Stats: 3,184,724 members, 7,924,330 topics. Date: Sunday, 18 August 2024 at 10:15 AM |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Religion / My Thoughts And Questions About Religion (236920 Views)
Questions About Religion For The Deep Thinker / Why Are Atheists Always Talking About Religion / Questions About Demon Possession - Nairaland Demonology Experts (2) (3) (4)
(1) (2) (3) ... (66) (67) (68) (69) (70) (71) (72) ... (130) (Reply) (Go Down)
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by Kenerd: 11:58am On Feb 02, 2018 |
budaatum:Hmm good point. |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 6:37pm On Feb 02, 2018 |
budaatum:Thanks. Let's see what I can do about that. |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 6:58pm On Feb 02, 2018 |
YOUR IMAGINARY FRIEND Sometimes God is called an imaginary friend. I have no problem with 'imaginary' but isn't 'friend' a bit of a stretch? After all, how many friends do you have who demand you love them and promise to inflict indescribable pain on you without mercy if you put a step wrong? That's the kind of friend you're better off without. But, to be fair, there is a bright side--imaginary friends only do imaginary torture. 5 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 6:22pm On Feb 03, 2018 |
THE STORY OF GOD God had no beginning. He was always there. He is maximally intelligent. We don't exactly know what this means but let's say his IQ is a few billion compared to our average IQ of 100. And he was alone. Definitely. We are told he is the ONLY real god--all the others are human inventions. So he had no friends, no wives, no one to talk to, nothing to do, no TV, no nothing. He didn't even have day and night. As far as we know, he spent infinity in the dark and terrible cold all alone. But he must have been happy, because he is perfect. At some point he tired of being alone and decided to make some friends to love. He made an unimaginably huge universe and then made trillions of solar systems and in one he placed a tiny (and rather dangerous) planet for his friends to live on. He looked at his creation and thought it was good. With preparations done, he created his new friends. Now, you might think he would have made them as intelligent as himself. That would have allowed for interesting late night conversations. He could even play games with them and not always win. But he didn't. He made his friends pitifully weak; very, very tiny, belligerent, argumentative and very, very, very stupid (compared to himself). Well, they say God works in mysterious ways but this was like a lonely human being making bacteria for company. Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out too well. He was careful to provide each human with a dedicated comms channel, so he could talk to each one directly. Yet, still many of them didn't love him back, some didn't even believe he existed! He wanted them to follow his rules of behaviour but most of them ignored him. They even invented their own gods, and some actually masturbated! (He should have made their arms shorter!) Finally, he was so exasperated with his friends that he decided to kill them all. What else could he do? He truly loved them but they ignored him. He just left one family alive whom he thought would behave better. I suppose we could call this supernatural selection! Well, to cut a long story short, it still didn't work out. Humans continued to do their own thing; some of them pretended to love him, some of them loved other gods and hardly any of them would stone their unruly sons to death. God was at his wits end. So he thought and he thought (with an IQ of several billion, that's a heck of a lot of thought) and came up with his master plan. He would come to Earth as a human and have the locals kill him as a sacrifice to himself. Then he would be able to forgive all past, present and future human sin; obviously. What could possibly go wrong? Of course, it is possible that this story is not true. We can either believe that the immensely powerful being with a several billion IQ did all this, or we can believe the whole story was invented by tiny, tiny beings who are very, very, very stupid (compared to God). I don't know. What do you think? 11 Likes 3 Shares |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by Filmewell(f): 8:16pm On Feb 03, 2018 |
You have tried oo. Since 2014. But let me ask you sir in your unbelief has there ever been a period you felt like maybe you are wrong and you want believe again. Many people do not have faith but still believes somehow because it costs them nothing and lose nothing. 1 Like |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by adepeter2027(m): 10:36pm On Feb 03, 2018 |
Well lemme reply to this before Joe himself responds to you. Filmewell: To be honest with you, before trading the path of disbelief and irreligious route, I was pretty careful and asked myself this question. But at the end of everything, I was left with no choice other than to choose 101% disbelief. Why? Because the more I give room for possibilites of a creator, god, supreme being etc, the more the whole possibilities keep looking fuzzy and impossible. Many people do not have faith but still believes somehow because it costs them nothing and lose nothing.This statement looks somehow . But lemme respond to it sha. Anyways, it would cost them a lot because, peradventure they die and discover they very been serving a wrong god all the while they lived on earth. This equates them to us who don't believe in any. |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by Kenerd: 3:11am On Feb 04, 2018 |
Filmewell:one thing I'm sure of is if god is so omniscient and omnipotent, he should know those who truly believe. You cannot pretend to believe, it just doesn't work. 1 Like |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by Nobody: 7:11am On Feb 04, 2018 |
budaatum:I tell you...I've been following this dude since 2014..told him the same thing 1 Like |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 6:18am On Feb 07, 2018 |
Filmewell: People tell me that I have an introspective spirit and I think so too. An introspective mindset is one which is able to look at his core beliefs from a distance often and try to argue against it. Another word for being a devil's advocate. I do this often for my libertarian beliefs. I do this for my pro-capitalist beliefs. I do this for my apatheism beliefs. Etc There have been times when I had gone anonymous arguing with some militant atheists about the merits of religions and why it is not wrong to be a religionist. Each time, instead of feeling I may be wrong, it ended up making me foolish that I stayed in religion for as much as I did before denouncing it. It really does not take much to know that religions are man-made. One just has to take away that veil and the picture becomes much clearer. Your words I have highlighted in bold is an old form of argument for religion called Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager is an argument that asserts that one should believe in God, even if God's existence cannot be proved or disproved through reason. You know Blaise Pascal? He was the genius mathematician who helped the world on the subject of projective geometry and probability theory. Pascal's reasoning was that since nothing is known for certainty, the christian faith may be as good as any other belief, and since the possible gain from belief is so much greater than the possible gain from unbelief, Christianity was the bet that gave the highest gain. This is what is referred to as Pascal's wager. But think about it this wager for a while. There are many gods. You talk about faith but there are different faiths. The Christian faith is different from the Islam faith, which is different from the Hindu faith. Essentially, we have more than 3000 god and they are different from one another. So if you wager that Jesus' Christianity is the true religion, you have so much to lose if it turns out that it is Mohammed's Islam that is the correct religion. The main problem with Pascal's wager is that it suffers from the fallacy of bifurcation. It only calculates with two options when there are, in fact, at least four alternatives: The christian God and afterlife, some other god and afterlife, atheism with afterlife, and atheism without afterlife. Therefore Pascal's wager is invalid as an argument. Like I said earlier, because of the multitude of possible religions, if any faith is as likely as the other, the probability of the christian being right is P=1/n where n is the number of possible faiths. If we assume that there is an infinite amount of possible gods (i.e. ideas of gods), the probability of you being right is infinitely small. Because Pascal's wager fails to tell us which god is likely to be the right one, you have a great probability that you picked the wrong religion and go to some other religion's version of hell. This is referred to as the "avoiding the wrong hell problem" Sometimes I think that the reason the intelligent Blaise did not see through this wager was that he had such poor health, especially after the age of 18, that he died just two months after his 39th birthday. That might have affected him and drawn him to religion for hope. may be. 9 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 5:27pm On Feb 08, 2018 |
Fortune Chukwuemeka I have said this before but I'll say it louder for those at the back. The term "Respect my belief" is religious blackmail. Beliefs�Do Not�Deserve�Respect. Beliefs should be talked about, ridiculed, critiqued and discussed so that only those that conform to centrist societal ideals are allowed into society. Muslims have beliefs that encourage them to throw gay people off roofs, stone fornicating women to death etc. There are few religions or even situations that oppress women more than Islam. When it comes to the marriage of teenage and preteen girls before they're ready for sex or pregnancy, they take the lead Are we seriously not supposed to talk about that because beliefs deserve respect? Hindus have a caste system that keeps select people and their generations in perpetual oppression just because they are both into lower castes. Are we supposed to not talk about this? Christianity was used to oppress people based on race, is now used to oppress people based on gender and sexual orientation. My Bible said so. Are we not supposed to talk about this? If some random religion was still sacrificing human virgins, would we be expected to keep quiet about that because your beliefs deserve respect? Talk about all beliefs. Beliefs are ideas. It's okay to challenge ideas. That's how they grow. Belief systems that aren't challenged are the ones that carry terrible ideas from one generation to another with no loss of enthusiasm. 2 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 10:51am On Feb 11, 2018 |
Nkechi Bianze So, I saw a video that got me infuriated. A young female school teacher posted a Facebook video showing herself leading her student in praise and worship session, right in the classroom. Questions: 1. Who gave her the right and permission to post such a video of people’s children? 2. What makes her think she has the right to indoctrinate other people’s children with her religion? 3. Are all the children in that class Christians? 4. “Did the teacher get approval from all the parents before taking this spiritual trip with these babies, not to talk of videoing them and putting it on social media ![]() The average Nigerian religious person is a religious zombie. There’s this compulsive urge for many religious Nigerians to want to shove their religions down people’s throats. Just like a deeper life teacher in a Federal University in Eastern Nigeria told the female students to stop wearing trousers, that they should all wear below the knees skirts or dresses, and she also asked the male students to stop wearing jeans. And just like a Muslim lecturer in a Federal University in Northern Nigeria asked all the female students to start covering their heads to his class. This is ridiculous. You are a teacher/lecturer. You don’t have the right to force your religious doctrines on your students. In saner countries, that would earn you a sack. You are using your position of trust to infringe on the rights of your students to choose a religion or none, practice a religious doctrine or not. This is actually a FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT you people infringe on. If I want my children to do praise and worship, I will take them to church. If I pay tuition fees, I’m paying for them to learn academically. I don’t want any teacher indoctrinating my children with her religion. What many of you Nigerian Christians and Muslims need to understand is that not everyone gives a Bleep about your religion. Not everyone gives a Bleep about your Bible or Quran. Your right to indoctrinate people into your religion ends with your children and your church and mosque members. I do NOT want my children to grow up as Christians. I don’t want any Christian teacher to make them do praise and worship at school, where I would pay through my ass to get them to learn. My right to decide that I don’t want my children to be Christians (especially the Nigerian brand) is as valid as your right to decide that you want your children to grow up as Christians. Practice what you want on your children. But you haven’t got the right to practice such on other people’s children. A school teacher is paid to teach academically. Not to indoctrinate people’s children into his or her religion. Nigerian Christians need to understand boundaries. Not everyone wants to be Christians. Not everyone cares about whatever has been written in your Bible. Stop shoving your Christianity down people’s throats. Leave other people’s children out of your shits. Despite how religious you all claim to be, your country is still in a rotten state. A vast majority of Nigerians are religious, including all your thieving political office holders, employers who sleep with potential employees, lecturers who sleep with students to give them due or undue marks, bribe givers and collectors, you are all mainly Christians and Muslims. *-* This issue of Christian and Muslim school is one of the worst disasters happening on earth today. Most of these Islamic brainwashed kids who volunteer to kill people, or even sacrifice their lives as suicide bombers were bred in many of these Islamic schools. Let school for children be a place to learn academically. Leave religious institutions like churches and mosques to handle spirituality. You are a Christian teacher, practice your Christianity in your church and at home with your family. Don’t force my child to pray with you. This religious madness has got to stop. 9 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 2:13pm On Feb 11, 2018 |
Bolaji Yusuf I am shocked that Nigerians are not believing the snake story. The story that a giant snake swallowed a huge chunk of money at the JAMB office. Is this not the same set of people that believe cats wants to do all the bad things to them. That owls in their compound or in the ceiling wants to assassinate them? Or the one a donkey was talking via influence of a spirit? Can't spirit influence snake to swallow money? No be inside this country person drive several kilometres without fuel to his home(Not petrol station) and parked the car too? What of those ones where human beings dey born snake nko? Yet....una dey make mockery of snake swallow money? Make snake visit all of una and have a conversation on you people's "selective beliefs" 9 Likes 2 Shares |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 8:33pm On Feb 12, 2018 |
THAT HEART-STOPPING VOICE Sorry, I just don't get this. Apparently, God wants us to know him because he loves us and he wants to save us from the eternity of torture he has prepared for us. And God can communicate directly with each and every one of us. Just imagine that for a moment. The person who created all life and the universe, knows everything past, present and future and is billions of times more intelligent that we are, can talk directly into our brains! When that voice comes into your head, there would be no mistaking it. No one who hears God is going to say, "Damn, my tinnitus is playing up today!" or "I wish I would stop having these dreams." or even, "Yes, my Lord Thor, Your word is my command. I will sail west and attack the Christians in the land of Breteyne." No, once that voice starts talking to you, you'll stop dead in your tracks, time will stand still and every other sound and thought will be blocked out--you will be in the presence of greatness and you will KNOW who is talking to you. Yet this does not happen. Think about India. Across India there are vast swathes of land where hundreds of millions of people live and none of them believe in God. If God talks to them, they seem, ALL of them, seem able to put it down to tinnitus or bad dreams. The most populous country in the world, China, was the same and so was Japan, Korea and many smaller countries. The great continent of Africa was the same until European missionaries took Christianity there not much more than 100 years ago. Before that, Africans ignored God's every attempt to communicate with them. ALL of them ignored him. I can only think of two possible ways to explain these facts: 1 God chooses not to love or save billions of people (but can change his mind, for example, after Christian missionaries take God to them). 2 God does not exist. Many people hear voices in their heads and attribute them to the god they were raised to believe in. Have I missed anything? PS Interestingly, I believe in no gods and I never hear alien voices in my head. This is also true for millions of other atheists. 3 Likes 2 Shares |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 4:35am On Feb 14, 2018 |
SATAN: SINNER OR SAVIOUR? Satan may be the most misunderstood person in all mythology. Millions of Christians fear and loath Satan whilst they worship and love God, but is this fair? OK, Christians believe God created everything but God was a ruthless killer. He was unjust, frequently killing the innocent to punish the guilty. God was jealous and treated humans as his playthings--rather as a child pulling the legs off a spider. God was a cosmic bully. God did not want humans to have knowledge of good and evil but just think what that would have led to. Without this knowledge, anything would be acceptable. Genocide, rape, child molestation: what's wrong with these things? That would be our world if we didn't understand the difference between good and evil. Satan was a rebellious angel but he was rebellious for good reason. He understood how evil God was and wanted to make a better world. Satan helped humans to understand the difference between good and evil but God's wicked response was to curse all of Adam's descendants for ever, and make their lives short and painful. God killed tens of millions of humans and animals in temper tantrums; Satan killed only ten individuals and these were killed as a bet with God and with God's permission. And remember, God, not Satan, invented and created hell, the most terrible place of torture ever devised. It's true that the Bible says bad things about Satan. It says he is a liar and tempts people to do evil but, if God is the bad guy who inspired the Bible, what would you expect him to say about the good guy? Perhaps we should add character assassination to God's long list of crimes? God made many mistakes but he got one thing right, he managed to fool over two billion Christians into thinking Satan is the bad guy when the bad guy was always God. What a mess--good job it's only myth. 1 Like |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 7:00pm On Feb 14, 2018 |
THE BELIEVER'S FINAL CONUNDRUM My last post "SATAN: SINNER OR SAVIOUR?" suggested the conventional view that Satan is the bad guy could be completely wrong. The evidence clearly shows God was an evil monster and Satan's actions can be seen to be an attempt to oppose Yahweh to make a better world. This view is a credible interpretation of scripture and cannot be falsified, so all open-minded believers should accept it as a possibility. That raises some interesting issues for them. If I am right and if good does ultimately triumph over evil, you won't be judged by God when you die-- you'll be judged by Satan. What will Satan look for when he decides on your eternal destination? One thing is for sure, proclaiming your belief in, and love of, the evil Yahweh will be a huge problem for you. What could be more damning than spending your life worshiping and praying to a genocidal monster? What about faith? Will Satan take a dim view that you believed an avalanche of silly things based on no evidence whatsoever? I'm not sure Satan would find such people agreeable company to spend eternity with. Satan is also likely to be horrified at the way some believers, at the behest of Yahweh, treated LGBT people so badly. When Satan looks at what motivated you, I suspect he will be disappointed to find you were not moved to help people for the sake of it but rather to ingratiate yourself with evil Yahweh. I think Satan is likely to look more favourably on people who did good because they wanted to help others and who weighed evidence to arrive at their beliefs--people like atheists. Satan will put atheists in first class and others will be relegated to lesser places. There is one thing believers can hope for though. I can't imagine the good-hearted Satan wishing to torture people forever, so I think he will abolish God's cruel and unjust hell. Instead, he might choose to let believers live poor but adequate after-lives, acting as servants to the atheists and gay people in first class. Believers will be cooks, gardeners, housemaids, sewage workers, toilet cleaners and so on. This presents quite a conundrum for believers. Will they risk continuing to suck up to the evil Yahweh by worshiping him and relying on faith, or would they be better off revising their beliefs through the lens of reason and seeking to do good in the world for its own sake? The decision is theirs. . PS For the avoidance of doubt, this is a hypothetical possibility concerning a hypothetical god and his hypothetical nemesis. 2 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 10:55am On Feb 17, 2018 |
HUSH, GOD IS SLEEPING The six-day biblical creation story is so flawed and so firmly contradicted by what we know about the universe, that some Christians try to find excuses for it. They say, the universe WAS created in six days but they were not literal days. They were days of millions or billions of years. Does this make it better? To match the elapsed time since the true of beginning of the universe, a biblical creation day would have to be equal to 2.3 billion years, which brings its own problems—like grass, plants and trees being created billions of years before the sun… But there is one way in which this idea is an improvement. The story says God rested on the seventh day. Since a day is 2.3 billion years, God must still be resting and will rest for another two billion years or so. Now THAT does help —that could explain a lot. 3 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 3:26pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
joseph1013:Just want to ask a question you said schools don't have the right to indoctrinate someone with their religion Do schools have the right to teach children evolution theory and flying spaghetti monster? |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by hopefulLandlord: 3:42pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon:rightly so
Evolution theory? absolutely! Evolution is a SCIENTIFIC CLAIM, its on par with teaching them physics, chemistry and biology FSM? NO! |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 3:47pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
hopefulLandlord:Depends on your idea of 'scientific claim' besides science is limited it's very slow in progress although efficient |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by hopefulLandlord: 3:58pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon: your point is? |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 4:04pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
hopefulLandlord:From my view evolution theory is 100% unscientific |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 4:11pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon:Yes. Evolution theory deserves to be taught, just like Germ theory, Cell theory, Particulate Inheritance theory, or Dual Inheritance theory. They are all in the same category according to science. No. Flying Spaghetti Monster does not deserve to be taught in school. It's in the category of Harry Potter series. 2 Likes 2 Shares |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by hopefulLandlord: 4:12pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon: what makes you hold that view? what's "unscientific" about evolution theory? |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 4:14pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
joseph1013:Do you know that Harry Potter is read to children in American public schools? I hope you know Harry Potter promotes the religion called 'Wicca' |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 4:16pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
hopefulLandlord:I'll just make it simple, why are there still apes if we evolved from them? |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 4:31pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon:Yes, it's read as a story that it is. Fiction. Same way some of us were fortunate to be told stories of the tortoise and its tricks under a big tree. Remember tales-by-moonlight? Wicca is a religious movement like other religious movements. It is not taught in American schools to American school kids. 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 4:40pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
joseph1013:Good why don't they read books about a boy who became a Christian that's just fiction, even the Bible is considered fiction by them why don't they read David and Goliath to the children it's just fiction those things are banned but Harry Potter isn't http://mobile.wnd.com/2003/06/19247/ |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by joseph1013: 4:54pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon:You don't mind us reading the Bible as the ridiculous book of stories that it is? You mean, we are free to take out the horrific parts and tell stories like that of the Good Samaritan to teach ethics and merits of good deeds to kids? 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 4:59pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
joseph1013:Sure isn't that what Harry Potter is all about Good witches vs Bad witches besides, Harry Potter has many horrific scenes |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by hopefulLandlord: 5:00pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon:https://www.livescience.com/32503-why-havent-all-primates-evolved-into-humans.html |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by topdee(m): 5:04pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
danvon: Indoctrination and teaching are two different contextual words as highlighted. Schools/academic institutions are for teaching/learning, not to indoctrinate; even if one is to take classes on theology, the teacher has no right to enforce/indoctrinate, all the teacher is expected to do is educate students on the subject matter based on resources at his disposal. Even in science classes, the teachings are based on empirical data, and credit is often being given to the scientists behind the discovery, to show the information is based on discoveries of the scientist. If one feels objected by the scientist's discovery, one has the right to modify it with better empirical data and theories. The whole idea behind education is to continually provide means for improvement on disseminated data, to amplify and modify existing discoveries with newer discoveries based on more robust evidentiary information, not to just embrace information one can't examine or criticize. 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: My Thoughts And Questions About Religion by danvon(m): 5:05pm On Feb 17, 2018 |
hopefulLandlord:Look I could answer the question I asked, that link is pure nonsense they didn't give any answer they explained evolution as pure luck read it very well |
(1) (2) (3) ... (66) (67) (68) (69) (70) (71) (72) ... (130) (Reply)
Scandal: Pastor Chris Oyakhilome In South African Trouble! / Jesus is coming soon. This thread is for faithful watchmen / Rhapsody Of Realities: A Daily Devotional
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 108 |