₦airaland Forum

ÈDÈ As Who We Are — Prof Moyo Okediji: https://www.nairaland.com/7126823/ede-prof-moyo-okediji#112831459

Hmmm. Interesting.

kofimoses:
This guy, you too like long essay. If you be Lecturer, your students go just dey sleep for class.

I know the average Nigerian doesn't like reading lengthy articles.

By explaining concepts in detail, only very few people that like reading would read some of my posts and engage me.

That saves my time and minimizes personal attacks (ad-hominems).

When next you see a herd of cattles being controlled by a small boy, that picture just shows you the human society is structured.

The boy leads other animals like him because his brain is more developed, the same way Africans were colonized in the past because Europeans and Arabs were more developed mentally than they (Africans), and that's why Africa still worships their colonial masters, Europe and Arab, today since these two peoples have more thinkers (readers) in their regions.

Most Africans despise reading (reading lengthy articles and books), but one of the most effective ways to develop the brain is to read and seek knowledge.

Only very few people control humanity, and to excel in life, one needs to read and seek knowledge a lot to leave that class average.

Kholiwe:
I am a christian and I don't understand anything you are typing or how it relates to my points about Muhammad.

You don't understand? I am just urging you to apply the same standards for the aspects of the European culture, which Christianity is an aspect of, to the local culture as well.

It's not right to condemn some traditionalists that engaged in human sacrifice in the past as ritualists and barbarians without applying the same standard to Muhammad and the characters in your Bible.

Even if an anti-human or barbaric act is legal or lawful (based on certain religious laws), that doesn't make it right or good.

Only a hypocrite applies different standards when criticizing aspects of various cultures.

Kholiwe:
You and your fellow what?

I thought you were a Muslim. Am I wrong? If you're not a Muslim, most likely you'd be a Christian.

It's Muslims and Christians that reason the way you do, always keen about promoting the foreign culture(s) and denigrating the local ones.

Kholiwe:
The law doesn't allow you to punish someone retrospectively for something you did before the law was changed and quite rightly. Mohammed, in his time, was not a paedophile or rapist, what he was doing then was the same as pretty much every man did. Ayesha was even betrothed to another man before meeting Muhammad. This is proof that Ayesha had reached the age of marriage and engagement in that time. It was not illegal, immoral or weird, it was perfectly normal by the standards of the day. Judging him by standards set 1500 years after he died doesn't achieve anything except allow people to feel smug and troll Muslims.

But you and your fellow Muslims can condemn the local cultures and the bad elements or aspects of those cultures as if you don't know human sacrifices were once legal in many parts of Africa.

Yet, the Arabic culture (with Islam its key element), which Africans like you (with deeply ingrained self-hate and inferiority complex) promote and subscribe to, also has their bad elements as well.

Cultures, like people, have their good and bad sides, and the culture of Allah's people (Arabs) isn't an exception.

All the good deeds and vices of today had been done in the past, and nothing is new under the sun.

Vices like child marriage, rape, slavery, prostitution, stealing, human ritual, etc. had been practiced in the past world, even during and before Muhammad's time.

Those acts were condemned by some people in the past just as they're frowned at today.

Vices like stealing, child marriage, rape, ritual killings are just as bad today as they were in old times when Muhammad was alive and before his birth.

BlueRayDick:
lol. Good morning !

Where did u think those mass votes from the triple k states come from in 2015 ?

Lols

If the information in the picture below is true, then it's safe to say the North has already perfected their rigging machinery for next year's elections.

The faster most Nigerians in the South realize this British experiment called Nigeria is a failed one, the better for us all.

Android22:
Homo Sapien era 300, 000 years? That is news to me.

Yes, one can learn more about the evolution of homo sapiens from Africa by reading papers and books of archeology and paleontology.

http://humanorigins.si.edu/education/introduction-human-evolution

https://bigthink.com/the-past/other-human-species/

Many of those characters in the Bible and Qur'an were real people (pagans) that had existed in the past world, but the mischievous people that wrote the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Qur'an portrayed them as though they worshipped only the god of that religious text (Allah or Yahweh as the case may be).

Many of them were even deified and worshipped as a god/God.

None of the stories in the Bible and Qur'an are original. They were all plagiarized from the texts of older religions.

The homo sapiens era has existed for close to 300,000 years, yet Christianity and Islam were only founded in about 2500 and 1500 years ago respectively.

Before those two religions were created, humans were mostly pagans. Thus, almost all the concepts and stories in the Bible and Qur'an had been developed by the ancient pagans.

BlueRayDick:
Since I was a kid I’ve always known atheists, fire brand Pentecostals , devoted celestials, unrepentant Roman Catholics , devoted Muslims; the liberals and the ones who don’t compromise on tolerating other religions .

In fact I attended a public secondary school and I was exposed to all of these religious sects amongst students and teachers alike. Thus far nothing has changed. Internet only enabled each and everyone of them an avenue to propagate whatever they choose to believe in.

Anybody that claims nairaland made it possible for him to become an atheist had probably been nursing atheism in his mind for a while .

Internet exposes a lot of things and allows one to learn about other philosophies and religions and interact with people of other religions/philosophies.

If not for Nairaland and the Internet, I won't be able to have access to some great books of history, philosophy, and science.

Some books one downloads for free online or borrows in an e-library for reading are quite costly offline.

popizaino:
Yes God is a concept but his worshippers have never claimed he once lived and died so tell where you got your own story from?

This question shows you've not taken the time to research the history of the gods and religions.

Starting from the local examples here: Orunmila, Obatala, Odua, Ogun, Sango, Osun, Oya, and co are the local gods or deities who earned the title of god by deifying themselves or were deified by their people for achieving one historic feat or the other in the past.

In fact, all the pagan gods of Yoruba culture were humans that had existed in the past.

The first person that welded (designed) the first sword; the first person that made the first brick house; the first person that killed a monstrous creature in a place, and many other firsts in history were deified by their people when the majority of humans weren't exposed and civilized.

That's real history, not a claim.

The same thing applies to all other cultures around the world, and by the time you read the history of the chief gods (the gods/deified humans had hierarchy like the present-day humans) of various cultures, such as Atum and Ra of the Egyptian culture, Zeus of the Greek culture, etc. and study their religious texts, you realize these chief gods had also existed in the past like the smaller deities such as Ogun and co.

Then, studying the attributes of all these gods (irrespective of their hierarchy) in their religious texts, one notices their human-like attributes, with each major god claiming (competing for) the title of God Almighty or the Supreme God (the battle of supremacy).

Obviously, it becomes glaring that the gods of religions are the ancestors or deified humans of the past.

In other words, whether it's the major or chief gods like Olorun, Atum, Allah, Jehovah, Zeus, etc. or the smaller ones like Ogun, Odua, Obatala, Osun, etc. all the gods of religions are past beings or higher beings.

(They're higher beings because nature gifted them with special abilities that other humans, the average persons of lesser abilities, see/saw as supernatural or spiritual.)

They're elements or aspects of the Universe like everyone of us, and whether a seemingly mysterious ability is supernatural or not is a question of one's level of intelligence and abilities.

BlueRayDick:
The funny thing about all these religious arguments is; at the end of the day, the Muslim with "extremists" views remains one, the liberal Muslim remains liberal, the Christian who hates tithing refuses to pay tithes, the Pentecostal 'fire brand" Christian will continue paying his tithe to daddy G.O, while the atheist will continue to maintain Yahweh, Allah, Almighty God are all figment of "gullible" people's imaginations.

Then u begin to wonder why waste so many pages of the thread trying to convince people who already have a conviction they are willing to live and die for ?

In modern times, the number of freethinkers in Nigeria has been increasing thanks to the Internet, Seun's Nairaland, and these arguments.

Capaldi:
Men this is tiring. I have given you facts after facts yet all you bring is backhanded logic from were I can't fathom that has no evidence or credibility. Man am done with this.

Facts? Okay.

You need to research the history of religions (especially the popular ones).

If you do so, you'll realize there are little facts in your posts on this issue.

Capaldi:
Stop disgracing and confusing yourself with the location of their origin. Islam originated from Judaism, trace their roots to Abraham and worship the same God as Abraham same as Judaism. It's all over the Quran . The people of the religion are telling you yes but you are saying no. Make it make sense.

It's obvious your knowledge of the history of these popular religions and gods is limited.

The fact that Yeshua (your god) plagiarized the texts of older (African) religions to develop the Bible doesn't mean Christianity originated from Africa.

Also, the fact that the writers of the old testament copied the concepts of the religious texts of gods like Mithras, El, Sin, and older religions doesn't mean Judaism originated from any other Asian country except Israel.

And the fact that Muhammad plagiarized the Bible to develop Qur'an doesn't mean Islam originated from Isreal.

Only a mischievous or ignorant person says Islam has its origin in Israel.

The origin of the god of a religion shows the origin of that religion.

If you took a course in a foreign school and plagiarized their literature to create a local concept (such as a philosophy) centered around your personality, the origin of that concept is your country, not the foreign country you stole their knowledge.

Capaldi:
Bro it's basic understanding and I won't be going back and front with you on this . How can Islam that follows and even appropriated most of Judaism be worshipping another God different from Christianity? So basically you are saying Christianity and Judaism worship a different God. Yes or No....!

I didn't mention Judaism in any of my posts. Jews and Christians both worship Yahweh since the god originated from Israel and both religions originated from that country.

Judaism and Christianity are the personal philosophies of Jehovah, just like Islam is the personal philosophy of Allah.

Do you have your own personal philosophy or you adhere to the personal philosophy (the religion he founded) of Yahweh?

Godx:
What is all these? I am talking about your gibberish on Jesus being a giant and the other nonsense you cooked up from self acclaimed research.

If you feel my posts are nonsensical, why are you bothering me by asking me silly questions instead of ignoring what you see as nonsense?

I've stated my view on the subject, and I didn't say it for the mere sake of believing it.

Whether Jesus is real or not (or a giant or not) doesn't really matter because only the living do things on Earth, not the dead.

If you feel otherwise, that's your own choice.

Godx:
Same way flat-earthers did their research and came to the conclusion Earth was flat, Same way conspiracy theorist did their research and came to the conclusion that humans never went to the moon and it was all a fixed job by NASA to win the competition with Russia, Same way conspiracy theorist did their research and came to the conclusion Eminem died in 2006 and was Cloned, same way etc Yours sound as insane as the others.

Lols, which research did flat-earthers do? Flat-earthers are people like you that don't research and think about things independently and merely follow what the Bible and/or Qur'an says.

You don't need to be an Einstein to know that Allah isn't the same as Yahweh or Olohun.

You only need to know your history if you're a Yoruba person (for example) and know the Qur'an and the Bible well.

I gave you some of the major attributes of each of those gods that make them distinct from each other.

How is Allah who has no son or daughter (as stated in Qur'an) the same entity as Yahweh who gave birth to Jesus (as stated in the Bible)?

How is Yahweh (Jesus' father) the same as Olorun that gave birth to Obatala and Odua (from oral history of the Yorubas)?

How is Jehovah, the god of Israel, the same as Allah, the god of Arabia? Is Israel the same as Arabia?

How is Olohun, the god of Yorubaland, the same as Allah or Yahweh from Arabia and Israel respectively?

Is Yorubaland the same as Israel and Arab land?

These things are clear issues for anyone that thinks independently and learns about the history of their religion.

If you think I'm wrong, prove me wrong by addressing those questions above.

Concerning whether Jesus Christ is real or not, based on my research, I don't see any evidence to believe he is real.

Even if he's real or not, it doesn't even matter in reality because only the living do things on Earth, not the dead.

popizaino:
If you truly ignored it,how then were you able to point out some of the points in his post ?

If I don't ignore a comment, I'd read and analyze every point in it and would respond to every point raised in it.

But once I skim through a post and see silly accusations in it, I'd simply ignore it.

At other times, I may read the whole comment.

donjazet:
[s]You are still pegged to the after effects of being a religious\spiritual person.
If you're not an astronaut or a physicist or deal in any of the natural sciences, you really don't need to burden yourself with probabilities of the existence of soul and whatnot or god's or whatever preposterous theories are out there. These things don't affect our day to day lives and such putting soo much effort into these things just push you deep into rabbit holes, echo chambers and conspiratorial pits.

Just look at your devotion to otem, can't you see how cult-like, it's now looking on you?? For someone who see organized religion as a cult, don't you see that you're almost admiring this fella more than one should, even though all he does is post wild theories that are highly unsubstantiated. He's clearly a victim of conspiratorial rabbit holes.

Eg,one minute you're googling the name of the former vice president of Nigeria, 2 hours later, you've found your self in a page that postulates that the 1st governor general of Nigeria was a free mason. RABBIT HOLES.
Stop burdening yourself with these tim tales.[/s]

You merely reacted to my post emotionally as an atheist, and things like cult and other gibberish in your post only exist in your tiny mind, not in reality.

I state my opinion on issues or any affiliation I've clearly. Whether you like it or not, that's none of my business.

I don't have time for needless discussion about whether god/God exists or not or how you feel emotionally about an author.

Whatever view you've about any author or individual I mentioned is none of my business.

When you've something sensible or objective to say about my posts, you can mention me.

If you belong to a cult as an atheist, don't assume everyone is like you.

Stop mentioning me to make silly, mischievous accusations. And I won't bother to read your trash of a comment, just as I ignored this.

Ibime:
According to our esteemed historian Otem, Jehovah and Allah are only locked up, not dead. Atum will soon release them along with Mazda, Toyota and co

Lols, that's according to him. It's a bold and interesting claim that's unverified and may be unverifiable.

It may also be true because those that revealed those stories to him don't seem like jesters IMO.

In history, humans have made various claims about the gods/God; I think with time, we'll know the truth.

And what I mean by dead is the death of the flesh. Consciousness doesn't die.

Based on my own research and experience, consciousness (soul) is a fundamental aspect of the Universe that's immortal, existing in various forms in cycles infinitely, unlike the body that dies after some time on Earth.

That's my view on the subject as an agnostic.

popizaino:
So all this multiple gods and there is no asunder in the sky ? Have you seen where a child has two fathers or two captain controlling a ship ?

Where are the gods? In your room?

The word god is man-made. Those entities that humans refer to or worship as gods/God are past beings, who are long dead and gone.

popizaino:
You like to confuse yourself even when there is no need to.

I see the simple facts I stated about the popular gods worshipped in religions are confusing to you.

Don't worry. Just keep on wallowing in ignorance, praying in the name of the pagan gods sometimes and in the name of the foreign gods at other times, thinking all of them are the same simply because you were told so.

I don't know how you'll read the Bible and the Qur'an, and then conclude Allah is the same as Yahweh just because each of them claims the title God Almighty in the religious texts, without realizing the each of the gods of older religions predating Christianity and Islam had also claimed the title of God Almighty in the past.

God Almighty is just a title, and past humans had even called elements of nature such as Sun, Earth, Air God Almighty.

Others regard the Universe as God Almighty, and these concepts of God are as old (with some even older than) as the two most popular religions of today.

Oasis007:


So you finally admit you're Teejay?

You think he has only just one fan here? Check his profile and see some of his fans. Jesters would leave real issues and focus on trivialities.

Oasis007:


.... and you keep denying you're not Teejay? Well, if Twitter by iPhone changes to Twitter by Android, does that mean the Handler ain't same anymore?

Dude denies himself cos he doesn't wanna end up Mekuturu...... LMFAO.

Keeping giving yourself a headache over a deactivated account. That's your palaver to deal with.

Oasis007:


Otem Atum de Legend.

I have never had interest in religion topics and I would keep to it for life. No one would ever agree his/her Religion is right or wrong.

Whether we like it or not, no religion is perfect. Also no religion preaches tolerance, except we decide to do away with parts that we believe are old (never know Words of God has expiring Date though).

Even Believers of Otem Atum ain't perfect. Their imperfection beyonds spiritual though, coz they are literally worshipping god of Delusion.

Realist?.... be a Realist and be in harmony with all and everything.

I don't know where you see believers in Otem Atum, who is a historian and has his fans like the other historians dead or alive, such as Herodotus.

It's folly to believe in a historian being a fellow human like yourself.

Ibime:
Capaldi approach is factual, which is that Mohammed claims the same God as the Jews. It is all over the Quran.

Lols. Bros, his approach is the popularly accepted notion about God Almighty, where religious people would say Allah is the same entity as Yahweh, with both meaning God Almighty.

Yorubas would call Olorun, Allah, and Jehovah the same entity, meaning God. The same thing applies to Ibos who pray to Chineke as Yahweh without realizing the former is a pagan god native to Iboland while the latter is a foreign god native to Israel.

But the confusion is due to syncretism, which Europeans and Arabs employed when introducing their god (Jehovah or Allah as the case maybe) to Africans, telling them that Yahweh or Allah is the same as the native gods like Olorun, Chukwu/Chineke, Oghene, Osanobua, and co.

However, it's not true in reality. If one studies books of history of Islam, Christianity, and the native religions, the differences in these entities become clear.

In fact, there is no equivalent word for Olohun, Esu in English. In other words, Olorun is Olorun in English, and Esu is Esu in English.

It's erroneous to call Esu Satan because the concept of Satan is alien to the Yoruba culture. It's a judeo-christian idea.

Chineke, Sango, Fenibeso, Sango, Ogun, and other local deities don't have English words.

Any attempt to translate them to English will distort the history of those deities and their people (worshippers).

One of the strategies European colonial masters and Arab warmongers used to dominate their colonies is to replace their local gods (deities) with foreign ones to distort and destroy their history, which made them lose their identity.

A people without history have no identity, and the Europeans and Arabs understood this well being of higher intelligence than their colonies.

donjazet:
I share this feeling of hopelessness with you. Amoto94 is the most outspoken moslem here and he presents himself as well read, so for him to not be much different from the ones carrying bombs into churches is truly heartbreaking. It's them that even worsens the issue sef because they are best at polishing their words and vocalizing their dangerous ideology masked in deceitful tones. Have you seen his topics on his profile? He's a hardcore extreme fundamentalist.


I think that with time, more of them will hopefully become more exposed too. It's a question of time.

Yes, it's a question of time.

Amoto94:
He said intellectual to disguise the insult, A001 I'm not an intellectual nor a conservative. A001 take note please.

Okay.

Islam is long overdue for a reform. But I don't see that happening in our lifetime.

A number of early Muslim philosophers and scientists had called for a reform of some key aspects of the religion, such as Avicenna (ibn Sinna).

But the Muslims murdered many of these early thinkers, including the ones in Egypt (just after it was invaded and conquered by Arabs), who urged the Islamic authorities to remove certain parts of Qur'an and Sunnah that are antihuman and barbaric.

donjazet:
Well, you can't really say "apart from online discussion". The world has now gone digital. Campaigns are now carried fully online. Just like, that terrorist sympathizer pilot that tweeted support for the mob has been fired for his tweet.
Using our Whatsapp status, Facebook pages, Twitter posts. We can all amplify our voices massively.

You know, you seek out online echo chambers and you try and burst their bubble.
I mean, this Deborah's issue really touches me badly because I know there is nothing wrong with what she did and that is something which a lot of has have the privilege of doing.

Sometimes in my own colleagues Whatsapp group, some over zealous christian people would post those silly messages that will tell you to pass the message to seven people so that you will receive God's grace and if you don't, God will do so and so, the way I dey take change am for them ehh, I'm now imagining being killed, for doing what everyone knows is right.

The world is now digital. We have a much wider reach than ever before and we should use it as much as we can.

You're largely right. But I think online discussion and engagement will only help with Nigerians in the South-West, South-East, and overseas.

A sizeable percentage of the North's densely populated people are not on Nairaland.

Even the educated ones with Internet access are too conservative. A good example is an intellectual like Amoto94.

Looking at his takes on this issue, you realize the situation is a dire one.