₦airaland Forum

adjoviomole:
Good if u say its like dat. So let us wait till after we are dead to know who is right or wrong. Case closed

The essence of this debate for me is that, the religious folks need to become conscious of the fact that they are not sure of anything. Why waste resources on uncertainty and assumptions.

Both God and evolution ideas are human creations.

@adjovio

You see, non of you Christian/religious folks can reasonably defend the deluded and atrocious actions of your God/gods.
What you folks either don't know or choose not to want to know is that god and god ideology is simply a creation of human primitive imagination.

That's the reason why your God has all the personal characteristics of men. Men are characterized by both good and bad (evil) traits at different degrees.

The sum total of the good of men is represented in your created God and bad (evil) as well.

Religious beliefs is a chronic mental suppressive virus, it's only rationality that can cure it.

Evidences of your God's genocidal acts

Deuteronomy 2:34 And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain:

Deuteronomy 3:6 And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city.

Gen 6:7 your god destroyed every living souls including children.

Gen 19:29 your god destroyed ordered genocide in cities of plain children included

Exodus 12:23 your god kill all first born in Egypt including babies

Num 21:23 your god ordered genocide of canaanites

Do you still trust this your atrocious God?

@alien
If you read that your book in context as well, you will read in several places where your God enforced the fourth generations sin avengeance, God ordered genocide of those nations.

Now explain why your God ordered the killing of everything that bear life when God knew there are fetuses and little children who are yet to no the difference between hating or loving God?

You now see how useless your argument of it's only the generation that hate him is?

@adjovio
You see how ignorant you are of the story book you called bible yourself?
Your god hated esau while he was still in the womb. Except your God said esau had sex when he was still a fetus.

Your God lied here. He said one thing on the subject of sin, right in the same old testament, God changed it.

The question is, why should you trust this erratic God?

In answering, please remember that it's the same God that said the soul that sin shall die. This same God turned around to say he (God) shall avenge the sin of the father on the children till fourth generations.

How do reconcile the last part of the post with your God that can't lie

Before Esau and Jacob were born, God HATED Isau and LOVED Jacob.

Esau had not committed any SIN against God to warrant his HATRED, and neither had Jacob done any RIGHTEOUSNESS to warrant his LOVE.

In answering this question, Paul the Apostle says God behaves as he (God) wishes, and God can't be questioned on what he does.

Now, what if when you die as a born again Christian, and you get to heaven's gate, and God says to you that he has changed his mind, that you're going to hell, HOW WOULD YOU FEEL ABOUT GOD THEN?

In answering, please remember that it's the same God that said the soul that sin shall die. This same God turned around to say he (God) shall avenge the sin of the father on the children till fourth generations.

FEMI ARIBISALA: A CASE OF RELIGIOUS IDEAOLOGY DISSONANCE (2)
By Akingbade Thomas

The very idea of god, that gradually evolved into religious ideology started from the predominant assumptions about the reason behind curiosity eliciting events, happenings and environmental features of the world of the early men. The stone age humans have no better explanation for eclipse, rainbow, thunder, storm, chameleon, rainfall etc. other than to assume that something or someone (super human, which metamorphosed into God/gods) not known by them is behind it. Early men didn’t have proofs of their conclusions, they just assume so. So, if the very origin of religion is assumptions, the subsequent religious development is simply an amplified assumption. Till today, there has not been any empirical proof of this grand assumption, even though this idea has fester on into what is now known as organized religions of the world. This awe inducing religious ideas thrived on the fertile ground of ignorance of the early men. Ignorance breeds fear, superstition, and myth. The leaders of the early human societies took advantage of these four hangers of religion to rule over their subjects with ease. Since these leaders simply arrogate to themselves the position of the earthly representative of the unseen and unknown God/gods.
As human society evolved, learning (philosophy, psychology), documentation and scientific research also evolve. Most of the religious ideas that sold on ignorance became demystified, and skepticism began to afflict religious ideas. In attempt to defend the demystified ideas, the religious leaders plunged deeper into more irrationality, historical distortions, all of which was still based on assumptions. The religious group, the skeptic group, and the scientific group began to document their positions on religious ideas, and this is what lead to or created contradictions in religious ideologies. The religious group claims god is responsible for what the scientific group empirically established to be a natural phenomenon, but this assertion by religious group is still without proof. All the religious books are replete with contradictions, and the bible is not an exception. Femi Aribisala has over the years done more than expose these contradictions in his writings. With the volumes of published contradictions in the bible, authored by Femi, one would have thought that by now, he would have denounced both the bible and the type of god the bible introduced to the world. But, just as it is with persons suffering from cognitive dissonance, they result to rationalization, fictitious stories and outright self-deception when they are confronted with the realities of the inconsistencies in their lives.
One of the contradictions in the bible that still bear consequence on today’s world is the claim that the land of Canaan belongs to the Israelites because god said so. In exodus 23:7, god himself commanded the Israelites to “keep thee far from false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked”. The very land god promised to give to Israelites, belong to the Canaanites. To occupy this land, god commanded that all the Canaanites be killed. If god be just and not wicked, why did he have to command the innocent and righteous (although the same god had condemn them without giving them opportunity to repent) Canaanites who were living in their own very land? Since god claim to own the whole earth, why can’t he give a virgin land to the Israelites, instead of commanding the genocide against the Canaanites? These atrocious acts of god contradict his claim of true, good and just god. But like I had earlier said, all these stories about god and all that he was claimed to have said or done were mere crafty concoctions of men who found religion as an easier means to keep men in perpetual mental slavery.
Inherent in all theistic and deistic religions are exegesis conflictions and contradictions. These ideological conflictions are the normal and expected literary consequence of an idea conceived, birth and grown on assumption, ignorance, myths and fear. The very oral and written documentation of religious ideas (e.g. bible), are sellable to the oppressed (adherents) and oppressors (religious and political leaders), who justifies the authenticity of these documents on what they called “prophetic correctness” (that the events and occurrence of today were foretold in these documents). What the oppressed don’t know is that, these apparently “correct prophecies” were human (the oppressors) created historical distortions intentionally inserted into these documents to give a divine authenticity to them.
There’re some towns or cities in Nigeria, whose king, genealogically, isn’t an indigene of such towns. Historically, it’s known that the progenitor(s) of these kings were sometimes mercenary warriors who were hired by the kings of such towns to prosecute war. After securing victory, some of these warlords, infiltrate the ruling council and topple the king and install themselves as king. To justify indigeneship originality, some of these kings in their deliberate effort to authenticate their right to the throne, results to historical distortions and fabrication of the evolution of such towns. The name Akingbade (Akin-gba-ade), akin (warrior) – gba (obtain/usurp) – ade (crown), is said to have its variant derivative origin from this type of event, according to some Yoruba historians. Although, no king bears such titles now, it’s part of the conspiracy to cover up how their lineage became royal family.
The evolution of one of the Abrahamic religions- Christianity/Judeo-Christianity is similar to the above narration. Abraham was Haranites (genesis 12:4, 5), who migrated to Canaan (lived and died there). Abraham descendants (Jews/Israelites), multiplied as people over hundreds of years, form allies with some other cities, launched a genocidal war on Canaan, and claim Canaan as their “God” given land(according to bible). But that claim was an historical distortion and fabrication to make Israelites’ claim to authentic ownership of Canaan acceptable to the religious world. They did this to divert the mind of people then and now from the true historical position. This was done because of how easy it’s to sway and pervert people’s mind through religious sentiments. The true history is that Abraham was a sojourner in Canaan and not an indigene. So, the claim of Israelites was and is false. This is the root of the never ending war in that zone till today.
One of the negative effects of religious ideology dissonances is self-deception. The implication of this self-deception is as peculiar to the area of life the victims decide to apply it. So many clients who claim that their god cures hypertension, but who have to confront the reality of their hypertension still persisting after they have gone through all the Pentecostal rituals, will rather unfortunately go into self-deception by claiming to believe god’s report and rejecting the doctor’s diagnosis, than take their anti-hypertensive medications. These folks proceed further into their delusion by not taking their anti-hypertensive medications. And of course, it’s only a matter of time before they suffer stroke or death as a result of complications arising from uncontrolled hypertension.


Thomas Akingbade is a Physiotherapist and Humanist
empril41@gmail.com

FEMI ARIBISALA: A CASE OF RELIGIOUS IDEAOLOGY DISSONANCE (1)
By Akingbade Thomas


I have over the years read the opinion articles of Femi Aribisala on both socio-political and religious matters. On both matters, Femi has never appeared to me to be a man who belongs to a definite side of the divides on any matter through his writings. Particularly, his writings on religious matter portray him as a man sitting on the fence, with his legs astride the fence, and asking people to judge which side of the fence he belongs, while still maintaining the same position. It’s either Femi doesn’t belong to both sides and trying to create a neutral position, or he belong to one side of the fence or belong to both sides. Femi’s writing on religious ideology is characterized by the above three positions.
The reason for these characteristics is not difficult to establish as far as the issue of religious ideas are concerned. Religious groups, both traditional and orthodox are divided (fenced) along doctrines, and it’s on these doctrinal divisions that different factions evolve and continue to evolve. Since the whole embodiment of religious group is an assemblage of different doctrines (views of each founder of factional group of what religion is and not). These doctrinal divisions are what i call fences within religious groups. And these fences are the inherent contradictions and conflictions in religious ideologies. Each member of religious groups sits on this fence, because, religion only have divides without sides. Whichever position a religious person claims to be a side of the divide, becomes a divide immediately, because whatever doctrines such a person build that position on will automatically be conflicted by another person. That’s why religious groups will continue to suffer fractionalization. This is the reason therefore for the contradictory writings of Femi on religion.
It’s not unexpected that religious ideologies will be characterized by contradictions, because the very origin of religion (the human ideological concept about God/gods) is based on assumptions. Any idea that is based on mere assumptions, and not on empirical evidences that are either independently verifiable or falsifiable, is an idea that is destined to suffer contradictions and conflictions ab initio. To Femi’s readers who seek no contractions in his writings, they can only find that when he stop writing on religious ideas. Before i go on to expand on how the very origin of religion is founded on assumption, below is the response of Femi to an article titled: “the god who does not exist” by Douglas Anele. His response also bears the same title and was published on 31st March, 2013 in Premium Times Online.
“At university, I was a student of Philosophy. You had to be, if you studied Political Science. I therefore find it highly amusing that, in a discussion about the existence of God, Douglas Anele tries to dazzle me by dropping the names of philosophers like David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Bertrand Russell. But I need no such shenanigans in order to confound Douglas’ atheism. I will only present here a token of my relationship with the God Douglas foolishly says is non-existent.


“Non-existent” meeting
I was standing in the parking lot of the building where I lived in Lagos, talking to Bimbo Dada, now Director of Library, Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, when a man walked through the gate and came to talk to me. He said he worked for an oil-company but had recently been posted out of town. There was a lunch-hour fellowship meeting every week in his house and he was at a loss what to do about it now he was leaving. So he had been asking the God Douglas says does not exist for guidance.
On that particular day, the “non-existent” God told him to stop praying. He told him to go out of the house and walk down the road. When he got to our gate, the “non-existent” God told him to go in. Then he said to him: “You are to hand over the lunch-hour fellowship to that man talking to the lady over there.” So the man said to me: “The Lord says I should hand over the lunch-hour fellowship meeting in my house to you.” After getting the confirmation I required from the God “who does not exist,” I agreed to take over the fellowship. That was how I inherited a 20-man lunch-hour fellowship in 1994……….
“In effect, the “non-existent” God gave me a lunch-hour fellowship. He then gave me a big building at 12 Babatunde Jose Street, Victoria Island, a prime location in Lagos, in which to have the fellowship. He then arranged a loan for me to finance the payment for the building. Then, he arranged for gifts to enable me clear my debts. Today, barely nine years later, the value of the building given to me by the God who is “non-existent” is now over fifteen times the purchase price.
You can now see why I feel very sorry for people like Douglas Anele. They use Philosophy to negate the existence of God. People like Douglas are victims of their own conceit. Since they don’t know God, they conclude he does not exist instead of humbling themselves in prayer and asking God to reveal himself to them.
Jesus says: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight.” (Matthew 11:25-26)”.
From the above response of Femi, he’s simply confirmed my assertion that the origin of religion is assumptions. Whatever Femi claims to be his proves of god existence were mere assumptions and at best, coincidences that are normal to human experience in life. If Femi wants to empirically prove anything, he will have to call the persons god sent to him, to physically show how god did that. Anybody can claim to hear anything; the very claim of hearing what any other person can’t hear, can’t prove anything other than some type of mental disorders or mental function that neuroscientists are researching on now.

to be continued....

Thomas Akingbade is a Physiotherapist and Humanist
empril41@gmail.com

Hmmm

FEMI FANI-KAYODE AND HIS APOCALYPTIC PESSIMISM

By Akingbade Thomas
empri41@gmail.com
I have followed the opinion articles of Femi Fani-Kayode since he started publishing in different news media. At first, his opinions seem to me to be inspired by patriotism, after some time, he gradually descends into ethnical and partisanship inspired writings. His recent writings have now been conceived in the womb of Judeo-Christian theology. In his opinion, the root cause of virtually all the challenges confronting national and international community is nothing but the religious conflict amongst the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), and that the solution to these challenges is the ultimate triumph of the Judeo-Christian over Islam. This easy solution is not original to Fani-Kayode, he has probably just found likeness for this illusionary, apocalyptic and pessimistic solution which is original to the Judeo-Christian theology, which originally evolved from cultural fabric of the Haranites and indigenous Canaanites, the ethnic groups from where the Israelites got their origin genealogically.
I particularly found it amusing that a man who claimed to be soundly educated will now begin to derive inspiration from religious beliefs (as organized into Judeo-Christian theology) that fundamentally, essentially and largely derived it source from superstitions, myths, historical distortions and irrational fears.
Below are excerpts from his article titled what Donald trump will not do, published in eagle online on 2nd august.
“During the coming election debates, he should do the Nigerian people a favour and ask Hillary Clinton one question. That question is: Why did she and President Barack Obama refuse to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation until late 2014? This was after they had slaughtered over 100,000 innocent Nigerians in a space of four years. If the victims had been Americans, would they have taken so long to designate them as terrorists? Is Nigerian blood not red and do Nigerian lives not matter?
Donald Trump would never have made such a mistake or tolerated such evil. If he had been the POTUS for the last seven years and not Barack Obama, Boko Haram would have been designated a terrorist organisation five years ago. Unlike Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, when it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump is incapable of tolerating and accepting evil from those who espouse terrorism and the cold-blooded murder of women and children as a way of life.

That is the difference between him and them. He knows what to do to the Islamist terrorists and he will support any foreign government that will take a hardline against those that slaughter innocents in the name of their god. He will crush those that wish to establish a new world caliphate in which non-Muslims and moderate Muslims are slaughtered or turned into slaves. Unlike Barack Obama, he will not pamper the terrorists, encourage them in some parts and treat them with kid gloves. Instead he will wage a hard, full-scale, relentless and comprehensive war against them.
He will, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, see it as a battle of the forces of light against the citadels of darkness. He will view it as an end-time war between the sons and daughters of God and the emissaries and agents of Satan. He will decimate the ranks of the Philistines, the Amalekites, the Midianites and all the other vultures, vampires and blood-thirsty barbarians in our midst. He will not support a Nigerian government that has a clear-cut religious and ethnic agenda, that seeks to shame and dehumanise Christians and that is attempting to restrict the spreading of the gospel of Christ”

The question Femi wished to ask Hillary Clinton is belated and a misdirected one. In September 11th 2001, the day terrorist group touched American soil, George Bush, the then president in his broadcast said “we will either bring the terrorists to justice or take justice to the terrorists” , the fulfillment of this promise was immediate and completed when Osama Bin Laden was killed. George Bush didn’t wait for categorization before he acted as president should. My question to Femi is: why didn’t the president and Commander in Chief of Nigeria act decisively in 2010? What justification does Femi have for the Father Christmas acts of the Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA), from where monies meant for the prosecution of war against boko haram were share to persons (among whom Femi is alleged to be prominent), who used it to prosecute personal vanities. I am not surprise therefore, that he’s not still seeing the former president as the person largely responsible for all the atrocities, committed by boko haram as itemized by Femi earlier. The president had the gun and the dry gun powder (apology to Gov Ayodele Fayose), he just didn't release fire on the boko haram for reasons that ranged from ineptitude and wicked political considerations. The sharing of the arms procurement money was taken to a ridiculous level, when according to the revelation by EFCC, among those alleged to have been beneficiaries of this heinous act are prayer merchants who were given millions of naira for the purpose of what the friends of Femi called ‘special’ prayer which they went to offer at some places in Asia and Europe. Since Femi now claim to be an end time revivalist, may i ask him the rationale behind the dubious rigmarole to Asia and Europe to go offer ‘special’ prayer for Nigeria, to a God that the bible and Quran says he is omniscient, omnipotent and above all omnipresent.

If Nigeria was so corrupt and dark then, to warrant God taking sabbatical in Asia and Europe, thereby making it impossible for him to hear and answer the prayers of these merchants, the likes of Femi forced God on the exodus. I wonder the kind of god Femi is claiming to know and serving, could this god be author of schemes, tricks and bold face with which persons who were co –power brokers with Femi in the last government raped, plundered, squandered the commonwealth of this nation? If he is, then this type of god that Femi is high on, is nothing other than primitive, corrupt and vain. These are the very attributes of the persons who have in past years conspired to retrogressively develop Nigeria.

The allegation of ethnic and religious agenda against this present government by Femi is stale and infirmed of any useful effect on the mind of Nigerians who know the shallow places Femi is speaking from. How come Femi has forgotten in a hurry how some religious groups and centers went almost berserk while they were promoting malicious ethnic and religious sentiments against PMB during the 2015 electioneering campaign. If this sinister propaganda couldn’t stop PMB from winning the election, how can this ridiculous gist of Femi now be of any effect? Femi appears to be living in Nigeria of 5 years ago, if not, he would have sought other critical and logical basis to engage this government, other than this lifeless sentiment.

The business of managing and addressing the present challenges that confront the national and internal communities is a serious one and requires hard thinking, hard action, urgency and eternal vigilance. The answers to the challenges created by the inevitable conflicts of interests, culture and idealogy of societies around the world, can’t possibly be found in the easy but fatalistic theology of adherents of organized religious movements.

If in the thinking of Femi is the idea that the myriads of challenges that confront the world today, can easily be resolved if we all just pessimisticaly succumb to the predetermined outcome concocted in the body of the teaching of eschatology, there is no need therefore for him to pretend to be writing about a better Nigeria, when his bible has prophetically predetermined that one of the Abrahamic religions will ultimately prevail on the other in Armageddon. He should just patiently wait for the appointed time of fulfillment.

THE CHURCH: WILL YOU EVER FIND TRUTH THERE?
By Akingbade Thomas

There are definitions of the word truth, that justifies its use in the world of idealism and mysticism. But the truth i intend to speak of in this piece is of the persons that live in the real and material world, and has the following dictionary definition: "true facts, genuine depiction or statements of reality", "conformity to fact or reality; correctness, accuracy". From the above definitions, i define truth as any thought, statement, and action that is founded on empirically verifiable (or falsifiable) elements. For example, if i say that water is made of two elements, it's true, and it can be verified in the scientific laboratory. But to the man who holds the assumption( truth in the world of mysticism) that water came about as a result of a god who transformed into oceans. This type of assumption can't be subjected to any kind of empirical verification. They just believe so (faith: beliefs without and against reasons. And coincidentally, this is also the definition of delusion. Source - Richard Dawkins).

The church is primarily and solely founded on the ideological statement that says: "and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". This statement was from the very mouth of Jesus Christ - the progenitor of Christianity. The church belong in the world of mysticism and idealism, and i wouldn't ordinarily have issues with this statement. But because the entities that constitute the church (the congregants) are real and material, the church would have to put forward the logicality of making people who are real and live in the real world free via truth that applies to the world of idealism and mysticism.

Though some denominations have attempted this, but in the attempt at explaining reality with mysticism, they have always ended the debate in laughable, but conflicting, contradictory and admission of impossibility conclusions. For instance, the church says it's apolitical and non partisan. The church based this position on exegesis of the scriptural verses that said Christians aren't of this material world, and that the kingdom (government) of this world is not their's. And to further preclude any hope of a government that is responsive and responsible for the growth and development of humans, the church apocalytically propound that the human government is by default and ultimately programmed to fail and cease to be.

To expose the conflictive and contradictive postures of church, it's the same church that will lead its congregants in praying for human government to succeed. This type of prayer is delusionary at best. I think the church should rather pray for the hasty fulfillment of the apocalyptic prophecies about human government, if the church truly believe in the possibility of such prophecies happening. At least they will then be free in deed from hopeless human government according to their views.

This observation became practical to me few days back. I have been watching on TV in the past few days, the different religious/spiritual activities RCCG (Edo region) is airing in support of the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Edo state, Pastor Ize-Iyamu. Though RCCG called it spiritual support for one of their own, but for the fact that the presiding leadership of RCCG publicly (on TV) canvassed votes for pastor Iyamu and equally asserted that God has ordain him to win, is nothing but core campaign. The question to the church therefore is this: since the church hold the view that the government of this material world (Edo state, for example) is of the devil, why is the church putting forward one of them?, why are they so strongly desirous of winning in the government under the headship of Satan (the arch-enemy of their God)?. Away from the spiritual implications. The very RCCG is congregated by members of different political parties. In fact, some pastors in RCCG Edo region are prominent leaders in APC. Do RCCG care about how their endorsement of pastor Iyamu affect their members who are APC party members? Well, most of the churches (especially of this generation type) have not been found to be interested in the sensibilities of its members. All they care about is how they can continually delude them to waste their time and resources to gratify its illusionary claims.

If any real human being is really desirous of truth therefore, it'll be most unnecessary and avoidable self inflicted effort in futility , to look in the direction of the church in his/her quest to finding the truth of life, that can in deed make man free from poverty, diseases, psychological bondage(delusion and illusions) and complicated lifestyles.


Thomas akingbade is a physiotherapist and a private student of behavioural neuroscience with special interest in human beliefs system and its interactions with optimal quality of life.