really I am hoping that the female pope will be super hot. wouldn't mind a one night stand with the Holy pope!
and hey this poop pope is doing all these as a publicity stunt. time will tell!

Kamsy10: I can only pity your miserable soul for peddling such falsehood against the pope
So you opened this monika last week to post this crap.

When your problem starts, I hope you'll remember this post

it is your soul that needs pitying cos biologically you got no soul! check it up!
and stats show that atheists live pretty normal lives and their problems can be explained thorough science not attributed to phenomena or some imaginary big bully in the sky.

blasphemy love the woman pope idea, hope she is a sexy devil

can anyone logically explain how this is not a publicity stunt from the poopoopope?smh

LOL!!

come on stop it.
black people can be just as foul and can stoop just a low.
in fact it was blacks in the name of religion who sold each other out
into slavery.

as for the topic,
those are not true believers in God. These people are fraudulent and hide behind
theism to justify their disgusting nature. it's people like them why atheism is on the rise (well for weak folks who can't differentiate true faith from "faux-religious barbarianism" ). #spits!

from an atheist to you:
"Those weren't real believers. They just claimed to be believers as some sort of excuse."

This is rather like the No True Scotsman fallacy.

What makes a real believer? There are so many One True Religions it's hard to tell. Look at Christianity: there are many competing groups, all convinced that they are the only true Christians. Sometimes they even fight and kill each other. How is an atheist supposed to decide who's a real Christian and who isn't, when even the major Christian churches like the Catholic Church and the Church of England can't decide amongst themselves?

In the end, most atheists take a pragmatic view, and decide that anyone who calls himself a Christian, and uses Christian belief or dogma to justify his actions, should be considered a Christian. Maybe some of those Christians are just perverting Christian teaching for their own ends--but surely if the Bible can be so readily used to support un-Christian acts it can't be much of a moral code? If the Bible is the word of God, why couldn't he have made it less easy to misinterpret? And how do you know that your beliefs aren't a perversion of what your God intended?

If there is no single unambiguous interpretation of the Bible, then why should an atheist take one interpretation over another just on your say-so? Sorry, but if someone claims that he believes in Jesus and that he murdered others because Jesus and the Bible told him to do so, we must call him a Christian.

"Obviously those extreme sorts of beliefs should be questioned. But since nobody has ever proved that God does not exist, it must be very unlikely that more basic religious beliefs, shared by all faiths, are nonsense."

The commonality of many basic religious beliefs is hardly surprising, if you take the view that religion is a product of society. From that viewpoint, religions have borrowed ideas which contribute to a stable society--such as respect for authority figures, a prohibition against murder, and so on.

In addition, many common religious themes have been passed on to later religions. For example, it has been suggested that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament actually have their roots in Hammurabi's code.

The claim that because something hasn't been proved false, it's less likely to be nonsense, does not hold. As was pointed out earlier in this dialogue, positive assertions concerning the existence of entities are inherently much harder to disprove than negative ones. Nobody has ever proved that unicorns don't exist, and there are many stories about them, but that doesn't make it unlikely that they are myths.

It is therefore much more valid to hold a negative assertion by default than it is to hold a positive assertion by default. Of course, "weak" atheists may argue that asserting nothing is better still.
infidel dot org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html

who says morality is for only them deluded bible beltists and other religious fellas. then they should come to me all those who disagree and I shall give them rest from their case- Libero 1 vs 1 .
[size=16pt]Morality and religion are totally exclusive![/size]

rationalmind:

As for the bold, like someone once noted on this forum, religion has a built in fail safe mechanism.

Just this night while chatting with my gfd, she told me to come to their house on the 31st so we both can go for crossover service together with her family in their church.

I started contemplating following her and asked when they would be back the following day. She said, in the morning.

I was like, I don't joke with my sleep, I can't stay in church from night till the following morning. So, I won't come.

She suddenly said, won't you enter new year in a church and start the new year with God?

I told her I didn't enter this year in a church and never started it with God yet I had everything to gain n nothing to loose. I pointed out some favours I even had this year to her.

I was like gbam!!! who knows, I'm about having a new "convert".

She suddenly to my surprise resorted to the built in fail safe mechanism

Its your mums grace that has been covering you

I couldn't contain my laughter.

it is very disturbing to think that most people don't realize that even without their religious text, anything can be used to cover up for religion. very disturbing. it is this ploy that religion has used to survive this long. it is blind belief, subjectivity and denial that they thrive on.

typing here while I am watching millionaire pastor [s]selling false hope to his members on tv and to my mother[/s] I will burn in her own hell if she sees this!

kambo:

Many christians pass/passed through these phases.
The difference is tht they held on and stayed strng. Today theyre encouraging others.
You cant make sense of God's plan many times until you are out of the tunnel then looking back you can nod and say with d wisdom of experience "i see i see ".
For example, joseph cud hv turned atheist in prison. If there was a God ddnt he pray to him. He did.
He was busy mindg his own busness wen a nympho house wife lied on him. He askd one of d prsoners to remember him wen he got out but tht 1 forgot.
He cud have logcally concluded "there is no God".
Christianity isnt easy - as some ppl try to make it seem. But at the end they proved God right. Mayb if u persisted and were patient u wudve had a different story to tell.

if other religions disbelieve in your god, are convinced you are utterly wrong, believe you are going to their version of hell and are unafraid of going to your version of eternal punishment, then please explain, with irrefutable and proven facts, why a person shouldn't generalize(some atheists) or pick a particular religion(s) in which she refutes the existence of God(s)?

rationalmind:

Lol, maybe you weren't properly indoctrinated. Don't you think so?

same thing I thought myself . So in secondary school, I had become a moralist, told my parents I was going to be a bible scholar, read the bible everyday, went to every service. then I saw my so called righteous teachers and adults' inconsistency. to make matters better worse, I read and re-read inconsistencies,contradictions in the bible and how it failed to answer the theories of belief posed by psychology. the most touching for me however was the line in 1984 by George Orwell where he mentions that the poor, after all the maltreatment they faced, are told by their oppressors, not to complain because there is a better world beyond the grave..
the rest is history.

rationalmind:

Ooh really? But u'll agree with me its not easy doing away with that childhood indoctrination. Except perhaps you had atheist parents which I doubt.

For me frankly,it wasn't so hard. ever since I was young, I could always tell that the religious people had no idea what they were saying. I could feel their doubts through their speech, their hypocrisy in their actions and I noticed similarities with other religions, boldness of non-believers, evidence of science.that was all I needed!

rationalmind:

Lol, not to worry bro.

The spirit of the flying spaghetti monster whom I worship won't let that happen to you

Thank you, thank you *on knees*. I am told that I am a fool in xtainity, should be killed in Islam and what else? The spirit of the flying spaghetti monster is indeed kind and loving. come let us set our myths truths and recopy them in ancient papyrus scripts and seal hide them for two thousand years. so that they may believe and whoever does not believe in the spirit of the flying spaghetti monster, cursed be his fate!

religion: one hell of a pyramid scheme. the greatest scam of all time!

Kabieosi:

@plaetton

Incidentally I have the book "God, A Biography" (i.e. by Jack Miles) - and its actually one of my best books,

Good book, not a book for the lily-livered

I rarely do hardcopies nowadays
but hey this one sits proudly in the house alongside others such as
Dan Browns' Angels & Demons; The Da Vinci Code etc
Dennis Wheatley's The Devil and all his Works

I love Jack Miles' beautiful sentence on page 87 (i.e. God, A Biography's What makes God Godlike? chapter)
it states
"Experience shapes character, and character determines action"

Hope you won't mind sharing the download link of the soft copies to this infidel.

rationalmind: There is something here I just noticed. Most atheists here on nairaland seem not to live in nigeria. Logicboy, plaetton, weigraf, mazaje, muskeeto, bindex e.t.c

Seems its safe for me to assume that, majority of them, if not all wouldn't have been atheists had they stayed in Nigeria all through.

This leaves me with one major conclusion, its extremely difficult to break those chains of childhood religious indoctrination most especially when ure in a country like nigeria.

Are there others (atheist or agnostic) here, other than me, who despite not leaving the shores of this country renounced their childhood indoctrination?

I AM HERE! READY TO BURN IN HELL FOR BEING AN INFIDEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cyril83:

That 10% is nonsense excuse, because i pay as much as i want in the church.
Go and read Bible online, if you can't afford it.

And about preacher scaring about going to hell cause of money?
Are you sure you're not making this up? Because Jesus taught differently.
If you go to a church where such preachers existed, then you should change the church,
it might be one of the prosperity and success "christian" churches.

How about secular government? Doesn't it force people to pay taxes, by already deducing it from their payment and goods they buy?
By your reasoning - this is a scam too.

You don't believe those stories in Bible, because you don't believe in God as an All-Powerful Spirit, and think that in the past the same standarts applied as in today's society.
God only added laws about not marrying with relatives since Israeli Old Testament.
It wasn't a sin before it.
God is all-powerful, so He can do anything, I believe God is the Creator of this world, so He can make everything work as He wishes: making Jonah live, calming and fitting animals in the ark.

God doesn't send somebody to Hell for anything - but implicitly for sin and evil.
Slavery point is nonsense, it existed before Israel, and i don't believe even free people lived much better than slaves back then - working mostly for food.
So slavery is not evil, when it protects people from dying from hunger, and no harm is done.
God allowed slaves to run away from abusive masters - there is a law in Old Testament.

God forced rapists to marry these women and not divorce them, because nobody would marry these women and they could have died from hunger after their parents' death.

You lie and you were probably born in a christian family, and went to church with parents,
but you didn't bother to learn about God and Jesus, and you don't understand His reasons and the situation people were living back then in the past.
You were christian in name only, but not in your heart, so you just drifted away as soon as you were free to do what you wish.

I received the Bibles i have at home for free, so evidently you seek excuses to not be a christian and not do God's will.
You're free to make your choices, but you should know that after death - those that haven't believed in Jesus, are thrown into the burning lake, if you want that - go for it.
You can live a secular life, where you're tricked to consume, to be taxed and overburdened by credit.
So don't be a hypocrite, but look at things from both sides - both among christians and outside them.

Hopefully God will help you to repent and to believe in Jesus - to get salvation, peace and eternal life in Heaven.

Interesting, another myopic brainwashed person. It still amazes me how people still have 'faith' in the crap called the bible these days.
As for the part of the government, I as an atheistic agnostic humanist am also an anarchist. So yes the government is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history! pick out the log from your eye blind Christian democracy and government are the worst things in history that has ever befallen mankind after religion and the brainwashing, discriminating, sexist, slave promoted, blind, absurd, intolerant cruel way of living called Christianity.
Who are you say the lives of the Israelites were no better than the slaves. Lemme tell you something: Your god created evil! How? I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)
yet you condemn an atheist for speaking their mind BLASPHEMY I SAY UNTO THEE, YE TOO SHALL BURN IN THE LAKES OF SCORCHING FIRE! REPENT NOW AND BE SAVED FROM YOUR MALADY YE CHRISTIANS!!!! How dare judge another? Your fairy-tale book says do not judge or are in another Christian denomination that does not use the accepted bible in Christendom?
Why shouldn't you agree to this, you are already hallucinating about a mythical utopia called heaven and also what about the following scripture isn't wrong? According to Jesus, how should slaves be treated?
Answer:
They should be beaten for disobedience, but not more severely then they deserve. --Jesus never denounced slavery: he endorsed it! He incorporated it into his teachings as if it were the most natural order (which it was for the biblical writers who didn't know any better). Why doesn't the bible--supposedly inspired by an all-loving deity--ever hint that there is something wrong with such a brutal social institution? If it were not for the influence of the bible, the appalling slave trade might have been curtailed, along with the bloody Civil War.
"And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." (Luke 12:47-48) The entire context (Luke 12:41-48) shows that this is not part of a parable--it is the explanation of a parable, after Peter asked a question. But even if it were a parable, it would carry the same weight as a teaching of Jesus.

The word "servant" above is doulos, which means "slave" in Greek, and is correctly rendered "slave" by the NRSV, NAS, Scholar's Version, and others. "Shall" meant "should," as Jesus adds: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required." (Luke 12:48).
The Bible nowhere states that slavery is wrong. Slavery is ordained by the Bible: "Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, . . . and they shall be your possession . . . they shall be your bondmen forever." (Leviticus 25:45-46) "If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing . . . And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do." (Exodus 21:2,7) "Servants [slaves], obey in all things your masters." (Colossians 3:22)

Kendzyma: Devil incanate...smh!!!!!!wat more can I say Father have mercy on them

You lack any right whatsoever to judge this person and make assumptions that the op needs help. For you see you condemn non-believers yet you are an atheist as well for you believe in only the god(dess) you worship and no other;thus that makes you guilty and in need of mercy as well.

plaetton: May I be permitted to say that unlike modern computer hardware, the mind did not evolve a firewall to protect it from outside interference, influence or access.

In fact, the borders of the mind are very porous, the substance of the mind is very malleable and extremely vulnerable to suggestions and alterations.
In other words, a person's reality can be accessed, interfered with, influenced and deliberately reshaped.

Looking at it from an evolutionary point of view, a dynamic and malleable mind, as opposed to a static mind, was a critically important and necessary factor in the social evolution of the earth's most senior primate, man.

Social evolution and it's modern adjunct form, social engineering, depends largely on the ability of one or a few to influence and shape the reality of the many through a variety of psychological re-inforcement mechanisms such as religion, political ideology, military conquest or economic hegemony.

My point in all this is that mind does not have any absolute truths of it's own except that which it has been conditioned to see.
Indeed, If the mind was naturally or divinely imbued with absolute truth, then all minds should be able to have the same interpretations of one image, one dream, one epiphany.
We know that it has never been so.
Every mind interprets one visual image, such as yours above, in many different ways.
Thus, everyone has his own inner truth.

Therefore, once again, subjective truth , no matter how elegant or sublime, whether it's about god, or whatever it may be, is simply unreliable in the real world.

Yes, I completely agree. Nothing is this world is absolute, never ending and complete. The truth remains unknown not because of the lack of ability to find truth but because humans interpret truth through their broken and incomplete shads of lens which is called human perception.
Therefore dear op and everyone else who fails to see the relevance of the above quote to the post, it would be futile to ask everyone their interpretation of these pictures, because like the multi-faced diamond, the truth has different sides,angles which is neither wrong nor right.... I am fairly certain that you are very much aware of the young lady/old woman photo.