₦airaland Forum

Myer:
Covid-19 some how managed to humble Christians during Easter by locking everyone in, it humbled the Jews during Passover as it failed to pass over their country and now the Muslim ramadan kareem is here, it's just too embarrassing to watch.
These are the most pious religious calendars but Covid-19 has clearly proved more powerful than their God/Allah cos all their prayers have come back empty, rather the tolls are increasing.

Initially pastor kicked against the lock down saying the churches are being targeted and only rapture can make the church close. Now they claim the Covid-19 was sent to draw them closer to God through personal fellowship. However tithes and offerings are not on lockdown as notable churches have now created USSD codes for payments.

As bad as Covid-19 is, it has done one good thing.
It has exposed the scam religion is. And most especially the fraudsters who call themselves GOs, pastors, imams and prophets that have been having a field day prophe-lying to gullible and desperate souls. Succinctly put, they never saw it coming.

Why do you think Christian leaders who claim to be miracle channels avoid visiting people in critical situations out side the church?



How many times have you heard that oyedepo or tb joshua or adeboye visited an hospital and people got healed and the hospital emptied?



Real life is different from a crusade where everything is conditioned and controlled to fool people and even people are willing to voluntarily claim to be healed just to please the pastor or in hope that they would later get the real healing be claiming it by faith and testifying even though they know they are not healed

Why do you think Christian leaders who claim to be miracle channels avoid visiting people in critical situations out side the church?



How many times have you heard that oyedepo or tb joshua or adeboye visited an hospital and people got healed and the hospital emptied?



Real life is different from a crusade where everything is conditioned and controlled to fool people and even people are willing to voluntarily claim to be healed just to please the pastor or in hope that they would later get the real healing be claiming it by faith and testifying even though they know they are not healed

LoudlyMouthed:
Would you keep quiet?

I'm glad you can Make a rebuttal to my point

Here's a test for those pastors who claim they can work miracles through God; take them to a hospital to pray for 30 patients.
Ten patients have aortic valve failure and need replacement heart valves.
Ten are almost blind, suffering from advanced cataracts--their eyes need replacement lenses.
Ten have chronic osteoarthritis in their knees and need artificial knee joints.
In a modern hospital, surgeons will achieve a 100%, or near 100%, success rate healing these 30 patients. God will not be able to heal ANY of them.
Any pastor can feel free to prove me wrong but we have never, ever seen God do what surgeons do every day.
Believers make extraordinary claims for God. They claim he created an entire universe from nothing and he designed and assembled living things from atoms. But they can't show he can replace a knee joint, an eye lens or a heart valve.
The truth is, believers cannot even show that God exists, far less that he did anything at all--all they have is faith and empty claims

BLASPHEMY AND THE CREATURE IN YOUR ATTIC
Imagine you meet someone who strongly believed there was a creature living in his attic. A creature who watched his every move and could affect his life for better or worse. And he believed this creature needed to be appeased by performing regular rituals of chanting and singing.
Naturally, you would be sceptical. You would want to find out if there was any truth to his beliefs. Your conversation might go something like this:
You: Can you show me the creature?
Him: No. I can't do that. It can't be seen.
You: How do you know it's there then?
Him: I hear it. It talks to me and I talk back.
You: OK, can I listen to your conversation?
Him (shaking head): No. It doesn't work like that. You have to believe it is real before you can talk to it.
You: But how can I believe it's real if I can't see it or talk to it and only have your word that it's there?
Him: Oh it's definitely real. It's as real to me as you are right now.
You: I understand you believe that but how can I believe it with only your word to go on?
Him: You can doubt me but you can't prove it's not up there can you?
You: I don't suppose I can...
Him: You have to have faith. Join me in my daily chanting and soon you'll believe it too. You'll see the light and your life will be transformed. That's the only way.
...
If that story seems both crazy and familiar, it is. There is only one difference between the character in this story and the billions who believe in invisible gods. That difference is that your interlocutor is the ONLY person who believes in the invisible creature in his attic.
Because of this, not only would you not believe his story, but you would conclude he needed professional help for delusional disorder. And you would be right.
This story illustrates the true nature of religions. Religions are institutionalised delusional disorder. That is why they try so hard to make sure everyone is a believer--every disbeliever is a threat. The more disbelievers there are the closer believers are to becoming like the man in this story--isolated individuals believing highly improbable things that cannot be shown to be true.
Real religions employ techniques to divert us from this obvious conclusion. Most importantly, they teach children to believe at an age when they are impressionable and uncritical; religious leaders often wear impressive clothes and claim they have a privileged relationship with their invisible creature.
Then they seek to insulate their improbable and unsubstantiated beliefs from criticism. They promulgate respect for religious beliefs as a cultural norm. Sometimes, they even seek to make it a legally punishable offence to criticise religious beliefs.
I can think of nothing more damning of religious belief than the existence of blasphemy laws. It is an admission that these beliefs are so frail and indefensible that it should be a crime to challenge their truth or reality.
Truth and reality do not need to be defended by law. They can look after themselves

shadeyinka:
It's your call!

If your god exists and your religion is true, does this give you an obligation to help others who do not share your beliefs?
If you saw a child floundering in a shallow pond, you would surely feel obliged to make an effort to save its life but how much greater is your moral obligation if you see a multitude of people headed to an eternity of unimaginable agony? Could anything possibly be more important than saving them?
So why don't all religious people dedicate their lives to saving those who worship fake gods or no gods at all? Why do most religious people shrug their shoulders and say people are entitled to their own beliefs? Are we really so selfish and wicked?
This is hard to understand. Perhaps it is because you feel it is too hard to convince others that their beliefs are wrong and yours are right. But if your beliefs are true and you know they are true, it should be possible to pass that knowledge to others. After all, if you cannot do that, how can you be sure your beliefs ARE true?
I don't know why religious people are so selfish. Perhaps they will tell us. But I do have my suspicions. I suspect they don't do this because they are not really sure their own beliefs are true--they just find them agreeable and hope they are true. They have faith.
And how can you expect to convince others, if all you have is faith?

shadeyinka:
I can speak for myself: I can't generalize for others.

There is a knowledge of God you have because you were TOLD either from the Bible, your Parent, the Society, the Church, etc.

There is a KNOWLEDGE of God you have by EXPERIENCE. This experience is usually Subjective.

Now because of its subjective nature, it is impossible to convince you or anyone for that matter about my experience. My experience is unique to me and not transferable.

A mundane example:
There is no way to convince you that I had dinner with Donald Trump in my dreams. You can only have your own dream to confirm that a Nigerian can eat dinner in his dreams with the President of United States of America.

Is my claim true?
Yes!
Is it provable?
No!

Your question could be, if an experience is subjective, does it make it unreal?

So according to you,your own personal proof of Gods existence is the bible and your ' personal experience ' with him....right?

IamMichael:
Hahahahahahahahaha.
You want to kill some people. In fact, the moment you raise something like this, they will probably kill you.
This is an attack on every level of Indoctrination known to them. They can never agree to it and will quote religious pages for you as to the fact that it is against their faith.
Anything that is going to show for a fact whether or not their belief is real/fake is totally abhorred.
It's as you rightly stated, Religion doesn't care about the truth, it never did. This is why anyone that challenges religious beliefs is tagged a heretic, witch, unbeliever, etc.
All the people killed by the Catholic Church tagged as witches were people who never agreed to the ridiculous belief's they were peddling as truth.
Even the often quoted Galileo succumbed to them when threatened and modified some of his findings to suit the Catholic church.

And the worse part is that these religious folks will justify anything that God did.... because,after it was God who did it or commanded,it can never be wrong

That's how they justify a Father torturing his children in a lake of fire for Eternity

shadeyinka:
Your misconception @bold

You are NOT a child of God!.
You are NOTHING, just star dust!
No human being is a child of God by default!

You are only SOMETHING if by your Freewill and Volition choose to honour God with your life.

See the yellow highlight and the subsequent bold.
HELL is for Satan and defiant creatures who take that path that BURNING in a timeless environment was created. Like you said: YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE!
It's your choice to make:

Deu 30:19:
"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live:"


Why should you blame God when YOU by your Volition and Freewill CHOSE Death?

Check your italics:
In the face of haters of God, a man can only do what he can.

Let me tell you what the scriptures say about this:

Jud 1:21-23:
"Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh."


Luk 16:28-31:
"For I have five brothers; that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent. And he said to him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

The job of a Christian is to Evangelize: which means tell them that they have HOPE and a SOLUTION of NOT partaking in God's final judgement.

Let's see what Jesus said:

Mar 6:11:
"And whoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when you depart there, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Truly I say to you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city."


It's NOT by force!
Your blood is upon your head!

Almost every day a Christian will warn me that I will burn in hell if I do not repent and accept Jesus... well you know the rest.
I feel like telling these sad people that I fear Christian hell as much as they fear Jahannam (Islamic hell), Hifhel (Norse hell) or as much as they fear being reincarnated as a slug.
Why don't my Christian friends fear these horrible afterlives?
Because they are ridiculous, that's why...

shadeyinka:
I'll answer you!

In summary, you need an OBJECTIVE criteria to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Short Answer:
You will NEVER EVER get it!

Long Answer:
It is childish.
A similar question:
How can I prove that Aisha Buhari and Zhara Buhari really know Buhari. We will ask them to Go home and ask Buhari some questions like
1. What is the colour of the carpet in the President's office?
2. Is the President's pen solid gold or gold plated?
3. Does the President put on pants or boxers? etc

Now, the President of Nigeria Mohamadu Buhari will now try to convince you that he is actually the President of Nigeria and He exists by answering those questions.

The question is, to whose advantage is the question?
Does it change anything about the reality of Buhari.

Let's say I was Buhari and my children came to ask me such questions, I will just smile and move on to more important things. Anyone who believe that I (as Buhari) doesn't exist should keep up the good work.

Why?
1. God isn't physical
2. Science is Man's understanding of God's creation
3. It is man's responsibility to crave understanding of how the universe work
4. GOD DID NOT CREATE the UNIVERSE with man's understanding of science.
5. God does no care one bit about what your understanding of science is.
6. The purpose of creation of man isn't about man's ability to understand Science.
The Purpose of creation of man is a SELECTION of human species with a specific traits.
The trait: given freewill and unlimited freedom, which of these humans will subject themselves to the Love of God and Love for man.
The purpose: these are then qualified to be sons of God and His representative in the universe.
The failures: these are packed and thrown into the refuse bin of God.

I will give you a very short rebuttal

According to you,it is impossible to prove the existence of God since the bible says he's a spirit

Now,since you yourself dont have proof for byis existence,how are you so sure he exists??

What other ' proof ' apart from the bible makes you BELIEVE or KNOW that yahweh is the ONLY true God??

shadeyinka:
The only weakness of God is His gift of freewill to man. With freewill a man can defy God his maker, man can rail against God, man can even rain curses on his Creator and the Merciful God will forbid His angels from striking such men dead and instantly put in the middle of the hottest part of hell fire.

Interestingly the scriptures say that ALL things (good or bad) work for God's good purpose.

The earth is an exam Field. It is a place of selection of men who will by their own WILL and VOLITION, submit themselves to God's rulership. For such is God's desire.

"I cannot see why we should expect an infinite God to do better in another world than he does in this."
"If there is a God who will damn his children forever, I would rather go to hell than to go to heaven and keep the society of such an infamous tyrant. I make my choice now. I despise that doctrine. It has covered the cheeks of this world with tears. It has polluted the hearts of children, and poisoned the imaginations of men....
What right have you, sir, Mr. clergyman, you, minister of the gospel to stand at the portals of the tomb, at the vestibule of eternity, and fill the future with horror and with fear? I do not believe this doctrine, neither do you. If you did, you could not sleep one moment. Any man who believes it, and has within his breast a decent, throbbing heart, will go insane. A man who believes that doctrine and does not go insane has the heart of a snake and the conscience of a hyena."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll

shadeyinka:
Everything you have said here is deflated by one phrase "RELATIONSHIP and EXPERIENCE"!

Without experience, the God of gap is a good argument. Can you convince me that I have no experience (subjective or objective) of God? Too bad if you don't have your own experience: open your eyes!

This had been answered before: I wonder if this is just to keep your thread alive. I shouldn't even have responded if not for @shadeyinka that keeps resonating everywhere.

Sometimes god-believers tell me they don't just BELIEVE God exists--they KNOW it. They know it because they have a personal relationship with him. They ask questions and receive answers.
If this is true, it would give us a good way to demonstrate that God exists. All we have to do is arrange for 100 to 200 people who claim they have a similar relationship, to ask God a question. We would devise 5 or 6 questions and randomly assign one question to each person in the study.
We would need questions to which we currently have no answer, such as; is there life elsewhere in the universe and where? What is dark matter? Is it possible to freeze humans for long periods and restore them? Why is sleep important? Is it possible to unify general relativity with quantum field theory? What important questions have humans never asked?
Each person would ask God their question and note his reply. We could then compare answers. If people really do talk to God, we should see the same answers more often than we would expect by chance. We might even be able to test the answers to see if they are correct.
Getting a positive result from a study like this would be good evidence that people really do talk to a highly knowledgeable being. Discovering that such a being actually exists, together with the answers he would provide could literally transform the world. And there would be no excuse for atheists or people who worship invented gods.
If the results are no better than chance, we will have learnt that God does not exist, or people are mistaken when they say they talk to him or God does not want to reveal himself to his creation and would rather see billions tortured in hell...
What do you think?

Let me add my own

All religions insist they have found the truth, despite the fact there are hundreds of religions and thousands of denominations preaching contradictory beliefs. This made me wonder, if religions were REALLY concerned about finding the truth, how would we expect them to behave?
I wouldn't expect to see religious or inter-denominational wars, such as we have seen between Shia and Sunni Muslims, Catholics and Protestants and between Muslims and Hindus. Obviously, you don't find who has the truth by killing those who have different opinions.
Instead, I would expect to see multi-faith working groups in centres of higher learning all over the world, working round the clock, sifting evidence, setting up archaeological expeditions and carrying out research. I would expect these centers of excellence to have ruled out most religions and denominations by now and be working hard to pare down the remaining short-list of religions.
Finally, I would not expect religions to cling to dogma that cannot be changed; rather I would expect religions readily to change their beliefs as new evidence is uncovered.
But in the real world, we do see killing, we do see rigid dogma and we do not see serious attempts to rule out false religions by mutual consent. Why not?
Because, religions are NOT about truth. Truth is not in the least relevant to religions. That is why religions rely on faith and eschew evidence; that is why they rely on indoctrination of children and not on open-minded inquiry.
Religions are not about finding truth--they are about defending lies.

Faithful4real:
Common sense is not common

Dont add common sense to The word of God

Believe it blindly with faith

Studies also show that praying for other people either has no effect (if the recipient isn't aware of it) or has a small negative effect (if the recipient is aware of it). This rather suggests that the benefits of prayer are all internal, and that no "Almighty" is listening to them.

Here are my thoughts on prayer. I'll compare how the Christian god acts regarding prayer with how a potential friend might ask.

Let's say I contact a friend and tell her that I need some help doing something; I send an email, make a call, and she never gets back to me, not "Yes" not "No" not "maybe." I'd consider that pretty inconsiderate, though if she was particularly busy I might let it pass. If I ran into her and she said "well, I was going to help you, but I wanted you to stress out, send a few more emails and be more obsequious" I think I'd find a new friend.

None of my friends treat me like this. But this is basically how the Christian god operates.

Some people say that this is the wrong way to look at prayer, and it's like a *conversation.* But conversations require actual communication. Sitting around silently *feeling the presence* or someone or something isn't adequate communication by my standards. Even distant acquaintances do better than the Christian god seems to do here.

So, maybe it's all wrong, and the *only right prayer* is to just tell god "Your way, not my way, I SUBMIT I SUBMIT!" Wow, what a *deep, profound relationship.* It's about the same relationship you would have with a nutcase holding a gun to your head.

All said, remote acquaintances seem to provide a lot more meaningful contact than gods do through prayers.

There are stories of people praying to the Christian God and being healed.
There are stories of people praying to non-Christian gods and being healed.

There are stories of people praying to no gods and being healed.
There are stories of members of all three categories who are not healed.
How do we figure out if anything is going on except confirmation bias? We find people who are sick, we have some prayed for and some not, and we see if there is a different recovery rate. The Templeton Foundation - a group inclined to believe that prayer is effective - ran exactly that experiment and found no difference

Faithful4real:
Not only to his disciple but to every single Christian. You need faith to activate it.

What you said was not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.

Stop adding to the word of God

Faithful4real:
Luke 10:19

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.


Sickness is one of the power of the enemy. Believe it or not i have seem a man who have never fell sick for 13 years. Why? Because he believed that bible principle. He accepted it by faith.

In that scripture,Jesus was talking to the disciples present

Nigerians that lived 2 thousand years after, doesn't Qualify

MuttleyLaff:
My dear familiar and have noticed around friend, there's an old famous Arabic proverb, that says, "not being able to know something, lol, is no proof, that it doesn't exist, but making that jump, lol, taking a leap of faith, isn't as easy as it sounds" Pardon me please, the inserted lols, are me, just being carried away in there.

Yeah, I can see on this thread, how seriously true and truth revealing, that proverb is, lol

If you don’t understand something, and the community of physicists don’t understand it, that means God did it? Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here’s a list of things in the past that the physicists at the time didn’t understand [and now we do understand] [...]. If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on - so just be ready for that to happen, if that’s how you want to come at the problem.

When religious people quote the Bible to prove God exists, atheists say the Bible is the claim--not the evidence.
If that is hard to understand, here is an easy way to think about it. If God is invented, the Bible CANNOT be true. So, when you assume the Bible is true, you are also assuming God exists.
Assuming the very thing you are trying to prove is a circular argument and circular arguments can be safely ignored. Simple.
The Bible proves people wrote a book about a god. That is all.

Stephenmoka4:
1. I mentioned nature had to take it's way, God made nature. Like I said I have been healed before from Faith/prayers and many others, I've heard and also seen, so do others. I don't want to start sharing contact of different people who are witnessed to this kind of thing in their own place... so it's not a personal something
2. Simply some things are meant to be, God approved mine (according to the way you termed it).
3. See (2)
4. So themselves and usually other people won't be affected too, we should all know that diseases and illness are real and should be avoided/prevented. Not just prayers but, physical attribute to it too.
5. We don't always have to blame the car company for road accident, there is manual, there is driving school and instructions. Should I explain this one too...

If God was real, could answer prayers and cared about human well-being, nothing would be impossible.
There would be no incurable illnesses and congenital defects would be reversible. Amputees could be restored.
Droughts and famines, earthquake, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes could be stopped before anyone died. Locust swarms could be diverted from vital crops.
Defective airplanes could crash-land without harming people and African football teams would win every world cup.
If God answered prayers, even death itself would be reversible.
In fact, none of these things happen. So God is not real, or can't answer prayers or doesn't wish to. But the Bible promises he WILL answer prayers and assures us that he has incalculable LOVE for us.
So that only leaves one option, God is not real--he's just a character in a story.

Why do you think Christian leaders who claim to be miracle channels avoid visiting people in critical situations out side the church?



How many times have you heard that oyedepo or tb joshua or adeboye visited an hospital and people got healed and the hospital emptied?



Real life is different from a crusade where everything is conditioned and controlled to fool people and even people are willing to voluntarily claim to be healed just to please the pastor or in hope that they would later get the real healing be claiming it by faith and testifying even though they know they are not healed

Who killed the man that held the ark of the covenant ?

Who flooded the Earth?

Who ordered the total Destruction of the Amalekites?

Who killed the first born sons of the children of Egypt?

judedwriter:
There is no sickness that GOD cannot heal and this includes the dreaded covid 19.

For the fact that no pastor has publicly healed any coronavirus patient doesn't mean God cannot heal it.

Again for the fact that many more have recovered from the virus shows the healing power of God.

For the fact that 500 million people died in the black death plague centuries ago means that God either doesn't care or doesn't exist

If one god was real and all the rest fake, we would know. Consider three benefits of believing in a god:
- Believers in fake gods would be constantly complaining their prayers are never answered whilst believers in a real god would be jubilant over their amazing success rate.
- Believers in a fake god would bemoan the fact that they never feel the presence of their god whilst believers in a real god would talk to their god daily and be certain of it.
- Believers in a fake god would ask their god for advice yet still make many bad decisions whilst believers in a real god would find their god deftly guiding them through life's obstacles.
So it would be obvious which god was real and responsive and obvious that the others were not. But, here is the interesting thing, it is NOT obvious. Religious people all report these benefits whichever god they worship.
So we are forced to conclude that imaginary gods apparently work as well as real ones. This leads us to a second conclusion, since we know some gods MUST be imaginary, all known gods must work as well as imaginary gods. It turns out all gods are equal.
Is it not therefore fair to conclude, that all known gods are equally imaginary?
Is there any other reasonable conclusion?

Adaogwashi1:
Help me ask him the question, Nigerians are foolish and selfish





I still remain Ada ogwashi

Anybody ask you for your name

Abeg generous nairalanders help me with any amount you have let me buy two cups of rice and eat today I didn't even eater rice on Easter Day

Please i and my family might die out of hunger by the end of this week





2262999223 Zenith bank

May God bless you

Abeg generous nairalanders help me with any amount you have let me buy two cups of rice and eat today I didn't even eater rice on Easter Day

Please i and my family might die out of hunger by the end of this week





2262999223 Zenith bank

May God bless you

Abeg generous nairalanders help me with any amount you have let me buy two cups of rice and eat today I didn't even eater rice on Easter Day

Please i and my family might die out of hunger by the end of this week





2262999223 Zenith bank

May God bless you

Very in-sensitive, non-empathetic government.



Is there no other way you can urge people to stay home other than drawing our attention to the sad reality of what is going on in other countries?



Have respect for the innocent lives lost in those countries please



You urge us to stay indoors but what have you provided us with?



No electricity for comfort, no water supply, no FOOD, no money.





Foolish people and their supporters



Abeg generous nairalanders help me with any amount you have let me buy two cups of rice and eat today I didn't even eater rice on Easter yesterday
Please i and my family might die out of hunger by the end of this week


2262999223 Zenith bank
May God bless you