In my opinion you see there are many different mythological stories that attempt to explain how life began on this planet, from our own african creation stories, eastern religions, aborigine beliefs, jewish and middle eastern beliefs, and hundreds of other ancient and modern creation stories of how life started based on supernatural entities.

I believe that nobody knows yet how life got started on this planet and to just believe that the creation story of the religion that you were born onto is the right one is quite ridiculous and intellectual laziness. Consider if you born into a hindu family, your beliefs would be completely different and you would be equally convinced that youre beliefs are right.

It is ok to admit that you dont know and strive to find the answers by scientifically examining the world around you. Its geological history, Fossil history, atomic history such as carbon dating and other radioactive half-life substances. etc. Also the study of astronomy to find if there is life on other planets as well will help in the discovery of how life began on this planet. Maybe life is abundant in the universe, or maybe we are alone.

I dont know how life began on this planet, but hope to find out one day. Do you?

"This morning during a radio interview on 774 ABC Melbourne, the new Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard was asked point blank:

    “Do you believe in God?”

Her reply:

    “No I don’t, John”

Julia went on to say she was raised in a Baptist household and attended church regularly, but decided to “pursue a different path in her adult life“. The Prime Minister believes people can be decent, moral, upstanding citizens without pretending to believe in a deity to attract the religious voters.  What is more important to her is the welfare of the Australian people – regardless of their religious convictions.

It is hugely refreshing to hear a politician talk so openly and honestly about their faith, or lack thereof.  I am unaware of any other current major political leader who has openly admitted their disbelief (according to the comments, there are plenty).  Julia’s credibility just jumped a few notches in my books."

http://www.godless.biz/2010/06/29/julia-gillard-confirmed-atheist/


Its a shame that in nigeria our politicians would still consider it political suicide to admit their lack of belief in mythical gods and demons. When will we finally all realise that it is ok to leave behind the belief systems of the colonial european slave masters?

How silly can you get. They must think that god watches football and is a super eagles supporter.
What if nigeria were playing brazil who pray just as hard to god before matches. Dont they realise that they are praying to the same god?
Do these believers seriously think they can convince thier god, the creator of heaven and earth, the universe and everything, to take sides in a game of football.
Where was god when Yakubu missed an open goal? Did he not pray hard enough, or forget to pay his tithe last month?

Prayers are a waste of time. Believe in yourself, practise your abilities, skills and teamwork. That is the way to win matches.

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/noahs_insobriety/gn09_22a.html

Noah's Insobriety

Genesis 9:22
Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's unclothedness.

The story of the curse being put on canaan for seeing his own father naked is not only totally ridiculous and laughable, it is quite obviously fictional.

It makes much more sense when you think about when it was written (bronze age), and by whom (Nomadic ancient isrealite tribesmen).

Ask yourself this. If you saw your dad naked do you think that it would warrant your son being punished AND all his decendants for thousands of years. What is the moral of this story? It is totally immoral in my opinion and not based on any truth.

Respects

@Olaadegbu

If you had the choice, who would you rather have in power as president of the usa, Obama or a Glen Beck supporter?

Who do you think would be better for the usa and the world in general?

And one more thing. What do you think should be done with all people who are non-believers in your particular faith?

Respects

This whole topic is quite sad when you think about it.

Look at the big picture. Here we are in 2010, with some african people argueing that Barack Obama, the most powerful black man on this planet is an antichrist. If Nelson Mandela said he supported the tolerance and equal rights of homosexual people would you be saying that he is an antichrist too?

Have we forgotten our history because of the power of the white mans religion. It took over 1500 years after the death of jesus before we even knew about his existence. If god is omnipotent and jesus came to redeem the whole of mankind, ask yourselves why we africans did not find out the 'good news' until europeans came and put us in slavery? Now we have managed to overcome those atrocities some of us are still enslaved to the religion that condoned our physical enslavement.

Barack Obama is a great man and his presidency should be celebrated. Millions of our ancestors died never believing that black people would ever acheive equality, let alone leadership. Now you say he is the devil because he preaches tolerance for all peoples. You should be ashamed of yourself. Didn't the jesus you so strongly believe in preach tolerance for all people too.

Back to the topic. Gender is not black and white. You have people who are born with both sexual organs (Hermaphrodites) and people who are born with none (eunuchs). You have women who are born with excessive testesterone and men born with excessive estrogen.

As a christian, what do you suggest we do with these people?

Respects

The biblical law that olaadegbu follows states that homosexuality is a crime, and the punishment is execution by stoning.

@olaadegbu
If you were president of the usa would you pass a law to make homosexuality a crime? And if so,what would be the sentence that you would like to see given to people who break that law? Would it be the death sentence? public flogging? or prison?

@olaadegbu

What would you do about homosexual people if you were president of the usa?

From Jenwitemi

That is the truth. There is only one of us here. There is only one entity here. The rest of us are just mere temporal expressions of that one single entity that is God. For example, there are estimated 6 billion plus humans on the face of the planet. That makes 6 billion plus temporal expressions of one God. If 10 persons are sitting in a room looking at each other, that means the one creator God looking at itself through 10 pairs of eyes. Think of the ocean and the billions of wave crests on it. God is the ocean and each one of us represent each wave crest. Where does the ocean ends and the wave crests begin? The ocean is in the crests and the crests are in the ocean.

This is very good. I would expand that and say that maybe the universe is god. It is infinite, created itself, all around us and created us. We are in it and of it and just now beginning to start to understand it, just as we are starting to understand ourselves.

However, the universe has been around billions of years before the earth was formed and will continue long after the earth is consumed by the sun. We humans have only been in existence for a mere nano second in the timescale of the whole universe. Why did god (if he exists) take so long to bring us (homo sapiens) into his creation?

Christians are exactly the same as non-christians.

There is no evidence to show that they live longer, avoid natural disasters, are more wealthy, healthy, or in any way better off than muslims, hindus, buddhists, atheists, or any other non-christians.

So what do you think will be the best solution to deal with the existence of gay people in society?

Please do not say kill them all or anything ridiculous or barbaric like that. Just because they are different, they are still human beings just like me and you and deserve equal human rights.

Remember, it wasnt too long ago that jews were considered sub human and attempts were made to eradicate them. Black people were also considered less than human not too long ago by many europeans when they took our lands and gave us their morally superior religion which you quote to justify the eradication of another group of human beings. Many non-jews and whites fought for our respective causes.

As a hetrosexual, I understand that homosexuality has always been around and will continue. Lets treat them fairly. I think they deserve the same basic human rights as everyone else, otherwise we are all hypocrites.

Well done Obama. (i dont think he had much choice really)

Realistically speaking, What would you do about homosexuals if you were president of the USA?

Nice discussion. If i might just add my 2 cents to the great points being made.

Having a lot of hair and being hairy was a disadvantage when Homo erectus and other species were evolving into modern day homo sapiens because of parasites. Since at this time, human-like species were changing from nomads to living in a permanent place. As such, due to Darwins theory of natural selection, hairy individuals were less likely to survive and reproduce, meaning that over time, in the gene pool, the gene frequence for hairy bodies slowly declined. As such, there are relatively few hairy bodied people, although the hairy gene does crop up again from time to time. As illustrated below:

Yu Zhenhuan 29
[img]http://1.bp..com/_gfXupHOEhH0/R7sH_tSVprI/AAAAAAAAAz0/EOAl2O38hVY/s400/004_volosach_13.jpg[/img]

Cheng Junjie, 9, a girl from the province of Jilin.
[img]http://2.bp..com/_gfXupHOEhH0/R7sI19SVpsI/AAAAAAAAAz8/76OAuuX5764/s320/xin_54080317150743514591.jpg[/img]

[img]http://2.bp..com/_gfXupHOEhH0/R7sJG9SVptI/AAAAAAAAA0E/LcU8f8-x_EY/s400/hairy_man_copy.jpg[/img]

[img]http://1.bp..com/_gfXupHOEhH0/R7sJQtSVpuI/AAAAAAAAA0M/ot90a7Nlgg4/s400/werewolf-3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://1.bp..com/_gfXupHOEhH0/R7sMetSVpzI/AAAAAAAAA00/67Yt1miuCx0/s400/hairy-girl.thumbnail.jpg[/img]

This reminds me of the story of lot and what he did to his two daughters. He used the excuse that they got him drunk and seduced him. Yet lot is still considered to be a good man in the bible. The man is a peadophile and this is incest just like with Lot and his daughters. There is no excuse.

@Femmy
You still dont get it do you.

If it was your grandmother that needed a lifesaving heart operation and you had the money to pay for it and save her life, would you take that money and give to your pastor instead? Or worse still if someone else took that money and gave to another pastor for their own personal future blessing.

Pay your tithe with your own money, dont use other peoples money to pay your tithe. It is stealing and a direct violation of the eigth commandment.
Do you think God accepts stolen money?

Where is your integrity?

@femmy
My grandmother is dying. Please give me back the money i lent you so that i can pay for her vital operation. It is not your money, please dont give my money to your pastor. Give it back to the person who lent it to you in good faith when you needed financial help. Can you not see that that is the honest and correct thing to do?
Do you not understand that if someone lends you money you need to pay them back when you said you would?
Do you not know that if someone lends you money, that person has helped you out when you were in need. That person has trusted your integrity and honesty so return their money to them.
How can you be so heartless an ungrateful to give that persons money to someone else.
You know it is wrong so dont do it.
My children are starving, my grandmother is dying and i need my money back now.

I hope you see the point i am making. Just try to put yourself in your creditors shoes. It's not all about you.

Femmy
Just give me my money back as agreed. My grandmother's operation cannot wait! It is my money and i need it back. The fact that you are even considering not to pay back something which is not yours means that you are prepared to steal someone elses money. Stick to the ten commandments and do not steal what is not yours.

Would you rob a bank to pay your tithes? You must know it is wrong to steal. Your pastor and God will understand.

@poster
If i lend you N9000, and you agree to pay me back next month. Then next month, if you have my money but decide not to pay me, then in my opinion you are a thief. The bible says thou shalt not steal, so you should give the money back to you creditor. It is not your money to give to your pastor. If you have N10000, 9000 is mine and i want it back!!! You can consider giving N1000 to your pastor but not my money.

@poster
If you had agreed to pay your creditor back within the three days you have left, then the decent and resposible thing to do would be to honour that agreement and pay back your dept. Imagine if someone owed you that money but did not pay you back even if they had it, but instead gave it to their pastor. Imagine if you really needed that money to pay for an operation, your rent, food, etc etc.

Pay back the money you owe, otherwise you will have to try to explain to your creditors that you had the money, but gave it to your pastor instead. Put yourself in your creditor's shoes. Do you think they will be happy with that or will they assume that you are trying to steal their money. Honour your agreement with them first and do not borrow any more money unless you intend to pay it back when you are supposed to.

If you borrowed this money, it is not yours to be giving to the church anyway. It belongs to your creditors so give it back to them.

Maybe God will send Jesus back down and put him in goal for us. 

from Kag

To be fair, when I think of and use the term "human" I'm referring solely to Homo Sapiens not all hominids.

You are right of course, i wouldnt class all extinct hominids as human also. Homo Sapiens (humans) are the last surviving specie of a large family of hominids.

Respects

There are no different species of humans - at least, not that has been found.

So far over twenty different species of extinct humans have been found. Homo sapians are the last surviving species of humans. Maybe we survived whilst all others became extinct is because we killed them all off when we migrated out of africa. Homo sapians have in the past had a great tendancy for genocide when coming into contact with others who are slightly different to themselves.  God said "kill them all including women and children then burn everthing to the ground" and that was only recorded after writing was invented. We can only imagine how genocidal homo sapians were before then.

This is a very good book to read.
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Human-Twenty-Two-Species-Extinct/dp/0300100477/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276202670&sr=8-3

"Remarkable in scope and clarity, this stunning collaboration among scientists, scholars and artists reveals the vast panorama of hominid evolution. The project began when the Fossil Hominid Reconstruction and Research Team, led by anthropologist Sawyer and paleoartist Deak, began reconstructing fossilized skulls and skeletons, using meticulous procedures of forensic anatomical reconstruction to build three-dimensional models of contemporary humankind's known predecessors. Paleontological and anatomical data for each species were combined with anthropological and climatological research to produce this volume, covering 22 species and 7 million years. As chapters move chronologically from our most primitive antecedents, the poorly known "ape-men" of the African Sahel, through more well-known ancestors, such as the Australopithicines, Homo habilis and Neanderthals, the data grows in complexity and quantity; happily, fictional accounts of individual hominids draw readers into each new chapter. Illustrated with astonishingly life-like portraits of long-gone species, this volume also includes appendices that describe in detail how those portraits were achieved. Both inspiring and humbling, this look at humanity's ancestors-the worlds they inhabited, the challenges they faced and the legacies they left behind-is fascinating, informative, and deeply provocative."

And this one.
http://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813339189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276202670&sr=8-1

There are also many other species of primates that we may never know about which have gone extinct and many more are on the verge of extinction due to us.

^^^ the extent some people go to try and rationalize this illogical evolution myth. Grin

All mad max is saying is that the evolutionary changes are very small over many generations. For instance, you may look the same today as you did yesterday, but over the period of several years you will notice that you have changed. Evolutionary changes are much slower than that. For example, you may look similar to your father and grandfather but you will look nothing like your great great great great great great great great great great grandfather after all the incremental slight changes are taken into consideration.

I hope this helps you understand the logic of small incremental changes over long periods of time.

There is an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence in support of the evolution theory gathered over the last 150 years yet it is still so hard for some people to accept. All life on this planet is constantly evolving, including us humans. The process is very slow and takes at least 2 millions of years for a species to aquire enough differences to be called a new species. This is linked to the slowly changing environment due to plate tectonics and other factors affecting the organism. The only animals that can survive in a changed environment are the ones that have undergone favourable mutations that allow it to. All the others die off. That is why 99% of all the species that have lived on this planet are now extinct.

Nobody knows how life began on this earth but we know roughly when it began. If you are religious, are you absolutely certain that it was your particular god that did it? Or is it just because you dont have the answer and need one?

You need to keep your mind open, You do not know everything there is to know. With the discoveries yet to be made in quantum mechanics, anti matter, dark energy, dark flow, gravity waves, black hole singularities, and dark matter etc, there could be much more to a simple equation than meets the eye.

Research more on the difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law. While some theories will always remain theories; some theories may become laws if they are proven to be correct, because technically speaking in science a theory cannever be proven correct.

From wikipedia

"Scientific laws
Main article: Scientific law

Scientific laws are similar to scientific theories in that they are principles that can be used to predict the behavior of the natural world. Both scientific laws and scientific theories are typically well-supported by observations and/or experimental evidence. Usually scientific laws refer to rules for how nature will behave under certain conditions.[9] Scientific theories are more overarching explanations of how nature works and why it exhibits certain characteristics.

A common misconception is that scientific theories are rudimentary ideas that will eventually graduate into scientific laws when enough data and evidence has been accumulated. A theory does not change into a scientific law with the accumulation of new or better evidence. A theory will always remain a theory, a law will always remain a law."


There is no such thing as absolute certainty in science. All theories and laws of science are discovered and adjusted, refined and improved as more knowledge is discovered. Just because something is called a law does not mean that it is 100% correct.

Here you can download and listen to The God Delusion audiobook by Richard Dawkins.

http://www.kickasstorrents.com/the-god-delusion-unabridged-by-richard-dawkins-iloveatheism-t89528.html

It's free to download and even if you find it goes against your deeply held religious beliefs it is a very interesting eye opener to the origins and phsycology of the belief in god/s.

There is a reason why it was an international best seller. Human beings are finally entering an age of reason, enquiry, and understanding.

Here you can read some of the reviews on amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618918248/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275582943&sr=8-1

Nobody knows yet what caused the big bang. All that is known is that observations show that the universe is expanding and if you rewind the expansion it started from a single point.

Lets investigate and find out as much as we can about the universe. Lets at least try to understand as much as we can about light, gravity, stars, galaxies, the elements, fusion, black holes, dark matter etc. before jumping to premature conclusions and worshipping the gods of ancient bronze age desert nomads who had no idea about the scale of the universe we are in.

Maybe the big bang was not an accident, just as gravity can cause an immense amount of energy to be released in the core of a star. This was only discovered less than 100 years ago. There is much more to be discovered in the future, just as we both can now agree that the sun is not a god.

Keep a rational mind, you dont need to worship allah or yahweh or krishna anymore. Just seek the truth.

Respects

Hi
I started this thread on the religion board to inform about the everybody draw mohammed day on facebook and get feedback on your opinions about the event. As a muslim, do you think it is a good thing for freedom of speech that non-believers can be outside the restrictions of your faith and express that on facebook, or does it make you fell sad, insulted, or very angry?

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-448993.0.html


So far they have got over 11000 very funny drawings of mohammed in some very compromising situations and some great discussions going on.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=121369914543425&topic=1507#!/pages/Everybody-Draw-Mohammed-Day/121369914543425?v=info

http://everybodydrawmohammedday./ (this webpage has been taken down for some reason)

"May 20th 2010 is draw Mohammed day! Help spread knowledge about this important day - invite your friends! When on this page, drawing pictures or discussing: We strongly encourage you not to use this page as an excuse for hate speech."

    "Hopefully this page will spark serious debates in international forums.

    We are not trying to slander the average muslim , it's not a muslim/islam hatepage. We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammed depictions, that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us to silence."

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=everybody+draw+mohammed+day&aq=f

Respects

FYI: the orignal site is back up, restored by Facebook. Here is a post form the admin:

"This page was removed two days ago, after one of our moderators had his email and skype
hacked. His personal data was revealed. He then got scared and deleted the page, the blog and the emails. The rest of us, are now back without him after he backed out. This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists. We won't fall."


http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=121369914543425&topic=1507#!/pages/Everybody-Draw-Mohammed-Day/121369914543425