Monthly Archives: June 2014

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I don’t know about you

but I find this talk by Kirillov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed very interesting. This is towards the end of the book where Pyotr Stepanofitch has an interview with Kirillov, wants him to write a suicide note claiming responsibility for some murders that have just taken place among them. Kirillov says

I have no higher idea than disbelief in god. I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done nothing but invent god so as to go on living and not kill himself; that’s the whole of universal history up till now. I am the first one in the whole history of mankind who could not invent god. Let them know it once and for all.

They continue the interview then he says, as if continuing his earlier train of thought, that

I can’t understand how an atheist could know that there is no god and not kill himself on the spot. To recognize that there is no god and not to recognize at the same instant that one is god oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself.

Nikolay Stavrogin says in a letter to Darsha he cannot kill himself for an idea, in fact he says he can’t believe in an idea as Kirillov. At the end he kills himself and says no one is to blame.

I think everyone is possessed in this book.

What are your thoughts on the statements by Kirillov on unbelief?

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Reproductive health bill

There have been members of parliament or senate throwing tantrums over the proposed reproductive health bill. Their argument has been as senator Musila said

it was against the country’s education policies and preferences

that is in a country where study after study show that teens are having just as much sex as the adults and every year during exam time we hear of pregnant candidates both in primary and secondary schools.

He continued to say,

Sexual abstinence should be the key HIV and anti-pregnancy message at schools. We can provide information about condoms and where to get them, but they should not be distributed in schools

and I don’t know his problem. But I suspect it is the slippery slope argument usually advanced by prohibitionists of whatever stripe. If they are having sex already, what is the danger in providing them with the necessary protection? Which would they rather prefer, hiding behind the cover of morality, that they have sex without protection and no access to contraceptives get pregnant or STDs or they have access to these things.

I decided to read the bill to see why these noisemakers were making so much of it.

Part 6 of the bill deals with reproductive health of adolescents[ who were defined as being between ages 11 and 17]. stipulates

33. (1) The Cabinet Secretary for health shall consultation with the Board facilitate the provision adolescent friendly reproductive health services.
(2) In the provision of reproductive health services to adolescents, parental consent is not mandatory.
(3) Despite sub-section (2) above, nothing prevents a health care provider from whom reproductive health services are sought by an adolescent, from referring the adolescent to a qualified person for provision of the necessary services

the bill continues to stipulate further

34. (l) The Board is consultation with government institutions and other bodies shall-
(a) facilitate the provision to of adolescent- friendly reproductive health and sexual health information and education;
(b) facilitate the provision to adolescents of confidential, comprehensive, non-judgmental and affordable reproductive health services;
(c) develop policies to protect adolescents from physical and sexual violence and discrimination including cultural practices that violate the reproductive health rights of the adolescents; and

(d) facilitate adolescents access to information, comprehensive sexuality education and confidential services.

As you can see from the above, unless I have been blind in my reading of the bill, for this is the section that deals with reproductive health of adolescents, there is no where in the bill that forces teachers, as the MPs would want you to believe, to distribute condoms in a maths class. Musila and his ilk want us to believe parents can offer sex education to their children. In many cases parents are unable to breach this subject with their young ones. I don’t remember my parents having this talk with me and I know this happens to many children.

These MPigs and senators opposed to the bill should stop hiding behind the veil of morality and say what it is they are opposed to. It can’t be sex education.

If there is anything that guarantees power, it is to have and be able to use  knowledge. In 1984 George Orwell wrote

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

and such is the power of knowledge. It is absurd that anyone in his right mind in this day and age would be opposed to sex education for their children, lessons they will not receive at home nor in church where most of them go.

Here is the draft bill currently before to the house. One would hope it wasn’t idiots politicians having to debate them before they are assented to by the clown.

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God has been photographed

But the photos are invisible!

This morning my brother informed me of the Nigerian man hospitalized for his atheism[ see previous post] then I find this post of a nun who claimed to have photographed god. The only reassuring thing about the whole episode is those close to her didn’t believe her.

Hear what she tells us

I was revealing what God had told me and they didn’t believe but these are the real words from God, ‘Listen to me I am above this earth, I have allowed you and you alone to photograph me for them to know the truth’. I managed to photograph Him but what surprised me is that when I took the full image, it came out a passport size picture of the image of Christ because he did not want people to know what he looks like

I am willing to buy them drinks if they can only share with me these photos.

I don’t know about you, but I am calling this bull

There was also another miracle where a photographer in Uganda attempted to take a picture of the sister while attending a seminar there but when he produced the film, the picture of Mary the mother of Jesus appeared in the background holding the holy sacrament. All these pictures are available at the Cathedral church in Eldoret.

I am not aware of anyone who has an inkling of what Mary, if she lived, looked like. How do people believe such bs? And now they think she should be made a saint.

Just as with the Jesus story where there is no father, no body so it is with the camera and photos in this case. We are told

The lady had shown us several wonderful miracles, which I as a bishop have never seen in my life. Even the cameras she used to photograph the alleged Lord were later blown up after she finished taking the pictures. We did not believe and bought a new one. Surprisingly it was also damaged, according to the technician who attended both of them

and this bullcrap is voiced by the bishop! Not that I hold the bishop or any church person in high regard, but what this means is most of the lay people will just buy this crap. It has come from the bishop and so it must be true.

woman photographs god

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if the miracles of the OT and NT were true

 it could be said that God showed more care in meeting the least needs of men than in their greatest and principal need; that he more severely punished slight faults in certain persons than he punished great crimes in others; and finally that he didn’t show himself so beneficent in the most pressing of needs than in the least of them. All this is easy to show, as much by the miracles that he is said to have performed as by those he didn’t perform and that he should more likely have performed than any other – if it were true he had done any. For example, to say that God had the kindness to send an angel to console and aid a simple servant when he left – and still leaves – to languish and die in misery an infinite number of innocents; that he would miraculously preserve for forty years the clothing and shoes of a miserable people, when he doesn’t watch over the natural preservation of so many goods so useful and necessary for people’s subsistence, and which every day are lost through different accidents. What! He sent to the first chiefs of the human race, Adam and Eve, a demon, a devil, a simple snake to seduce them and in this way to destroy all men? This simply isn’t credible. What! He would have wanted, through a special grace of his providence, to prevent the king of pagan Geraris from falling into a minor error with a foreign woman, an error that would have had no ill consequences, yet he didn’t want to prevent Adam and Eve from offending him and falling into the sin of disobedience, a sin which, according to our Christ-lovers, is fatal and caused the humanity’s destruction? This isn’t credible.

From an excerpt of The Testament of Jean Messlier

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The peaceful religion of…

atheism.

One wonders whether there is the possibility that religion has been redefined to include atheism or are there a section of the society that is so bent on spreading foolishness whenever they get the chance that it is impossible for them to realize the folly in their own statements.

The author tells us

Modern day atheists, at least those who take the time to have blogs, websites, and troll the internet spreading their “faith” are rabid haters and deniers of God

which for all intents is meant as an insult. It is first a claim that there is a god whom we have obstinately decided to hate, that we have a faith, that we are trolls. How are we to respond to such level of stupid?

Let us for a moment grant the believer that there are

rational grounds for religion or belief in any form of deity

could we be told what these are and how, in all that is reasonable,is wrong with challenging religion on the market place of ideas if the adherents think that it is rational to believe in talking donkeys, walking snakes and transporter fish among others.

I must have missed some memo or underground meeting where the resolution to eliminate all forms of dissent was passed. But seriously speaking, please help me, which is dissenting? To punish someone for blasphemy or to ask for the abolition of blasphemy laws?

A question is posed

why are many atheists mean, nasty, despicable people full of hate and loathing of all things religious?

and he/ she tells us

because they know they are wrong and missing out on something their religion can never offer.

Am almost tempted to ask why are so many religious so stupid?

Atheists are people. There are nasty, mean, despicable people and this has nothing to do with their religion or lack of it, and in the words of Steven Weinberg it is important to remember that

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

The ad hominem attacks continue and we are told we troll the internet because we

have no moral compass

and

so they can behave however they want without being judged but also, the trolling, mocking, and ridicule are an effort to make themselves appear bigger by making others appear smaller.

We also troll because

Christians can go to bed at night confident in the knowledge that their eternity is secure, atheists can do no such thing.

It is amazing how shallow Christians can be. For most of them it seems there are only two alternatives, atheism or Christianity. How does the christian feel about being in the Muslim hell, or being reborn as a cat or a donkey? Is the chief requirement to being christian that you stop to use the reasoning faculties?

I would be the first to admit that

Their websites, blogs and forums are not only used to spread their message, they are also gathering spots where like-minded people prop each other up

but refuse that this is done with

bogus assurances

but that we

bash religion

whenever its adherents want to force it on our throats or claim privileges on the public square. And no, our arguments have not be debunked for decades. It is the other way round. The believer has made a claim about reality, a claim that a god exists. We have asked to be told what god is and how we can know that it is. This challenge hasn’t been answered since it was first asked. This particular apologist seems to be unaware of this fact.

I don’t know about you, but I know I don’t have

 a God shaped vacuum that cannot be filled with anything but God.

It is true that we

know more about the Bible than many Christians

because we take the time to read it.

I am open to being told what universal truth atheists deny. I don’t know it. I haven’t heard it.

We are told

Atheism has no new ideas

which is interesting especially since atheism deals with one question only and that is about the existence of deities. If the believer is proposing a new conception of god, we are willing to hear what this god is and whether we can be convinced on its existence.

Science, construed broadly, I don’t think ever started as a way to undermine Christianity or religion in general but that this has happened naturally.

I think some apologists live in caves and only come out to use internet. For how would someone write that there

are no fresh discoveries in science, philosophy, or history to undermine Christianity.

I don’t know who goes to their laboratory or lecture theatre with the goal to undermine Christianity. Wouldn’t that be a tiresome way to study inflation models, behaviour of rats, or the history of the Peloponnesian war. To claim that

For years, the intellectual world has added nothing to the old and recycled ideas of Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, or Russell, a problem even Charles Darwin was aware of.

is to be an idiot of the first order. Why would a new idea be necessary if to this date we have  reason to think natural selection explains the progress of life on earth, or that religion is opium of the mass or that the last Christian, if ever there was one, died on the cross? What new thing has religion taught us? What new thing has the Christian revealed to us that is useful to us here? Am patient, I will wait.

We are asked

Would anyone trust the convictions of a monkey’s mind if there are any convictions in such a mind?

And the question we must ask is why not. The monkey has learnt to alert members of the group about danger. Whether you want to call this instinct or cognition is your business. But it makes a right assessment of the situation and acts accordingly. If there is a bigger question to be asked is whether some men have developed cognitive faculties greater than a monkey’s?

No atheist scientist, if there are such, proclaims evolution as the origin of life and I stand to be corrected. Evolution theory describes how life has progressed on our planet. It is wrong on many levels to make such a claim. The first conclusion I can come to is that the author of this post knows zilch about evolution.

The claim that god is the author of meaning, morality, order and logic has been debated for so long and it is a horse that I don’t want to beat in this post.

Here and here are reflections I have written about meaning of life. I think anyone who claims that without god, life has no meaning does not think, or has refused to think through the subject.

Here and here are the author’s attempt to sell his type of nonsense.

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Haters of god

Here we wrote a response to a blockhead who argued that atheists, to make any moral statements, must borrow from the Christian worldview. In that response we told the said nincompoop that if his assertion were correct, then, the Buddhist, the Taoist, The Muslim- basically everyone else- must borrow from the christian worldview to live their lives. It is to claim that exemplary men line the Antonines, Solon, Lycurgus were morally deficient because they were not aware of the fiction called Christ. That men such as Buddha, Lao Tzu and other great moral teachers must have borrowed from Christianity even though they lived several years before this character was developed in the mind of some idle middle easterners.

Today we have the unfortunate chance to meet such a silly person. The said person writes

The thought that anyone is “horrible” comes from the understanding of a moral law, which can only be accounted for by God.

This is such a tired argument and yours truly is truly tired of whipping this dead horse. This fellow must live in a place surrounded only by fellow idiots. It is ok to believe in god. But to argue that the sense of good or bad can only be accounted for by belief in god is moronic. It is to live with your head buried under a sand mould. Were the god of the christian be a source of moral conduct, we would be killing our children for the mistakes of their siblings as atonement, we would drown those who annoyed us and be complicit in the murder of maidservants when the person at fault is the king. How stupid can a person get?

I cannot for the life of me make sense of

 If being wrong isn’t such a thing than truth does not exist in your world and you cannot make any claims at all. Not even that nothing is wrong.

That said however, the question to ask is what is truth. Atheism as has been said several times before by many is a lack of belief in the existence of gods. Question of what is truth is a philosophical question that is open to debate.

This statement here

Your worldview is inconsistent and you borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make some of your claims. I know that you have knowledge of God’s existence because God who knows all things and never lies has communicated that to us in the Bible. I beg you to respond to God’s call and turn from your sins and trust in Christ to forgive you

is not only rude but also condescending. As Atomic mutant said in his comment, it is disrespectful. Atheism makes no claim, at least as far as I can tell unless we call the response that no evidence has been provided for god nor that a god hasn’t been coherently defined a claim. One is an atheist because he has no belief in the existence of god. To think that christianity and the claims it makes are the only truth is to be like a child who thinks her mother is the best cook and their shanty the best house, in short it is to be really ignorant.

Haters of god

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When he works out of town

In a few months this will be a livestock market. I promise I will not cut down trees
My livestock market project site somewhere in northern Kenya
Views to the lake from my site in Kisumu
If you squint hard enough you will see the airport in the background
We stopped by the lakeside to have lunch.

As you may all have heard, there was a violent raid in one of the towns in the coastal region where quite a number were killed, houses and business property destroyed among others. I hear the HMS have claimed responsibility. I don’t know, especially since I don’t watch news.

Politicians, religious leaders and anyone who can say anything has been quick to condemn the attacks. Others have called for the sacking of security chiefs for sleeping on the job. I think the only reasonable thing that has so far been done is to condemn the beastly act. Beyond that, all the other things being said is just noise.

You do not expect a people who have been marginalized by all the governments we have had since self rule to really be concerned by issues national when residents don’t have title deeds to lots and others from elsewhere have.

It is insane that for me to get to Marsabit, a place not so far from Nairobi, I have to hire police escort or I will never arrive their in one piece. What kind of government allows that to happen? Why do people act like such things are not important? Why are they quick to cry foul when such an attack takes place not realizing that security is a function of a healthy society. A society where the majority, as much as is humanly practicable, have access to a decent living is a healthy one. Such a society is in no need of jailhouses and police outposts. How long will it take the noise makers to realize that deploying more police officers without tackling poverty, unemployment, ignorance will result in naught.

I condole those families that lost their loved ones but hold each member of our society responsible. We elected clowns who are clueless about what is happening in the country. The clowns have appointed sillier clowns to run government agencies. They open their mouth to replace their feet. Nothing intelligent comes out of those foul mouths.

If anything security-wise is to change, the country must start not to invest in a bigger police force but in a healthy and equitable society. This is the challenge which am not holding my breath to see a politician come up with.