₦airaland Forum

The reason:

Most people don't really believe heaven exists.

Most people just really hope heaven exists.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMaK6k4oZ20

Wow. What a steaming cauldron of ignorance!

My thoughts:

- We can infer from this graph that religious belief declines following advances in the quality of a nation's educational system. And since IQ is also positively correlated with wealth, it is expected that better education, as well as improved wealth distribution (basically a better Nigerian economy), will result in a decrease in the number of bible thumpers, thieving MoGs and boko boys.

Here's the thing though. When Karl Marx wrote those infamous lines about religion, he clearly intimated that the purpose of religion was to create illusory fantasies for the poor. Economic realities prevent them from finding true happiness in this life, so religion tells them that this is acceptable because they will find true happiness in the next life. Marx goes on further to empathize with such people, acknowledging that religion is a necessary illusion for them, if only for the solace it provides them.

As an atheist, the one thing I've always asked myself is this: instead of trying to educate people around me on religion, maybe my efforts would be best focused on effecting the quality of life in my vicinity. But surely there's a place for both? I would like some input from atheists on this. What's your opinion?

I came upon this thread earlier, and was wondering where Nigeria actually stood when compared to the rest of the world on either measure (Average IQ and religiosity). So I went about finding the relevant data.

Found a study here with data comparing these measures for 137 countries, which I then put into MATLAB to obtain the plot below.

Well, feel free to make your own conclusions. How accurate do you think Nigeria's position here is?

lozairio:
Don't worry your money won't be able to save you from death when it comes knocking your door ode with money

And I suppose you have a cure for death hidden somewhere? You no go die abi?

Yeye people

dunkem21:
Try buying life.

Well everyone dies eventually.

But the rich can afford to eat healthier, can afford better healthcare, and have the wealth to ensure a higher degree of safety from some of life's uncertainties. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the rich have a higher life expectancy than the poor. In the UK for example, the rich have an estimated 25-year higher life expectancy compared to the poor.

In the future, when perhaps humans advance to the point of making accurate clones, or advanced biotechnology to support longer life, the rich will be able to live even longer.

So they can't exactly buy life, but they can afford higher qualities of life, and also live longer.

sinequanon:
The problem is that you refer to "rational", "reasonable", "consistency" in a vacuum, as well as what constitutes "evidence".

What you don't realize is that you are implicitly referring to your preferred type of logic.

But in reality, religious logics have their own "rationality", "reasonableness", "consistency" etc., so does scientific logic, philosophical logic, etc.

By talking as if there is only one version, you invoke your preferred version without explicitly mentioning it.

In what way does my preferred version of reason differ from that of religious logics, or anyone else's for that matter?

Reason is a definitive characteristic of human nature, no? The conclusions that one arrives at are based on the evidence and information available to them, and concerning the initial argument, science is not necessary to arrive at a conclusion of nonbelief.

Using the problem of evil as an example,
- God is omnipotent and all-benevolent
- There is evil in the world

What scientific evidence or assumption do I require to know that these statements are contradictory, and hence at least one of them must be wrong?

That one person chooses to draw their premises about the existence of a God from old religious texts does not make their way of reasoning any different from mine. It just means that they're willing to discard the realities apparent in the world.

sinequanon:
Well, I am not asking for your help.

LOL of course not. Was just pointing out how absurd a position that would be to take.

sinequanon:
Dictionary definitions are not so useful in philosophical discussions.

All you have done is push the question to "what is reasonable?"

When you reason, you must have rules and logic. What is the repository of these rules and logic?

A dictionary will not tell you. But when scientists use the term "rational" they refer to the basic logic and rules of science, which are assumptions.

The most common arguments for nonbelief in a supernatural deity are the problem of evil, the argument from inconsistent revelations, and the lack of empirical evidence (at least as far as the human senses go).

No scientific assumptions are required to arrive at the conclusions of any of these arguments, but the same processes of logic and reason that my religious father applies when purchasing an automobile at the dealership.

Unless you want to argue that human reason is an inherent derivative of science, then I cannot help you.

sinequanon:
Rational is just another word for "conformance to scientific ASSUMPTIONS".

It plays the same role as "holy" does in mainstream religions.

Ironically, the word "rational" plays on various politically established psychological connotations -- not on the the profoundness it purports to convey.


And born again Christians come out of church believing less in scientific ASSUMPTIONS. What is the difference?

Rational:
1 a : having reason or understanding
b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason : reasonable<a rational explanation>< rational behavior>

One does not need science or 'scientific assumptions' to discard the idea of a God or to be considered rational.

The stark contrast between the demeanors of the claimants on the initial thread and on this one is so funny. Daddy pastor puts up a confusing post leaving out specific details to absolve himself of any responsibility, while his Smeagol-like pawn is resigned to posting silly pictures. As if that'll make people forget the issue at hand

Really, there's one single detail that puts the nail in the coffin for any theories that this was not a planned 'miracle' on the part of Joagbaje

SirJohn:
Jeff claimed he got HIV because he didn't pay his firstfruits; he gave a lengthy tale about how his pastor warned him about not giving his firstfruits.

Good business strategy to get those church people tithing Jo

sonOfLucifer:
Please, someone put me through. What exactly is going on here? Who's the troll and who is being trolled?

Neither, unfortunately. This is an actual serious conversation.

ayoku777:
By marriage Mary became one flesh with Joesph, and hence a daughter of David according to the flesh as much as Joseph was a son of David according to the flesh.

So whatever Mary brought forth is a seed of David according to the flesh too.

Is this scriptural analysis so difficult to understand? Its so simple and straight forward. Unless ofcourse you don't believe the words of Christ that when a man and a woman become husband and wife; they become on flesh in the eyes of God.

Jesus is not the seed of Joseph (and no one said He is) but He is the seed of David according to the flesh, because He is one flesh (and blood) with Mary who is ONE FLESH with Joseph (of the house of David). That is balanced scriptural truth and analysis.

So in the event of a divorce, which I assume would signify an absolution of this one-flesh connection in God's eyes, would Jesus would no longer be considered of the flesh of David?

If yes, how is it that all-wise God chose to justify his connection to the line of David through such a flimsy, non-permanent Jewish marriage tradition?

red101:
yeah, you must be blind. what bible translation do you use?
I have the kjv and the nrsv and they both have "supposed" in them when they list the genealogy in Luke 3:23
you can open the bible and read the verse to see for yourself (or google it). You haven't disputed Matthew 1 either. It states that "joseph is the husband of mary who is the mother of Jesus". and this is the explanation of how Jesus falls into the lineage of David.
Nowhere did it say in the genealogy that jesus is the biological or DNA son of Joseph.

I offer my apologies. I missed that when I read it earlier. I'm not clear on your position though. Which one of the genealogies are you attributing to Mary, if any? Having read them again for certainty , Matthew does say that it is Joseph that is the son of Jacob and then lists on. Luke say he supposes he was the son of Heli. Did he get it wrong? It seems whoever wins here, coherence loses.

when talking about lineage, the bible is referring to the social family lineage not DNA. clearly Jesus wasn't born of joseph biologically. this is very clear in the bible. I really don't understand what exactly your argument is.

The implication of a non-biological connection to David would be that the scriptural prophecies concerning the Messiah weren't exactly fulfilled. It would also mean that Paul was wrong when he said in Romans 1:3 "Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh;"

dotuna3:
D rate by which people die dis days self is becoming unbecoming and alerming truely end time things

On the contrary, world-wide death rates have actually reduced steadily over the years since we began keeping record. Beginning time things, maybe?

Topgainer:
Mr. Man
just back-off. Man of God or not, he was a great lecturer and inspirational talker So this is not a goodnews
There are sure lessons to be learnt. No man no matter the worldwide following he may have accrued should arrogate himself the position of God under whatever guise. God is nobody's age mate

In all things, praise God.

ayoku777:
My post is directed at christians who are trying to understand how Jesus is the seed of David if he was born of a virgin birth by Mary of whom nothing was said by lineage to David.

Obviously you're not a christian and you don't hold the bible in authority as the word of God. I can't argue doctrine with someone who doesn't even believe in the bible.

The bible is the foundation of sound doctrine to a believer. You can only argue doctrine, and compare scripture with scripture with someone who already holds it in authority.

If you don't believe marriage makes two people one flesh in the eyes of God according to the scripture, then I can't rationalize this truth to you.

Your issue is not with doctrine, but with the bible in general.

Oh don't worry, I know very well to whom your post was intended. However, I'm a part of this discussion just as much as you are, and my opinions here are just as open to scrutiny and criticism as yours are.

I used to be a born again Christian, and I strongly believed in comparing scripture with scripture to fathom the mind of God, but even then, I always thought it was also important to compare scripture with reality. I hope that you agree. With this said, I am optimistic, maybe naively so, that we can have discussions on the common grounds of both the bible and reality.

On the issue at hand, it seems that you and the Christians that spoke before you have fundamental disagreements on the genealogy of Mary. Unlike them, you agree that Mary had no ties to the lineage of David, up until her marriage to Joseph. You however reconcile this by citing that married couples become a single flesh in the eyes of God. And maybe this is so.

But my contention here is, if you had taken a sample of Jesus' DNA at conception, could you trace him by blood back to David?

Moreover, Mary was pregnant before Joseph even married her. Would this mean that Jesus was not of the line of David at the point of his inception into the world, but only became so by adoption after Joseph and Mary got married?

Man of God dies horrible death. Lord be praised. Hallelujah!


EDIT: This is for those who have replied to me, rebuking me for the above. Yes I was being facetious. I know very well that death is an immutable fact of life, and is the only conclusion that every living being arrives at eventually. I didn't know this man, and I hold absolutely no ill-will towards him. Judging from the responses here, I have no doubts that he lived a life that some found inspiring.

What I can't fathom though is why a loving God would allow his prophets, and supposed representatives here on earth die in the same horrible ways that "other" people die. It is even worse when they are right in the middle of carrying out duties in his name. Recent examples are the 150 that got crushed under TB Joshua's building, the various church bombings, and the bus of convention returnees that burnt halfway home.

What would be the lesson here for either the witnesses of these events, or those that are left behind to mourn the victims? God is just? All-good? Yeah right.

Anyway, let's carry on praising God. Hallelujah!

^^^ ayoku777

Funny enough, this is the exact opposite of what your brethren before you have been proposing. In your account, Mary is the one that becomes of the lineage of David by proxy (marriage). At least you truthfully admit that nothing was mentioned about Mary's lineage. I have to ask though, which one of the two different genealogies attributed to Joseph in Matthew and Luke is the correct one? Unless you want to believe the guy had two different biological fathers...

The bible saying married couples have become one flesh is entirely anecdotal, or just plain wrong. Marriage does not make anyone become related by blood. Their DNA doesn't change one bit, although it occasionally flows in small quantities in either direction, if you know what I mean . If both Joseph and Mary were related by blood, I'm pretty sure that's some form of in-breeding anyway.

Have you considered the possibility that maybe, just maybe, these guys made this stuff up trying to fulfill old Jewish mythical prophecies? There's a good reason why Jews do not accept Jesus as the Messiah.

red101:
^ Did you read the verses? if so, you will identify how the bible wrote the geneology differently when it came to the point of Joseph.
in matthew, it didn't say joseph begat Jesus. it says "jospeph was the husband of mary who begat jesus"
in luke, it says Jesus was the "supposed" son of joseph.


unless you don't know what the definition of "explicit" is. because the bible put it implicitly.

I must be blind. Where does it say "supposed"?

Please stop being dishonest.

red101:
@timmy2409, there is no contradiction there. Read the bible for evidence.


Matthew 1.1-17
"Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez....and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations."

Luke 3:23-38
"And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,
Which was the son of Matthat, which was the son of Levi, which was the son of Melchi, which was the son of Janna, which was the son of Joseph"

Romans 1:3-4
"Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead"

[img]http://.net/thumbnail/114.gif[/img]

You're literally putting forth the same argument I just addressed one post ago. Please read that and then present your rebuttal.

LordReed:
The divergent lineages are attributed both to Joseph because women's lineages were not generally recorded in the scripture. Also by marriage Joseph becomes Mary's father's son that's why Luke uses son instead of begat.

This just seems like you're twisting scriptures in order to fulfill prophecy, and I suppose this wouldn't be the first time someone has done this in relation to this topic.

The fact remains that nowhere in the book of Luke, or the entire New Testament even, does it allude to Mary being of the house of David in any form or manner. In fact, Luke actually says that Mary is a cousin of Elizabeth, who was a descendant of Aaron, effectively placing her as a member of the house of Levi.

Really, the clincher that shows your position to be unsubstantiated is that Luke states repeatedly that it is Joseph specifically that is of the house of David. Luke 1:27 says "To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary."
Moreover Luke 2:4 says that the couple had to return to Bethlehem (in the tribe of Judah), because it was Joseph, and NOT Mary, who was of the lineage of David. This clearly refutes your claim that Luke was only referring to Joseph's lineage by proxy. By using "was the son of", it is most likely the author meant "was the biological son of". And do you not think that when the author mentions Joseph's lineage in these passages, as well as Elizabeth's earlier, that he'd not also explicitly mention Mary's if she was also of the line of David? It seems like an extremely useful piece of information to omit, no?

Regarding your last claim, there is nowhere in the bible at all that unambiguously shows Jews using the father-in-law/son relationship in the manner which you describe. I know David called Saul "my father" once, but that was meant as a honorific title referring to one's master or teacher, as shown in a couple other parts of the Bible.

In conclusion, you have to understand that it was necessary for the early church to adopt your current position for two reasons.
1. To reconcile the contradictions between these two differing accounts of Jesus' lineage, and
2. To make sense of what Paul had written saying that Jesus was of the line of David by flesh (Romans 1:3). Mind you that Paul knew nothing personal of Jesus himself, as shown by his writings. But that's a discussion for another day.

LordReed:
Yes, by direct descent on Mary's side and by adoption on Joseph's side.

And you know this how? Both Matthew and Luke explicitly attribute their different genealogies to Joseph, implying that he was either born of two fathers, or that one or both of these writers had no idea what they were talking about.

@OP What you have stumbled upon is part of a series of philosophical arguments on religion that have been discussed for centuries.

If you really think about them, you will find that the omni-xx qualities that are ascribed to God are almost impossible to rationalize.

Like your scenario rightly describes, God's omnipresence would mean that he is present everywhere, including hell, and in Lucifer's 'body' even. So after judgement day, at least according to the Christian faith, all of the condemned would be in the presence of not only the devil, but God himself. For all eternity.

Also, one less obvious implication of this omnipresence would be that God then cannot chose to NOT be in a place, ergo he is not omnipotent.

Furthermore, aside from the scenario you described in the OP, God's omniscience also implies that there is a single possible path of events. If God already knows the very end, whatever that is, then there cannot be any deviations from this path of events. As soon as there is, then God ceases to be omniscient. One implication of this is that he cannot then chose to change the course of events, effectively refuting any claims to his omnipotence. Karen Owens puts it succinctly in this haiku:

"Can omniscient God, who
Knows the future, find
The omnipotence to
Change his future mind?"

Another implication of this is that human freewill does not exist in this event. If God knows exactly what choices you would make from the very moment you were born, then you could not deviate from this path of choices, ergo you have no freewill. If you could actually make your own choices, changing God's initial 'knowledge' of the future, then God ceases to be omniscient.

Yet another quality attributed to God is omni-benevolence, the idea that God is all-good. To that, I'll leave you with Epicurus:

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"

I hope I have been able to help, but this probably just leaves you with more questions than answers LOL. For more research on such topics, you may Google the Omnipotence Paradox, Euthyphro's Dilemma, and the Problem of Evil.

Thought this was funny

https://i.imgur.com/rWKZl1b.jpg

BuddhaPalm:
www.nairaland.com/attachments/1565197_peltier_gen_assm_jpeg72a6a562a6697e46093e63aa9c2eaf06

Where would this be attached? Around the globe, or the all-metal part - above it?

In-between. Look at the first pic again!

The list of problems with the story of Noah's Ark is ridiculously LONG, but I'll highlight a few

1. Through our boat building experience over the past millenia, we know that a sea-worthy vessel with such dimensions as described in the bible cannot be made entirely out of wood. The Wyoming, which is the largest wooden ship modern humans ever built was heavily reinforced with steel, and still here's her story:

Because of her extreme length and wood construction, Wyoming tended to flex in heavy seas, which would cause the long planks to twist and buckle, thereby allowing sea water to intrude into the hold (see hogging and sagging). Wyoming had to use pumps to keep her hold relatively free of water. In March 1924, she foundered in heavy seas and sank with the loss of all hands.

2. The Ark as described could not possibly contain the amount of species we see in the world today, not even to talk of the enormous amounts of food they would require for a year. Below is a size comparison of the ark with modern ships. For reference, the Titanic was able to carry about 3500 people, with enough food for 2 weeks.

https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/am/v2/n2/ships.jpg

3. The logistics involved with getting all the species to and from the ship to their various current locations are just transparently impossible. The life span of so many animals and insects are so short that they would have died before even making it off their continents. Moreover a majority would have had to leave their niche habitats from the tropics, savannahs and deserts, outside of which they cannot survive. Also, how did the kangaroos, for example, get back to Australia from Mount Ararat in Turkey (where the Ark landed), without leaving any fossil evidence for their journey along the way? How did they cross the Indian ocean even? The same argument can be extended to the myriad of animals that are only found on certain continents, like koalas, polar bears, etc

4. What happened to the millions of species of microorganisms and half a million species of plants who would have not survived in such conditions? How about aquatic life? Across the board, a flood of the described proportions greatly distorts habitat qualities like salinity, pressure, and microbial density, all of which aquatic life require to survive.

5. How is it that God saw it fit to save all the species of animal on earth, but kill his beloved humans? Because of sin, you say? OK, well did the flood get rid of sin? Noah's family was back at it as soon as the ship landed! So it would seem like this was a failed exercise from the all-knowing. On another note, would you like to estimate how many sinless babies and little children died in that flood?

That's as far as I can tolerate writing about this BS.

Hahaha! I died at "It can happen"

I can relate to the frustration man, once having had to repeatedly explain to a friend why the story of the Tower of Babel is re.tarded and should be considered a myth

At some point you just want to physically pull the knowledge from your skull and thrust it in theirs. But then I realize that they're probably wishing for the same ability.

https://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/537/976/57b.jpg