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 Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:01am On Sep 29, 2018 |
LordReed:It's ironic, but competition has driven cooperation the most in our history. Those who sought to make us cooperate at all costs (read communism) dragged the world to its knees. At its simplest level, a market system would only exist if you agree with what I have to sell, and I agree with what you are willing to buy it. What's more cooperative than that? It's also instructive that UBI would only have been possible because free market ensures prosperity to the extent that there is so much available that politicians now feel this should be used to subsidize the living conditions of others. Also, when people say capitalist countries are distorted, the question is, compared to who? Singapore, compared to Nigeria? Hong Kong compared to Bolivia? For all the slacks the United States gets for being capitalistic, it attracts the highest number of migrants across the globe. Even Saudi is seeing the merits of diversification. Stubborn countries like China and India dwelt so long in communism/socialism and only began to grow in wealth when they started freeing up their economy. Chairman Mao killed over 40 million people because he forced cooperation on his people. Lastly, capitalism is inherently human. People want to profit from their efforts and would not want to be forced to share their proceeds against their will. What I find interesting about this "capitalism is greed and opportunistic" debate is that the most capitalist countries are the biggest financial donors the world has ever seen. So much for greed, right? 3 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:06pm On Sep 28, 2018 |
Apart from being an atheist, I am a huge fan of capitalism. I have often contemplated opening a thread for my capitalist thoughts and questions...may be I still will. You only have so much time in the day... *sighs Anyways, I saw this somewhere and felt to share. --- Brian-Gabriel Ndubuisi wrote: Long Post Alert � The economics of why drivers are so heartless when you’re stranded. Lagos traffic can be hell! One rainy evening, I was going home from work. I took an Uber because I didn’t have enough cash to take me home on public transport, and i couldn’t use the ATM because I’d get soaked before I got to it... But then half way into the drive, Lagos happened... and everywhere was blocked. When we stood at a spot for over 30 minutes, I knew I had to call it quits... Afterall, I was close enough to home that I could now use the change I had to get home... ...or so I thought. So I walked past the traffic jam to a bus stop 15 minutes away. It was still raining heavily, but I couldn’t care anymore. There, I joined a crowd waiting in the rain to get into a Danfo, so I knew I wasn’t crazy. Then I realized why there was a crowd: apparently the Danfos had doubled their prices. And those in the crowd were boycotting the price hike by refusing to enter the Danfos... On the announcement by the conductor, a woman in the crowd exclaimed “Why are these people so wicked and heartless when we are stranded?!” I smiled in my heart, and my face couldn’t hide the feeling: This, right here, was the beauty of capitalism. I didn’t have enough cash myself to pay for the Danfos, but I was enchanted still. I had witnessed something beautiful and the pain was worth it. So I walked... I walked for another 1 hour 30 minutes before I could get to the point where the money I had could get me home. While I was walking, I was analyzing what had happened. Why was there a hike in prices? Was it really greed and opportunism/wickedness/heartlessness of the Drivers? After much thought, I arrived at the conclusion that it had absolutely nothing to do with these... In fact, those Danfo drivers are human angels, sent by God himself to serve the Lagos masses. So, what had happened? [side 1] You see, during every rush hour, the customers only see one side of the journey, and couldn’t care less about the other side of it. Most Lagosians live outside the business centers. This means that, during morning rush hours, buses go to the center full, and come back empty [**its more complex than this, but for the sake of simplicity]. During evening rush hours, it is reversed - busses go to the center empty, and come back full.[**] But of course, passengers only see the side of the journey when busses are full. But for the bus drivers, the whole journey matters, because he has to use the money he makes during the TO leg or the journey, when his bus is full, to subsidize his FRO leg, when the bus is empty. This is one reason why they charge double. [Side 2] During rush hours, fuel consumption is higher. During the morning rush hours, so many cars are headed to the center, therefore the traffic towards the center is usually heavy. The same goes for the traffic away from the center during evening rush hours. Cars burn a lot more fuel during traffic jams than when the road is free... This is another reason why they would double the price. Of course when it’s raining, or when you’re stranded due to traffic, traffic and fuel consumption also increases dramatically. [Side 3] Incentive. Now this is what some people may tag as greed, but I don’t. Not everybody likes the hustle and bustle of rush hours. Everyone knows that the only thing anyone wants to do at that time is get to their destinations. And if it’s in a rainy night - get home into the softness of their sheets, wrapped in the arms of someone warm... But these Danfo drivers and their Robins have to head back into that hell called Lagos traffic jam to pick up more passengers stranded in town to bring them back home to their loved ones... I say they deserve all the money they make doing that! 7 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:24am On Sep 28, 2018 |
People say I talk about God a lot and it's true. But it's because I speak to believers everyday. If I stopped talking to believers, I doubt I would ever talk, or think, about God again for the rest of my days. God is a non-issue for people who prefer to live in the world we have, rather than a world we imagine. 3 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:26am On Sep 27, 2018 |
HOW RELIGIOUS FOLK ARE INCREDIBLY LUCKY All religious folk are lucky enough to have been born into a family that believes in the only true god and rejects the thousands of fake gods other families believe in. But there is something even more wonderful. Because your family believe in the true god, you can be sure of your place in heaven for eternity. That is unbelievably lucky! Just imagine how awful it would be if you couldn't rely on your parents believing in the true god. You would have to doubt your parents' god and compare it with other families' gods--you would have to study and look for evidence and really THINK about it. You might even end up discovering none of the gods are believable! What a horrible thought. Thank goodness no one has to do that. 10 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:15am On Sep 27, 2018 |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:03am On Sep 26, 2018 |
"Of all rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it. If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf. Once you suffer for a story, it is usually enough to convince you that the story is real. If you fast because God commanded you to do so, the tangible feeling of hunger makes God present more than any statue or icon. If you lose your legs in a patriotic war, your stumps and wheelchair make the nation more real than any poem or anthem. On a less grandiose level, by preferring to buy inferior local pasta to imported high-quality Italian pasta you might make a small daily sacrifice that makes the nation feel real even in the supermarket. This is of course a logical fallacy. If you suffer because of your belief in God or in the nation, that does not prove that your beliefs are true. Maybe you are just paying the price of your gullibility? However, most people don’t like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes. This is the mysterious alchemy of sacrifice. In order to bring us under his power, the sacrificing priest need not give us anything – neither rain, nor money, nor victory in war. Rather, he needs to take away something. Once he convinces us to make some painful sacrifice, we are trapped. It works in the commercial world, too. If you buy a second-hand Fiat for $2,000, you are likely to complain about it to anyone willing to hear. But if you buy a brand-new Ferrari for $200,000, you will sing its praises far and wide, not because it is such a good car, but because you have paid so much money for it that you must believe it is the most wonderful thing in the world. Even in romance, any aspiring Romeo or Werther knows that without sacrifice, there is no true love. The sacrifice is not just a way to convince your lover that you are serious – it is also a way to convince yourself that you are really in love. Why do you think women ask their lovers to bring them diamond rings? Once the lover makes such a huge financial sacrifice, he must convince himself that it was for a worthy cause. Self-sacrifice is extremely persuasive not just for the martyrs themselves, but also for the bystanders. Few gods, nations or revolutions can sustain themselves without martyrs. If you presume to question the divine drama, the nationalist myth or the revolutionary saga, you are immediately scolded: ‘But the blessed martyrs died for this! Do you dare say that they died for nothing? Do you think these heroes were fools?... "...Sacrifice not only strengthens your faith in the story, but often substitutes for all your other obligations towards it. Most of the great stories of humankind have set up ideals that most people cannot fulfil. How many Christians really follow the Ten Commandments to the letter, never lying or coveting? How many Buddhists have so far reached the stage of egolessness? How many socialists work to the utmost of their ability while taking no more than they really need? Unable to live up to the ideal, people turn to sacrifice as a solution. A Hindu may engage in tax frauds, visit the occasional prostitute and mistreat his elderly parents, but then convince himself that he is a very pious person, because he supports the destruction of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya and has even donated money to build a Hindu temple in its stead. Just as in ancient times, so also in the twenty-first century, the human quest for meaning all too often ends with a succession of sacrifices." ~Yuval Harari: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century 6 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:47am On Sep 25, 2018 |
BIBLICAL TRUTH I'm sure there must be some things in the Bible that are true. It's just that I can't find them. If you think there is truth in the Bible, please list three things that have independent, validated evidence so we can be very confident they are true. |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 11:16am On Sep 23, 2018 |
CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION! This is a response to Primesky latest comment. Have you noticed a new Christian apologetic emerging in recent years? Rather than attempt the hopeless project of finding evidence to support the existence of God, Jesus, heaven, hell and all the rest of it and excuses for the contradictions and embarrassing nonsense, these new kids on the block, like Primesky, simply say we misunderstand it all--Christianity is not a religion, it's just a way of life. Really? So Christianity has no god, no prophets, no holy scripture, no dogma, no priests, no worship, no life-after-death and Christians don't pray? OK, it's not a religion then. It's just a lifestyle. A lifestyle that happens to believe in a god, prophets, holy scripture, dogma, priests, worship, life-after-death and prayer. What an amazing coincidence--it's a lifestyle that looks just like a religion! 15 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 10:14am On Sep 23, 2018 |
"Does God exist? That depends on which God you have in mind. The cosmic mystery or the worldly lawgiver? Sometimes when people talk about God, they talk about a grand and awesome enigma, about which we know absolutely nothing. We invoke this mysterious God to explain the deepest riddles of the cosmos. Why is there something rather than nothing? What shaped the fundamental laws of physics? What is consciousness, and where does it come from? We do not know the answers to these questions, and we give our ignorance the grand name of God. The most fundamental characteristic of this mysterious God is that we cannot say anything concrete about Him. This is the God of the philosophers; the God we talk about when we sit around a campfire late at night, and wonder what life is all about. On other occasions people see God as a stern and worldly lawgiver, about whom we know only too much. We know exactly what He thinks about fashion, food, sex and politics, and we invoke this Angry Man in the Sky to justify a million regulations, decrees and conflicts. He gets upset when women wear short-sleeved shirts, when two men have sex with one another, or when teenagers masturbate. Some people say He does not like us to ever drink alcohol, whereas according to others He positively demands that we drink wine every Friday night or every Sunday morning. Entire libraries have been written to explain in the minutest details exactly what He wants and what He dislikes. The most fundamental characteristic of this worldly lawgiver is that we can say extremely concrete things about Him. This is the God of the crusaders and jihadists, of the inquisitors, the misogynists and the homophobes. This is the God we talk about when we stand around a burning pyre, hurling stones and abuses at the heretics being grilled there. When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. ‘Science cannot explain the Big Bang,’ they exclaim, ‘so that must be God’s doing.’ Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of ‘God’ to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. ‘We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’ Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behavior. The missing link between the cosmic mystery and the worldly lawgiver is usually provided through some holy book. The book is full of the most trifling regulations, but is nevertheless attributed to the cosmic mystery. The creator of space and time supposedly composed it, but He bothered to enlighten us mainly about some arcane temple rituals and food taboos. In truth, we haven’t got any evidence whatsoever that the Bible or the Quran or the Book of Mormon or the Vedas or any other holy book was composed by the force that determined that energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, and that protons are 1,837 times more massive than electrons. To the best of our scientific knowledge, all these sacred texts were written by imaginative Homo sapiens. They are just stories invented by our ancestors in order to legitimise social norms and political structures. I personally never cease to wonder about the mystery of existence. But I have never understood what it has got to do with the niggling laws of Judaism, Christianity or Hinduism. These laws were certainly very helpful in establishing and maintaining the social order for thousands of years. But in that, they are not fundamentally different from the laws of secular states and institutions. The third of the biblical Ten Commandments instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. Many understand this in a childish way, as a prohibition on uttering the explicit name of God (as in the famous Monty Python sketch ‘If you say Jehovah …’). Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatreds. People hate somebody and say, ‘God hates him’; people covet a piece of land and say, ‘God wants it’. The world would be a much better place if we followed the third commandment more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbours and steal their land? Leave God out of it, and find yourself some other excuse. When all is said and done, it is a matter of semantics. When I use the word ‘God’, I think of the God of the Islamic State, of the Crusades, of the Inquisition, and of the ‘God hates gays’ banners. When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades – who cares a lot about names and above all about His most holy name – the mystery of existence doesn’t care an iota what names we apes give it." ~ Yuval Harari: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century 5 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 10:13am On Sep 23, 2018*. Modified: 4:44am On Sep 24, 2018 |
"Does God exist? That depends on which God you have in mind. The cosmic mystery or the worldly lawgiver? Sometimes when people talk about God, they talk about a grand and awesome enigma, about which we know absolutely nothing. We invoke this mysterious God to explain the deepest riddles of the cosmos. Why is there something rather than nothing? What shaped the fundamental laws of physics? What is consciousness, and where does it come from? We do not know the answers to these questions, and we give our ignorance the grand name of God. The most fundamental characteristic of this mysterious God is that we cannot say anything concrete about Him. This is the God of the philosophers; the God we talk about when we sit around a campfire late at night, and wonder what life is all about. On other occasions people see God as a stern and worldly lawgiver, about whom we know only too much. We know exactly what He thinks about fashion, food, sex and politics, and we invoke this Angry Man in the Sky to justify a million regulations, decrees and conflicts. He gets upset when women wear short-sleeved shirts, when two men have sex with one another, or when teenagers masturbate. Some people say He does not like us to ever drink alcohol, whereas according to others He positively demands that we drink wine every Friday night or every Sunday morning. Entire libraries have been written to explain in the minutest details exactly what He wants and what He dislikes. The most fundamental characteristic of this worldly lawgiver is that we can say extremely concrete things about Him. This is the God of the crusaders and jihadists, of the inquisitors, the misogynists and the homophobes. This is the God we talk about when we stand around a burning pyre, hurling stones and abuses at the heretics being grilled there. When the faithful are asked whether God really exists, they often begin by talking about the enigmatic mysteries of the universe and the limits of human understanding. ‘Science cannot explain the Big Bang,’ they exclaim, ‘so that must be God’s doing.’ Yet like a magician fooling an audience by imperceptibly replacing one card with another, the faithful quickly replace the cosmic mystery with the worldly lawgiver. After giving the name of ‘God’ to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces. ‘We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage.’ Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behavior. The missing link between the cosmic mystery and the worldly lawgiver is usually provided through some holy book. The book is full of the most trifling regulations, but is nevertheless attributed to the cosmic mystery. The creator of space and time supposedly composed it, but He bothered to enlighten us mainly about some arcane temple rituals and food taboos. In truth, we haven’t got any evidence whatsoever that the Bible or the Quran or the Book of Mormon or the Vedas or any other holy book was composed by the force that determined that energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, and that protons are 1,837 times more massive than electrons. To the best of our scientific knowledge, all these sacred texts were written by imaginative Homo sapiens. They are just stories invented by our ancestors in order to legitimise social norms and political structures. I personally never cease to wonder about the mystery of existence. But I have never understood what it has got to do with the niggling laws of Judaism, Christianity or Hinduism. These laws were certainly very helpful in establishing and maintaining the social order for thousands of years. But in that, they are not fundamentally different from the laws of secular states and institutions. The third of the biblical Ten Commandments instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. Many understand this in a childish way, as a prohibition on uttering the explicit name of God (as in the famous Monty Python sketch ‘If you say Jehovah …’). Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatreds. People hate somebody and say, ‘God hates him’; people covet a piece of land and say, ‘God wants it’. The world would be a much better place if we followed the third commandment more devotedly. You want to wage war on your neighbours and steal their land? Leave God out of it, and find yourself some other excuse. When all is said and done, it is a matter of semantics. When I use the word ‘God’, I think of the God of the Islamic State, of the Crusades, of the Inquisition, and of the ‘God hates gays’ banners. When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades – who cares a lot about names and above all about His most holy name – the mystery of existence doesn’t care an iota what names we apes give it." ~ Yuval Harari: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century 4 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:06am On Sep 21, 2018 |
COUNTING ATHEISTS When there is one atheist in your town, you can think he is mad. When there are 100, you might worry about their motives and intentions. When there are 1,000, you start to wonder what they know, that you don't. 7 Likes 3 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:20am On Sep 20, 2018 |
CAN WE BE GOOD WITHOUT GOD? SHOW ME FACTS! Many religious people are suspicious of atheists because they think without God we have no moral compass. They also say, since we don't believe in divine Judgement, we have no reason to fear the eternal consequences of behaving badly. I do wonder why believers don't bother to check the facts before they speak. It is easy to discover that the opposite is true. Non-believers, across a wide range of measures from teen pregnancy to STDs and from domestic violence to homicide are less prone to antisocial behaviour and commit fewer crimes than believers. Both Phil Zuckerman and Gregory Paul have carried out international comparisons that not only show we can be good without God but we are likely to be better without God. (See Note 1.) To illustrate this point, If you chart intentional homicide rates (number per year per 100,000 people) against religiosity (the percentage of people who say religion is important to them). Data for 103 countries is shown. The chart will show a positive correlation between homicides and religiosity. In other words, as a general trend, the more religious a country is, the higher its rate of homicides. The difference between the low homicide and high homicide countries is so great that if this chart is drawn to a logarithmic scale--each horizontal line is TEN times greater than the one below. Keep this in mind when you look at this chart. Several countries are outliers from the trend and are much less murderous or more murderous than their religiosity might suggest. For example, Singapore with a religiosity of 70% has an outstandingly low homicide rate of only 0.2 homicides per 100,000 people per year. In contrast, a clutch of countries have extremely high homicide rates of between 10 and 90 per 100,000 (this is 450 TIMES higher than the Singapore rate). The most murderous countries in the world, which are all above 70% in religiosity, include Honduras (90), Venezuela (54), El Salvador (41), Guatemala (40), Jamaica (39), Columbia (31) and South Africa (31). The low religiosity European countries together with New Zealand, Hong Kong and Japan are all at 1 homicide per 100,000 or less. Correlation is not causation, so this data does not prove that being religious makes people more likely to murder--there are undoubtedly many factors at play here. But it does show us one thing. Being religious does not make people good and being non-religious does not make people bad. ... NOTES 1) Gregory Paul: "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies": Journal of Religion & Society, vol 7 Phil Zuckerman: “Atheism, Secularity and Well-Being” Sociology Compass, vol.3, no.6 (December 2009). 2) I have omitted 37 majority Muslim countries from this analysis because they do not follow the same trend as majority Christian countries. Poorer Muslim countries have relatively high homicide rates, for example Sudan = 11.2; Djibouti = 10.1; Comoros = 10 and Somalia = 8 and wealthier Islamic countries have low homicide rates on a par with, or even lower than, the irreligious European countries. For example, Kuwait = 0.4, Bahrain = 0.5, Indonesia = 0.6, Algeria = 0.7, Saudi Arabia = 0.8 and Qatar = 1.1. However, wealthier Muslim countries tend to be as religious as poorer Muslim countries. (For comparison, the least murderous majority Christian country is Switzerland at 0.6.) For the avoidance of doubt, this is not evidence that being a Muslim makes people good (if it did, we would not see such high homicide rates in poor Islamic countries). I suspect what is happening here is that in Christian countries, as people become wealthier, more secure and better educated they tend to become less religious and better behaved. People in Islamic countries experiencing the same changes, also become better behaved but they do not become less religious. 3) Religiosity data: Gallup Research (2009): http://en.wikipedia.org/w…/Importance_of_religion_by_country Homicide data: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (most data from 2012): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate 4) Norway is shown with a homicide rate of 2.2. Norway's more usual rate is around 0.6. The elevated rate was caused by a single terrorist attack in 2012 and does not reflect the country's long term rate. |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:04am On Sep 19, 2018 |
Primesky keeps arguing for his religion, talking about the authenticity of his Jesus, a personality that we do not even know if he exists. Characters like Abraham and Satan that we have not been able to prove their existence, despite decades of tries. But I say let's even talk about what religion has done for us. Science, since the turn of the 20th century, has extended human life by almost 30 years on average, cured multiple childhood illnesses, discovered the universe contains billions of galaxies and is expanding rapidly all the while perfecting personal transportation, harnessed the sun's energy, increased food production capacity and made living, at least in the West, an enjoyable experience. What has religion contributed to society in that same time period? I posit, aside from obstructing the advances of science and promulgating their superstitions onto credulous, poor, sick 3rd world people, nothing of value whatsoever. Was it not Pope Benedict XVI who told Africans that AIDS is bad but condoms are worse. So I ask, of what value is religion? 5 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:59am On Sep 18, 2018 |
A QUESTION FOR THEISTS Over the past 400 years, we have discovered the causes of hundreds of mysteries that for thousands of years we thought were caused by gods. Things like wind, droughts, earthquakes, volcanoes, day and night, the eclipse of the sun, diseases and so on. My question for you is, for how many of these solved mysteries have we now confirmed God is the cause? I'll give you a clue, it's a round number, one less than one. Which leads to a second question, why do you continue to assume God is the cause of the few remaining mysteries? I wouldn't bet my life on it. And nor should you. 4 Likes |
| Phones › Re: Phone Engineers On Nairaland Willing To Assist You - Part II by joseph1013: 3:18pm On Sep 16, 2018 |
haywire1:It's inbuilt. How/where do I do that? |
| Investment › Re: Treasury Bills In Nigeria by joseph1013: 3:07pm On Sep 16, 2018 |
Bravedude112:What are the rates for the last auction? |
| Phones › Re: Phone Engineers On Nairaland Willing To Assist You - Part II by joseph1013: 10:32am On Sep 16, 2018 |
Phone, Oukitel K6000 Plus, stops charging. Only works when plugged to power source, as soon as power is disconnected, goes off. Battery is inbuilt. And yes, I have tried with several chargers. Any help on how to get it repaired/replaced, especially since Oukitel is not such a common phone brand? cc:replybbot, haywire1 |
| Phones › Re: Phone Engineers On Nairaland Willing To Assist You - Part II by joseph1013: 5:41pm On Sep 15, 2018*. Modified: 10:28am On Sep 16, 2018 |
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| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 11:01am On Sep 15, 2018 |
Dave Partner writes: RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD Jeff Bezos. | Amazon. | $140 billion | Agnostic Bill Gates. | Microsoft. | $97 billion | Agnostic Warren Buffett. | Hathaway. | $88 billion | Agnostic RICHEST PASTORS IN THE WORLD: Bishop David Oyedepo | $150 million Bishop T.D Jakes | $147 Million Pastor Chris Oyakilome $50 Million Bill Gates for instance, is 2,000 times richer than pastor Chris, even though Pastor Chris has direct access to unlimited blessings and key to the floodgates of heaven and riches of the kingdom exploits. Warren Buffet is 598 times richer than TD Jakes. Jeff Bezos is 933 times richer than Bishop David Oyedepo. How come? 5 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:30am On Sep 07, 2018 |
THE DIM GOD OF THE GAPS Let's be honest, God is not a star when it comes to the brains department. Apparently, within days of creation he was outwitted by a crafty snake. Soon everything went pear-shaped and he regretted making humans. So he decided to try again and drowned every living thing. That meant unnecessarily killing millions of innocent creatures but worse than that, he kept eight of the original untrustworthy humans alive hoping Noah's descendants would be better than the first lot. But they weren't and it all went wrong again. These events would be unfortunate for any creator but God apparently has the power of omniscience and STILL didn't see the disasters coming! God is not much better when it comes to making things. He made the penis with a foreskin and then realised it was a mistake that had to be cut off. In Judges 1, he helped the men of Judah defeat the Canaanites but they couldn't defeat the Canaanites on the plains because they had chariots of iron--God was defeated by simple Iron Age technology. The Bible has plenty of examples of God's errors and ineptitude that show him to be a dim and bumbling god. It is this reputation that contradicts a favourite Christian argument... Christians often point to something complex, like DNA, or human beings and argue these things couldn't have come about without an intelligent creator. But then they claim the dim and error-prone Jewish god was the intelligent creator! What are the chances that a god who couldn't make an iron chariot could manage complex molecular engineering? What are the chances that a god who was outwitted by a snake could plan an intricate DNA code that would form the basis of ALL living things? If Christians really consider DNA too complex to arise naturally, why don't they search for a super-smart god that does not make simple mistakes instead of wildly claiming the dim god they were raised to believe in must have done it? Or does anyone here think I am unreasonable? 13 Likes 4 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:11am On Sep 06, 2018 |
THE PRICE OF A BED TO SLEEP IN I spent the best part of last weekend with a friend I made via Nairaland. He is Hausa, well read, logical and very bright. We have been online friends for over three years but he has never interacted with me on this thread.He however claims to have read most of them. His story could be the story of (may be) hundreds of people here--people forced to remain closet atheists by loving Muslim and Christian families for whom believing in God comes before everything else and is the price you must pay to have a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in. When he began to have doubts about God he was isolated. There was no one he could talk to. Everyone around him was so certain of God that he began to seriously wonder if his doubts were early signs of a descent into madness. But then he found Nairaland, the Religion section, and eventually this thread. He began to read my posts and the discussions that followed them. At last he had found sensible, rational people who thought like he did, but he didn't dare reach out to them. As he talked I could see this experience must be something like suffering locked-in syndrome where you are conscious, can hear people around you but cannot talk to them. I wish Muslim and Christian parents were not like this. If my kid announced she had become religious, it would never cross my mind to show her the door or be angry with her. Why do some Muslims and Christians behave so badly? But there is one more thing. Believers often ask me why I spend so much time talking about a god I don't believe in. I have just given you one reason. I bet there are hundreds more. 4 Likes 2 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:32am On Sep 04, 2018 |
MY WORRIES There are plenty of things to worry about in life. For example, I worry that I might wake up in the night and stub my toe as I rush to the loo in the dark. Or that I might find that despite the horrible job the president is doing he still bags a second term or a car would splash mud water on my fine clothes. I might even worry that I would not be able to find a single seller of Sharwarma in Lagos one day. But there's one thing I never, ever worry about. I never worry about coming back to life after I die and being tortured forever in a fiery hell. Nah, with so many things to worry about, let's just worry about things that might actually happen. 3 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:52am On Sep 03, 2018 |
YOUR RANDOM GOD This is odd. A lot of religious people take great pains to stress that SOMEONE must be responsible for creating the universe. And then, instead of embarking on a painstaking and exhaustive search for the missing someone, they immediately pluck a random god from ancient history and pretend they've solved the problem. Duhh... PS Even more curious, the random god they chose is USUALLY the very same one their mum believes in. 9 Likes 5 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:07pm On Sep 01, 2018 |
Mavis OCHAKPOR wrote: Mode: Domestic Mood: Optimal Location: North Central,Nigeria. Weather: Sunny Earpiece tucked in my ear. Sean Paul&Sasha's 'Still In Love' be booming. A figure was walking towards me. His lips were moving. He was talking to me. Huge Bible in his right hand. My BS detector got the signal already. God botherers!!! And me? I deputize for his Father's alter ego. Did he figure it? I wouldn't know. And to think I had to stop work because I didn't want his ilks to get in the way of my plan - you know those ones who almost sleep at ATM facilities every Saturday to withdraw tithes and offerings to settle spiritual magas na? Those ones.With the crowd they pull at this particular facility in my hood,they can cripple your schedule. Not today tho! I met this one on my way. Turns down volume on my phone. Person: Bless you sister Me: Bros good morning. NEPA finally restored light after 3 days of darkness. My clothes will dry it's a sunny day. Person: Yes. We thank God for his mercies. It's Saturday day. This guy no know say e suppose thank Thor�. Meanwhile na bad market you just jam laidis. Person: Do you know Jesus loves you and he's coming back soon... Me  Cuts in) Do you know Ludacris and Ja Rule never used the word "bitch" in their songs?Person: I didn't get you? Me: Me too! Have a nice day. �� Back to my phone. It was Mariah Carey's "It's Like That" playing. 3 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:57am On Aug 31, 2018 |
THE ARGUMENT FROM FABRICATION In the last year or so, I've noticed a few theists adopting a new style of argumentation. I call it the argument from fabrication. It is a three-stage process. STAGE 1 The theist makes an extravagant claim. Here are some recent examples: 'There are thousands of pieces of evidence that prove Jesus was real.' 'Scientific evidence is now piling up that the Earth did stop in the sky for a whole day' (as per the Joshua story). 'Science has now proved the universe was created.' 'Flat earth is gaining weight in academia, and is being backed by science and math.' After such world-view changing claims, you naturally ask for sources for the evidence. STAGE 2 The theist refuses to "do your work for you" and insists you find the evidence yourself. So you do some research and draw a blank. Then you report the absence of evidence to the theist. STAGE 3 The theist hurls a barrage of choice insults at you and is never seen again. I suppose we could call this progress--at least they are talking about evidence and think it important in the discussion about their beliefs. Now they just have to stop making it up. 4 Likes |
| Business › Re: If You Are Uber Partner In Lagos, Please Share Your Experience Here by joseph1013: 10:02am On Aug 29, 2018 |
Angelawhite:30k per week would be fair. The driver will bear the cost of its maintenance. All things being equal, how long are you looking to have it on E-Taxi? |
| Business › Re: If You Are Uber Partner In Lagos, Please Share Your Experience Here by joseph1013: 6:37am On Aug 29, 2018 |
Angelawhite: taxiappguy:The kind of vehicle you have will determine what the weekly rentals will be. So what make and year is your vehicle? 1 Like |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:13am On Aug 29, 2018 |
ATHEISM 101 There is nothing complicated in atheism. Everyone knows that men invent gods and invent even more religions. So, if you have been raised to believe in your family's god and religion, you have a choice: You can just believe it, enjoy it, fit in with everyone and not care whether it is actually true. Or you can decide you would prefer to believe only things you can be reasonably sure are true. If you want to believe things that are true, how can you decide what is true? Well, there are some methods that we know do not work. For example, the fact that your family firmly believe in a god does not mean it is real. The fact that millions or billions of people believe in a god does not mean it is real. The fact that the president of your country or your favourite scientist believes in a god does not mean it is real. There is another, slightly more complicated, set of arguments. We call these god-of-the-gaps arguments. The fact there are things we don't yet understand is never a reason to believe a god exists. Why not? Because we may understand these things in the future, just as we eventually explained how the sun "moves" and what causes thunder, earthquakes, diseases and so on. Finally, the fact you enjoy worshipping your god or even sense him talking to you and this makes you feel great does not mean your god is real. Why not? Because believers in all gods and all religions experience the same feelings and they can even be recreated in a laboratory, so we know the brain causes these feelings--not a god. How then can you figure out if your god is real? The same way you figure out if anything else is true--you must find convincing evidence. What evidence is relevant depends upon your God and how he is said to manifest in the world. For example, if your god answers a proportion of prayers, you can test to see if a proportion (greater than chance) are answered. This is the scientific approach. (FYI the Christian god does not answer prayers better than chance.) So you can look for evidence for your particular god. I hope you do and let us know if you find any. If you can't find any evidence (and experience tells me you will not), you can go to the next stage and see if it is possible to falsify your god, that is, see if you can find evidence that shows your god does NOT exist. For example, if your god created all life forms in two days, you can find evidence that life has existed and changed over almost 4 billion years. Therefore there is no god that created all life in two days. You have shown your god does not exist. I hope this helps you to understand how atheists think. We rely on evidence and reason and we reject all the old arguments that have long ago been shown to be unreliable. When we do this we can find no trace of gods--we only find humans inventing gods and humans passing their beliefs onto their children. 7 Likes 1 Share |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 9:13am On Aug 28, 2018 |
If you can put aside what people have drummed into you, how can you POSSIBLY believe there is an invisible man who lives outside the universe and knows what you think and watches you (and everyone else) 24 hours a day, when there is not a shred of evidence that this is true? 2 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:20am On Aug 27, 2018 |
I USED TO BE AN ATHEIST... Sometimes, when I argue against more religion I hear some Christians claim that they used to be an atheist. They say it is nothing new to them and that I will come back to my senses pretty soon. When I hear that, I always ask them why they were an atheist and invariably discover that they were not really atheists at all—they were lazy Christians. Instead of praying/going to church they preferred drinking/sex/drugs/masturbation/gambling or other self indulgent pursuits. Then I ask why they changed their minds and they always give me an emotional reason—they had an experience of some kind and discovered Jesus. What I never hear is "I found the ontological/cosmological/teleological argument..." [or whatever]. Well, in my opinion, if you were an atheist for no logical reason, you were a bad atheist and if you are now a Christian for no logical reason, you are a bad Christian. If logic takes you to atheism, you will almost certainly remain an atheist because no matter how much your life changes, logic will stubbornly stay the same. The beauty of logic is that it does not depend upon how you happen to feel today. 9 Likes 2 Shares |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:17pm On Aug 23, 2018 |
IS EVERYTHING IN THE BIBLE TRUE? A very large number of Christians believe everything in the Bible is literally true. If you are one who believes this, I just wondered how you arrived at that conclusion? Did someone tell you it's all true and you just believed them or did you research every sentence to verify it against independent evidence? Or did you use some other method? Please tell us how you reached this conclusion. A very large number of Christians do not believe the Bible is 100% literally true. They believe some of it is literally true but accept that the book includes stories that have become confused and embellished, myths, allegories, poetry and parables. If you are one who believes this, I wonder how you decide what is true and what falls into those other categories? Please tell us how you decided this. Thank you. To be fair, since I asked you, I should answer this question for myself. I start off being sceptical and not believing any of it. I change my mind on individual passages when I find independently validated evidence that they are true. That's my way of trying to ensure I don't believe things that might not be true. Just common sense really. |
| Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:46am On Aug 20, 2018 |
IT'S A MIRACLE! When something you can't explain happens, you have two choices: 1. Accept you don't understand how it happened, or 2. Believe it was a miracle. You should only conclude it was a miracle if you have a way to be SURE science will never, ever be able to find a natural explanation. Since you cannot be sure of this, you can accept that a miracle is a possible explanation but you should never BELIEVE a miracle actually occurred. (Maybe it would be a miracle, if religious people could grasp this simple logic and stop claiming miracles have occurred!) |
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