₦airaland Forum

joseph1013:
Steve Abia

So Pastor Chris has predicted the 'rapture' would take place in 3 or 6 years. Hehehehe..... I actually wish that jerry curl pastor is right.

Imagine a world without these religious dolts! Paradise!

Let Jesus come and carry his people, and then the Muslims would join whoever is coming for them. Those of us left will then negotiate with oga 666.

CAPSLOCKED:
MAY GOD SAVE US FROM GOD.

CAPSLOCKED:
MAY GOD SAVE US FROM GOD.

joseph1013:
99% of our ‘supernatural experience’ have an explanation, and it is NOT a supernatural being pulling the strings. For the 1% that don't have an explanation, then they SIMPLY DON'T HAVE AN EXPLANATION, so terming it supernatural is fallacious.

Shine your eyes fellows.

joseph1013:
If I see one more "pray for Nigeria" post, I'll lose my sh.it.

Pray for what?

The ones we've been praying since nko?

joseph1013:
Nigeria is history's greatest evidence that prayers don't change a country.

LOL, GOD IS TESTING OUR FAITH. JUST LIKE JOB FROM THE BIBLE.

CAPSLOCKED:
LOL, GOD IS TESTING OUR FAITH. JUST LIKE JOB FROM THE BIBLE.

joseph1013:
Nigeria is history's greatest evidence that prayers don't change a country.

Karleb:
A fellow posted the usual pray for Nigeria on his whatsapp status.

Another posted about how many people who joined a prayer walk about liberating Nigeria.

Can't these people see that the thing does not work?


When things were better, we prayed for something better than what we had and we got something worse.

Karleb:
A fellow posted the usual pray for Nigeria on his whatsapp status.

Another posted about how many people who joined a prayer walk about liberating Nigeria.

Can't these people see that the thing does not work?


When things were better, we prayed for something better than what we had and we got something worse.

CAPSLOCKED:
GAVE UP ON THESE PEOPLE A LONG TIME AGO, INCLUDING FAMILY, FRIENDS AND LOVERS THAT WOULD PICK THEIR FAVORITE MYTH LEGENDS OVER YOUR CONNECTION WITH THEM.

joseph1013:
It is interesting how his highness, Oba Rilwan Akiolu, the powerful Oba of Lagos' palace was invaded yesterday by thugs and his staff of authority seized and paraded on the streets like an ordinary stick.
The man couldn't even disappear and had to be rescued from the angry mob by soldiers.
What happened to the jazz our traditional rulers have?

Image123:
God promised to change countries by mere prayers, right?

CAPSLOCKED:
THE RELIGION OF PEACE.

joseph1013:
Of Religions, sentience and egos.
BY NWOBODO FORTUNE

When religious people say that Science proves Religion right and people that don't believe are "fools", what exactly do they mean?

Because from where I stand, it seems like quite the opposite.
A central flaw of religion is a desire to put man (and the earth) at the center of everything because we're the only beings that have the sentience to do so.
The earth must have been created for us. We must have some great, big purpose in this world.
The earth must have been the center of the world with everything revolving around it (this religion based belief was popular until the early 1600s).

This "special person, special purpose" belief is why the majority of religions have young earth creation dates. Man is the reference point and religions cannot conceive of a world in which animals existed for hundreds of millions of years before we did. Or a world in which until recently, we were no more special than these animals, just evolving humans at the middle of the food chain.
Thus, most religions aren't even made from the moment when man split from the ancestral apes or the moment when he first became sentient enough to make wooden tools. They're from the moment when he became sentient enough to think in abstract terms, in fact, in such abstract terms that he could imagine things that didn't exist and convince himself that they did because it was the only way this world could have been created. That period was just about half to one dozen millenia ago compared to the 200 millenia that our species, homo sapiens has existed or the approximately 6.5 million years since we split from the ancestral apes.
And most of their thoughts are bull... The exact bull by which most religions are proven false.

All of science does not agree with a young earth. The only thing that agrees with a young earth is our ego and our wanton desire to place ourselves at the center of narratives simply because we have the consciousness and the overbearing ego to do so.
From the petrol in our cars that represent the remains of dinosaurs that existed 66-230 million years old and the remains of myriad other species of extinct animals to the rocks that we can accurately date with Potassium Argon dating systems to 3 or even 4+ billion years ago to the earliest light from stars that we calculate to have left the star 13.4 billion years ago, showing us that the star is at least that old, we've consistently found that so much existed before us, so much exists with us and so much will exist after we have gone extinct. We're just lucky enough to have the consciousness of self / intelligence to enjoy the now.

I have always maintained that the more specific a religion is, the easier it is to be dismantled. Because while they can twist and turn, changing the goal posts on a number of these vague ideals they churn out, the truth remains that most of their beliefs are created by men who thought themselves special enough to be the mouth pieces of the gods whilst making quips that were only true in their time, mainly as a result of widespread ignorance in ancient times.
If you hold their more specific quotes, thoughts and attempts at science up to scrutiny, they crumble into fine dust.

No religion is special. They're all made up attempts to answer the questions, How did all of this come to be? Why are we here? etc.
That is why there are so many of them. (There were over 100,000 known religions before the conquest and colonialism of much of the world by superior armies spreading Christianity and Islam (for political means) reduced that number to the conservative 4,000 it is today.)

Unlike Mathematics or Physics which would be replicated almost perfectly if all of it were lost, religion is such a diffuse product of the imagination that if all the 4000 religions suddenly left our imaginations now, in time people would invent entirely new ones that would have only one thing in common with the old ones. A reliance on faith and absolutely no rooting in fact.

Have a nice day.

GodHead85:
Here's something to think about,

We are mortal because our chromozones decay, what if within the relatively near future, we develop the flexibility to renew our chromozones ??

Imagine how theists would react to it, who needs heaven once you are immortal on earth ?

Obviously, you’d need an off switch, for once you run out of things to try to to.

Gives you one more reason to resent, we could potentially be the last mortal generations of the humanity.

Imagine technology could return your youth to you, I doubt it might reverse the consequences of aging, but it could definitely halt it. Maybe quantum autonomous nano swarms riding our blood cells, acting as a brilliant system, regulating our body, giving us increased regenerative abilities.

Imaginatively, I do hope or envision a future time where money is recognized for what it's (an imaginary construct that facilitates trading and cooperation) - AND humanity will outgrow its needing the bible/Koran/fav holy book to inform you the way to be moral. However I don’t see that taking place until mankind as an entire starts to actually take responsibility and admits that it’s alright to not have answers.

The idea of AI causally being tossed as an alternate for humankind deciding and fair resource balancing scares the shit out of me. Why? Because
A) without emotions, it might be a psychopath
B) programmed emotions (for empathy?) are only nearly as good as mankind’s emotional maturity

Okay, i'll be getting sooner than myself with all this pseudo science and what ifs

joseph1013:
Les Luka

So Ijeoma Chinonyerem made an interesting post about the supernatural, detailing a story of a woman who, it appears, “unintentionally killed her boyfriend” with charms and whatnot. The full story is on her page so go there for the gist.

I've been wanting to make a post on this and this seems like an opportune time to do so.

Whenever people find out about my irreligious leanings, the first question they ask is;

“so you don't believe in jazz?”

(which is funny, given the god they serve is supposedly more powerful but they never hesitate to use a ‘lesser power’ to validate the existence of their god, but I digress).

“No, I don't. Any wahala?”

Oftentimes, they'll regal you with stories that have no explanation and could only be as a result of the unseen. Not that their stories are made up but I'll explain why I don't believe in the supernatural.

1. The imperfections of cognition — selection bias.

For all the adulation and praise the human mind garners, it is not impervious to failures of accurately describing the human experience. One of this failures is the Selection Bias.

The selection bias is a quirk of human behaviour that predisposes us to accepting information that aligns with our preconceived notions and dismissing information that invalidates our opinions. Everyone has a selection bias to a certain degree. No human is immune to this. You will accept information that confirms what you already know and you will discard those that do not align with your beliefs.

For instance, an antifeminist will readily accept and ape the rhetoric of ‘indecent dressing leads to rape’ while ignoring the fact that conservative nations (with ‘decent dressing’) have far more incidence of rape than liberal countries (with ‘promiscuous dressing’).

Or what about the Buharist who refuses to factor in the overwhelming socioeconomic failures of the Buhari administration but agrees with the miniscule, two-bit crumbs of ‘progress’.

In the same vein, superstition is the mainstay of this selection bias, and religion as a whole.

If I made a prediction few days back that Manchester United with lose 6-1 and Liverpool would lose 7-2 concurrently what would happen to my reputation? Let's back up a bit; say I also predicted an 8-2 loss against Barcelona before the match what would you think of me?

I'd be heralded as a seer. People will slide into my DM to run their betslips by me, I'd be asked what charm I'm using, or the intellectuals amongst us would ask what statistical models I'm using.

But here's the catch, I make THOUSANDS of predictions. 99% of which turn out to be wrong, off-tangent most often. But the need to believe I have the powers of premonition predisposes people to SELECT the instances in which my prediction was spot on and dismiss the overwhelming chunk of it that was wrong.

It doesn't matter how unlikely my correct score predictions were, the fact that it is not consistent already eliminates it's viability.

We have been fooled by randomness. We see two or more unlikely events happen (usually within the same time frame) and automatically assume there's a pattern, neverminding the fact that these events wouldn't even register if they were far apart. Because of our need to understand our world, we force-fit randomness, select the information we want and toss the ones we don't like.

2. Imperfection in our cognition — mass delusions.

People say;

“well, I saw it with my eyes, Chinedu saw it too, so did Kemi”

Emmm.. that you all witnessed a “supernatural phenomenon” does not make it true.

There is a phenomenon in psychology called mass hallucinations — as the name implies, it simply means when a group of people witness an anomaly at the same time, usually within the same vicinity.

The history books are replete with stories of a mass of people witnessing a UFO, Virgin Mary, Jesus or an apparition. For instance, there was a time in Brazil, thousands of people ‘witnessed’ an apparition of Virgin Mary in the clouds (it turned out to be clouds of lightening).

As psychologists explain, mass hallucinations often start with one person seeing an unfamiliar object or activity. He or she then points this out to another person, who looks for this pattern (consciously or unconsciously), sees it, and points it out to the next person and boom! An entire mass of people are supposedly seeing something supernatural.

In terms of local magicians and ‘prophets’, they first prime the unsuspecting audience with cues; accentuation of key words, subliminal gestures and the rest. Then they often employ a hallucinogen — could be a plant, a powder, whatever — to induce psychedelic, out-of-body experiences, altered states of consciousness and then proceed to manipulate the person through suggestions.

The victims of this snake-oil plot never suspect they've been played because they don't know they've been played.

For good measure, consider the fact that psychiatrists can implant fake memories simply by putting the person in a highly suggestible state (using the aforementioned techniques) and telling them stories which they will remember as vividly as their own memories.

This is something that has gone on for centuries but now the scientists have a way an empirical way of understanding these blindspots in the human psyche.

When a person is doing feats of magic, stop and ask yourself this question;

“Can they do this again but in a different setting?”

Like 99% of magic, it is not reproducible in a controlled environment. They said magicians and native doctors cannot reproduce it with scientists controlling for variables and extraneous occurrences.

Summary of my extra-long post.

99% of our ‘supernatural experience’ have an explanation, and it is NOT a supernatural being pulling the strings. For the 1% that don't have an explanation, then they SIMPLY DON'T HAVE AN EXPLANATION, so terming it supernatural is fallacious.

Shine your eyes fellows.

joseph1013:
Of Religions, sentience and egos.
BY NWOBODO FORTUNE

When religious people say that Science proves Religion right and people that don't believe are "fools", what exactly do they mean?

Because from where I stand, it seems like quite the opposite.
A central flaw of religion is a desire to put man (and the earth) at the center of everything because we're the only beings that have the sentience to do so.
The earth must have been created for us. We must have some great, big purpose in this world.
The earth must have been the center of the world with everything revolving around it (this religion based belief was popular until the early 1600s).

This "special person, special purpose" belief is why the majority of religions have young earth creation dates. Man is the reference point and religions cannot conceive of a world in which animals existed for hundreds of millions of years before we did. Or a world in which until recently, we were no more special than these animals, just evolving humans at the middle of the food chain.
Thus, most religions aren't even made from the moment when man split from the ancestral apes or the moment when he first became sentient enough to make wooden tools. They're from the moment when he became sentient enough to think in abstract terms, in fact, in such abstract terms that he could imagine things that didn't exist and convince himself that they did because it was the only way this world could have been created. That period was just about half to one dozen millenia ago compared to the 200 millenia that our species, homo sapiens has existed or the approximately 6.5 million years since we split from the ancestral apes.
And most of their thoughts are bull... The exact bull by which most religions are proven false.

All of science does not agree with a young earth. The only thing that agrees with a young earth is our ego and our wanton desire to place ourselves at the center of narratives simply because we have the consciousness and the overbearing ego to do so.
From the petrol in our cars that represent the remains of dinosaurs that existed 66-230 million years old and the remains of myriad other species of extinct animals to the rocks that we can accurately date with Potassium Argon dating systems to 3 or even 4+ billion years ago to the earliest light from stars that we calculate to have left the star 13.4 billion years ago, showing us that the star is at least that old, we've consistently found that so much existed before us, so much exists with us and so much will exist after we have gone extinct. We're just lucky enough to have the consciousness of self / intelligence to enjoy the now.

I have always maintained that the more specific a religion is, the easier it is to be dismantled. Because while they can twist and turn, changing the goal posts on a number of these vague ideals they churn out, the truth remains that most of their beliefs are created by men who thought themselves special enough to be the mouth pieces of the gods whilst making quips that were only true in their time, mainly as a result of widespread ignorance in ancient times.
If you hold their more specific quotes, thoughts and attempts at science up to scrutiny, they crumble into fine dust.

No religion is special. They're all made up attempts to answer the questions, How did all of this come to be? Why are we here? etc.
That is why there are so many of them. (There were over 100,000 known religions before the conquest and colonialism of much of the world by superior armies spreading Christianity and Islam (for political means) reduced that number to the conservative 4,000 it is today.)

Unlike Mathematics or Physics which would be replicated almost perfectly if all of it were lost, religion is such a diffuse product of the imagination that if all the 4000 religions suddenly left our imaginations now, in time people would invent entirely new ones that would have only one thing in common with the old ones. A reliance on faith and absolutely no rooting in fact.

Have a nice day.