Monthly Archives: March 2017

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on wealth

in the Map of Life, William E.H Lecky, writing about opulence writes

wealth which is expended in multiplying and elaborating real comforts, or even in pleasures which produce enjoyment at all proportionate to their cost, will never excite serious indignation. It is the colossal waste of the means of human happiness in the most selfish and most vulgar forms of social advertisement and competition that gives a force and almost a justification to anarchial passions which menace the whole future of our civilization. It is such things that stimulate class hatreds and deepen class divisions, and if the law of opinion does not interfere to check them, they will one day bring down upon the society that encourages them a signal and well merited retribution.

and while reading it, I thought about those who get rich in this country by embezzling public funds and then displaying their ill gotten wealth in opulence and splashing it everywhere to be seen that someday we will say no and do what others have done in similar circumstances.

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Apologists of the empire

Sam Akaki writes in a Guardian article thus

Britain may have “buried a large part of its 20th century history, along with the rest of the country’s tradition of brutality and crimes against humanity in building its empire” (Building Brexit on the myth of empire, 7 March). But, to give the devil his due, it is an incontrovertible fact that Britain left positive legacies of social and economic development in the empire. In Africa, for example, the British transformed a borderless continent inhabited by warring tribes and clans, ravaged by disease, into modern nation states. They built hospitals, schools, elaborate networks of roads, railway lines, air and sea ports. Crucially, they introduced the rule of law, which protected all Africans irrespective of their tribe, clan or religion.

Tragically, the baby was thrown out with the bath water at independence, ushering in a vicious cycle of self-destructive civil wars across the continent, as demonstrated by the current violence in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. At the same time, despotic leaders are amending their constitutions and clinging to power for the sole purpose of stealing development funds. The result is a widespread lack of opportunities, which is forcing hundreds of thousands of African men, women and children to take risky journeys in search of a better life in Europe. In 2015 and 2016, an estimated 10,000 African migrants perished in the Mediterranean.

Ironically, it is Britain which is funding several NGOs that are performing the role of governments in providing basic education, health services and clean water. It is also feeding millions of refugees in internally displaced persons’ camps across the continent.

He, without shame, wants his readers to believe the British in building the Kenya- Uganda railway were concerned with improving our infrastructure for benevolent ends and not to exploit the hinterland. 

He tells us Africa was borderless and warring without presenting any shred of evidence. It should be remembered, especially for those who are ignorant, Africa before colonialism had nation states. They had their boundaries they had their system of governance and they definitely were guided by rule of law. Had they been a lawless horde, they would possibly have been all dead. Besides, in many places, for example in kenya, the boundaries many places have were extant before the colonialists and we’re adopted and have retained their names. I know Akaki doesn’t know this and that explains why he is an apologist for the colonial administration. 

Again, to demonstrate his ignorance further, he points to the Sudan which has been mired in civil war partly because of the actions of the colonial administration that forced the north and south into a marriage where the south is the abused partner that keeps on giving. It is ignorance that is only possible in the mind of a present day African fed on silly TV sitcoms and who does not bother to engage with the history of the continent. 

Lastly in giving the devil his due he tells us about NGOs in Africa. He forgets to mention the history of colonialism that forced almost all the able bodied African men and women to look for work in the settler farms and business to pay a tax regime that served only to impoverish Africa. He conveniently does not mention that most of the whites sent by the colonial administration as administrators were idiots and had failed back home. What were they to teach Africans in governance? 

African states have their own failings. That I must admit. But for an African to start lecturing us on how the British and other powers in Europe helped us is unbecoming of an intellectual. 

One must address issues of imbalance in trade agreements, puppet presidents, SAPs and their effects on the civil service in African countries and other emerging economies of the South. Finally one must address the plunder of resources from Africa that continues to date. The destruction of local ecology to feed Europe. An example in point is introduction of Nile perch in Lake Victoria mainly for export to Europe that has in about 40 years killed almost 400 indigenous species that were only found in the lake.

Akaki,  please give us a break and learn a bit of history. 

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Dear atheist

You have met ufuomaee before. She has written a letter to atheists. She has diagnosed all of you and here is the prognosis

You have a problem.  You have an addiction.

and you may want to know what is the cause of your addiction. Guess.., I will wait.

The cause of your addiction is

 You crave to know.

And her remedy

In your longing for the truth, wait.  Wait in expectation.  Wait, and believe that there is a Truth to know.  Don’t start thinking about what it is.  Just free your mind.

In case you have any doubts, the truth is in the bible. I think she was being sarcastic but failed miserably.

This prayer prager group has a problem with anyone questioning POTUS45. Anyone who thinks tRump could be misguided is a Fascist. What would Jeebus say?

And finally, the best for last!

If there is no god.

Someone please tell me if those boy fucking priests didn’t believe in god?

Or the countless people who have killed others because god told them so didn’t believe in god.

Have a good weekend everyone and see you soon.

 

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on god and David’s son

This post by Ufuomaee is a followup to a post by KIA where he dealt with the death of the child of Bathsheba and David.

She tells us, with bold font added by us for emphasis, that

This was like some sort of a revelation, at the time I shared it.  I was thinking, at the time, how the value we place on our lives here and now is often what hinders us from believing in God and eternity.  And I think this is the fundamental flaw of Mike’s analysis.

which, dear friends, is not why we are atheists. It is the failure by the god believers to provide evidence for their god that we are atheists. The same goes for eternity. We have no evidence to believe in eternity. And besides, if she didn’t value this life why would she want eternity, especially if, to her, eternity is a continuation of this life in the presence of her loved deity?

I think it was Nietzsche who said Christianity is a death cult. Our friend writes,

But in Christianity, we called to DIE before we can live…

And I think most of them remain dead. They never live.

She then tells us

I think the reason I have never cried, and will never cry for this child (which Mike believes is fictional), is because I believe that he is already in a better place ().  This life, here on Earth, is over-rated!

And I am wondering why Christians like her aren’t praying to god to call them to his dwelling place. All of the Christians I know love this life and don’t want to die. They take medication when they are sick, eat well and so much more. To say you wont weep for the child because he is in a better place, a place you have no way of knowing it exists, is to me heartless.

Atheists, she says

 But here it is, the thing Atheists can’t seem to get their heads around – God is the only one JUST to take away what He is the only one able to give.

Divine Command Theory anyone?

If she were arguing as David Benatar does in his book Better not to have been, then this

Whether or not he would have lived a life worth living, or if he would have been a tyrant of a king, we really don’t know.

would have had some weight. Or if she were like Spencer, who when his newly born babe died, argued the bible was very wise to not have wanted to live long. Reminds me of what Nietzsche writes, it is better not to be born but once born to die sooner. For a person who believes in an omnipotent god, what a person becomes should not be a problem. Unless she is willing to limit the extent of omnipotence, she can’t have her cake and eat it.

Her next consideration also paints a picture of a god without options and incapable of seeing his works to fruition. If, as the book says, they were god’s chosen people, one shouldn’t even consider the possibility of a powerful god failing to provide them with a leader. Most of the time believers point to Joseph as an example of god working with anyone he so chooses. There should have been no vacuum of leadership were god to do the right thing. Besides it would have been a good lesson to the people of Israel that it is not proper to get a person killed to have either his wife or husband as the case may be.

Why did god command several wars of annihilation for entire tribes?

I know why God did it (the same reason you don’t cut off weeds, but pull them out, roots and all), but I really wish there had been another way prepared then.

Who was their god? Couldn’t Adonai forgive them without having to shed blood? Was it possible that even the day old babes in Sodom were guilty of some transgression?

While she says

One innocent child dying at the judgement of God, I can understand…

I, on the other hand, with Ivan in the Inquisitor cannot accept the death of a single child at the judgement of god. What god does that to a child?

It has not always been the case that

I think that even today, a king’s life is considered as valuable as that of all his subjects combined!  The reasoning goes that without his leadership to unite and guide them, they would all certainly fall into chaos, mischief and peril.

and this is supported by the many instances of ritual killing of the kings.

And while it is the case that

The truth is we all make judgement calls on the value of human life every day by the way we treat the living; whether near or far, friend or foe, sinner or saint, rich or poor, black or white etc.  Evidence shows that the value of human life is both immeasurable and inconsistently applied.

we have the excuse of being ignorant, driven by passions we hardly can control and greed. What excuse would a god have for treating humanity with favouritism, especially, being as it were, that he is claimed to be the creator?

Finally, she asks

It has also always baffled me how Atheists or Humanists would make an issue with God about His right to take life at will, and yet condone abortion for those who are inconvenienced by the life of another human being.  But that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

and I think this is to trivialize the issue.

To answer her final questions.

  • Has this post given you a new perspective on Christianity and the God of the Bible?

No, but it has done much more to convince me that some Christians are no different from their god.

  • What about the value we place on humanity?

Nothing new here. It is evident that we treat people differently, and for good reason.

  • Do you think that such accounts are proof that Jehovah is fictional or is there a different perspective on this you would like to share?

No, the accounts themselves do not tell us much about whether god[s] exist. Similarly, reading about wizards in any of Harry Potter books doesn’t bring us any close to solving the problem of wizards. All we can tell is that an author at a certain point in history imagined a god who abates assassinations and chooses as his representative the perpetrators of crimes. Nothing else. It is just a so so story and nothing more.

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The Damned

A novel by Algernon Blackwood in which tells the story of a haunted house.

Towards the end, there is an interesting dialogue on beliefs and thinking. He writes

“What is the world,” she told me, “but thinking and feeling? An individual’s world is entirely what that individual thinks and believes –interpretation. There is no other. And unless he really thinks and really believes, he has no permanent world at all. I grant that few people think, and still fewer believe, and that most take ready-made suits and make them do. Only the strong make their own things; the lesser fry, Mabel among them, are merely swept up into what has been manufactured for them. They get along somehow.

Bill then says

None of us have Truth, my dear Frances

to which she responds

“Precisely,” she answered, “but most of us have beliefs. And what one believes and thinks affects the world at large. Consider the legacy of hatred and cruelty involved in the doctrines men have built into their creeds where the sine qua non of salvation is absolute acceptance of one particular set of views or else perishing everlastingly–for only by repudiating history can they disavow it–

Frances says

“Trying to get out of it,” she admitted, “perhaps they are, but damnation of unbelievers–of most of the world, that is–is their rather favorite idea if you talk with them.”

If the whole book was just these few paragraphs, I would have loved it just as much.

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How Africa developed Europe

The end of colonialism in Africa only freed the continent politically. The international economic and political system after the Second World War, in the name of liberalism and free trade, pulled together all unequal countries (in terms of development in mode of production) to compete against each other in the open market. This in turn helped the continuation of the exploitative structures whose foundations were laid in Africa in the precolonial and colonial phases. Owing to a lack of access to technology, capital and skilled human resources, which colonialism stunted in Africa, the continent was not able to break out of the role of primary goods producer and supplier to the international market. The attempt at import substitution industrialisation (ISI) also failed and created more debt burden for African countries. Since colonialism never allowed the development of a strong bourgeoisie class in Africa, the state had to play a dominant role in the economy, and parastatals (public sector undertakings) became a common phenomenon in many states after independence (Ake, 1981, page 92). Developed countries, insisting on linear model of development based on modernisation theory, prescribed that African countries should open up their economies after independence to continue the trade relations

I think any discussion about Africa that does not look into the effect of colonization and the unfair trade agreements do not do justice to the problem.

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On morality. Again

SB has a post about conversations but somehow it ended up being about morals.

The visiting fundamentalist asked

If morality is subjective, how do you condemn slavery as immoral?

This question asked by a fellow who believes the bible should be used as a moral code reeks of high irony. Or is it sarcasm. I can’t tell which.

In different ages, society has condemned slavery in many of its myriad forms because of the belief that all human beings deserve equal treatment before the law. In that period of time, who is worthy of the consideration of being human has changed too.

And what does it even mean to say that subjective morality is inconsistent? Maybe the question to ask is what is morality? I think that’s the source of all confusion.