Monthly Archives: September 2019

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Debate

The opposing side: religion is a creation of the shrewd man who sought nothing more than the imposition of order on a naive people (social control)

The proposal: religion is a bottom up process, driven by early humanity’s desire to understood the natural world.

Take a side and make your case.

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I am tired of traffic cops

I don’t like cops. No. I am generally law abiding not necessarily because I am a good person 😀but because breaking the law is expensive. But I hate our traffic police and the courts that deal with traffic offences.

I swear these two groups don’t exist to make our lives better. First, the traffic cops will take every opportunity to extort you for an infraction and because going to the courts is generally a tiring prospect, people would rather part with money in form of a bribe that the humiliation of the court process.

You recall I have once written about the speed cops who would flag you down for driving 5kph above the posted speed limit and threaten to take you to court or waste your whole day until you bribe them. What difference does it make if I drive 5kph faster in an area where there are no pedestrian crossings or a market?

The traffic courts are worse. You go to court at 9 only for your case to be mentioned at 11 or 12. A whole day wasted just because of a minor infraction.

If you ask me, our legal system and the traffic department are not concerned with road safety rather they are opportunities for government to get money from us over and above what it takes in the name of tax. Or for the police officers to line their pockets with in the name of bribes.

Maybe we should abolish the police!

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Capital punishment in Kenya

This author has on more than one occasion argued against the death penalty, arguing as others more eloquent and read than I have, that the death of one innocent person outweighs all the benefits to society achieved through the death penalty. There are many places in the world where the death penalty is still in the statute books. There are occasions I have been almost persuaded that having the death penalty is good so there is a way to deal with politicians and the corporate types who collapse banks with people’s savings and the like. I believe, however, that an active volcano would do just fine for this group of miscreants.

But I digress. Capital punishment was introduced in Kenya by the Brits (remember they came to civilize the Africans: sarc) in 1893. While it’s use was not so prevalent in the early days of the colonial state, it got to a crescendo during the emergency years and from what I have read, many Africans were hanged on very flimsy grounds, rules of evidence were swept aside and the conduct of the cases were such that the accused in many cases were not represented. In short, there was miscarriage of justice in the interests of the crown.

It appears also that its application was racially motivated or biased, if the comments of the District Commissioner for Nyeri is to be believed. In 1921, the DC is reported as having said

sometimes i wonder whether in this country, capital punishment is not inflicted on natives more often than is necessary to attain the ends of justice. (Hynd, 2012).

In my conclusion, my other argument for abolishing capital punishment in Kenya is because it is a colonial relic instituted not so much for the interests of justice but law and order.

Hynd S (2012) Toward a History of Violence in Colonial Kenya. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 45 1 pp 88-101

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The Earth is 6000 years old and the sun was created on the fourth day

And here is the science to prove it. Do you, dear reader, know what mature creation is? Wonder no more. Mature creation is

is the idea that God created (on Day 4) the sun fully functioning with all those zillions of gamma photons already in place at all depths in the solar interior.

I must at this point say our author is not convinced this is a good enough explanation and suggests the answer lies with Einstein’s theory of relativity. How do we do this?

And we time those events by when an Earth observer could see the events happening.Thus when the light from the sun first arrived at the Earth it was Day 4. It does not matter, it is even irrelevant, how long the light took to travel(emphasis his).

Is he saying what I think he is saying? That the sun had been created many weeks earlier but the observer on earth saw it on the fourth day? and is this really the language of the bible? Does the narrator in Genesis say light reached the earth on the fourth day or that god created the sun on the fourth day? Or the light reaching the earth on the fourth day and god creating the earth on the fourth day mean the same thing?

John tell us

This is the language of the Bible. Events occur when they are observed. The sun was first seen by Earth observers on Day 4 and that defines when the sun was created. That event occurred 3 days after God created the Earth on Day 1 about 6 thousand years ago. See Related Reading for more information on this.

And I call BS.

But it is this comment below that floored me.

Good afternoon, some time ago while going through a deep depression question my faith, there was so much that with my limited knowledge I could not explain. Then I found the website of Hugh Ross but I could not believe that the universe was millions of years old, this presented more questions than answers. After praying to God for really knowing the truth, I found Jason Lisle and you Mr. HARTNETT, I am very grateful to God for having found people who believe in the creation of approximately 6,000 years. I still have many questions to answer, but now I have a reason to live, a motive that fills me completely.

Dear reader, what are you waiting for to find meaning in your lives? God is calling you. The earth is 6000 years old. And the sun just a few weeks older than the earth.

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marvels of engineering wastefulness

I am all for pedestrians have safe footbridges across busy road sections. But this is one of those occasions I would use the road to cross the footbridge. It does look like a monumental waste of resources. Speed bumps, in my view would solve the problem for this small market centre.

This is an over kill

Where you live, do you pay to use the toilets? It is important that you do. You see that money has many uses.

Cost sharing for better services

And finally, good and clean toilets are key to nation building. Who knew?

Clean toilets for national success

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The three burials

Of Melquiades Estrada

I was advised to give movies a wide berth and recommend only books as that’s where I do well but I will pretend I didn’t hear Jim and recommend a movie I think was quite well done. And as is usually the case, I like oldies.

At the end one wonders whether without the thought that Melquiades had a family in Mexico, would Parkins have taken the trouble of this long lonesome journey on horseback? Was it worth it?