₦airaland Forum

frosbel: Listen brother , I know deeper life very well, they hold unto church doctrine just like the catholic church and no one is allowed to challenge their doctrines because they are all supposedly bible doctrines and therefore infallible , even though a thousand other denominations can also make the same claim.

Judges 11
30 And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,

31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

32 So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands.

34 And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back.

36 And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.

37 And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows.

38 And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains.

39 And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel,

40 That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.

MacDaddy01: . . . she can use her money to tithe or her share of the joint account to tithe.


However, if she tithes with my own share of the money, we will have to have the talk!

plaetton: What if you are the bread winner of the family?

Faith must be reasonable else it is not valid.
To put it simply, 'to have faith' simply means 'to believe'

Hebrews 11:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

The Babel Fish

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with the nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen it to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Douglas Adams
The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe

Uyi Iredia: Are you saying the book is fallible ?

Uyi Iredia: Dawkins never based the book on science.

MacDaddy01: Jesus christ? Hasnt Jayriginal explained himself on this point?

Pastor AIO: God Delusion is not a book of science either. I know you know that but I'm just stating it for emphasis.

Uyi Iredia: Yes, as far as I know the Bible has no errors. Now I would like to see an atheist answer to whether a book like The God Delusion is infallible. Would you be the first to answer ?

Uyi Iredia: I can understand the guy. Some atheist arguments look compelling at first. Particularly if you have not been exposed to them or if you are not a thorough student of the Bible. Upon closer examination of these arguments (particularly the ones relating to Bible contradictions) they fall to pieces.

musKeeto: Provide an alternative, I think. See how we can educate people on everything 'religion' ought to have taught them: how to live as a society, taking care of your neighbor... It should be open to theists too, as long as we do not start with prayers and clapping, Im ok with that.. :-)

MacDaddy01: You tell me? I need ideas

mkmyers45: Names..Names..Names..

Jenwitemi: This is such a lie and you know it. It seems, in your view, that everybody should pick only two sides set up by two different groups based on what their beliefs and non-beliefs are. Absolute crock. Agnostics don't have to follow any of the two groups. That would be intellectually dishonest. Jayriginal, you will never get any more intellectually honest with yourself if you learn to say to yourself, i am not sure. That leaves room for further research and investigation on the subject. The mind is always open and searching not closed up. That is how to learn. It is quite amazing how similar the religionists and atheist are, really. I thought, for a moment, that i was replying to a religious fanatic there.

Jenwitemi: Yes, i did.

Jenwitemi: I'd have to say you are wrong about agnostics by your proclamations here. Agnostics, unlike atheists, do not completely reject the notion of a supreme creator. They are just not sure about it but still keep an open mind about it.

Quite different from atheists who have completely closed up their mind to the possibility of the aforementioned concept. That is how atheists got the label they go around in, no? An agnostic says, "I don't know. I can't say anything conclusive on the existence of a supreme creator because i do not have enough data to utter anything conclusive on the matter but i know that there is something responsible for this existence." An atheist, on the other hand, utters conclusively that there is no such being. He/she has to do that to justify his/her own label as an atheist.

What is an atheist without that which he/she rejects?

Purist: There's this common assumption that atheists are angry at God, or disappointed in a particular church's practices/pastors, or just simply bitter people, etc. It's pretty annoying when some people suddenly feel like psychologists and begin to psychoanalyze you just based on a few sentences you typed or uttered. They always seem so SURE of why exactly you are an unbeliever. They have met "so many others like you"; heck, they were even "ONCE like you"! While some atheists certainly do give these impressions, it is definitely not representative of the views of the vast majority. As has been mentioned repeatedly on this forum, people reject religion and God for various reasons. Why don't people get this?

Don't tell atheists what they think; let them tell you what they think.

The single greatest and most common mistake theists make in dialoguing with atheists, in my experience, is to attempt to present the atheist viewpoint themselves and then argue against it. The problem with this is that relatively few theists can accurately depict the atheist viewpoint, and when they try, they often end up presenting nothing but the same old false stereotypes - atheists are nihilists, atheists have no purpose in life, atheists just want to be free of moral restraint, atheists are angry or arrogant, and so on - which are common in apologetic literature, but which do not represent the true beliefs of the vast majority of atheists. The result is that the theist goes to some effort only to set up and then knock down a straw man, while the atheist's actual position remains untouched. This brings the atheist no closer to converting. If anything, it is far more likely to produce annoyance at the one who would presume to speak for atheists without understanding their views, and make a conversion even less likely.

To evangelistic theists, my best advice is this: Don't rely on books written by other theists to tell you what atheists think. Don't even rely on books written by theists who claim they are ex-atheists. Most such books, based on the ones I have read, cannot be trusted to accurately convey the atheist viewpoint. If you want to learn about a position, there is no substitute for asking people who actually hold that position. If you want to have a productive dialog with an atheist, be sure to assume as little as possible, and whenever it is practical ask them what they think, rather than presuming.

ayobase: and the cast are .....
-God as Pilot.
-Jesus as Co-pilot.
-Passengers as people across the globe.
-Terrorist- Satan.
-Those with parachutes- the believers.
-Those without- the unblievers.

Delafruita: it depends on the idea of "god".agnostics dont believe in the god potrayed by the major religion,but many a time,they are open to an idea of a deity or a religion that goes along with their idea of what a god should be.an agnostic would be more open to the idea of partaking in a religious festival irrespective of the god or deity been worshipped than an atheist

Beretta92: my major problem with d xtian god is his absolute indifference 2 d plight of man whom he supposedly loves so much.

truthislight: repent means to regret of doing things that are bad to one self/others/God and to stop doing them deliberately in the future.

Complete turn around from ones former course of conduct.

What would convince an atheist that a religion is true?

In several years of debating atheism and theism, I have made an observation. Ask any believer what would convince him he was mistaken and persuade him to leave his religion and become an atheist, and if you get a response, it will almost invariably be, "Nothing - I have faith in my god." Although such people may well exist, I personally have yet to meet a theist who would acknowledge even the possibility that his belief was in error. Many theists, by their own admission, structure their beliefs so that no evidence could possibly disprove them. In short, they are closed-minded, and have been taught to be closed-minded. (For more on this, see "Thoughts in Captivity".)

In light of this, it is ironic that atheists are often accused of being the closed-minded ones. Fundamentalist proselytizers very frequently claim that we are hard-hearted, that we are dogmatic and irrational, that we reject God based on preconceived bias, and so on. Such claims result from psychological projection. Incapable of coping with the fact that there are some people who genuinely do not believe in their god, these theists simply deny that such people exist, and instead insist that everyone thinks the same way they do. Therefore, people who reach different conclusions than them must have some secret ulterior motive for not believing. This is truly ridiculous, but unfortunately, some people really believe it.

Thus, in the spirit of proving that atheists' minds are not closed, I've assembled below a list of everything I can think of that I would accept as proof that a given religion is true. Also included are things that I would accept as circumstantial evidence of a particular religion's truth and things that would not be acceptable to me as proof of anything. While I do not claim to speak for all atheists, I would confidently say that any religion that could produce one of the things from the first list would probably gain a great number of converts.

The first category deals with things that would absolutely convince me of the truth of a particular religion. If shown any of these, I would convert on the spot.

Verified, specific prophecies that couldn't have been contrived.
If the Bible, for example, said, "On the first day of the first month in the year two thousand and ten, the pillars of the earth will shake and a great part of the New World will be lost to the sea," and then January 1, 2010 comes and a tremendous earthquake sends California to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, I would become a believer. No points are awarded under any of the following conditions:

If the prophecy is vague, unclear or garbled (like Nostradamus' ramblings, for example). It must be detailed, specific and unambiguous in its prediction and wording.

If the prophecy is trivial. Anyone could predict that it will be cold next winter, or that this drought/plague/flood will eventually subside. The prophecy must predict something surprising, unlikely or unique.

If the prophecy is obviously contrived for other reasons. No official seer or court astrologer ever predicted that the king he worked for would be a brutal, evil tyrant who would ruin the country.

If the prophecy is self-fulfilling; i.e., if the mere fact of the prophecy's existence could cause people to make it come true. The Jewish people returned to their homeland in Israel just as the Bible said they would, but this isn't a genuine prediction - they did it because the Bible said they would. The predicted event can't be one that people could stage.

If the prophecy predicts an event that already happened and the writing of the prophecy itself can't be shown to have preceded the event.

If the prophecy predicts an event that already happened and the happening of that event can't be verified by independent evidence. For example, Christian apologists claim that Jesus fulfilled many Old Testament prophecies, but the authors of the New Testament obviously had access to those prophecies also; what would have prevented them from writing their story to conform to them? The extra-biblical evidence for the existence of Jesus is so scanty that it is impossible to disprove such a proposal.

And finally, if the prophecy is the lone success among a thousand failures. Anyone can throw prophecies against the wall until one sticks. The book or other source from which it comes must have at least a decently good record on other predictions.

These conditions, I think, are eminently reasonable, and are only what would be expected of a true prophet with a genuine gift.


Scientific knowledge in holy books that wasn't available at the time.
If the Bible (or any other religious text) contained some piece of knowledge that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known but that is now known to be true, that would be highly convincing to me. A passage about the atomic theory of matter or the heliocentric solar system would be interesting, but not conclusive, since the Greeks, for example, proposed those ideas long ago independent of any claim to divine revelation. A mention of the theory of evolution would have been impressive. A reference to the germ theory of disease, or the laws of electromagnetics, would have been compelling. But what would be indisputable proof would be an elucidation of a truly modern theory of physics, such as relativity or quantum mechanics - not just something that the people of the time couldn't possibly have known of, but something so counter-intuitive that the odds against guessing at it correctly would be staggering. Just think: What if Jesus had said something like this?

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee that thine energy is as thine mass times the speed of light multiplied unto itself."

Of course people of the time would have been baffled, but just imagine how many souls it would have saved today. As with the prophecy item, there must be independent verification that the piece of knowledge was written in texts that existed well before it was actually discovered by science.

Miraculous occurrences, especially if brought about through prayer.
If cities condemned as sinful by preachers tended to explode in flames for no apparent reason, if glowing auras of holy light sometimes appeared around believers to protect them from harm, or if atheists and only atheists were regularly struck by lightning, this would be compelling proof. But it wouldn't have to be so dramatic; even minor but objectively verifiable miracles would do, especially if they could be invoked by prayer. If a hospital did a double-blind study to determine if intercessory prayer helps the sick, and it was discovered that only the patients prayed for by members of a certain religion experienced a dramatic, statistically significant increase in recovery rate, and this result could be repeated and confirmed, I would convert. This one shouldn't be so hard, especially for the Christians - after all, Jesus told them that they would be able to work miracles through prayer!

Any direct manifestation of the divine.
I'm not that hard to convert; I'll be happy to believe in God if he tells me to in person, as long as he does it in such a way that I could be sure that it was not a hallucination (for example, in the presence of multiple reliable witnesses, none of which are in a highly emotional or otherwise altered state). Where are the voices speaking out of burning bushes, or out of thin air when people get baptized? In Old Testament times, Moses saw God so often that he knew him on a first-name basis. Why doesn't this happen any more today?

Aliens who believed in the exact same religion.
And one more, though this one is just a bit off the wall. If humanity was to contact an extraterrestrial civilization, and if said extraterrestrials had a religion that was exactly like some religion on Earth, I would become a believer. (Though it would raise some interesting theological problems for Christians. Does Jesus have to travel to every planet in the universe individually, dying and being resurrected on each one?)


The second category deals with things that would not be conclusive, but that would count as circumstantial evidence. Show me one of these and I might not convert right away, but your religion will look a lot better to me.

A genuinely flawless and consistent holy book.
True inerrancy is, so to speak, the holy grail of theism. Almost every religion claims their scripture is perfect, but none that I know of have actually met this exacting standard; I have yet to read a holy text entirely without error or self-contradiction. A book that was free of such problems would be circumstantial evidence in favor of the religion that possessed it, but not compelling, since this is still explicable as the result of purely human forces.

A religion without internal disputes or factions.
It seems reasonable to expect that, if there existed a god that was interested in revealing itself to humanity and desired that we follow its commands, that god would write down whatever instructions it had to give us in a way that was only amenable to one interpretation. Thus, if a religion was true, we might expect that no factions or sects would form within it and all members of that religion would speak with one voice regarding ethical and theological issues. Why the alternative scenario should ever hold for an inspired religion is not clear. Did God intend to communicate his message clearly but failed to do so? However, since this could still be the result of human influence, it would only be circumstantial, not conclusive, evidence in favor of a given religion's truth.

A religion whose followers have never committed or taken part in atrocities.
If a given religion's sacred text consistently promotes peace, compassion and nonviolence, and if that religion's history reflects that fact, that religion would look much more attractive to me. Historically, almost every religion that has ever had the power to do so has persecuted those who believed differently, and I do not think it likely that a morally good deity would allow his chosen faith's good name to be smeared by evil and fallible humans.

A religion that had a consistent record of winning its jihads and holy wars.
Strangely, none do. One can only wonder why.


The final category deals with things that would not convince me; none of the following would persuade me to rethink my position. To date, all the evidence I have ever seen presented for any religion falls into this category.

Speaking in tongues or other pseudo-miracles.
To convince me, a miracle would have to be genuine, verifiable, and represent a real and inexplicable divergence from the ordinary. Anything that can be explained by peer pressure, the power of suggestion or the placebo effect does not count. Favorable coincidences or kind or courageous acts performed by human beings also do not meet this standard. (This post clearly illuminates the difference: "Biblical miracles aren't about accidents and people saying 'Whew, that was close.' Biblical miracles are people raising their hands and telling something impossible to happen, and it happens." ) Seeing the Virgin Mary in a water stain or Mother Teresa in a piece of pastry is not impressive. Nor is glossolalia, not even if it really sounds like a language. And faith healing, or people being "slain in the Spirit" and toppling over, owes more to showmanship and the placebo effect used on eager-to-please individuals that have been worked up into highly excitable, suggestible states. (Now, if faith healers could restore severed limbs...)

People's conversion stories.
I'm not interested in the testimonials of people who converted to a religion, not even if they used to be atheists. Everyone has moments of weakness in which emotion overrides logic. Instead of telling me how fast a religion is growing, how much of a difference it's made in people's lives, or how devoted its converts are, let those converts explain what logic and evidence persuaded them to join in the first place. If they can't do this, their stories will not affect me. After all, for obvious reasons, atheists are almost never the sort of people who go along with the crowd.

Any subjective experience.
Saying "I know God exists because I can feel him in my heart" or something similar will not affect me. Most arguments of this sort rest on the assumption that a person cannot have a completely convincing subjective experience and be mistaken regarding its cause, but a look at the diversity of world religions easily disproves this. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists - members of all faiths claim to have had convincing subjective experiences of the truth of that faith. Obviously, they cannot all be right. Why should an atheist accept any one of these testimonies as more valid than any other?

The Bible Code or similar numerological feats.
Using the same algorithms employed by the Bible Code numerologists, skeptics have been able to find assassinations and other historical events "predicted" in Moby Dick, War and Peace and other works of fiction that don't claim divine inspiration, so don't expect it to impress me.

Creationism of any sort.
I'm thoroughly familiar with the pseudoscience practiced by advocates of "scientific creationism" or "intelligent design". If you attempt to prove God's existence to me by listing the evidence for a young earth, more likely than not you'll be disappointed. (Though I'm always happy to debate the merits of evolution.)