesus supposedly cured many, perhaps hundreds of lepers, but Dr. James Lind gave humanity a permanent cure for leprosy in 1753 that has not only cured millions of people but has wiped out the disease entirely(except for Nija). Jesus supposedly made the lame to walk, but Dr Jonas Sulk formulated the polio vaccine in 1952 that has almost ridden humanity of polio and its resulting effect of lameness.
Religious faith has only left us  with legacies of hatred, wars, genocides and the exploitation of the weak.
So, if I , and others choose to cast our lot with REASON, why should that antagonise you so-called people of faith?

@davidylan and sexkills: So you believe in god as the creator and heaven and earth and you have a personal relationship with god? . As far as I am concerned, that is great for you. That would never stop me from loving you as my neighbor.  You should be basking in the esctasy and uphoria of your faith. The strenght of your faith and closeness to god should make you a shinning light among others.
However , the fact the two of you spend a lot time to fight and defend the vearcity of your faith, says a lot about you and a lot about the very faith that you defend so much. It clearly shows that YOU, yes YOU, have some subconscious doubts about your faith and beliefs, otherwise you would not need to come out shooting cannonballs each time some nobodies like us criticize your beliefs. If you are actualy strong in your faith, why would you need to defend it at all? It does not make sense to me. Your faith is yours. It's in your mind, its how you feel, it's subjective and it is safe to dwell within you. That should be sufficient for you. But your faith has no reality outside of your head. If every person of faith understands that , then the world would be a much better place for everyone.
When faith makes a leap out of your mind into physical reality,It becomes a weapon of exploitation and destruction.When you and your types use faith to confer authority on yourselves over others for the purpose of exploiting them , for exampl,e by picking their pockets or defiling the backsides of young boys , then the  usefullness and veracity of faith opens itself up for  skeptical analysis. and scrutiny.

alaper:
It gives one an insight into a unique aspect of human behaviour. Have you noticed that the more irrational a belief is, the more passionate the believer holds on to it? And the more vicious they are in its defence!! They literarily have to recite it to themselves everyday in order to keep their belief. "I believe in one god the father almighty. Maker of heaven and earth. bla bla bla bla" You don't do that if the idea is real. No scientist wakes up in the morning saying "I believe in gravity, and Isaac Newton is its prophet! I believe what goes up must come down! It is only an idea that does not make sense that you have to do that. Another aspect of human behaviour is the vemon they use in the defence of the belief when challenged. It is as if you are hitting a sore point in their being, even if your point is obvious. They may just decide to hate you, abuse you, some may injure you if you are near them. In the extreme, they kill. Christians did it a few centuries ago when they had secular power, muslims are doing it now. You don't see a scientist being that vicious in the defence of his scientific idea!!! But if the idea is a religious belief, people are ready to kill for it.

Beautifully said. I cold not have said better myself.
And that is problem with religion. It is like a virus that attaches itself to some unknown part of the central nervous system and then defends itself against imunization and ati-viral remedies. LOL.

I have repeated myself so many times. I am tired. These people are deaf.Atheism(dont mind the ism) is neither a  belief nor a philosphy, so asking what it is based on is silly (sorry to say that).
I think atheism is about taking a norman rational and sceptic aproach at the religous narrative as espoused by the multitudes of the competing religious bodies. Besides not believing in god, I also dont believe that 1+1+1=1, I aslo dont beleive that you can turn N1m into N10m in one month with any legitimate business, I also dont believe in Mami water, I dont believe that the earth is the center of the universe, I dont believe that witches and wizards are the causes sickness and death .etc. etc.
Sceptism is part and parcel of our mental make up. We employ sceptism in our business dealings, in our dealings with both friends and foes, in our personal and family lives. when sceptism is deployed to dissect ancient  religious myths, then we are called atheist. It is not a unique or peculiar philosophical system. It is just asking: what? who? when? and how? , something both you and I do countless times everyday in other aspects of our lives.   Do you need to be labeled with an ism when you ask those questions? No.
I dont see how by saying that one does not believe your religious narrative, that makes the person stupid, a sinner, shallow and spiritually empty.

If religous belief was so good and fulfilling, I sincerely believe that you and others like you would  spend more time refining and perfecting the grosser and primitive aspects of your human self and making your soul worthy of the grace of your god , rather than to spend your time,seeking, attacking and castigating those that do not share you beliefs.
I pity all of you. I am so glad that am free from religious bondage., therefore I have nothing, absolutely nothing ,to prove to anyone.
But if am wrong, on judgement day, I am very confident that god will be sensible enough to ask me " my son WHAT HAS THOU  DONE ON EARTH?, rather than"WHAT HAS THOU BELIEVED ON EARTH?
Even with my unbeliefe, I am sure I  would still make it to paradise ahead of the the tens of thousands of neurotic priest who f, k young boys in the ass in the name of god, I would make it to heaven ahead of the tens of thousands of parasitic locust pastors who pick the pockets of the gullible poor everyday in the name of god, I would sail to heaven ahead of the evil fanatic moslems who kill and maim everyday in the name of god.


NB: @davidylan: You did not answer my earlier question. It is really a sincere question and is not meant to mock or disparage you. I would appreciate an answer.

davidylan: Lets change the tempo of this debate. instead firing cannonballs at each other, I want to see what I can learn from you. You are obviously a christian and I suspect a pastor or priest. I want to ask some honest questions and I seek simple honest answers.

In the his teachings, Jesus emphasized the importance of good deeds like like kindness, self sacrifice for the good of others, and virtues like meekness, unconditional love, forgiveness, perseverance etc. as a simple path to spritual regeneration and ultimate union with god. Right?
later, apostle paul and others after him stressed the importance in the belief of Jesus as the son of god. Right
Martin Luther, the reformer proclaimed that strong faith wa sthe only pre-requisite for spriritual salvation.
Ofcourse for most of humanity, having a strong belief and faith is much easier than following the advice of Jesus regarding personal conduct and responsibility.
My question to you is: If am very strong in faith but have vices or lack any strong personal virtues ,and you, on the other hand, are very week in faith but have very strong measurable personal virtues, who amonst us is most likely to go to heaven or hell during judgment by god?

And I guess you are spiritually clothed because you believe in 6 days(24hrs each) of creation? the creation of day and night before the creation of the sun and moon? the creation dumb animals for man's dominion and then the appearance of the talking snake?
You are spiritually clothed because you believe all this ? wow.
You have exposed your nyash. You have leaped from creation to write about another person's spiritual emptiness. What a cop out. Well , spiritual blackmail has has always been the universal currency of churchmen. Churchmen do not have claim to spiritual superiority or purity. that claim is by far the biggest fraud ever sold. that is what you are just trying to sell at this monent.Actaully , it is the spiritual emptiness in you that lashes out at people who repudiate your cosy little fairy tales. Truth needs no elaborate defence. Truth needs no embelishments. When I see people like you lashing out, I understand wat you are going through and wat you are trying to defend:
Your own taylor-made truth.

@ davidylan: I wrote that I was sceptical and suspicious of religion from abt the age of 7. That healthy sceptism fed my lifelong interest in religion.
If you see scientific logic and deduction as metaphysics, then no problem. But its is very very laughable. It's deja vu all over gain. Science has always been labeled as witchcraft , metaphysicst, occult magic, etc by church men of yore, so am shocked that people like u still hold such antiquated views.
Do you know that every leap in scientific knowledge started out as great heresies? Yes.
When the Wright Brothers were pioneering air flight, the religious establishment at the time sounded their opposition by citing that " If god wanted us to fly in the air like birds, he would have given us wings to do so". Just imagine if humanity had headed that warning from churchmen. Just imagine.
So, I gladly cast my lot with this metaphysics that you refer to.

davidylan:
lol all these brain-dead non-scientists spouting about their love for "science" . . . u know that part that provides them with a tenuous faith that God doesnt exist. I'm a scientist in real life, what part of science do you know?

@davidyna: I do not need any specialized scientific knowlegde to repudiate the Judeo-Christian myths of creation and devinity. I was sceptical and suspicious of religion from the age of 7 and I searched and asked questions in vain for anything tangible and common sense to sustain my belief and fear of this god up until the age of 16 when I finally divorced myself from religious faith and then threw them in the garbage.
I have never said that god does not exist. That would be equally dogmatic. God exist for those that believe it. What I and others have been arguing is that those that believe in the existence of god do so merely on blind faith because there has been no evidence provided to back up that belief. Historically, every society moulds and fashions their various gods according their traditions, needs, fears and their prejudices .That , for me, is sufficient evidence that the idea of god originates from the mind.
That' is why each religious sect has it's own flavour depending on the mindset of its founder.
Going to church in Nigeria, I notice that kind and compassionate preachers will preach about the love and compassion of god, wicked and hateful preachers will preach about damnation and the wrath of god, manipulative preachers will preach about how the devil is coming to get u unless you do this or that, greedy preachers will preach about how god needs your money in order to shower you with blessings.
I say with great conviction that god is a creation of the the mind.
It is you who has something to prove.
If however, in the years to come, scientific evidence leads us back to the garden of eden, then so be it. I , for one, will be very happy to see the fruit of the long search for god.

The main difference with you and I, between atheist and theist ,is that we prefer to arrive at god's doorstep via scientific logic and deduction rather than by the convoluted and schitzophrenic logic of blind faith.
Need I say any more?

@davidylan: And let me point out to you, that athiesm is not about belief in evolution or in whatever way humans and the universe emerged. Their are thousands of scientist in various deciplines exploring and asking questions about human origins and the emergence of the universe itself.
As an athiest or watever u want to call me, I just prefer the theory of evolution(deduced by scientific logic) as a MORE PLAUSIBLE explanation of the origins of life than story told by unknown stone age nomads who did not know about atoms nor did they know that germs were the causes of disease. It is just a preference. You prefer to listen to and accept the words of the unanimous ghost writers of Genesis and I prefer modern scientific  logic. Can it get any simpler than that?
NB: And by way, the book of Genesis is just a plagerised and abreviated version of a much older and much broader Babylonian creation epic called the Enuma Elish. This ancient Mesopotamian text predates the bible by thousands of years. The translated versions are  available at bookstores or you can order it from Amazon.
The ancient Hebrews studied and copied from this book and others  when they were exiled in Babylon around 650BC. That was when the old testament books were compiled. All that the hebrew priests  had tp do was to simply substitute the Babylonian Deities Marduk and Nebu  with their own god Yahweh, and bingo, you have the infallible word of god.  

Actually, the Babylonian tales seem to make more sense because it explains all the contradictions in genesis. The Babylonian myth explain that there were multiple  groups of gods and that they created man as a slave race to tend to their needs.(let US create man in OUR IMAGE AND LIKENESS).  
Just google Enuma Elish, Attra Hasis and Arra Apos or Erra Epos
to learn.
I'm not trying to convert you or change your mind, but to show you some facts about the origins of  the beliefs you hold so tightly or should I say, hold you so tightly.

Almost every book in the old testament ,especially, genesis, Job, Psalms and proverbs were plagerised from both Egyptian and Babylonian sources. I have found the lord's prayer in an Egytian Hymn to RA that predates Chritianity by at least 6,000 yrs. The entire proverbs is to be found in a the Egyptian book of the dead , titled the precepts of PTAH-HOTEP written and compliled about 6000 to 10000 yrs ago. Ptah was the first and supreme Egyptian god. He was refered to as the father. It is from the word Ptah that we get the name Peter and the order of the fathers. In essence, the roman fathers(catholic priests) are in actuall fact,  priests of Ptah, the god most high.Getting my drift?
The books of Job, Issaih, Ezekeil and revelation have been found to have been each written by several different authors during different eras.
These are historical facts that anyone can easily verify.
Happy reading.

You sound like the person that time forgot. You seem to have a big problem with science. In this age? Sorry. Science is bad for your business. The busines of forcing stone age myths down the minds of people, intimidating with fear of god, and then pick their pockets. That's what it has always been about. The pocket, the wallet, the money.

These religious people really have no case to present. They are just here to vent their anger and hate for people who do not share the belief in their stone age fairy tales. They are just here to lash out. You can see it in their choice of words. They never offer any rebuttals to point raised by the other side nor offer anything to buttress their tighlty held beliefs.
Pls Pls pls. Hold on tight to your beliefs if it is what makes and defines your personality. We non-beleivers have no problems with that. Its only when you expect everyone to smoke your opium and bask in your delusions that we fight back with simple questions like: what?who? how? and when? And for two thousand years now, blind faith religion is yet to offer any coherent answer?
You need to get your story straight. You have been editing and redacting (the supposed word of the infallible god)that same story for 1700 yrs now and you have not gotten it straight. An orange tree cannot yield a mango fruit. Truth cannot emanate from something that is fraudulently contrived. To we non-beleivers, it comes as no surprise that there are more than 1000 sects, denominations and versions of this so-called truth, with each one claiming the supremacy of it's own truth over all others. What a monsterosity.

I prefer to put my faith in Observation, experimentation and analysis than on the tales by moonlight of some tent-dwelling semi-neantherthals some four thousand years ago.

If your relationship with your god makes you a better citizen of humanity, then that is great for you and for humanity.

and which is your god? Ra, Ahura mazda, Amadiora, Kamalu, Shango or Ogun?

I can see that your heart is already filled with hate. I wonder if this forum is about healthy debates or about venting hate to people who dont share your beliefs.
You have written zero to buttress your beliefs. I 'm eager to learn too

Narrowmindedness is locking myself inside a dark closet and believing that to be the beginning and end of the universe. Soon, I begin to see images and forms inside the closet, and  then  I  begin interpret the images and forms in the dark closet to suit my imaginations. Soon, I would forget that the closet is just a small part of a room which is a small part of a house, which is a small part of a street, which is small part of a town or city and which is a small part of a state or province and so on and so forth.

Indoctrinated in what? You keep saying that. If the conviction that 1+1+1=3 is indoctrination, Then I PLEAD GUILTY as charged.
I dont know why you people choose this debate if you have nothing to offer but derogatory remarks.

Let me give you another analogy: if I come to you and ask you to invest N1m of your money with me and I promise to increase it to ten million naira in one month, what would be your natural response? let me answer for you, you be sceptical because you know that it almost imposible to turn N1m into N10m in a month. You would suspect fraud and you at least demend to know How I'm going to do it and proof that I have done it before. ABI? But If I tell you that you dont need proof , all that you need is to look at the expensive clothes and jewelry am wearing as proof then have faith in me, would any of you posters have over your hard earned N1m to me on blind faith? If your answer is no, then we have something in common: HEALTHY SCEPTISM. The only diffeence is that when it comes to religion, your defences are easily broken because, like most humans, you need something to believe.

You guys are hilarious. I dont hold any beliefs. Let me give you another example. when i was in form science class, we were told that matter exists in three states namely solid, liquid and gas. Today, more than 30 yrs later, other states of matter have been discovered such as plasma and other sub-atomic states. So we know know that matter in many more states than we originally knew. So we have upgraded our thinking to the new knowledge. PLS WAT IS WRONG WITH THAT?
Honestly , religious belief remains very big mystery to me.

Interestingly, you are today using ur computer( a product of science) to voice out ur distrust of scientific rationality. Do you know who the designers of and how the microprocessors in your pc are designed and how they work to perform the billions of calculation sper second that help you do all that fancy stuff on ur pc? I  bet you dont know. But you have  enough faith in the abiliy of the pc to do these things for you. That's because others had already devoted their intellect to do that work for you, and so u have faith in those that did it. right?
Science and knowledge are  growing and evolving(thanks to the imasculation of religion over the past two centuries). Wat we dont know today, we may get to know tomorrow or in the next 100 yrs.
Science(emperical thinking) has NEVER EVER claimed absolute knowledge of anything.
Let me quote again wat a great man once said: " It is always best to start from a position of doubt to arrive at certainty than to start from a position of certainty and then arrive at doubts".
That says it all. Am just trying to point out how and what atheist think. Unlike theist and religious people, I am not trying to convince anyone of anything.
Who am I to tell you how good or bad your opium taste? You are the one smoking it, so you are very free to bask in whatever illusions or delusions that your opium creates for you. Just try not to hate others who don't share it with you.

We all that the presence of clouds, air temperature, atmospheric pressure and wind direction will determine when its going to rain, where it's going to rain, how much rain and the intensity of the rainfall. We can now calculate and predict weather with great accuracy because we collate observable data to make such predictions. Now ,if on the other hand someone tell me that god or some invisible spirit is going to make the rain to fall tomorrow, I will first of all laugh at that person before I ask for proof of that claim.

For the millionth time., atheism is not about ANY BELEIF. There are no beliefs. We have nothing to prove simply because there is nothing to prove. Atheists , like scientist, simply ask common sense questions such as : what? who? when? how?and says " show me the evidence". Athiest just exhibit what should come natural to all thinking humans: a healthy sceptism and suspicion of claims and asertions that cannot  be proven or verified.  An athiest is a free person who is not burdened or held hostage by any dogmatic belief. There is no rigidly held opinion or belief.

Canada is very liberal  on such matters . Their main concern is  usually about infested dryfish. Once the quantity is small and neatly packed, you should have no problems. I assure you.

If this is all the food stuffs you are bringing to Canada, then you should have no problems as long as you declare them on your form as edible dry spices . However, my bigger question is why would you be bringing such items to Canada from Malaysia? There are plenty of African food stores  in major cities in Canada selling everything you'll typically find in any Nigerian market.
Depending on whether this is your first time to Canada or not, the fact that you are Nigerian  coming from Malaysia( a known drug route) will ensure that they are going to ask you plenty of questions and search  you and all your luggages very thoroughly.

Thank you bro Deji for your insight. As you can see , there is a dearth of intelligence in our land. There is a funny joke that" If you want to hide something from a blackman, simply hide it in a book because black people don't read books". You cannot blame them much, we dont have many public libraries in our cities and towns. Our bookshops only sell religious literature, so there is almost nothing to properly educate our people except for the Bull crap they watch on Corporate owned media.
150 million Nigerians will gladly welcome a Gaddafi to come and rule us for the next 50 yrs. Some posters are talking abt Libyan people not having freedom.Freedom?. What freedom do you enjoy in Nigeria? Pity for the people of Libya. They are about to enter the season of the locust.

In a letter(still on public display)King Leopold of Belgium Instructed Belgian missionaries In the Congo to "Discredit and destroy their heroes so that they(Africans) may have no heroes to look up to  except you as their heroes and saviours".
What we are seeing is a mad rush for oil reserves. What does Libya, Iraq, Iran and Venezuela all have in common? OIL. And their crimes? They all want to manage their own oil reserves. Iraq has fallen in line, Libya is about to fall in line. watch out for Iran and venezuella in the coming years.
It is really that simple. Anyone that does not understand the game is just a simpleton.

Abt 10yrs ago, a bunch of fools told us that they were going to buy NITEL for $1.5 billion. I laughed till I could laugh no more. I had wondered what they were smoking to think that NITEL was worth any penny. Those fools deposited $100 million of borrowed money and later had to forfiet that deposit because they could not find any insane banker in the world willing to invest $1.5 billion in that peice of shi.t. Till today, we are still looking for someone to take Nitel for just $400 million, but no takers. Nitel has a negative networth, The Fg has to pay someone to manage Nitel for at least 15yrs before it can consider selling to for a penny. That is the fact.

Today, you Nairalanders are throwing $100 billion as if it was small change. With all due respect, I think most of you are quite ignorant.  No one will be taking such a big risk by paying even $1 billion cash for Phcn. To say that PHCN is worht $100 billion is pure ridiculous fantasy. Let me give you some examples below of what some of the worlds biggest and most profitable coampnies are worth by market capitalisation

DEUTSCH BANK- ANNUAL REVENUE= $44 BILLION - MARKET VALUE  $52 BILLION
DEUTSCH TELECOM- REV.= $72b , market value $83b
HSBC- rev=$200b, market value =$80b
China mobile- rev=$200b, market value = $73b
Nokia- rev=$120b, market value=$53b
Intel- rev=$109b, market value =$43b
France Telecomm - rev=$88b, market value =$60b
Unilever - rev=$101b, maket value = $59b
Tokyo electric power - rev= $36b, market value =$53b
Iran National oil campany - market value =$55b
Glaxo SmithKline - Rev=$100b, market value =$46b

and so on and so forth.  each of  the above listed companies  have net profits of $2 billion per annum or more.Can anyone tell me or guess Phcn's  revenue and profit? To say that PHCN is worth $100 billion is to say that PHCN  has more  value than :
Diambler Benz, Volkswagen, Ford motor comapnay, Lg electronics, Honda motor company, Conoco Phillips, Sony, Siemens, Vorizon,Panasonic, Goldman Sachs , etc. PURE NONSENSE.
The argument that controlling a nation's power supply is more than just money is a load of crap. Generating and selling power is a for-profit business, pure and simple.
With $100 billion, Anyone can build brand new complete power generating and distribution systems for at least 20 African countries from scratch. LETS STOP DELUDING OURSELVES.

Hello, Can you prepare and package snail for export (air cargo)?. If you can, we might be able to do business.

$100 billion??
Ha ha ha. Dream on. That would Phcn among the top 30 most valuable companies in the world? No way. It must be a misprint or a gross exageration. We Nigerians love to exagerate , especially when it comes to money. For any Foriegn buyer, Phcn is not worth more than $4-$5 billion, no matter how  much our government says they have invested on it with their ten-fold inflated contracts.

There is no point arguing with sexkills. Here are my observations about sexkills:

1. He or she(most likely a she) is actaully quite intelligent
2. He or she is  definitely not a Bible-thumping nut
3. He or she is probably an Atheist or at best, a free thinker or an Agnostic.
4. He or she is targeting Atheist for debate cos he or she knows that attheist will offer the most reasonable, most robust and most logical arguements to complex issues.
5. He or she makes no attempt to anser any questions but only provoke more logical explanations to His/her questions.

Lets take pity  and stop insulting him/her. The poor thing is out to learn just like all of us.

@sexkills:
If science cannot answer what existed  before the big bang , its because science doesn't yet know the answer. there are no instant answers in science. The Big Hedron Collider in Switzerland is an attempt to understand the events that let to the big ban.g. that is science: always searching.
And let me  ask you: In your God theory, what existed before God? You see? No one knows. But we must ever keep serching.

I have nothing to prove dont owe you an explanation. Many intelligent people have  tried to educate(not convert you) you on this forum in simple language ,but ur mind is captive to religiuos dogma. If you did  not study simple bilogy in school, thats too bad.
The only conviction I have  is that religion was mistake by early man which later evolved into a big fraud and which today has evolved into a form of mental illness.

[

sexkillz:
YEAH BRO! MISSED ME? HAVE YOU TRIED PREPARING THAT SOUP? DID YOU GET LIFE? . . . . . . . . . .SOUP MY SYNCHRONIZED ARSE!!!

yeah give me  about 4 billion years.

And let me ask you a question xkills; It is written that your creator said let their be light and their was light and then he dived the day into day and night and on the third day he created the sun and the moon ,right? My question: If there was no Sun and moon on the first two days of creation, then what was the source of the light that divided day and night? Please answer, since you have everything to prove.