Joseph1013's Posts

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:06pm On Sep 13, 2015

Wait, death means Islam is true? And then helps in your quest for immortality?

Care to explain how you come by that conclusion Sir?

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 3:28pm On Sep 13, 2015

^^^

Is that your way of letting Allah off the hook? If yes, try harder.

That verse of the Quran you just quoted is quoted out of context. It was referring to people fighting Jihad and killing infidels. Therefore, as a way of guilt-tripping others who had warned Mohammed not to fight for God and shed innocent blood, Mohammed tried to use death, which happens to all living things, to justify his actions. The same things ISIS members say to people who oppose them.

By your analogy, why not jump in front of a trailer since we will all die someday? You may as well end your life today.

Religion indeed clouds objectivity.

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 3:27pm On Sep 13, 2015

Is that your way of letting Allah off the hook? If yes, try harder.

That verse of the Quran you just quoted is quoted out of context. It was referring to people fighting Jihad and killing infidels. Therefore, as a way of guilt-tripping others who had warned Mohammed not to fight for God and shed innocent blood, Mohammed tried to use death, which happens to all living things, to justify his actions. The same things ISIS members say to people who oppose them.

By your analogy, why not jump in front of a trailer since we will all die someday? You may as well end your life today.

Religion indeed clouds objectivity.

1 Like

Sports › Re: All The News About The Olympic Eagles (U-23) HERE! by joseph1013(op): 6:03pm On Sep 12, 2015

Icon4s:
"the greatest U20 team he has seen" he said. When u mentioned Tunde Disu's boys i know u meant the Saudi 89 set which to me are till date d best ever U20.
Manu's U20 were nt even as good as d Siasia's 2005 U20.

Time will tell. Don't be in a hurry, okay?

Wait, did you see Kelechi’s goal? That's the player Manu said is not good enough for his first team. The same boy you keep saying is overhyped.

2 Likes

Sports › Re: All The News About The Olympic Eagles (U-23) HERE! by joseph1013(op): 6:02pm On Sep 12, 2015

Pele should stop bringing him in on the 90th minute jor.

Sports › Re: All The News About The Olympic Eagles (U-23) HERE! by joseph1013(op): 5:08pm On Sep 12, 2015

[But Pelegrini didn't do well o. He still doesn't trust Kelechi. I had expected him to bring him in since and remove Bony. The boy came in on the 90th minute and still stole the show.

That's how we roll! Hope he starts next game

2 Likes

Sports › Re: All The News About The Olympic Eagles (U-23) HERE! by joseph1013(op): 5:03pm On Sep 12, 2015

[THAT'S MY BOY. KELECHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

1 Like

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 12:12pm On Sep 12, 2015

THE PLACE OF ALLAH IN SAUDI TRAGEDY

Yesterday, 107 people (& still counting) died at the Mecca mosque (the greatest holiest mosque or so in Islam) during an accident. What a tragedy!

Concerning the tragedy,

September 11, 2001: Muslims aided Allah to kill innocent people

September 11, 2015: Allah helped himself to kill innocent Muslims.

What is the place of Allah in the accident

1. He has power to prevent it but refused?

2. He doesn't know about it??

3. He doesn't have power to prevent it even though he knew about it??

4. He caused it himself??

If a miracle had happened inside that mosque, it would've been used as a means of preaching Islam to the whole world. Allah would've been mentioned side by side with the miracle.

But now that it was a tragedy, folks shouldn't mention Allah side by side with the tragedy? I'm confused here.

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:47pm On Sep 10, 2015

[b]THE FOLLY OF FAITH

I have discussed faith several times with several people of faith and I tell them that faith is WORTHLESS as a way to distinguish truth from untruth and it is DANGEROUS to base your life on faith. They believe faith is vital. That is our disagreement.

What is faith? Faith is believing things without reasonable evidence. In many cases it is believing things with no evidence or, even, believing things when there is good evidence to show your beliefs cannot be true.

Why do I say faith is worthless and dangerous?

1. Faith has no mechanism to help show which things are true and which are false. We know this is so because people believe contradictory things through faith. Compare Christianity and Hinduism. Both cannot be true because they make contradictory claims but both are believed through faith. So you can easily believe things that are not true if you rely on faith.

2. Faith places no limits on what people will believe. Once you accept things on faith you could believe donkeys can talk or a man could live in the belly of a whale or the sun could stand still in the sky or that Cain’s offspring were cursed by god and became black people. (People who use faith have no problem understanding that the faith claims made by other religions are absurd!)

3. Faith encourages certainty. We can rarely be certain about things even when there is abundant evidence but faith leads people to be CERTAIN about things for which there is no evidence. This can be dangerous.

4. If you are certain that god loves you and answers your prayers you may forgo medical help for your diabetic daughter and rely on prayer. This is how 11-year-old Madeline Neumann died in March 2008 in Weston Wisconsin. A shot of insulin would have saved her life, prayer allowed her to die from ketoacidosis. If you are certain that god wants you to wage a holy war on infidels, faith may convince you it is a good thing to fly a plane into a 110 story-building. These are not isolated stories—religions have been killing people for thousands of years. Faith places no limits on what people will believe and encourages certainty. This is a lethal combination.

5. Faith creates artificial barriers between people. Those who share a faith become an “in-crowd” and everyone else an “out-crowd”. Dialogue between faiths is difficult because there is no basis in reality for anyone’s beliefs. No side can point to evidence to show that one belief is more reasonable than another. It is hard to convince someone who is certain she is right for no rational reason. So periodically, conflicts erupt between religions and people die as a result of their superstitions. There are hundreds of examples of inter-faith conflict but the on-going killings between Christians and Muslims in Central Africa Republic are a recent example.

That is why I say faith is worthless and dangerous.

Religionists have no way of denying any of these criticisms of faith but they always seek to show that everyone use faith every day.

For example, they say that when I accept medicine from a doctor, I accept the medicine on faith.

But this response is wrong in logic AND it fails to recognise the difference between faith and risk assessment. I do not use faith but I do make risk assessments. The two are completely different.

Let’s look at the logic of this objection. I use the name of an hypothetical Christian called Lawal. I summarise Lawal's logic as follows:

1. Faith is not a reliable way to determine truth.

2. Everyone, including Joseph1013, find out they have to use faith in everyday life.

3. Lawal uses faith to believe that his god exists.

Lawal’s conclusion: Therefore, use of faith to believe in god is justified.

Wrong conclusion. Even if I were to agree to Lawal's premises, which I do not, the only justified conclusion would be: Some of Joseph1013’s beliefs and my belief in god may be false because we both use an unreliable method to determine truth.

However, I do not agree with premise (2). I do not use faith. When I have to make a decision and have imperfect information (which, I agree is quite often), I do a risk assessment.

Let’s take the example of accepting medication from a doctor. I will find out what I can about the medication, its effectiveness and its side effects. I may do this by reading the datasheet, searching the Internet for reports about the drug or by asking the doctor. I will then weigh up the likely benefits and disadvantages of the drug and make a decision. At the end of this process, I will form a belief about the likely outcome of the treatment. That belief will never equate to certainty. It will be expressed in my mind as a probability and it will be based on whatever evidence I have been able to gather.

The faith process is completely different. The evidence is not relevant to Lawal's belief and his belief will be at the level of certainty (assuming he have enough faith). This may be a positive belief that the drug will work or a negative belief that the drug will not work. As an example of this, I recall Muslims refusing on faith free vaccinations for Measles, Mumps and Rubella, Diptheria, Pertussis,Tetanus, and Polio. I recall this has happened in India and in several African countries, including Nigeria. A rational risk assessment would have led these people to accept the vaccinations but, irrational faith, led them to reject the treatment. As a consequence there were deaths, paralysis and other problems among the unvaccinated population.

Faith is worthless and dangerous. I look forward to the day when we all reject faith as a way to determine truth; to a day when the word faith will be synonymous with the word stupidity.[/b]

2 Likes

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:55am On Sep 08, 2015

kobosmalls:
Each one of these worlds religions think that they are superior to others and that theirs is the right one and the others ar wrong, and is very similar to the way people view their cultural heritage and background.

Those religious stories and beliefs were all evidently made up by some primitive humans back then.

They all have one common characteristc; They are all full of sh!t.

I should have added a last part:

When I told my Skeptic friends that about 5 billion people in the world believe in one of the four stories, they all burst into laughter.

1 Like

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:55pm On Sep 07, 2015

[b]THEY ALL LAUGHED EXCEPT...

When I told my Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish friends that 14 million people in the world believe that glass must be broken at weddings to mourn the memory of a destroyed Temple in 70AD, to remind them that even at the happiest of moments they should still be unhappy, they all burst into laughter except the Jew.

When I told my Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu friends that more than a billion people believe that an angered monkey named Hanuman once tried to eat the sun, they all burst into laughter except the Hindu.

When I told my Christian, Hindu and Muslim friends that more than 1.5 billion people in the world believe that small birds carrying small rocks in their beaks devastated an entire army of elephants they all burst into laughter except the Muslim.

When I told my Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Christian friends that more than 2 billion people on planet Earth believe that when a man named Jesus cursed a fig tree, it withered from the roots, they all burst into laughter except the Christian.[/b]

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Investment › Re: Nigerian Stock Exchange Market Pick Alerts by joseph1013: 3:01pm On Sep 07, 2015

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 2:50pm On Sep 07, 2015*

[b]YAHWEH, MEET HAMMURABI

Hammurabi, the sixth Babylonian King, ruled for 42 years from 1792 - 1750 BCE. He is probably most famous for introducing the Code of Hammurabi--one of the earliest known codes of law. Several copies of the 282 laws have been found, some chiseled into stone and some on clay tablets.

The most well know example is the, almost complete, stele made from black rock (diorite) which bears an illustration of Hammurabi receiving the laws on a stone tablet from the sun god Shamash.

Hammurabi's laws governed slander, trade, slavery, theft, family law, sexual conduct, inheritance and the duties of workers and employers.
Punishments for infringing laws were extremely harsh with no fewer than 32 crimes carrying the death penalty. Death was mandated for the expected offences such as theft, murder, rape and perjury. But other offences warranting the death penalty included, helping a slave to escape, sending a substitute when asked to run an errand by a king, drinking wine (if you are a priestess) and building a house that falls down and kills a man (but not if a woman is killed).

Other punishments included cutting off body parts such as fingers, ears and breasts.

It is clear the code takes children and women to be the property of men--their father or their husband. An extreme example of this is where a man is punished by killing his children. For instance, if a man strikes a woman causing her death, the offender's daughter would be put to death.

Naturally, a man is free to have sex with his slaves and with his wife's maidservants. (This is Islamic heaven on Earth, I wonder where they got the idea from?)

Interestingly, women are given rights (though inferior to men). So, next time a Muslim defends the inferior rights given to women in the Qur'an by claiming Muhammad was a reformer who was the first to give rights to women, refer them to Hammurabi. Islam came over 1,000 years after Hammurabi and both give women almost identical rights.

Most interesting of all, are striking similarities between the code of Hammurabi and the Jewish laws in the Old Testament. Leviticus sets out these laws and tells the story of their origins. The Jewish laws, too, were said to have been handed down from a god to a man, in this case from Yahweh to Moses.

The historicity of Moses is disputed among scholars but, if he lived, Rabbinical sources give his birth date around 1,391 BCE. That is, 360 years AFTER Hammurabi died so we can be confident that Hammurabi predated Leviticus.

If you are skeptical that Hammurabi received his laws from the Babylonian sun god Shamash, you should be equally skeptical that Moses received almost the same laws from the Jewish god Yahweh.

What happened here? Did Yahweh see Hammurabi's laws, like them, copy them, change them a bit and hand them down to Moses? Or did Moses tinker with the Babylonian laws he was familiar with and pretend he got them from his god?

I know which I would put my money on.[/b]

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 2:32pm On Sep 07, 2015

rabzy:
I never said the verse is saying God is the Pillar, i said God is the one supporting the pillars so he is the ultimate support, just as most pillars rest on the foundation. I didn't change anything. The Bible using the pillar is a figurative sense and its not literal, for it to have literal pillars, then that means God is also literally holding it in his hands. It is a figurative use of language. The Bible talked about the seas having bars and doors, the snow having storehouses and uses other symbolic and figurative terms to pass its message across
And God is still supporting the earth with his powers such that no quake has actually destroyed the planet. He never said there would be no quake, but that he would be there to support it, no quake would be strong enough to topple the earth, destroy it, moved, make it to totter on its foundation...New International Version
He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
He established the earth on its foundations; it will never be shaken.
International Standard Version
He established the earth on its foundations, so that it never falters.
NET Bible
He established the earth on its foundations; it will never be upended.

So talking about pillars, bars and doors does not mean there are actually pillars. The Bible said the earth is God's footstool also, does it mean he has his hands on the pillars and his legs resting on the earth?. You can take it as literal but i believe it to be a figurative expression and there are thousands in the Bible.

rabzy:
I don't know what straws you are talking about, just because the bible said empty space, you have to say space is not empty. There is nothing else that can be emptier than space. This is what science says:

Vacuum is space void of matter. Outer space is the closest natural approximation of a perfect vacuum. It has effectively no friction, allowing stars, planets and moons to move freely along ideal gravitational trajectories. But no vacuum is truly perfect, not even in intergalactic space where there are still a few hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter. (For comparison, the air we breathe contains about 1019 molecules per cubic centimeter.) According to modern understanding, even if all matter could be removed from a volume, it would still not be "empty" due to vacuum fluctuations, dark energy, transiting gamma- and cosmic rays, neutrinos, along with other phenomena in quantum physics.

So if there is anywhere that can be said to be empty it is space. I don't know why you want to dwell in the realms of absolute. If you say space is not empty, then you would have to tell your wife anytime she says the tank is empty that, no it is not empty but there are billions of dust particles, petrol residues, and billions of microbes, no plate can be empty, no room or bag...empty as a word would have to be unused. Everyday life is not about dark matter and black holes and electromagetism occupying all space, that is why empty is valid and the Bible is right by saying empty space.

The Book of Job says the earth hangs upon nothing and it is valid and true. The last time i checked, expand and stretch are still synonyms of each other, the bible said God stretches the heaven in space, scientist says it is expanding. To an observer in the universe, it is expanding, the person applying the force that causes the expansion can say he is doing the stretching. The nitty gritty and minute details of how and why it is expanding is the job of the scientist. The Bible was not written to explain science nor astronomy, so it might not used the exact words scientist may want it to use. It uses expressions understandable to all. Its astronomy is still valid.

I have heard your interpretation and the way you have tried to reconcile the inconsistencies in the Bible with modern realities.

Let me ask you, how do you know the parts of the Bible to take literally and the ones to take figuratively?

Investment › Re: Nigerian Stock Exchange Market Pick Alerts by joseph1013: 11:02am On Sep 07, 2015

From all indications, we might not be able to trade today via iTrade. But the good news for the UBA crew is that it can't close below 4 today.

Investment › Re: Nigerian Stock Exchange Market Pick Alerts by joseph1013: 10:19am On Sep 07, 2015

UD4040:
CHANGE IN OUR BROKER'S TRADING CODE-In line with our branding strategy and as approved by The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Central Securities and Clearing System (CSCS), there will be a change in our broker's trading code from ICSEC to MCSE. This change has been effected by the CSCS over the weekend and it is likely to cause a slight interruption in our FIX / Online Operations during the trading hours of today.If this interruption takes too long, we advise you to send your orders / mandates to our trading desk today via tradingdesk@morgancapitalgroup.com.Kindly accept our apologies for any inconveniences this might cause you.Thank you.

I guess the 'slight' used is just a pacifier. Boys were too ready to go full in today. Not good

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:06am On Sep 05, 2015

[b]HOW THE RELIGIOUS FRUSTRATES THE SKEPTIC...

The religious continues to travel in circles.

Religion only claims infallibility on account of belief in God, who gives the inspiration. And since they are CERTAIN that god is all knowing, someday religionists believe religious texts would be proven to be correct in their entirety.

When the scientist confronts the religious man with his 'proof' of certain aspects of the religious text as being untenable, he or she is met with aloofness and a 'time will tell' attitude. So the skeptic scientist concludes, and rightly so, that this religious dude is totally bereft of reason simply because he believes in god, otherwise he wouldn't be so obstinate.

And so there is a push to vehemently deny god's existence in the hope that the religious folk will see reason.

But we know that the religious folk won't see reason (at least not in the way the skeptic expects him to) because to accept that the holy texts are partly fallible is almost to invalidate the whole text. Because then the Christian can no longer preach, and the Islamic extremist can no longer wade Jihad. And there will be no heaven and no hell.

What then would be the function of religion? So the religious folk must defend their ground to the death, while the Skeptic must continually bash them in the head for doing just so.

But say religious folk are right - which of the many religions in the world would it be?

So the religions fight among themselves, wrangling for supremacy. And the skeptics also wrangle among themselves, proving and disproving the latest theories. [/b]

4 Likes

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 4:33am On Sep 05, 2015

RELIGION BASHING

Why do people do it?

There are many reasons, I suppose.

I'll offer one: in the main, religious people are really no different from their non-religious counterparts in matters of character and behaviour.

But they behave as though they are. Whether by virtue of grace or by works.

Maybe that's what irks.

Maybe that's why some continually bash religion!

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 11:52am On Sep 03, 2015

I certainly think that alot of Religious people are not open-minded, but interestingly I have been getting Private Messages from people asking me questions, and though while in the process of becoming closet skeptics, they have no qualms about asking themselves hard questions about what they believe. That's a good start, right?

As a nation, we cannot move forward if we hold on to these archaic traditions and live lives based on invented stories that no longer serve us in this age and time.

A young man got in contact with me yesterday and ask that I recommend a documentary he could watch that would help him form an opinion of his own, I recommended Bill Maher's RELIGULOUS.

Watch it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFspMFYntME

Good stuff!

1 Like

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 9:08am On Sep 03, 2015

[b]SCIENCE DOESN'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS

When people say, "Science doesn't have all the answers", I have to agree. Honestly, I don't even know what proportion of the answers science has. Could it be 50%, 1% or 0.0001%? I just don't know. Nor does anyone.

But people who say that usually have something else in mind. They usually mean there are realms, such as the supernatural, that science cannot investigate at all and, without science, it's OK to believe whatever you like.

My first question is, without science, how can you arrive at reliable knowledge about the supernatural? I get four answers to that question:
1) Personal experience
2) Faith
3) Revelation
4) Intuition

I think of these as subjective epistemologies. They all suffer from the same problem--they give different answers to different people. The answers you get are influenced by your mood, personality and culture and they change over time. This is enough for you to know these methods are unreliable--they give you answers but you have no way of being sure your answers are correct.

Worse still, most of these epistemologies have a tendency to make you CERTAIN you have the correct answer. Being certain of something that is not true doesn't just make you wrong, it can make you dogmatic and dangerous too.

So science does not have all the answers but subjective epistemologies have no answers at all--they cannot even tell us if a supernatural realm exists, far less investigate it.

If you really want to believe only things that are true, give subjective epistemologies a wide berth--they can make you believe in fairy stories. There is no truly solid ground when it comes to knowledge but science gets closer to it than anything else.

Right now, science is the only game in town.[/b]

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Christianity Etc › Re: Pope Francis To Allow Priests To Forgive Women Who Had Abortions by joseph1013: 6:36pm On Sep 01, 2015

I had no idea they were not forgiven before now. Were paedophiles forgiven?

2 Likes

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:11am On Aug 31, 2015

[b]HAVE YOU SEEN THIS POST?

I had been busy all week and all weekend and as I rested yesterday from my labour for the new week, I stumbled on this article online.

SEE WHO MOCKED GOD:
John Lennon (Singer):
Some years ago, during his interview with an American Magazine, he said:
'Christianity will end, it will disappear.
I do not have to argue about that.. I am certain.
Jesus was ok, but his subjects were too simple, today we are more famous than Him' (1966).
Lennon, after saying that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, was shot six times.

Tancredo Neves (President of Brazil ):
During the Presidential campaign, he said if he got 500,000 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency.
Sure he got the votes, but he got sick a day before his inauguration as President and he died.

Cazuza (Bi-sexual Brazilian composer, singer and poet):
During A show in Canecio ( Rio de Janeiro ),
while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said:
'God, that's for you.'
He died at the age of 32 of LUNG CANCER in a horrible manner.
The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of the Cruise Ship, Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said:
'Not even God can sink it'
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic

Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show.
He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said: 'I don't need your Jesus'.
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment

Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:
'Don't stop me; I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell'.
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.

Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas , Brazil, a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend.....
The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
'My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You.'
She responded: 'Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, 'Cause Inside Here.....It's Already Full '
Hours later, news came that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died.
The car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact.
The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact.
To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none was broken

Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist and entertainer) said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle.
Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus.
Many have died, but only Jesus died and rose again, and he is still alive....
"J-E-S-U-S"

PS: If it was a joke, you would have sent it to everyone.
So, are you going to have the courage to send this?.
I have done my part.
Jesus said:
'If you are embarrassed about me, I will also be embarrassed about you before my father.'

It baffles me what an opium religion is. So you mean that all these deaths were caused by a God you say is merciful? A God you say sent his only son to be sacrificed to cleanse your sins?

Cmon...aren't these acts a bit too petty and vengeful?

A few questions for this vengeance-loving bigots...

- The Christian families that died on Christmas Day Suleja bombing, which of the gods did they blaspheme?

- The Professor that died in the BUK-NIFES massacre in the hands of Boko Haram elements, were his supplications offending to god like John Lennon?

- Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh, the heroic doctor that helped the whole nation during the Ebola tragedy and died in the process. She was a Christian. What happened?

- The thousands of Christians whose throats were slit by Islamic warlords, Yahweh was sleeping?

Asides the fact that there are God knows how many incidences of people dying horrible deaths while worshipping God, people perished while worshipping God at T. B Joshua's church. People who believe in God have died even more horrible deaths than the ones listed! If dying a horrible death is for people who don't believe in God why do Christians die violent deaths. This post is not befitting of any God! I'm sure there are other ways.

The earlier religious people stop wishing that unbelievers die gruesomely, the better for us for forward movement.[/b]

1 Like

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:19pm On Aug 26, 2015

PastorAIO:
The analogy IS a great one to be used by a religionist who believes in the afterlife. it does not 'demonise' anybody or make anyone a 'hero'.

A 'scientific' baby will never say 'walking is impossible', but a baby that took it as a creed, the way some atheists do regarding spiritual matters, not a 'critical thinking' baby, but a baby that holds it as a philosophical position adamantly without proof (either way), would say that 'walking is impossible'.

I believe its that adamant attitude that is being criticised here. Neither baby has proof but the analogy shows how the future can totally confound our current experiences and so one should allow for the possibility that there is more than what we now know.

In the story the skeptic baby does not say 'relax we don't know for sure'. Why? because in real life the Atheist don't say that neither. That is why it is such an accurate analogy.

Your opinion. I, for one, dont encounter atheists who take it as a creed that there is no afterlife. I will confess that I don't have time to look up atheist threads on nairaland, so maybe they exist.

When you say some people take a philosophical adamant position, do you mean those who shut off any discussion of a 100% afterlife without proof? What do you mean by saying an atheist should proof that there is no afterlife? You advocate that he proves a negative?

I still insist that the analogy is widely misrepresenting. We do not KNOW that the future can totally confound our current experiences. The onus of proof is on anyone who says it does.

For all we know, no one has been able to convince us that he rose up from the death.

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 5:00pm On Aug 26, 2015*

[b]DO YOU WANT RELIGION OR NOT?

According to the Global Peace Index, issued by the Institute for Economics and Peace, here are the top 10 peaceful countries in the world. I have included in brackets, the percentage of people in those countries who have decided not to have anything to do with religion in their everyday life.

The 10 most peaceful countries

1. Iceland (60%)
2. Denmark (83%)
3. Austria (51%)
4. New Zealand (67%)
5. Switzerland (57%)
6. Finland (69%)
7. Canada (61%)
8. Japan (71%)
9. Australia (67%)
10. Czech Republic (72%)

On the other hand, here are the top 10 most crisis-ridden countries in the world. They are the most dangerous places to live in the world for someone who is interested in human rights. I have included in brackets, the percentage of people in those countries who believe in God and have a religion.

The 10 least peaceful countries in the world

1. Syria (85%)
2. Iraq (85%)
3. Afghanistan (97%)
4. South Sudan (91%)
5. Central African Republic (99%)
6. North Korea (46%)
7. Somalia (99%)
8. Sudan (95%)
9. DR Congo (94%)
10. Pakistan (96%)

I think you can form an opinion from this information.

SOURCES
- https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/06/which-is-the-most-peaceful-country-in-the-world/?utm_content=buffer7a762&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_by_country[/b]

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Sports › Re: All The News About The Olympic Eagles (U-23) HERE! by joseph1013(op): 8:19pm On Aug 25, 2015

TheGoodJoe:
Playing time is not a criteria for greatness.you can get playing time but a coach who can not train a player to greatness will not help.

Nacho has the chance to train with coach who turned a flopped young Forlan into the fiercest attacker in Europe. He coached a young and flopped Riquelme into one of the best midfielders football ever saw.

He groomed a young Isco into a Midfielder Real Madrid and Man City fought for.

Nacho working with Pellegrini now is better than Nacho working with mediocre coaches who have never trained a World star.

Bro, where have you been? Don't mind Icon. Just beefing the lad.

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 6:03pm On Aug 25, 2015

YOU KNOW GOD?

Christians often insist they have a personal relationship with God and talk to him daily but whenever we discuss God's apparent injustices, his evil behaviour or his absence when we need him most, they insist we cannot know God.

Which is it? Can we know God or can we not? If we cannot know God, why do so many pretend they do?

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 2:33pm On Aug 24, 2015

[b]DOES THIS MAKE SENSE TO YOU? IT MAKES SENSE TO CHRISTIANS!

You have two children. A son and a daughter. You place a bowl of candy in front of them and tell them not to touch it. You leave the room. They give in and eat the candy, you come in and not only punish them but their children as well who weren't even involved.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

Your children now have a large family and many of them disagree with you and refuse to live by your rules. You get angry and dig a series of large pits and throw many of these children into the pits and bury them alive.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

You have an enemy (Satan) who challenges one of your children's belief in you. To prove yourself and your child's belief you kill all the child's offspring, destroy his property and make him sick with boils and suffer great agony all to prove a bet. On top of that this enemy can talk to you face to face, but your own creation can not because they once obeyed this enemy.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

The idea that the earth and the universe were created from gases the existed forever and exploded is false, yet the idea that a god who existed forever just spoke it all into existence is true.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

God who is so powerful he not only spoke the universe into existence but can control the most absolute smallest particle and yet his solution for mans plight is to be born of a virgin so he can grow up and be killed by his own creation.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

Instead of pushing man to better fulfillment and a brighter future, god instead pushes to end it all in a most horrible manner all because he lost control a long time ago.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

God has a war with his worst enemy (Satan) and yet he doesn't destroy him nor locks him up in prison but instead he releases him to roam the galaxy freely so he can cause countless problems. But it's ok, god will get him someday. (wolf, wolf)
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

You are not to think for yourselves or about what you believe, but rather just have faith in the Bible and what the preachers teach you without question.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

You pray and ask god to answer even though he rarely answers you or anyone, but you are just to have faith and keep believing regardless of the lack of response from god.
Does this make sense to you? It makes sense to Christians!

When you really sit down and use your brain, Christianity does not make sense. We have a shot to build a better world, but god and his followers want it to end. It's all senseless.

I was once a Christian and believed all the above and yet somehow it made sense to me at the time.

Then I started to think.....[/b]

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 8:41am On Aug 24, 2015

A TALE OF TWO BIBLES

The Codex Sinaiticus is widely accepted as the oldest known (almost) complete Bible. It is 1,600 years old and is handwritten in Greek. It is kept in the British Library, London in a box made of English oak lined with light brown goat skin.

There are numerous differences between Sinaiticus and modern Bibles. One striking example is St Mark's Gospel which has fewer verses than today's Bibles and completely omits the appearance of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

So, we are left to wonder where the missing verses came from. Surely, they were not made up by a creative monk halfway through the 1st century?

Who knows? All we know is those verses were not in the original manuscripts...

Fascinating stuff. The entire book is available to view online: http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscript.aspx?book=34&chapter=16&lid=en&side=r&zoomSlider=0

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:08pm On Aug 22, 2015

[b]ISLAM COMES AGAIN...

• Riot breaks out at overcrowded refugee camp in Germany after resident tore pages out of the Koran and threw them in the toilet

• At least 17 people were injured at an overcrowded shelter in Suhl, Germany

• Group of 20 refugees chased down a man who tore pages out of the Koran

• They turned their anger on security services who eventually saved the man

• Raised tensions in nation which expects to host 800,000 migrants this year

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3204828/Riot-breaks-overcrowded-refugee-camp-Germany-resident-tore-pages-Koran.html#ixzz3jPBhE8kO

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Islam needs urgent reform.

Why does tolerance of Muslims come at such a high price?

Who goes on violent rampage because some national flag is burnt or some Holy Bible is deliberately torn?

Is it any wonder that the Slovaks don't want them?

Freedom of belief is a fundamental human right, yet it should not have to come with freedom from offense, and freedom from criticism and ridicule.

You don't hide under the banner of Islamophobia and protect your irrational belief system from attack.

Islam, like any other ideology, must be open to criticism. Moderate muslims must understand this.

The onus is on them to make muslims more accommodating of people of other faiths.[/b]

Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:06pm On Aug 22, 2015

[b]ON...FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE

There is one aspect of Christian fundamentalism that kept me confused even as a Christian. It is the issue of divorce. While as a Christian, I heard it drummed continually that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), I still struggled with that doctrine.

Of course I think marriage ought to be for better and for worse (as long as couples can handle their differences amicably and resolve their conflicts peacefully).

I shall tell some personal stories.

There was this my Uncle, Charles, jolly good fellow he was.

I remember the good times we had when I was a little boy spending long vacation winter holidays in Bauchi.

I later heard that he was having problems with his wife.

She ganged up with the kids against him.

I had no idea what his crime was. He suffered from diabetes, and his family neglected him.

The illness claimed his life.

Then there was this my mother's uncle. His father made him marry when he was very young, and he grew up to dislike the lady. He then married his lover, and all hell broke loose. The new woman never wanted him anywhere close to his first wife and her kids. Their home suffered from all sorts of trauma. The first wife died, and the situation did not subside. Both warring spouses continued fighting even after they suffered debilitating strokes.

I once had a neighbour who habitually beat his wife black and blue.

The woman would run into our sitting room, in mortal fear and weeping, the man close on her heels.

My dad would intervene and the conflict would thaw for a while, only to reignite days later.

Mama Jonathan had yet to have a male child, and the man felt he could beat a boy out of her.

In all these scenarios, the marriages lasted until death parted them.

Couldn't the couples have separated and had peace of mind?

Either way, wouldn't their children have partaken of the agony of family feuding or of the trauma of having separated parents?

For better and for worse, I think, ought to be realistic if couples have difficulties which are not of their own making. Some days ago a friend managed a man who was paralysed from the waste down. His loving wife never left his side. His inability to urinate and defecate normally were as a result of a farm accident.

If the woman had been the one with a similar trouble, I am confident that the man would have cared for her always. I have seen it happen.

The idea that couples should remain together even when they physically and emotionally torture each other till eternity, is one aspect of Christian fundamentalism and African culture which completely amazes me.

Seriously, people need to wake up and smell the damn coffee.

There is nothing like objective moral values. We make our decisions on situational basis. Asking people not to divorce because the Bible says so in face of child abuse, assault, unfaithfulness and sometimes at the risk of STDs is irresponsible.[/b]

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 2:21pm On Aug 21, 2015

PastorAIO:
What I get out of the metaphor is that the truth may not be evident to us due to our limited perspective. Just like the babies in the womb don't know what happens after birth.
Check out the difference between the two babies. One speculates cautiously on the basis of experiences it's had when it was quiet. The other one is cocksure and dismissive and 'knows' for certain that there is nothing after delivery.
If you weren't so bolshy perhaps you might also have appreciated as a metaphor cautioning against closed-mindedness.

[b]That may be true...but that analogy would be a great one to be used by a religionist who believes in the afterlife. Demonise the skeptic baby and make the believing baby a hero. A 'scientific' baby will never say 'walking is impossible'. A 'critical thinking' baby will never say eating with the mouth is ridiculous after being born. All those statements attributed to the skeptic baby are tailored towards ridiculing the baby. Scientists and critical thinking persons are not typically that close-minded. They withhold decisions and verdicts UNTIL good evidence is provided.

That metaphor is HOGWASH in this instance! It's false representation.

Like I said earlier, the reason the believing baby is giving a medal is because we know a mother exists. It was crafted so well so that she takes the victory. Twist it another way and make the believing baby say that there is a dragon out there who will devour them because they keep hearing strange voices of traffic, sound from horror movies watched by the mother and violence in the neighbourhood, and then have the skeptic baby ask the believing child to relax and tell him they dont know for sure and that they should withhold 100% certainty. With that, we will surely give the skeptic baby a medal for that act of holding back judgement.

In other words, that analogy was crafted to give a false premise. Too bad you say it taught you not to be closeminded.[/b]

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Christianity Etc › Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013(op): 7:06am On Aug 21, 2015

PastorAIO:
Since you appreciate it as a good use of metaphor why don't you just enjoy it like that. You seem to be missing the point the other way you look at it.

Babies will face delivery one day whether they like it or not. Just as we all will face death one day whether we like it or not. In your counter example nobody has got to jump.
If jumping with an inevitable thing they had to do and one fretted while the other was calm that would be a closer analogy. If the calm guy also suggested a means of perceiving the invisible rope that would help. Like if he said, 'if you squint your eyes lightly you will see the rope' that would be closer. The baby tells the other baby that if he is quiet he can hear their mother's voice.

I think I've explained fairly elaborately in my second comment. Like you pointed out here, it's a metaphor. The same metaphor that would have favoured the skeptic baby if it was a conversation about a dragon that eats baby because of the sound they hear when the mother is in traffic or a noisy environment.

No one knows what happens after death, so this metaphor is useless. Someone might say he has been listening and he is not hearing or perceiving anything about the afterlife like someone predisposed to superstitions will do.

And yes, we could finetune the cliff analogy and make the skeptic guy the winner. It depends on how creative the storyteller is.

The analogy of the two babies is a silly story that does not deserve a worthwhile argument.

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