Joseph1013's Posts
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tbaba1234:LOL. And that's Luis Enrique watching the show. |
ANOTHER SUICIDE...SAD CASE I've been really sad since hearing of Dr Orji Allwell jumping off Third Mainland Bridge yesterday evening. His is the third case I'm learning of in the past one week. Depression is real folks and, by George, I hope we take action and see depression for what it is. It's high time we understood that medical experts are those we have to go through, not religious leaders. How many people see therapists when they experience suicidal thoughts in this country? Accept it or not, church dominance in Nigeria makes all other meaningful disciplines irrelevant. Someone with clinical depression for example, is less likely to seek recourse in therapy but in the Church. Much worse, the bogus claim of the Church to salve our troubled lives blindly overlooks the human condition as a possible cause, at times overestimating the problem to some needless demonic or satanic-paranormal plight. This huge chunk of relevance the Church commands “regresses” us as a society; we need therapists, shrinks, child psychologists and other disciplines whose expertise might be brought to bear on a matter, not this monolithic relevance-grab by the church to the depression of all other disciplines. Church dominance in Nigeria is like heavy reliance on petroleum at the expense of other meaningful sectors. |
stephenmorris:Sent |
stephenmorris:Email |
TWO MISTAKES YOU SHOULD NEVER MAKE Once you accept there is a supernatural realm, you're at risk. At that point nothing is too absurd for you to believe. This is when you risk becoming an apologist for the ridiculous. This descent into the absurd relies upon two thinking mistakes. The first mistake is to accept there is a supernatural realm, when there is simply no valid reason to believe this is true. The second mistake is to treat the existence of the supernatural, not as a possibility or a tentative conclusion based on speculative, fallible evidence, but as a self-evident premise that cannot be challenged. Once you have done this, you can build an entire world-view, using this premise as the foundation for further beliefs--such as a belief in gods, magical animals, invisible creatures, deadly curses and events that never happened and could never happen. That is when you become lost to reason. But there is a way back and it's simple. The way back is to understand these two foundational mistakes, and to think again. |
tbaba1234:I have said it before that these people shouting MLS this, MLS that cannot boast that come what may the Super Eagles will beat Columbia, Uruguay, Chile, or USA. In the FIFA ranking, USA is 30th, Uruguay is 9th, Columbia is 7th, Chile is 4th. Nigeria is 41 o. Some of the players of these teams play in the MLS, Fernando Adi is bossing them week in week out. Even Kaka was invited to the Brazilian team while playing in MLS. We have players from Cameroun, Ivory Coast, and Mexico playing in the MLS. So what's the excuse for not inviting Adi when he is regularly showing his quality in the league. It's not just the goals, it's the ways he scores them. Is MLS not better than Cyprus league? What about Bosnia? According to a 2016 ranking, here are the top 10 leagues in the world: 1 Spanish La Liga 48 2 Premier League 47 3 Bundesliga 42 4 Italian Serie A 37 5 Portuguese Liga 35 6 French Ligue 1 31 7 Dutch Eredivisie 27 8 Argentine League 21 9 Brazilian Serie A 20 10 USA MLS 20 Source: http://www.totalsportek.com/football/ranking-best-league-in-the-world/ I repeat: What's the excuse? Why not invite him to camp and let him compete. Glad the likes of Siasia and Oliseh are out of the settings with their lies that he cannot undertake rigorous workouts. Please what did they achieve for us with their rigorous training? |
Again, Ndidi wins Man of Match in Leicester's win.
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safarigirl:The guy don bobo us finish. Even Buhari don comot, come back. |
THE QUEST FOR MIRACLES... The weak link in all miracle claims is that they rely on fallible human testimony and cannot be reproduced on demand before a skeptical audience. "But," some say, "God doesn't work like that; he does not provide miracles on tap for those who demand to see a demonstration of his power." Or, "God no longer routinely performs miracles since the time of the Bible." But to this I say that these are precisely the sorts of excuses one would have to give to salvage a belief in miracles, if in fact they do not occur. If Elijah was able to call on Yahweh to bring fire down from heaven before his adversaries (taunting the priests of Baal for their failure to do the same), why did no one come forward to skeptic James Randi to perform a bona fide miracle, and claim his one million dollar reward for doing so? Perhaps those who believe in miracles should do as Elijah advised the priests of Baal: "Shout louder! Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened" (1 Kings 18:27). Let's assume God exists and has the power to perform miracles, an assumption I do not categorically deny, but about which I am very skeptical. If, in addition to these assumptions, we also assume the Bible is true, then God causes an ax head to float in the Old Testament to preserve a prophet's investment, and God causes the Jordan to part so a prophet can cross it on foot without having to use a boat like most mortals, but he doesn't prevent an infant from starving at its mother's dried-up breast in an African drought, nor does he orchestrate the early demise of Hitler to prevent the many millions of deaths of World War II. Does it not more readily comport with experience that, if God exists, he has purposefully restricted himself from all supernatural intervention in the world, rather than that he sometimes intervenes off and on again in ways that appear so whimsical to us? It seems a mockery to the agony of the mother of Austin (a young mentee) that God would cause an ax head to float but not relieve her suffering as she slowly died of cancer. If we assume that God as a matter of principle does not intervene in the course of nature, then the arbitrariness vanishes. Of course the question remains, how could he choose to stand by and not intervene? This is a problem for deism, I grant, and one of the lesser reasons for which I have come to doubt the existence of God. |
Ahmad replaces Issa Hayatou as African football chief https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2017/3/16/a146e3e36bdc4f35a01af700c46e7564_18.jpg Ahmad Ahmad becomes president of Confederation of African Football (CAF), beating Issa Hayatou who served for 29 years. Ahmad won the election in the Ethiopian capital by 34 votes to Hayatou's 20, official results showed [AFP] Madagascar's football chief Ahmad Ahmad has been elected president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) on Thursday, ousting veteran leader Issa Hayatou after 29 years in office. Ahmad won the election in the Ethiopian capital by 34 votes to Hayatou's 20, official results showed. "When you try to do something, you mean that you can do it," Ahmad told reporters after the vote. "If I can't do it, I never stand." Ahmad, a 57-year-old father of two, had a discreet playing and coaching career before he took the reins of the Madagascar football federation in 2003. His rare and determined bid for "change" at the head of the CAF this year took many by surprise, and the incumbent was seen as the favourite. Hayatou headed CAF since 1988 and is a senior vice president of FIFA. He has been credited with increasing the number of African teams at the World Cup and bringing in extra finance for the continent's competitions. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/ahmad-replaces-issa-hayatou-african-football-chief-170316113650420.html |
goldfish80: ![]() |
do4luv14:No serious football fan will engage you on this topic. |
TheEminentLaity:It was interesting times. Well, during my time, I did 'perform' miracles. There were times I had felt some sensations and declared to the congregation that there was someone (described the person) and said the Lord had healed him/her of an illness. I would ask that they come forth and lay hands on them. Thereafter, they would come back to say they were healed. Another example: A woman, let's call her Deborah, who attended my church while I was still a believer. She was bound to a wheelchair for over a year and a half, unable even to stand up. One day as she was listening to inspirational music and praying for God to heal her, she felt a wave of God's presence over her and was then able to stand up and walk about on her own. I am told that anyone who remains bound to a wheelchair for an extended period of time would not subsequently be able to walk without therapy, due to muscle atrophy alone. This provided additional corroboration that God had intervened on her behalf. There are at least two kinds of false miracle reports: misperceptions and intentional deceptions. I did not know Deborah very well at all, but I know that a lot of trustworthy people in my church consider her trustworthy, so I am disinclined to think she was pulling a deception by sitting in her chair and pretending to be disabled (though it is a possibility that should be kept open). I know too little of her condition to make a call: was she diagnosed? If so, are there any statistics on recovery rates from her condition? Have any physicians evaluated her healing? It is not unfair to ask these questions before coming to the conclusion that it had to be supernatural. After all, a certain percentage of people recover spontaneously from even the most deadly of cancers, on the order of 1 in 100,000. But what do I think about preternatural phenomena like demonic possessions, exorcisms, haunted houses, ghosts, and the guys from 'The Conjuring’ movie? I approach them with skepticism! What should be our approach to claims of the preternatural phenomena? It should be the approach of detective and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell, who advocates withholding judgment until being granted the opportunity to investigate the claim. Nickell never pronounces his judgment on a reported paranormal phenomenon, be it a weeping statue or a haunted house, until he has been given the chance to examine the claim. If he must place a stethoscope on a statue purported to have a heartbeat, that is what he will do. So far, no claim of the paranormal has given him pause, no reason to think a supernatural explanation was required, but he will examine each claim on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, most of the claims we hear in the present day, not to mention those found in the Bible, are not amenable to this sort of controlled investigation. This being the case, we are under no compulsion to accept them as authentic. |
TheEminentLaity:Would people cook up new religions if we discard all religions this moment? It depends on which region(s) of the earth you do that. In places where the light of enlightenment have shone, most of them will just move on with life like nothing had happened. For instance, countries like Japan, Vietnam, Denmark and Netherlands where irreligious people are the overwhelming majority will not feel any loss. It is countries in Subsaharan Africa struggling with poverty that will be hard-pressed to come up with new ones. Japan, the UK, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, France and Uruguay (where the majority of citizens have European roots) are all places where religion was important just a century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries feature strong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. I have referenced Prof Harari's excellent book, Homo Sapiens, on this thread before and he detailed how humans will weave up imaginary things into reality because that's just who we are. We are creative beings. As it is, science is showing religion to be a facade but new creations are constantly weaved into being that evoke equally strong emotions like nationalism, capitalism, socialism, etc. |
TheEminentLaity:This is an interesting point. While it is true that the sun and the rain falls on all men, it is not true that all men yearn for the divine to explain why things are the way they are in their times of troubles. This reminds me of a story a missionary told about when he went to a remote village in the 1970s to evangelize. He told them about Christ and his sacrifice on the Cross and of how he came to redeem them from their sins. After he finished speaking, the leader stood up and said, "This Jesus you speak about, is he NPC, NCPC or AG? (Those were the political parties in the first republic)" It goes to show that a man does not know what he does not know. The same reason a Christian will not wonder why Allah is punishing him is the same reason why an atheist not exposed to religion will not wonder why God is abandoning him. It is a Christian that is an ex-muslim that may wonder if Allah is angry, and an Atheist that is an ex-christian that may wonder if Yahweh is punishing him for abandoning him. The kids born in the Scandinavia with no indoctrination of religion will not wonder about divine retribution if they experience bad times. What would a radical atheist tell people who are grieving? The truth with empathy. In fact, most times, only empathy is needed. We all have been with people who are grieving and all they wanted was a shoulder to cry on. They didn't even want you to say anything. They just wanted to vent out their sadness and cry their hearts out. Scriptures (1 Thess 4:13) say to believers about those who have died, "We don’t want you to grieve like other people who have no hope", but in reality, believers still cry their hearts out as much as unbelievers. I know to the theist it may seem inexplicable or cold but you have to understand that in certain ways, knowing that death is the end of the journey and accepting it can also be freeing. This is a process that has been repeated 20-30 some billion times by humans in the course of history. I do not have to concern about if me or my loved ones were good enough to get into heaven or bad enough to face hell. I know that I am made of stardust that in turn came from yet other stars and that someday parts of me will be stardust again. "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." ~ Mark Twain |
TheEminentLaity:Thanks for this. Appreciated. Yeah, I eventually caught you when the 'likes' kept coming in droves. I will address a point you raised near the end of your post in the next comment. |
YAHWEH LOVES SUYA Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. Genesis 8:20-21 NKJV |
NOT ALL QUESTIONS ARE LEGITIMATE "Where does the fire go when you put out the candle?" I asked this question yesterday and the responses were interesting. A few people tried to give serious answers but I dare say, everyone who commented on that post must have felt something off about the question. That was the point of the post. You see, just because a question can be phrased in grammatically correct language doesn't make it a genuine question. "Why does the fire go...?" Fire is a product of a complex chemical reaction. It did not 'Come' from anywhere and therefore it does not 'Go' anywhere. Putting out a candle terminates the chemical reaction. What is the edge of a circle? What was before Time? These questions are grammatically correct but they're flawed questions. Sometimes in engagements online, someone may ask a seemingly 'deep' question that is just really nonsense. Someone even commented "Deep" on that post . It wasn't a deep question. It was a flawed question. Questions like "Who created you/the first human?" These questions are akin to asking a man "Have you stopped beating your wife?" These are flawed questions. Loaded questions that presupposes an already known 'fact' which in most cases is just nonsense. Don't fall for these things. If a question seems off, most times it is because something is wrong with it. Take your time, think about it. Find out what (if any) is assumed in such questions. That way, you're not drawn into pointless arguments that will leave you confused and drained. BY AKORITA ISAIAH |
IF PRAYER REALLY WORKED Imagine there was a supernatural being who could intervene in our world. If this being did something to affect our natural world, we would see the effect but we would not see the cause. We would see an uncaused effect. If this supernatural being answered billions of prayers a day, every answered prayer would be an effect with no cause. So, across the world, we would be witnessing billions of uncaused effects everyday; lost keys just appearing in your hand but not where you left them, parked cars disappearing before your eyes to give you a free space, a bus failing to move despite the engine racing, to give you time to get aboard... We would find all this extremely unsettling--we expect effects to have a cause. We expect this as surely as we expect a dropped heavy object to fall. We expect it because we only ever see caused effects. We never see uncaused effects because they don't happen. Sorry. |
Don't hate a great team. Greatest comeback in football history by the greatest club on earth. Força Barça!!! ![]() |
MOVIE RECOMMENDATION Silence, a movie released in 2016 is a movie I recommend. It is one of the few films where you'll actually see persecuted Christians, rather than Christians who are offended because an Atheist dared to question their holy book (I'm talking to you, God's Not Dead). I feel everyone should see this film, no matter what religion they believe in or not believe in because we live in a society where one person simply doesn't buy into the bullshit that the person next to them believes, they're immediately antagonized. As an atheist, I don't believe in any religion, but I believe in one's choice to practice a religion. So to me, Silence was an excellent film. If it's playing in a cinema near you, seriously check it out. It's a little long, but still worth the watch. |
onyenze123:Indeed. I await the day. |
tbaba1234:He was unplayable in this match. Scored two goals...was brought down for a penalty for another goal. Contrary to what some would have us believe, this guy is good in hold-up play and can build from the back. He was building throughout the match. There is just too much sentiments in Nigerian football. People judge players even without watching them. |
THANKS FOR READING... Time and time again, I get notified of a large number of 'likes' just out of the blues. When I check, I realize that they have been coming from someone reading this thread from Page 1 all the way to the latest page. It shows these sometimes incoherent words are making sense to people. I have gotten emails from people saying their journey to disbelief started on this thread. I'm humbled by this. I have been spending the last hours watching Youtube videos of Benny Hinn endorsing Chris Oyakhilome. The last video lasted 3 hours. Benny Hinn invited Oyakhilome to California to preach to a congregation of about 100 people. It was a huge endorsement and Chris was grinning from ear to ear proud to have his mentor pay glowing tributes to him. In describing what he saw in Nigeria when he last visited in November 2016, he spoke of how Nigeria is now very different from what he experienced when Benson Idahosa invited him in the 80s. He called Nigerian pastors the best pastors in the world. He called Nigerian churches the best hosts in the world. He said there is a move of the Holy Spirit in Nigeria that is not in any place on earth. He ended by saying that the US needs Nigeria. That struck me as odd. In terms of economic development, Nigeria is one of the worst places to do business and even live. A reuter report last week quoted some investors saying that Nigeria is uninvestable. The US is the world's leader in economic development and it is still the greatest country on earth. Here is my point: That Benny looks to Nigeria as an example to the world shows the level of 'unthinkingness' that is taking place. There is a dearth of critical thinking no thanks to widespread poverty. Nigeria's greatest export is now religion. Ministries are springing up all over the world managed by Nigerian pastors, and those who understand religion realize the bondage Nigerians must be to have so many of these charlatans fleecing them. Therefore, if my little thread does something to buck the trend and cause people to carve a 'thinking' path, then it would be worth the efforts. Thanks for reading this thread. Hope it stays here for a long time. Posterity will absolve us of some blame because here is proof that some indeed understood the manipulation and exploitation that is taking place at this time of great religiosity in our dear country. Keep reading. The truth will set you free... |
YOU OWE IT TO PEOPLE Let's play a game of "imagine"... Imagine people you knew believed that Santa Claus actually existed. And they lived their lives according to rules they were told that Santa Claus wrote (or inspired his elves to write) in a book. And the rules in this book were used to occasionally restrict human rights or police people's morality or threaten people with an afterlife spent in the desert if they did not confess that Santa Claus was the only person who made Christmas special. None of them had literally seen Santa Claus. Just imitations of him at malls and the likes. But they were all sure that he existed because they had "experienced" Santa Claus. Now, imagine you could see through all the brouhaha. Wouldn't you think you owed it to people to tell them that Santa Claus didn't exist and why? Wouldn't you think you owed it to them to explain the improbability of flying all around the world in one night... on a flying sleigh... and flying reindeers without wings (not that reindeers are supposed to have wings) Wouldn't you feel upset when they ask you something as incredulous as, "prove that sleighs cannot fly" or "prove that Santa Claus does not exist". Would a decision to keep stating to people that Santa Claus doesn't exist and why mean that you actually believe in Santa? by Nwobodo Fortune Chukwuemeka |
I like this Rohr guy... something tells me he will be our greatest coach ever. He's so dedicated to his duties. |
tbaba1234:You proved my point with the bolded. Why do you want a player that is just coming from injury? Why do you want a player that has not gotten his chances? It's not good logic to say Adi would not make the first team of Wolfsburg when Osimhen has not made it either. But then use the same criterion to justify Victor's call-up. Life is about opportunities. If Victor didn't go to the U17, he would still be in an obscure academy in Nigeria. That he was lucky does not mean he is better than the home-based players. If these same players I am starting to watch in the NPFL get the same opportunities, they would blow in European teams. You and I know Nwobodo, but he's still in Nigeria despite all his potential. Does it mean Silvester Igboun is better than him? I don't like to hear it when people imply that local players can't shine the shoes of their foreign counterparts because they have not left the shores of the Nigeria. It's just untrue. |
edi287:The same article quoted unnamed local coaches saying Aaron Samuel could not perform basic drills for strikers. You believe that? The same Aaron we know? So why did you ask us to invite Aaron when the article says both of them were terrible in training? |
edi287:He was horrible, says who? What's your source? I can see all the people you listed but that's you changing the goal post. What brought about this discussion is if it makes sense to call up Osimhen, who has not played a professional game, instead of a top scorer in MLS? All these other names you're calling, I've never argued for them not to be called instead of Osimhen at this time, so you can't drag me into that debate. |
edi287:Oh please. You kept quiet when players from backward leagues like South Africa, Bosnia and Cyrus are invited but you think MLS is not deserving. You believe a player who has not tasted professional league action is more deserving than one of MLS top scorers? Even Brazil has invited players from MLS before. Mexico, US, Uruguay, Columbia have got players in the league that Adi outperforms. |
edi287:Where did you watch him? Dude is scoring goals and lifting his team week in week out. |
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