₦airaland Forum

johnydon22:
I am an African man, an Igbo man, Odinani is part of my identity, I do not have to be a man of belief to appreciate this part of who I am.

You make "belief" sound like its a thing only had by people of a particular religion as if "revered spirits of the ancestors, wise and just, ancient warriors with brave deeds to their names", is not a belief in itself.

Mine is the worship of Owala, the river from which I got schistosomiasis that paralysed me from the waist down. We worship it by eating a goat. I received a message from her that anybody who poos or pisses in Owala will render their sexual bits useless and will die. I am promoting it as a belief amongst my people while I educate those who can learn.

LordReed:
I won't take your rationalizing over hers. She stated her position quite clearly.

You don't need to take my rationalizing my Lord. I do however insist that the person you describe did not acquire whatever the "it" is that you and I acquired the same way we acquired it, or we too would be living by one book alone, which I would say she even hardly comprehends.

Something, surely, must make you not be like her.

I'd say it is religion actually, that "skips", and "goes right to the conclusion", a conclusion in the form of "God said", in fact. You are aware, I hope, that we do not leave you, or shall I say, the subject, to form any beliefs they want in their heads right? We taught their parents to believe the desired beliefs, i.e. don't eat human beings, and we are certain they made that a desired belief of their offsprings too. But if perchance we missed them in the desired belief education, I'm certain those we did not miss and who have the desired beliefs will have something to say about eating human beings. And we don't have to invoke a deity or a "fundamental belief" or "skip", since reason should suffice, or imprisonment.

Moral conclusions can begin with thought about the subject, and reasoning, as opposed to a belief, and even the conclusion does not need to be something they believe since we can educate them to know if they can be bothered to learn.

johnydon22:
Let's do it this way. Morality require a distinction in moral subjects in order to establish a basis for consideration.

Example: Eating a human and eating a chicken.

One is more abhorrable than the other in human moral consideration, and this is because humans believe one to be more special than the other and this is either explicit or implied.

If chickens and humans are held in the same value level, there is absolutely no way humans would abhor killing humans more, they both would either be equally abhorrable or an equal indifference is exerted to both.

This belief is the basis for moral weight.

Another close example is Killing a cow in India and Killing a dog.

Indians believe cows are sacred hence comes with a much bigger moral weight.

So, theists invoke moral value as an intrinsic quality instituted through a transcendent authority - God.

Someone who lacks such belief have no actual reason to say human is more sacred than a cow - You simply think killing humans is wrong because, yeah why not?

Every moral conclusion begins with a basis, a fundamental belief about the subject, secular morality skips this belief and goes right to the conclusion.




I do not understand this one

LordReed:
I can show you a conversation with a Christian who said she ignores anything that does not confirm what the Bible says.

How did you work out she's a Christian? By her "lord lord" perhaps, or by her religious attendance at church?

She can't possibly ignore "anything that does not confirm what the Bible says." There's far too much in this 20th century that the Bible writers had no clue about for starts, but more importantly, she could not possibly have acquired 'it', in the same way that you said "you and I acquire it", or we too would be talking her crap!

NLmember:
I don't believe good atheists exist.

I guess its a case of your beliefs against the evidence. You'd rather make things up in your head than check the evidence. Makes me wonder if you know the definition of "stupid", and "foolish", and at the least, "inexperienced". You might find they apply.

johnydon22:
I think their arguments can be summarized as

1. An atheist lacks the fundamental foundation necessary to cultivate a moral conclusion.

That is 'belief'

They are just wording it wrong by saying 'atheists can't have morals'

Do they mean, belief is the fundamental foundation necessary to cultivate a moral conclusion, and atheists don't believe so can't have morals?

If so, all I can say is thankfully, it does not matter what one believes in ones head, the wages of sin is still death. They should show me anyone, atheist or theist, who does not know their action has an opposite and equal reaction

Odetokun3:
But commissioner of police is not here on Nairaland!

But we will make him hear after someone posts the cops details and we all send him a link.

Michellekabod2:
Is that an opinion or fact ?
As an atheist I see marriage as a sacred Union between two souls...to exchange rings with you means YOU and you alone are the one I want to give my heart,body and soul to forever. .so cheating is never an option for me

It was meant to be "how do you know?"

There is absolutely no evidence to say an atheist is more immoral than a theist, and only ignorance would make anyone say they are. If you check any prison anywhere, in fact, you're more like to find more theist serving term that atheists.

And I am no more moral now that I was as an atheist myself.

hucknall:
Atheists have no morals, in fact cannot have morals.

And you say this because?

Michellekabod2:
Imagine participating in fund raising to build university and yet you can't afford it as it is outrageous. A percentage waivered off the fees for the members of the church with financial hardships is not bad.

Your fund raising is voluntary giving to build the university and does not cover the running costs of running it, the electricity, maintenance of the building you fund raised for, and wages for the staff that turned the building you fund raised for into a university.

You only want to go there because it's a good university, and should know that if wages were peanuts, monkeys will be your teachers. If you fundraised enough to build the university, fund raise enough to pay the fees instead of hoping to eat where you sowed not enough!

How do you know that an atheist woman "will probably see nothing wrong with sleeping with other men or having an entire relationship on the side while being married to you?"

Tinyemeka:
Was going through my previous posts and saw this. My mum eventually passed away June 30.

She rests in eternity and has remained in your thoughts so you live.

I take it.

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I like you Freeze, but you should take your own advice and find out Paul's role in the creation of the image of even Yahushua that you have.

Here's a good place to start.

IamPlato:
When You People Are Ready For Revolution Call Me... I Seriously Need To Break Some Heads...

What might you mean by "revolution", and "break some heads"?

MuttleyLaff:
If you all make your intellect as gods, what personality has the god that you've created with your intellect then? Curious to know. I bet its impersonal.

One barrier to coming up with the right answer, in this case, is the lack of use of personal experience. For some reason, many ignore their experience and disregard it's place where Wisdom is concerned. Instead of considering how Wisdom is acquired, most are like you, the Holy Spirit will bring it down from heaven like manna. You toil not but expect to eat despite the Lord thy God specifically cursing that the lazy shall starve to death! Or is it not true anymore that a lack of knowledge is the cause of death?

We don't so much "make our intellect God", muttley, for our arrogance won't permit us, it appearing to show us the limits of our puny mind everytime we think too highly of ourselves. Which one of us after all has said, "Let there be light", and light is? What we do is understand God according to our intellect, with the idea of God as conceived by your own intellect different to the same God from the same text as conceived by the intellect of some. Is it not, afterall, the amount of intellectual work to gain an understanding that one has done that makes one's God have abominations and another's God love the abominable? Is the reason for argument on here not because we all have different understandings of God?

It is only the evildoer who benefits from the lack of use of intellect, for in the dark called ignorance does it get to promote its evil ways. Those with Intellect, it being the proper use of the senses, the 'science of living', the 'Jesus Christ', might understand that education is the mud that opens the eyes, which without, one can not turn the other cheek.

There was a reason you were excluded from the paypal, muttley. You may refer back to your first answer and perhaps see why. 4 pages later, in a thread of "Thou shalt not create graven images", the lesson remains unlearned.

Those who understand, as I said, do "not go about creating graven images of God with [their] puny intellect as if it was watching from high on a mountain". "Those who store wealth in moth proof vaults from birth as suggested do not use their stored up wealth to create graven images because they and their intellect serve the Lord."

You are not "curious to learn", muttley. You already assume to know it all and are too afraid to learn, and typically, you confuse the twig in my eye for the forest in yours.

The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus by Lee Strobel

Pdf dload

MuttleyLaff:
Baba go and sleep jaare, stop showing yourself up

Why, baba? My sleeplessness affects you somehow?

Ignorant people, are the sole problem facing Nigeria. Its so bad, it manifests as a fear of learning with the likes of you favouring sticking your heads in the sand but wanting what those who don't have. Yet, there's the lie. If you had not raised the bar and looked for more knowledge, would you not be stupid?

If you do well, muttley, you too would be blessed as those you envy. Try harder and you too will have pride.

Ranchhoddas:
I don't know Hebrew. But I believe someone said it's "no image, no sculpture."

Someone said that? I hope I commended them! The Hebrew is the second commandment.

Jedidiah was indeed a young king when he asked God for wisdom (why the adjectives, by the way?). I've always wondered that only the wise ask for wisdom, and then he goes and commits three grave errors of coveting wives, horses and gold, foreign ones at that!

Weird behaviour indeed!

EmperorHarry:
I wish Nigeria was trying to catch up Muttley..We wouldn't be in this chaotic state if we were playing catch up. We have instead,brought out a relaxing chair,sun glasses,an umbrella,an stack of vogue magazines and we've kicked back and relaxed.

More like, "brought out a relaxing chair, sun glasses, an umbrella, a stack of vogue magazines and we've kicked back" and died!

Hear this utter ignorance!

MuttleyLaff:
I dont mind science shaking and rocking tables or shatterring glass celings, all I am bothered about, is that science should make sure, that it itself, is standing on firm and/or solid ground, when being a table shaker. Science is good, science is useful, science is needed for explaining things, but science at times is meddling. Science should learn that some muddy waters are best cleared, by leaving them alone

As if God did not mean, "do science" when God said "let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground". Or can one do any of that by doing what you suggest above.

MuttleyLaff:
budaatum, intelligence, is a gift from God, but when it is perverted by pride, it turns into intellectual pride and becomes a barrier between the person and God, because focus then shifts on to the perverted gift than the Giver of the original and/or unperverted gift

I don't know where you get your definition of pride from muttley, that makes you think it's a bad thing. Are you one of the manna people who wait for intelligence to fall on you from heaven? I wonder, by the way, if your yadayada isn't a pride thing. It would be typical of those who pervert their gift.

Do know that If we derived our pride from being stupid, we might have asked for that instead, but we value and derive immense pride and satisfaction from intelligence that we ask God for it always and God forbid we be not proud that the Lord God Almighty would one day answer our prayers.

As to our perversions. By our fruits, they say, shall we be known.

LoJ:
To me it is not. Yes I am old school...

What would be achievements in to your old school?
He did send people to Leeds University too!

MuttleyLaff:
About those who have eyes, well they are using extraordinary means of seeing in the dark, by way of remarkable means, took advantage of the Jesustician. They didnt even need Jesusglasses, because all Jesus did was spit into mud and rub it on their eyes, so they now see men clearly and no more see men as like trees etcetera.

There is nothing extraordinary about our means muttley. The definition of Jesusglasses is "spit on mud". "Take advantage" of a pair at the Jesustician and you too will understand what it is that you see.

LoJ:
What did he achieve?

Fame, for starts. Financial power, he motivates, has built huge buildings. Or isn't that achievements?

Ranchhoddas:
Jesus said to him, "you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind".

And thus, well done, hard working Hoddas Sir, did you work out the meaning of לֹא-תַעֲשֶׂה לְךָ פֶסֶל, וְכָל-תְּמוּנָה that came out of the MoG.

Now, with the second in mind, though I confess to yet seeing how specifically loving my Lord my God with all my heart and soul and being, I must add, and mind and my neighbour too, equates to being in receipt of wisdom, still, let it be assumed that all agents are wise though we have not yet clarified how they got wise.

How much wiseness would be in a wise vault of a wise 40 year old who put in a wise pound every wise month they lived wisely?

The revelation should eliminate the zero wise pound people who make saving seem like devil worship instead of school fees.

danvon:
I know it's unrelated

What are your thoughts on Ayn Rand and Nietzsche?

If one claims ones eye's opened and those eyes have not gone over the works of both, one is most definitely blind. Both writers have hugely influenced the state of being in the world today. Nietzsche, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch]Übermensch[/url] in Book for All and None set goals for humans to strive towards once it is understood that, "Ye are God's", a concept that swept and empowered Americans at one point in time. His word play is what JeromeBlack would wittingly say is Aba made Yoda, and is one I suffer to emulate.

Powerful insightful influential cultist Ayn Rand turned America understanding of Nietzsche's Übermensch into the depraved world of 'me me' Americanism, in my opinion, with her amazing novels, Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and We The Living. Her nonfiction on objectivity especially, when compared to her actual living is a lesson for anyone who wishes to learn the folly of being objective or righteous, as some Christians say, as she exemplifies the art, or error, of objectifying her own subjectivity and has led many along the same path with her finely written, every single word in exactly the right place in over one thousand finely packed paged Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which you wished would never end the closer you got to the end of both books.

Unfortunately, she doesn't end and spawns the likes of Alan Greenspan with his so called "enlightened self interest", and "moral or immoral capitalism", and dare I say, the Republican Party as a whole, despite her so called Libertarianism.

I love Rand and Nietzsche. Both fine insightful writers who tasks the mind and open the eyes. If you believe a single word they wrote though instead of seeking to fully understanding the implications of what you read, you're doomed!

Below is a 48kb download of Ayn doing Thus Spake a la 1984 in [url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_%28novella%29?wprov=sfla1]Anthem[/url].

It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. It is base and evil. It is as if we were speaking alone to no ears but our own. And we know well that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone. We have broken the laws. The laws say that men may not write unless the Council of Vocations bid them so. May we be forgiven!

But this is not the only sin upon us. We have committed a greater crime, and for this crime there is no name. What punishment awaits us if it be discovered we know not, for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it.

It is dark here. The flame of the candle stands still in the air. Nothing moves in this tunnel save our hand on the paper. We are alone here under the earth. It is a fearful word, alone. The laws say that none among men may be alone, ever and at any time, for this is the great transgression and the root of all evil. But we have broken many laws. And now there is nothing here save our one body, and it is strange to see only two legs stretched on the ground, and on the wall before us the shadow of our one head.

Anthem, Ayn Rand

Smart man! Those banks swindle you while your money is eroded by inflation and theft! The wise would invest instead, and what greater investment is there than in Leeds University? Would graduates not be "Fisherpeople".

Can anyone here confess with their own mouth that it is satan blessing them and not the Almighty God if they achieved a tenth of what TBJ has achieved?

CaveAdullam:
Please budatuum can you help me with the Forensic faith pdf by Jim Warner Wallace?

Thanks.

I'll think about it. After you educate us first.

Who is Jim Warner Wallace?

What is Forensic Faith about?

Ranchhoddas:
Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom


James 1:5
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.

I find this verse to be very interesting in relation to this thread. Take a look.

Ecclesiastes 2:26
To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Ecclesiastes 2:26 is the more relevant one. At least as far as the question asked goes. The "fear" in Proverbs 1:7 should perhaps be "revere", or "love the Lord" even, though it might depend on the abundance of the heart of the person whether they need to fear, revere, or love the Lord. And James, or rather, Jacob, his rightful Jewish name, would mean a lot when he says "ask God". Which hardly answers the question on, which with a little thought, was, "How does one ask God for wisdom and knowledge"? Or rather, what is it that one must do for God to give one wisdom and knowledge? A question you rightly answer with "Please God" in Ecclesiastes 2:26.

I believe it would be remiss of me not to follow in the steps of one who asked, "and what shall I do to enter the Kingdom of God", for it implies the Kingdom of the Wise with assumptions of worthiness. So I'll ask the question more relevant to my status.

How, please, hoddas, do I go about pleasing God?