Public service announcement

We interrupt transmission to bring you pictures of my hike today. The trail is the same, the distance the same but the exhaustion is different!

This couple didn’t want to be left out. I hope they will manage to get to the rim.

A section of the trail that has had to be improved following serious water erosion

There is a zebra in the background. They didn’t seem too happy to hear me pass by, and so all ran away

You can see the damage erosion is causing to this trail

I was hoping there could be some fossils following the great flood, you know which one, and there seems to be nothing to report home about

This is the summit of the small mountain.

Improved trail. If they could do it all the way, maybe we could just have our stairway to heaven, who knows 😀

The sun was still struggling to come through the clouds as I was going up

Euthanesia

We think talking about what god is, whether there are any gods and if they care about us, though sometimes interesting, there is nothing new we will say that will bring any gods to life.

We are going to look for data and debates on euthanasia. This will be our next topic of discussion.

To move the debate forward, I will declare where I stand on this debate. I support the procedure and look to a time when this will be available to everyone who requires such help.

We will try our best to look for interesting posts on this topic.

Quotable quotes- Truth

I have always said I will fight for any course I believe is right but avoid the death if I can. In the Wanderer and his Shadow, Nietzsche expresses the same sentiments more eloquently

Dying for the “truth.”— We should not let ourselves be burnt by our opinions: we are
not that sure of them. But perhaps for this: that we may have and change our opinions.

I don’t know what to say about this

Do you know Sarah Baartman?

A man can dream

Socrates.— If all goes well, the time will come when one will take up the memorabilia of Socrates rather than the Bible as a guide to morals and reason… The pathways of the most various philosophical modes of life lead back to him… Socrates excels the founder of Christianity in being able to be serious cheerfully and in possessing that wisdom full of roguishness that constitutes the finest state of the human soul. And he also possessed the finer intellect.

Nietzsche in The Wanderer and his shadow

On free will and punishment

My position on free will is known to the readers of this blog. I am not saying anything new in this post. Here is a passage from Nietzsche that I hope to hear your comments on.

Have the adherents of the theory of free will the right to punish?— People who judge and punish as a profession try to establish in each case whether an ill-doer is at all accountable for his deed, whether he was able to employ his intelligence, whether he acted for reasons and not unconsciously or under compulsion. If he is punished, he is 
punished for having preferred the worse reasons to the better: which he must therefore have known. Where this knowledge is lacking a man is, according to the prevailing view, unfree and not responsible: except if his lack of knowledge, his ignorantia legis [ignorance of the law] for example, is a result of an intentional neglect to learn; in 
which case, when he failed to learn what he should have learned he had already preferred the worse reasons to the better and must now suffer the consequences of his bad choice. If, on the other hand, he did not see the better reasons, perhaps from dull-wittedness or weakness of mind, it is not usual to punish him: he lacked, one says, the 
capacity to choose, he acted as an animal would. For an offense to be punishable presupposes that its perpetrator intentionally acted contrary to the better dictates of his intelligence. But how can anyone intentionally be less intelligent than he has to be? Whence comes the decision when the scales are weighted with good and bad motives? 
Not from error, from blindness, not from an external nor from an internal compulsion? (Consider, moreover, that every so-called “external compulsion” is nothing more than the internal compulsion of fear and pain.) Whence? one asks again and again. The intelligence is not the cause, because it could not decide against the better reasons? 
And here one calls “free will” to one’s aid: it is pure willfulness which is supposed to decide, as impulse is supposed to enter within which motive plays no part, in which the deed, arising out of nothing, occurs as a miracle. It is this supposed willfulness, in a case in which willfulness ought not to reign, which is punished: the rational 
intelligence, which knows law, prohibition and command, ought to have permitted no choice, and to have had the effect of compulsion and a higher power. Thus the offender is punished because he employs “free will,” that is to say, because he acted without a reason where he ought to have acted in accordance with reasons. Why did he do this? But it is precisely this question that can no longer even be asked: it was a deed without a “for that reason,” without motive, without origin, something purposeless and non-rational.— But such a deed too ought, in accordance with the 
first condition of all punishability laid down above, not to be punished! It is not as if something had not been done here, something omitted, the intelligence had not been employed: for the omission is under all circumstances unintentional! and only the intentional omission to perform what the law commands counts as punishable. The 
offender certainly preferred the worse reasons to the better, but without reason or intention: he certainly failed to employ his intelligence, but not for the purpose of not employing it. The presupposition that for an offense to be punishable its perpetrator must have intentionally acted contrary to his intelligence—it is precisely this 
presupposition which is annulled by the assumption of “free will.” You adherents of the theory of “free will” have no right to punish, your own principles deny you that right! But these are at bottom nothing but a very peculiar conceptual mythology; and the hen that hatched it sat on her egg in a place far removed from reality.

The Wanderer and his shadow, F. Nietzsche

Quotable quotes

It has been a long while since we did this and today we shall quote my favourite philosopher.

Truth will have no Gods before it.—The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.

Nietzsche in Ecce Homo

Origin of unbelief

It is surprising how daft some people seem to be.

How do you explain a person who writes

Unbelief comes not from lack of evidence or deficient intelligence, but from arrogance and pride, vehement refusal of anything contrary to personal feeling, love of sin and evil called “gray,” and ultimately hatred of even the very idea of God. This is why Scripture teaches that even when faced with the Truth at the point of judgment, there will be those who gnash their teeth at Him, who loves them.

unless they are willfully daft, ignorant and have not bothered for a moment to understand why someone may not believe there is cheese on the moon.

origin of unbelief

About laughter

I have a question dear friends.

Is there any passage in the bible or Koran about laughter, that is, a verse that is meant to make the audience laugh?

Is laughter a good or bad thing?

Is there any place in the NT where they say their hero laughed?

There is ample proof that god does exist. Really?

I seek your indulgence dear readers to use cuss words and insults in this post. You will know why in a short while.

Before we get there, I must ask, what do newspaper editors look for in articles before they can approve them to be printed. How can a media house that claims to have a reputation allow such a poorly argued article that will be the subject of this post to be printed? No wonder Nietzsche didn’t have anything good to say about them[editors and newspapers mainly] over a century ago!

My second apology is that this post maybe long. Every paragraph in the OP is loaded with a fallacy and it is only fair that we point out where. Thank you for your indulgence.

He starts by telling us

The existence of God is a fact that cannot be refuted. Having no reason to believe that God exists does not mean He does not.

which unfortunately is tautology. There is no argument here. Were the existence of god, whatever that is, a fact, we would not be having this debate. In the same vain, to claim that god is does not make it so.

To tell us

It is a matter of one choosing to seek in order to find Him

convinces me to believe this fellow has abandoned reason. Why would we have to seek something that was self evident? A being we are told is omni whatever would have no difficulty in having their way. The argument about belief being a choice to me displays an ignorance of the fact that we believe to the extent we are convicted and no more.

A person whose entire post reeks of fallacy after fallacy should be ashamed to write

One cannot base an argument on a fallacy and still try to prove an assumption like what atheists today are doing.

Someone tell me, the editor who authorized this piece, does he know anything about logical fallacies or was he awed by use of the word fallacy? This is irresponsible. What assumptions are atheists trying to prove?

You can tell a person is obtuse by what comes from the tips of their pens and it is evident in this case. He writes

History, nature and the conscience prove this irrefutable and immutable fact that God exists, contrary to what was alleged last month by Mr Harrison Mumia, president of atheists in Kenya.

Nature,whatever you understand it to be, my friend, is indifferent and as far as we can tell acts on its own without any divine agency. History does not provide proof of god but that men have talked about gods. Unless, the assertion here is that because men have maimed and killed each other to decide issues of gods, a god must surely exist.And if conscience is proof of god, those who for all practical purposes lack a conscience are evidence that god does not exist.

At this point

Better still, there is evidence showing miracle healing where medical science has failed to cure. 

we must all agree that this person ceased to be reasonable or intelligent. Granting for a minute there is miracle healing, what good is it to us if only one person is healed if all could be healed magically? In fact the bigger question would be what end does their sickness serve if they are to be magically healed? Is it to serve the caprice of a cruel god?

We are told, with a straight face that

Archaeological evidence has also proven the existence of God.

BWAHAHAHAHA! We, until this moment were unaware that god had fossilized and became a subject of archaeological digs. Now where is the god site? Has it been declared a World Heritage Site under the protection of the UN and where are the bones kept? 

Liars for Christ will go to whatever length to claim anyone as their own. And Einstein in this case has been chosen to be defamed. He tells us

I paraphrase the greatest scientist of all time, Albert Einstein, who said: “The more one seeks evidence against God, the more one sees the proof that He really exists.”

a person he would have been dissuaded to rally for support had he carried a brief internet search, he would find such from Einstein’s pen

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action

or

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms

or

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment

and finally

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

The study of nature has been the death of gods. To claim

Looking at the handiwork, incredible design and finesse of the universe, we can behold the awe and wonder of its designer since there can never be design without a designer.

is to betray a serious ignorance of any cosmology nor counter arguments to the argument from design and fine tuning. That even if we granted a designer, you could not, without special pleading arrive at a personal god. The argument also fails in the sense that all around us we see designs getting improved and products are not the handiwork of just one individual and as such we can infer that human beings are a final product of many workmen and there were several attempts that were discarded. Earthquakes or worms that eat the hosts eye are proof of how malevolent the designer is.

I am unable to make sense of

Besides, despite knowledge in science and anthropology, human beings can only predict what follows what in terms of the seasons and the weather patterns. Scientists can only use what is provided by the natural design to their advantage.

or how it leads to

In this regard, therefore, we can argue that scientists discover what is provided for by nature in order to invent things for their comfort, convenience and advantage. Thus, without a designer, there could be no invention.

And while we agree that

The world is too large, too deep and wide

I don’t think scientists have been making bets on the existence of a deity. All atheists and have asked for is to be told what this god is and evidence for it.

However to say

They have only managed to explore a few patches with their limited resources and imperfect common sense.

is to undermine human effort in its attempt to understand nature, wrest her powers and where possible tame it for her own use. Our common sense maybe imperfect in the sense they do not have the power to discriminate but they aren’t the faculty concerned with knowledge or understanding and I was hoping that even this small bit would not be lost on this apologist.

I have said often that ignorance is a bad thing, worse is claiming to know something you don’t. This fellow is also a poor student of history and that explains why he writes

Ever since the Holocaust, the Jews have been under attack by mean-spirited people with wayward ideologies.

for he would have known that Christians have vilified the Jews for as long as we can care to write that some of the icons of Christianity sowed the seeds that would result in the senseless murder,( is there a murder that isn’t senseless) of the Jews by the Nazis.

To tell us

Ever since the existence of man, humans have had a feeling of duty and obligation to be good to themselves and other people. This is put in mankind by the source of all creation, God.

is proof again that this person hasn’t read anything on morality beyond his bible. The age old question asked by Socrates remains to be decisively answered. The apologist must answer us this question

Is something pious because god says it is or god says it is pious because it is?

You would think that a person responding to atheists would know his bible just slightly more. Why would he write

I would like to assume that the inconsistencies Mumia is talking about are those found in the four gospels. If my guess is right, then there is a great difference between an inconsistency and a difference.

to betray his ignorance of the bible that he purports to believe? If he has read his OT can he answer us how many pairs of animals went to the ark or for what reason god created man? And while at it, I would be glad to know what he means by a difference in regards to contradictory bible passages.

And this claim here

The Bible is still the most widely read, most consistent and coherent book the world over. This is an act of the supernatural being.

is itself evidence that either this person has not read the bible or the word consistent and coherent mean something different in christian speak.

And his closing paragraph is not far from Paul’s disdain for those who sought knowledge. This author writes

Whatever is initiated by man is short-lived and erroneous. That is why one sees theses and philosophies being challenged by scholars over time.

a line similar to

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God[1 Cor 3:19]

I rest my case. I propose that this fellow should not be allowed to write anything for public consumption and that he should be made to read his bible maybe, and am not holding my breath, he could learn something from it.

There is ample proof for god.