₦airaland Forum

PAGAN 9JA:
CMon lets flood this section with our threads.

that's the spirit mate.

mr.official:
Yimu to them. I don't understand why they want to venture into stuff like this. Bull!

lol, na really yimu to them, but on a serious note, the white man has always believed in pursuing his dreams, the white man doesn't believe in impossibilities, cos if he did, we wouldn't be where we are today in the world.

Imagine when Leonardo da vinci drew contraptions of a flying machine many people would have laughed at him and called him mad, even the wright brothers, when they were trying to build a plane, people would have thrown all sorts of insults on them, citing reasons like if man was meant to fly, God would have created man with wings, etc, but alas we have flying machines today, which we are all using and benefiting from, so my good man, never say never.

tpacalipse: Let them try. Their story of failure will be well received.

but what if they come out successful? The dalai lama has given them his blessings with many other spiritual leaders, and the project is been spearheaded by some of the best minds of our time. What if it becomes successful?

kITA TITA: My life is challenging enough. I don't want to live for ever. No. It's not the first time humans attempted to play God; remember cloning. Remember Tower of Babel.

well my good man, I can assure u that, this is no tower of babel scenerio, these guys mean business, and they are hell bent on making this a reality.

Yungwizzzy: innazuwa

wetin dis one mean na?

I'm putting these questions to both atheists, and theists, what are your views about the 2045 project? Is it feasible? Do you think it's morally right? Do we have the right to put ourselves in another physical form in order to live for ever? Can we really remove our consciousness from our body and put it in a prototype body? Please I would love to hear your views about this project,

PS: for those of u who do not know about the 2045 project visit the link below.

www.2045.com/manifest/

@carcam. Nicely written piece. But the points written there are full of flaws. All of them boil down to putting one's self in one kind of consciousness, like being in a hypnotic state or trance like state. And in those states, anything is possible, so as much as I would love to agree with your points. I chose to disagree.

Lol, At last something fun. @op, the story of the tower of babel speaks volumes about the bible and it's stories. Let's look at it from a metaphorical perspective and from a literal one.

From the literal one, how could a God be scared of people building a tower that would get high into the heavens, how feasible is that. Unless the writers of the bible believed that the biblical God was residing in the skies and that if the tower could get high enough into the skies it would inadvertently get to heaven and meet the Gods,

And from the metaphorical perspective, this story goes to show that from the biblical God's perspective, there is no freewill, unlike christians say, the biblical God curbed what he considered was the excesses of the children of men, he did not want their knowledge to be broadened, he wanted them to still remain in an ignorant state, and that my brethren, speaks volumes about the kind of deity the biblical God is.

*Kails*:
HE LEFT FOR GOOD?!

yes, unfortunately he has. The guy was no longer enjoying the forum.

Logicboy03: I'm sure people have noticed the loss of certain influential people here on the religion section. Muskeeto and Deepsight are examples.....

The debates and funny stuff here have dwindled.....


Seun, congrats....the religion section is coming as dry as ever.

I hope this section gets back on it's feet, if not, it's bye bye for me.

Logicboy03: Many atheists and some christians have lost faith in the religon section after MMC's unfortunate treatment by Seun...

so what's the way forward now? Or have u moved finally to reddit?

Logicboy03: Has muskeeto left nairaland?

sadly he has left, I'm gon miss him, and u guys are making matters worse, no more new topics, no debates, no nothing, you guys are killing nairaland for me I swear. What's happening LB?

9jadelta: lol, how come only pastors, reverends, GOs etc are the only ones that hear the voice of the so called god? Huh

thats a very good point, cos if for example i come out and say that the lord ministered to me and said this and that to me, most folks would say i was lying but if a prominent pastor comes out and makes up a story and say God told him, everybody would believe him, is it that God only minister's to pastors and apostles?

k2039: It's a function of the hearer, not the speaker.
Ability of the ear of the hearer to decode the voice of God is a function of his relationship with God

In essence, God speaks to people in diverse ways.

well this is more like it. I agree with u.

Ajibam: @op.....if You stand outside a house and 200 fathers are in the house shouting your name,,wouldn't yourecognise your dad's voice You will!!!

So,if God is truly Your father you will hear his voice plainly....christianity nowadays is about doctrines and dogmas,,and das not It...all u knw is my pastor Says!!there is no personal encounter with your God...
christianity should be ur relationship with God...how wud u want to listen to God without ur quiet time,,family altar,alms giving,bible reading,fasting..e.t.c which. Improves our relationship with God...then we would be his own(cherem)
Run from doctrines,imbibe d act of worship in truth and in spirit,,,cos many of us ARE SERVING GOD WITHOUT HIS WILL...YOU KNOW GOD BUT DOES HE KNWS U?....if he is ur fada u will hear him...but if u ar not!!u ar just a churchgoer,,,
Maranatha

well sire, u tried explaining it, but there's something u've not put into consideration, according to the bible, the devil sometimes acts like an angel of peace and thus misleads christians, and if a christian's not careful he might be mislead by the voice of devil claiming to be the voice of God, what I'm trying to find out is, is there a distinctiveness in the voice of God that would make everybody know that, that's the voice of God.

paulmarkino: voice of God sounds like thunder.

I chose to disagree, so if the voice of God sounds like thunder, doesn't that mean that his instructions won't be clear? And imagine hearing thunder in your head, how would that feel? Nahh, I don't agree wit u sire.

I was watching TV recently, and I saw the leader of the RCCG, pa adeboye, preaching and he said something, he said "and The lord said to me son, ......." And it struck me, we always hear pastors and different christian brethren claiming to hear the voice of God regularly, and I would like to ask, what does the voice of God sound like? Is it really the voice of God these people hear? Or it's just plain old intuition that they construe as the voice of the lord, your opinions please.

And this thing will make front page. SMH

Musky, don't leave us here. I forbid u to leave. We shall overcome. Just hold on a little while longer. Reddit, happy atheist forum or any other atheist forum, can't be as interesting as nairaland's religion section. So my guy biko, chill.

the devil has entered into the churches, what do u guys expect? Nice one frosbel.

This beverly osu is a disgrace to Nigeria and Nigerians, she is a disgrace to her family, she thinks rubbishing one's image to get fame is cool, I pity for her, and by the time this bad girl image causes her more than she can take, na that time her eye go clear. Smh

emk4lif: So true, I've been an atheist for a while and yet I have to keep the religious facade to avoid a backlash, almost as if black people are programmed to be religious...lately though thanks to personal experiences and study of the works of hitchens,dawkins,dennett etc, I guess I've decided to be pragmatic abouth my lack of faith and rally against the sheer superstion and crass ignorance that religion represents

so true mann,

.

When Clive Aruede’s twelve-year-old
daughter asked him “What is science?”
he couldn’t have known quite how much
it would change his life. But when I
meet him in a gloomy bar in Borough,
Clive pinpoints this innocent question as
the beginning of a long and arduous
journey towards atheism.

The phrase he uses is that he “came
out”, which implies that he had been
hiding ‘in the closet’ – that he felt the
beliefs or lifestyle of an atheist would be
seen as objectionable to wider society.
But being an atheist in the UK is hardly
controversial. In the 2011 Census
around 14 million people – a quarter of
the UK’s population – claimed to have
‘no religion’. But for Clive this didn’t
matter, because Clive is black.
According to figures from Christian
Research in their 2005 English Church
Census, black people are much more
likely to be religious than most other
demographic groups. The census
showed that though black people only
made up around 2 per cent of the
population at the time, they nonetheless
accounted for 7 per cent of churchgoers
nationwide, and 44 per cent of
churchgoers in London. In fact, at the
time his daughter asked him about
science, Clive was included in these
figures because he, too, was a practicing
Christian – a Eucharistic Minister, no
less.

Lola Tinubu also fell into this
demographic, though she had already
been questioning God and religion since
she was young. “It started with the tribal
culture,” she tells me. “I asked my father
about his relationship with my mother
because I didn’t understand the
inequality, and he said ‘That’s what God
wants’, so that bothered me.” But
despite her growing doubts throughout
her teenage years, she went along with
the tide of belief. When she came from
Nigeria to the UK, she even joined an
Evangelical church and preached in
public. She laughs about this, and
supposes she did it mostly because she
needed to feel a part of a community.
For both Clive and Lola, like many
millions of other black people, belief in
God was never a matter of choice – it
was just a fact, like the sun or the sky.

The Bible held all the answers to any
question they could possibly ask, and
church formed the backbone of their
social life. They grew up attending
church every Sunday – filling the rest of
their time with Bible studies and prayer
meetings. Neither ever had the space to
ask why.
For Clive though, the moment came
when his daughter asked him about
science. As he researched a response
for her, he discovered a world of
fascinating information he hadn’t known
about before, which began to make him
wonder if the Bible really did have all
the answers. He was determined to find
out more, so he read up on science
regularly, and the tensions between
what he was learning and the received
wisdom of religion only got more
strained.

Eventually he felt he had to make a
choice. He could either continue
believing in the supernatural power of
God or instead embrace all he had been
reading, and accept that science, not
God, is responsible for the natural
world. It was an extremely difficult
process, but he settled on accepting
atheism. For someone of Clive’s
background, the social ramifications of
such a decision are huge, but as a part
of his “coming out”, he sent an e-mail to
all his contacts, designed to explain
himself. He was immediately inundated
with outraged messages and attempts to
prove he was wrong. Two people even
flew over from Nigeria to talk with him
in person.

For Lola, the final straw for God and
religion came when her religious father
visited from Nigeria. It turned out he
enjoyed watching popular science TV
shows. “That’s the irony of it!” says Lola.
“He loves science!” But when he saw
how genuinely interested in science she
was, he told her “Facts are not the same
as truth.” Lola realised that this absurd
statement was “cognitive dissonance –
he couldn’t reconcile his own beliefs
with the facts.”
That was it. First she began asking
difficult questions in Bible study. Then
she stopped going to church altogether.

She also stopped going to other social
functions where prayer would form an
inevitable part of the program. Her
friends would often call, asking where
she was, imploring her to come to the
next event. But she couldn’t. Her self-
imposed absence from a primary social
hub of Nigerian culture – church – left
her with no friends or social life, and
this warm, vivacious woman ended up
spending a year in treatment for clinical
depression. It is often “a very long
journey” for black people to become
atheists, she says.

It was the same for Clive: “It’s been a
very uncomfortable experience.” As far
as his friends and family were
concerned, “It was like claiming I was a
demon or a devil.” He says it is still
causing problems within his family, and
this shows how difficult it is to become
an atheist from a background where
religion is everything. He stresses that
for many black people, “Religion is
woven into the whole texture of your
life. It’s everything. It’s reality…part of
your identity.”
One nation under God
One of the most important revelations
Clive and Lola had upon accepting
atheism was seeing in full the corrosive
effect religion has on their homeland, as
well as many other countries in Africa.

Nigeria is a complex mesh of ethnicity,
language, and religion, with much
diversity and mixing amongst its people.
Broadly speaking though, according to
the CIA World Factbook, Nigeria’s
religious make-up is 50 per cent Muslim,
40 per cent Christian, and 10 per cent
indigenous beliefs, such as the Yoruba
religion. Non-belief doesn’t even figure
in the statistics. Islam is predominant in
the twelve northern states, to the extent
that they are all under partial or full
Sharia law, where blasphemy can be
punished by execution. The central and
southern regions can be thought of –
with many caveats – as majority
Christian.

The prevalence of religion in Nigeria has
only entrenched it as an unquestionable
absolute – a law of nature as real as the
second law of thermodynamics – such
that even the most intelligent Nigerians
often fail to identify the causes of
Nigeria’s problems, and instead believe
that the supernatural is their cause and
solution. As Lola puts it, “Rationality is
not allowed to supersede belief.” This
invariably creates an environment
where democracy is sidelined and
despotism can flourish. With the divine
as the final judge, accountability is seen
as pointless. And since various
supernatural forces are held responsible
for problems, politicians can often get
away with no punishment. In fact, Lola
tells me that when a politician is
confronted with a particular problem
the best response – the one which will
be lauded most by the media – is that
he will pray. Thanks to the central
importance of religion in Nigeria and
many other African countries, elites are
freed of the necessary checks on power
and are able to do whatever they wish.
Perhaps the best example Clive and Lola
can find of this attitude is under the rule
of Nigeria’s dictator General Sani
Abacha, when people simply said of his
brutality, “God will deal with him.”
The catch-22 in Nigeria is that because
religion prevents the state from properly
functioning, it leads to a lack of effective
institutions – most importantly a welfare
state.

Perversely, religion then fills this
vacuum, thereby forcing millions of
people into reliance on churches or
mosques for their very survival –
compounding the political breakdown
through the social dominance of
religion. Tithes and donations (normally
around 10 per cent of income)
effectively constitute taxes, and
Christians in particular have turned this
into a business where the top religious
leaders can become billionaires. Indeed,
Pastor E A Adeboye, founder of the
Redeemed Christian Church of God – a
Pentecostal church with branches
across the world – is one of many top
pastors in proud possession of a private
jet.

Wider Nigerian culture reflects this
overbearing focus on religion, with TV
networks broadcasting hours of
sermons and religious talk shows, and
some universities requiring prayers at
the beginning of lectures. In short,
Nigeria is stuck. “There’s no progress,”
says Clive. “All you see is more and more
churches and mosques…all the effort
and ingenuity of the people goes into
religious activities. It’s holding us back.”
Lola goes further: “In Nigeria religion is a
force for evil.” She believes that if
nothing changes soon, religious
fundamentalism – in the form of the
Islamist group Boko Haram – could
cause a civil war. Then they speculate as
to how many Nigerians have had great
ideas but no way of realizing them due
to the amount of time and space religion
takes up in their lives. “If Einstein was
born in Nigeria. . .” Lola says, “. . .he’d
be a pastor!” finishes Clive.
One world under reason
Regardless of the rise in arguments
highlighting the dogma of atheism, it has
been an overwhelmingly positive
experience for Clive and Lola.

While Lola’s first feeling upon becoming
an atheist was sadness for everything
she hadn’t known, Clive’s was anger -
anger at being deceived by religion since
childhood. Anger at all the wasted years
and the wasted efforts stuck in the
confines of religious belief. But after this
wore off, the wonder and excitement of
gaining knowledge took over. “I was
motivated to catch up with everything I
didn’t know which I thought I should
know,” says Clive. Lola admits learning
still makes her feel “like a kid in a candy
shop.” She attends lectures regularly,
loves Brian Cox, and recently went to a
recording of Dara Ò’Briain’s Science
Club. “It was so exciting!” she enthuses.
Her newfound happiness hasn’t stopped
some Nigerians accusing Lola of thinking
she is white. “They think if you’re an
atheist you’re rejecting the culture and
the society – that you’re a traitor, that
you’ve allowed the West to take over
your mind.

But rationalism isn’t the
property of the West. It’s universal!” In
fact, “Atheism has freed me to love the
world…I can go to any part of the world
and belong. My tribe is the world.” She
describes a recent incident where she
made friends with a Chinese woman at a
humanist event. She says she would
never have had the opportunity to share
that experience had she not become an
atheist. “It was so beautiful, so
amazing. . . but religion is so divisive.
Everybody else is wrong. If you mix with
them, you’re mixing with evil.” Clive
agrees, and adds, “We’re all part of the
same human society.”

Late last year Clive, Lola, and two other
friends organized the inaugural meeting
of the London Black Atheists. Lola says
of it, “Apart from having my child, it’s
one of the best things that’s happened
to me. It’s given me a new lease of life.”
Clive explains how important it is to
have a forum where black people can
come if they are experiencing doubts
about their belief. Through their focus
on discussing science and philosophy, it
acts as a support network for black
people who are already atheists, or who
are grappling with the possibility of
“coming out”.
Listening to Clive and Lola converse
during the few hours I spend with them,

I get an insight into how the London
Black Atheists operates – allowing space
for joint learning and sharing stories.
They have already held a number of
events, and are going from strength to
strength. “We just got our hundredth
member today,” Clive tells us. “Guess
what his name is. . . Christian!”

m-ployer:
Op you answered your question when you said the guy is a free thinker. You can't be a CEO in a company you have no stake in. That Nigga has no religion in him, yet he was moderating the religion section. Good Seun realised he was using the wrong person

lol, but don't u think that made him exceptional? Cos he was able to make unbiased decisions.

texaco1: That religion section is the most difficult to moderate ,I just went there now and I must confess that section is full of rebels pulling the mods here and there only a babalawo can moderate that section without having enemies

I agree wit u that the section is difficult to moderate, but manmustwac has been doing a good job of it before he was removed.

Uyi Iredia: The funny thing is I'm a Religion board regular but wasn't fully aware of all the politics involved. You are correct so far.I'll expatiate a bit. People on this side of Relgion board don't like tunji because he is unfair in moderating. He bans critiques or satires of Islam thread (especially those that make FP) whilst the muslims attimes take advantage of the less strict mod on this art. A certain topic was made on the Islam child board and tunji locked it (turned out to be temporary), Deep Sight complained and seething sentiments grew. On the 'Change Religion For A Month' thread threats (one which was clear made by Ayatullah) were made. Now the issue Deep Sight emphasized led to mmw's dismissal. He made some comments in the Moderator's board which supposedly led to his dismissal. Now a part of the whole brouhaha_maybe even the cause_is now the mod of this section albeit temporary. I hope this helps. Click the thread on my signature for details of the mess.

but my good sire, after everything is said and done, you'll agree wit me that maclatunji is a very intolerant person, and he's not fit to be the Mod here,

Logicboy03: ^^^^must be a muslim troll

most definitely.

We do not want "he whose name should not be mentioned" as a mod here, cos his reign of terror's gon make dis section messed up. And come to think of it, are u guys sure these guys haven't threatened seun one way or the other? Cos seun's a freethinker and manmustwac is also a freethinker so he is supposed to be lenient with the freethinker but surprisingly he has taken to the side of the muslim radical, hmmmm, I smell crayfish.

texaco1: I don't think anybody has the time to be answering ur questions

but it seems u have the time to be answering my questions.