₦airaland Forum

Not to belabour the point, but you don't know that 'Yahweh' told the Jews to go a-killing. They merely said he did.

You can still see the Jews at it: Modern Israel taking Palestinian lands. If this were Old Testament times they'd wipe out the Palestinians and say God told them to do it. There'll be tribal war heroes and poetic verses about when God spoke privately to the Israeli Prime Minister, promising them victory as long as they murder every Palestinian soul to the last child. Oh. They may spare the virgins.

The Jews can't do that anymore. Instead you have a posturing bully of a state, drunk on military might, having milked the Holocaust for all it was worth. If Jews want to claim Palestinian lands based on the OT, prior ownership belong to the Canaanites and Midianites and all the other 'ites' occupying the place before they came along and wiped them out. There really isn't anywhere else for the Jews to go. The Middle East is their home. But they could've done this far more peacefully decades ago.

I cut off my permed hair in 2008, and have grown it to almost ten inches in two years. I haven't relaxed it and won't either. I don't know if it's me, but virgin hair seems to grow faster than when I had permed hair. There are dozens of wigs for any look I want, extensions for braiding, and oils to keep it soft and fragrant. I use Morroccan oil with others, and sweep it up with large earrings if I'm going with bare shoulders. Hair is easy to grow.

I'll begin with a few facts about hair.

ALL hair grow at the same rate, be it causasian, Asian or kinky African hair. Depending on your diet, hair grows between 1/2  to 3/4 of an inch a month. That includes your hair.

THERE IS NO BEAUTY PRODUCT ON EARTH THAT GROWS HAIR. All those salon hair products promising fast hair growth are wasting your money. The ONLY chemical that accelerates hair growth is MINOXIDIL, and it's a treatment for baldness.

Great idea really. Angelina Jolie, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Ralph Fienned, Tom Cruise, etc Really great idea V3. Up to JK tho.

Seems the really great ones don't overstay their welcome. Battlestar, Lost, The Sopranos. I almost finished Mad Men season 2 before I got fed up. Jones seems the same smiley dollie everywhere I see her, from American Wedding to Bandits to Love Actually. And the great big secret past the guy was hiding was merely a change of identity. His brother kills himself. What for? No close childhood relationship between them was explored. There are few great serials left now, but some are still going strong, like Dexter and The Mentalist.

I'm great Bindex. Thou?

Pirates, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Die Hard, any old movie will do. I haven't seen any of the new ones.

Lol at sissy. Karma, you're a bad un. You may not miss NL, but NL's missed you.

Girls, we'll be taking a look at hair this week. CAN we grow our hair to almost any length we want? YES WE CAN. It's easy.

Actually, God's love and care extends to all, irrespective of your religion and status. We came up with all the divisions there are: race, geographical borders, states, religions, class,etc. If any group claims God for itself alone, that's their problem and has nothing to do with the reality of how God orders His universe. Jews wrote the things in the bible, and almost everything in it is from their cultural and religious perspective, not a universal one. And that includes their Jewish cultural creation myth. Every culture has one, and some are far more sophisticated and beautiful than the Genesis story. We know there's cause and effect, our actions producing assorted outcomes.Other people's will can act on us to bring about undesirable results. If I take a walk in an unsafe neighbourhood and a mugger shows up, points a gun at my head and pulls the trigger, I will die. My death will have nothing to do with the love of God, merely another person expressing his free will towards me. If a pastor is in a plane and it goes down, he will die. The laws of physics won't be suspended on his behalf, and the others on the plane are just as valuable and beloved of God as he is. I think He sometimes intervenes to save us, individuals and groups, when it fulfils a larger purpose, but that's for Him to know. You might recognize His intervention, or you might not. It doesn't matter.

But it seems we DO have guardian angels. Yours are with you right now as you're staring at your computer screen. Whether you think they're there or not is irrelevant. They're serving God by serving you, and aren't there to prove anything to you.  They do the most thankless jobs in the universe. They're invested in the outcome of your life, try to warn you of danger and try to protect you from undesirable outcomes as much as they're able. When you die and you're in their dimension you might recognize them when you see them. I hear some people are allowed to return as guardian angels to their children or a loved one they left behind. Sometimes people seem to return physically. But they won't remember since their memories of who they used to be is in their brain, and that brain is rotting away in some graveyard. Different genes and dna comprise the new they. They have a new brain and new memories of their present reality. Malachi prophesied  Elijah's return and Jesus appears to confirm it.

Malachi 4:5-6
"See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers

Matthew 11: 11-15
I tell you the truth: Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come. He who has ears, let him hear.

Mad Men seems to be all flash and no substance. It gets the period look nicely, but has no soul. January Jones' insipid doll-like smiling and mien drives me nuts. And the protagonist isn't interesting beyond the first season. He sleeps around, and comes up with the best Ads. That's all he does.

I won't ask where you've been. Where ya been? Dexter's still there. I hear Flashforward isn't bad. I don't like Mad Men but some do. We all miss Lost but life must go on sniff sniff.

TRUE BLOOD (TV SERIAL)

I knew the gifted Alan Ball created this series, but didn't give it a chance last year. I was disgusted by the sin, snakes and deep South religious motifs in its theme visuals and stopped watching after a few minutes. Caught someone watching it recently and voiced a snooty protest. He pointed to something I'd missed: a vampire at the end of the theme visuals. Everything shown is the South from the perspective of the vampire! Creepy. And brilliant. Decided to watch the series. Paquin is great as Sookie. Her brother's a dumbass. The gay black cook- no gay guy is that campy lol. Bill's Hawt. Ah like ahll thah unrequited lawve jes flyin' around. The race politics, vampire blood as an illegal narcotic, human-vampire relations: I did myself wrong not watching this last year. I'm a convert now. Ride awn, TB.

Romeo4real:
I have also read the God Delusion. Whilst is a mildly entertaining, and even stimulating book, it does nothing to assuage any arguments about God's existence apart from flagellating fundamentalists atheists like my brother - Mazaje. The arguments put forward are merely assertions with no proof -  The same things the Atheists accuse the Creationists and God Believers of!

The book is lazy, under researched, inconsistent and quite bellicose/angry in places. Most of the arguments put forward are sloppy, illogical, and frankly nonsensical - like his argument about how the universe would not be different if God did not exist.
Conclusion: A silly but entertaining book.

I've finished the book. It's still a great book, but I see what you mean about some of his arguments being lazy. He 'demolishes' the more absurd arguments for the existence of God while ignoring the better ones, all in a rush to convert the world to atheism. His indignation about the insidiousness of fundamentalism is justified. People do bad things in the name of religion. But there are courageous religious individuals who did great things all through history. Where's the balance? Slanted.

Some people are trying to discourage others from helping him because of their own experiences. But there are very, very different lives, different experiences, and different lessons learned from life. Your life and your individual experiences is not the blueprint for the world. There are people who struggled hard for their success, no one helping them along the way, but who aren't bitter and cynical and useless to others, but kind and giving. The people helping Menek are doing an excellent thing. He has absolutely no fault in asking for help. Things must be terrible for him to cry out for help. If he turns out to be a fraud the blame and the shame will be his, not those who did him kindness. One gets from life exactly what one puts in. You're not obligated to help in this instance. But don't you dare try to stop those who are.

@madlady: Is it a nail hardner? Sounds fabulous. It's either I have long, pretty nails and useless hands or short, stubby nails but functioning claws. @yjay: The best moisturiser you've used? I've heard of the brand but can't place it.

DARK KNEES AND ELBOWS: SOME HOME-MADE SOLUTIONS
Pick any one, and see which works for you. Try it 2-4 times a week, depending on your skin type, till they're the same colour as your regular skin.

*Mix a paste of 1 tsp Vitamin E, 1 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp glycerine, and 4 Tbsp milk. Massage and leave on dark knees and elbows for 15 minutes before washing off.
*Rub with lime or lemon juice, leave for 10-15 minutes. Soak a towel in hot water and scrub it on dark elbows and knees.
*Mix 1 tsp coconut oil and ½ tsp of lime or lemon juice. Do the same way with the hot towel.
*Right after shower, massage mustard oil on affected area. Rinse off with warm water.
*Make a paste of besan flour and lime juice and apply on elbows and knees. Leave on for 10-15 minutes and then wash it off.

Ebonyeyes:
I agree, simplicity is the best for skin care. Mary Kay products are terrible for acne-prone skin types.

I wash my face and moisturise with regular store bought products and my skin has never been better. A study was done on high end products and they found out that they essentially contain the same ingredients as your local store products only difference is the name selling the high-end product. So girls you dont have to cut your arm and leg for skin care products.

So true. I think the only skincare brands that consistently give value for money is Neutrogena, Jergens, Olay regenerist and Philosophy. I can't do without Philosophy Hope in a Jar. There are really, really expensive brands that do zero for your skin or make it look tired.

Lol. Puff-puff girls. Spikie will double as both. Gayin, mebbe you should send it to Femi Elufowoju at Tiata Fahodzi. They're into Nigerian plays.

Romeo4real:
I have also read the God Delusion. Whilst is a mildly entertaining, and even stimulating book, it does nothing to assuage any arguments about God's existence apart from flagellating fundamentalists atheists like my brother - Mazaje. The arguments put forward are merely assertions with no proof -  The same things the Atheists accuse the Creationists and God Believers of!
The book is lazy, under researched, inconsistent and quite bellicose/angry in places. Most of the arguments put forward are sloppy, illogical, and frankly nonsensical - like his argument about how the universe would not be different if God did not exist.
Conclusion: A silly but entertaining book.

People have done a lot of evil in the name of religion. It's enough to make anyone angry. But he holds on to his sense of humour. The book wouldn't have had to be written at all if religions would live and let live, and if indoctrination wasn't so dangerous. I don't know what kind of research is necessary for a book about something conventionally unresearchable (God) but it's well argued. One of the arguments I had an issue with is that an Intelligence must first evolve from humbler beginnings before it can create. Which means a God would have to have evolved as we did. Basis? US. He uses the ONLY instance of life that he knows, biological life on earth, as what must hold true for all life and all existence everywhere. That's stretching an argument too far. It's not grounded in anything he knows for sure, but is merely an assumption. But I'm finding the book excellent. 

Interesting posts. 'Where's the substance?' Excellent question. It's true. When we 'git religion' we go a little mad and point fingers and bay for the blood of those that don't believe as we do. It's the 'privileged frame of reference' mania that besets us all. Each of us believe he/she is 'special', his thoughts unique and profound, his insight the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. When we believe something to be true, it's sometimes inconceivable to our vanity that we might be wrong, that others believe different things just as deeply and feel that they are just as correct.'I' think it's true, so it must be true. And then you get others who believe the same and a little clique of 'those who have seen the light' starts, and the out-group is viewed with pity or contempt or hate. The more of our life we've invested in believing a set of things to be 'true', the harder it is to examine those beliefs objectively. It doesn't help that people are a raging volcano of conscious and unconscious intent, doubts, hopes, primitive fears, dreams, hates, loves, and these things interact with what we hold to be 'true' or 'false' at any time.

I know well the horrors of religious indoctrination to the mind. I wasn't joking when I called it a form of mental illness. But 'religion' by itself does nothing. People do everything. We're human, and it's the way people are. You're not obligated to accept anyone's view of God as yours, especially since they make all sorts of authoritative pronoucements for which no proof is ever offered. But aren't you judging 'God, if It exists, by the awful standards of what human beings say and do and write and believe to be 'true'? What if none of those things count or change a thing where He's concerned? What if our standards, our ways, our thoughts, our actions, our philosophies, our beliefs, our religions, are not His, and so He isn't in the least bound by those things? Sometimes I think each religion gets the 'God' it deserves. But maybe, just maybe, in spite of human deception and folly and wishful thinking, maybe humanity hasn't been foolish all along and there is actually a reality that transcends all this and isn't in the least affected by it.

I'm on page 206 of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Along with The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan, it's one of the best books I've bought recently. Utterly magnificent, something everyone should read, so you can examine what you believe and why. Dawkins' argument is less about the possibility God exists as with anger at the (ludicrous) 'God' that's been pushed down people's throats for a millenia by Christians, and justified indignation at the danger and excesses of the religious mind. From his vantage point, the possibility 'God' exists is extremely remote.I can't believe how many things I agree with him about so far. Christians seem to have no problem with what the Jews did to other people in the OT, in the name of 'God'. If they read of Moslems doing something similar they get up on a high horse. I just came across some of the religious views of Tom Paine, and wish I could've met him. He was far, far, far ahead of his time. Stephen Hawking has his ideas of 'God', as does Einstein. They differ from a fundamentalist Christian or Moslem's ideas of God. We seem to create 'God' in our own image. I like the idea that you think there might be a creator, and wish you could elaborate on that. Evolution is illuminating and rightly humbling but has zero to do with whether we were created or not. It's like the bible; we find confirmation of all our prior convictions in it.

mazaje:
I have lived with christians that try to observes these laws in all they do yet they are NO better than any body around.

Is it fair to blame Christianity though? If you're going to bash one religion, bash them all. Financial prosperity has more to do with opportunities, hard work and talent than religious affiliation. You know that. If there are Christians who don't, they're not at fault, the dear things. They've merely been indoctrinated different. Indoctrination is a mental illness. You don't know you're ill till you've been cured.

mazaje:
Even at funerals believers seem to grieve the loss of their loved ones as much as atheists do, even though they believe in some wonderful afterlife.

I concede the possibility that there is no God, that it's all in my mind. I know there are different kinds of names for God, and our parochial society has long dubbed It, 'he'. I mean God in the sense of a Higher organism. Let me ask you this: I ask, knowing we may have unexplored abilities latent in our brains, that 500 grams of LSD produces a 'religious experience' where people 'see' gods and demons and others things passing strange, that we evolved as a species and once lived in trees, and that terrible things happen to good people. Does even the remotest possibility exist in your mind that there might be a God?

Welcome, Rockstation. Exactly what we need. Another Meganized loony.We've long diagnosed your problem, JK, but you won't get help.

I've seen Water. Switch control? I've long stopped expecting sublety from Bollywood. As long as the 'actor' doesn't jump from a two-storey building onto a horse or bike, I'm OK.

It may have begun that way but things have come a long way since then. It seems the only religion that hasn't separated itself from state is Islam, and you can see the result. Retrogression. I'm not sure you need to be religious or spiritual to be moral or to craft a just system of laws. There are non-religious persons with better morals than religious ones. I heard a Nigerian state governor married a 13 year old, and the unapologetic slowpoke insists his Islamic religion is above the law. It's criminal behavior. One of many reasons no religion can be above secular law.

Darthmaul:
dis mad_max sef

What now lol.

RANG DE BASANTI
Aamir Khan, Alice Patten, Soha Ali Khan, Kunal Kapoor, Siddharth, Sharmam Joshi.


An English documentary filmmaker chances across her father's diaries about a group of young Indian men that led a rebellion in the 1920s. Excited she hops to India to make a historical documentary about it. Her friend introduces her to her clique of buddies, a group of happy, carefee youths, from whom both women endure much good-natured ribbing. Commissioned to bring the historical characters to life in the documentary, they take neither the script nor the people involved seriously, as they can't relate with the revolutionaries. It was a different India, and so long ago. But as we watch the actual rebellion unfold through these characters, something begins to happen to the youths themselves. The movie tracks their transition from a beer-swigging, humourous band of boys to social revolutionaries. Like the rebels before them, they discovered it was the same old India afterall.

Bollywood movies are cursed with melodrama and overacting, and there is a single surreal instance of this in the movie, but I've few complaints. The script and acting was great, though the music was only so-so. Aamir is one of the very finest actors in Bollywood, and he leads a great cast. A good movie. Well done.

Your take on things is simply refreshing, benodic.

@Romeo4 real
I don't know if Moslems tithe. If so, mosques and churches ought to pay tax. Charities are tax exempt because of how their funds are disbursed. But churches hide under tax-exempt status, collect enormous amounts from their members, and start building 'the world's biggest auditorium' and other nonsense, all ego. They may do what they like with the stupidity tax they collect from poor church members, but they should pay tax. Don't lay it all on Christians, though. Christ didn't come to start a religion, but to point the way. We all need guidance, but unscrupulous people abuse our trust. We give it away cheaply to anyone who wears a pastoral or clerical tag. They're supposed to earn your trust like everyone else. Christ proved himself over and over to his disciples. But we take these people's word for everything they say, no evidence or proof is ever sought. Anyone who makes authoritative theological pronouncements to the public, be you ayatollah, religious author, Bishop, Imam, Pastor or pope, furnish evidence to back it up or shut the frak up.

Almost all religions are guilty of one thing or the other, not just Christianity. The human factor, maybe. The problem isn't religion itself, but organized religion. It's not a force for good. Organized religion gives you Crusades, The Inquisition, 'Christian Nations', 'Islamic Countries', gender abuse, entrenched irrationality, religious killing, 'Holy wars', jihads, fraud, suicide bombers and a 'we against them' divisive mentality. It expertly stokes primitive hatreds and brings out the worst instincts in people. You'll notice most of the organizations combating the problems in the world, some of which organized religion caused, are not religious establishments. Turn all government secular and let each individual practice his religion privately in his house. And don't let them indoctrinate others or tout it as 'Law' or 'above' secular Law like the stone-age morons, statutary rapists and psychotics in some Islamic countries have done. With organized religion, the harm is to others, the benefits to you. It's not worth it.

I liked Amy Adams with James Marsden in Enchanted, and wanted some light entertainment. I didn't know the thing would be dumb.

Maybe Rampa was your introduction to Tibetan Mysticism. In The Hermit, he wove very little Lamaist Buddhism around UFO mythology, bad science, and human mythology, including Genesis. High comedy, but then few people take Rampa seriously. He was a British plumber who said he was chasing a bird or something, and the soul of a dead Tibetan monk entered him. The British press hounded him out of Britain. Why didn't he go to Tibet, his 'soul's homeland'? Because he was a laughingstock. The real Buddhist mystics either considered him a nuisance or a joke. In The Hermit we learn Moses was an alien spy. All that advanced alien technology, and Moses was the best they could do in spycraft.  The Blind Hermit described Rampa's aliens, who have been controlling human history: they looked like people, but were 14 feet tall and had egg-shaped heads. The female aliens had kinky hair (African hair) or straight white hair.

A long and unique sequence of evolutionary events made humans look this way. An alien from another planet would have a completely unique biological history, and they would look absolutely NOTHING like us. But Rampa didn't know this at the time. In one of his books, Rampa entered an alien Spacecraft and was taken to the planet Venus. Venus was a popular tourist spot for humans on alien travel in the 70s and 80s. One famous American 'abductee' even described the planet: there were aliens in robes, and flowers grew wild. Venus isn't next door, so it's not as if anyone could debunk their stories. Till a NASA space probe entered Venus in the 90s and discovered the planet had a temperature of 900 degrees fareinheit and the atmosphere was composed of sulphuric acid.

But Rampa was dead by this time. It would have been interesting to have reached him for comment. Nice guy though. My Dad had his books when I was a kid. You threw a bible (or any holy book) away for Lobsang Rampa. Amazing.

@benodic
May you live long and skip over puddles with your great-great-great grandchildren. This is so spot-on.When will people know this?

Some guy gets a 'vision' to start a church. Not 'Sell your car and give the proceeds to a stranger dying in the hospital', or 'Haul butt to Sudan and do something about the hungry there'. No, it's always 'start a church'. He scrambles around and some scraggly gathering begins in some wooden silo. And Vision Guy gets the bargain of his life. His 'children in the lord' do all the work, completely free of charge. They clean his church. They usher in people. They pay for a better building for him. He tells them they're doing it for the Lord, and they feel all warm and wiggly inside. God remembered to tell him but forgot to tell them that is how He is 'served'. You won't catch Vision Guy dead at menial tasks. It's far beneath his status. He's a Man of God, which must mean they're somehow the Spawn of Satan. They spit-polish his church and he doesn't pay them a dime. No, they pay him. They give him the 'firstfruit' of their entire first salaries, and ten per cent of everything else they earn as long as they live. There's other stuff too. Like 'sowing seeds' and 'freewill offerings' and 'pledges'. That's how you earn God's blessing, he says. He issues them a 'we vs them' mentality and murmurs darkly about 'church adultery' so they don't take his money and free labour somewhere else. They not only spit-polish his church and 'Give to God till it hurts', they worship Vision Guy himself into the bargain. Not a bad living. Not bad at all.

I'm a Christian. God is real. But the silliness, not just in Christianity but almost all the major religions, is just stupefying. Especially the smug 'We're going to heaven but all y'all in other religions are going straight to hell'. God is above religion. Love God, love others, be a decent human being.

LWKMD. Oya, sorry. No vex.

JeSoul:
^ & ^^
   Do they really Kray? it is rarely the case - in my casual experience - that a scholar would go out of his way to put a big sign on his decades of study that "this is just a guess". I remember remarking to Max once a while back that a lot of this "historical" stuff, are really opinions paraded as facts.

I don't recall. But I do remember one of the lost posts where I mentioned history is just one person's perspective and you need the other person's to arrive at some idea of what's correct, stating Stalin's deletion of Trosky from history as example. But sometimes a piece of history is a FACT and very easy to verify. The Nigeria- Biafra war is a fact, not someone's opinion paraded as fact. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a fact. Slavery is a fact. That a man went to the moon is a fact. That Buddha and Ghandi lived are facts. Not all history is mere opinion. I've tried to be careful because I began researching this for myself alone. I had to take a course in biblical textual analysis and many other boring stuff because of the importance of this to me. So I think I know a little bit about placing things in their proper context. Sometimes we make do with the expert educated guesses we have until something even better comes along. If someone whose expert field it is places a fragment of text as between so and so date, and others agree, one would have to accept their guess until something even better comes along. If a series of letters are written and all lines of evidence from the possible dates and circumstances under which they were written, its historical and cultural context, converge and reveal a particular writer, we accept that till even better facts emerge.Where the writers are unknown they're stated as unknown, but possibly so and so. But where it is known, it's known.

These people aren't ghosts. They're human beings who inhabited time and left traces behind. Experts can reconstruct some events in science that happened ten thousand years ago. How much less a couple of thousand. They can tell you the likely games that children played in Palestine two thousand years ago, and the methods by which some traders in Jewish markets cheated those who bought from them.These scholars have their methods and their tools, and they can't be accused of stupidity. We know there is a great deal of uncertainty in biblical text and history but kudos has to be given them for all that they've accomplished so far. It is not an easy field. But I don't know if credible scholarship is accepting a few expert guesses and historical facts and stating whose guess it is so you can verify and counter or prove the source as unreliable if they're so: Or dismissing them when they don't suit you because your class notes tells the world different. I'am being careful here, because Religion isn't something to play games with and people are hardly reasonable about their beliefs. Otherwise you'd just take an intellectual argument to Moslem fundamentalists, and they's stop blowing people up. There is a hard world  of irrational human beings doing terrible things to each other in the name of religion and what people wrote in holy books, and no amount of wishful thinking or condescending, 'credible', class-note opinionating and tutoring based on the findings of these same 'disreputable' scholars will change that.

I was sort of teasing the guy there jere. Whoever heard of an atheist studying a discipline devoted to something that doesn't exist? But he's smart and fun to hang out with. Ei-yahh. JS. I have heard.