₦airaland Forum

Chrisbenogor:
Thank you deep sight, I can summarize therefore that acknowledging that there is a God is not important.

Deep Sight:
Nevertheless it is important to add that knowing the things of God, the laws of God, and the purposes of God will enrich a man's life beyond compare. We can decipher these things by reading the Book of Life - which is nature around us. Therein, all the secrets, all the lessons, and all the things of God which we need to know, are clearly revealed. Therein, without recourse to any church or mosque, and without recourse to any "saviour" or "prophet", every man can discern his conscience, and live in justice and purity, with a bold hope of one meaningful and beautiful life after another.

To my mind, the only real danger inherent in not believeing in God, is that it leads some people to entirely doubt the existence of any spirituality whatsoever, and i am certain that such an attitude will serve to weaken the spiritual part of a persons's life, in some degree or the other.

mazaje:
Let me state my own purpose in life since I am an atheist. . . Atheism is simply a disbelieve in all the gods of man made religion

Krayola:
I think karma is bullshit!! I think reincarnation is bullshit too. Just my opinion.

noetic15:
@ wirinet

1. I STRONGLY disagree with your notion that destinity is what a person makes of it, . . .for obvious reasons

a. Have u ever put into consideration the billions of people who have no say in their destiny. . . including u? . . .did u have a say in where u were born? how and when u were born? did u have a say in the choice of your parents, nationality, race or heritage?
b. how about the millions of war victims, who are traumatised by the policies of a group of men? WWI, WWII and other wars? how about the victims of ridiculous economic policies in zimbabwe, nigeria and other parts of the world? do these people have a say in their destinies?

My point is that, by choice none of these victims would love to be born in Africa or impoverished nations, no one would choose to live in dehumanising and inhuman societies with devilish policies. Destiny is far bigger than u think of.

I do concede that a man's actions or inactions have a say in what he makes of his life, but the most potent decisions in a man's life were not taken by him.
No man chose a. where he was born
b. who his parents would be
c. how he would be born
d. when he would be born
e. the family, race, country of birth.
If a man has no say over these things, it is pertinent to state that whoever decides these things still has a bigger say in the life of man.

2. I also disagree with your postulation that God has to be seen before He can be remembered.

your notion of God as a distant non-existent person is not the same for many others. Some have a close inter-personal relationship with Him. so when u call for a visual experience like Thomas did in the bible. . .others are merely content with prophecy, visions, revelations, inspirations, miracles or manifestations of the spirit to serve as their basis of belief in God.
This fact of their might be unacceptable to u. . .but does not proof them wrong.

3. Its ironical that u mention ignorance. We need to largely define what ignorance means. Cos to u, I am ignorant simply because I fail to see things from your world view. I disagree.
your world view is a very biased and dogmatic one. There has been no concrete reason to support your dogmatic beliefs about the non-existence of God, so it is impossible to see things from an atheistic point of view. . .as such a non-atheist CANNOT be considered ignorant in this context.

wirinet:
My dear sexy, i am in the mood to indulge you with my answer and i will not claim to hold forth for all Atheists or all shades of Atheism.

before I attempt an answer lets me analyze your statements.

You say some Atheists say the purpose of life is whatever you want it to be. I will only agree with that statements if you substitute Purpose with destiny. I believe your destiny is what ever you want it to be within educational, social, physical, medical, gender, etc. limits. Although you can sometimes achieve your destiny even with those limitations. For example it would be almost impossible for an autistic child to become a professor of physics. Like wise it would be near impossible for a woman to carry heavier weights than men.

About some people saying than the purpose of life is to acquire fame and wealth. I can say that can only be said by a person living in poverty. Because according to his terrible experience of life, his purpose to existence would be a struggle against poverty. He will not be able to think of anything else. That is the situation a lot of black Africans face. That is why this purpose is not restricted to atheism or any religion but most poor Africans. You will even see majority of African religionist embracing religion because of the promise of escape from poverty.

You said you remember God every day. I am interested in knowing how you remember God. You remember things you have previously had interactions or physical encounter with. So please enlighten me with your description of your God and the remembrance of that description.

Now how can you be encourage to remember death? have you died before and thereby remembering that state.I think you mean think of death. Me as an Atheist do not think of death, i remember life, I want to live life to its fullest and as you people say live life abundantly. i want to wake up everyday looking forward to living that day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Death will come when it will come.

I am not a believer or an aspirant for heaven. I cannot survive in that environment, where i will monotonously sing praises to your god till eternity, with no free will, no challenges, nothing new to learn or aspire to, to me that is worse that hell.

Now the purpose of my life is the same as the purpose of existence, the purpose of the universe, the galaxies, the stars, the planets and in fact all other living thing. The purpose is the same, to be born to live our our lives, and make our contribution to the survival of the universe.

I have lived fairly successfully, I hope to make a contribution to mankind by educating people around me both formally and informally ( I believe ignorance is the greatest decease plaguing mankind and the cause of most of our problems), and at the end contribute half of my genes to the human gene pool (so part of me will live forever).

That is my purpose.

Any questions?

Chrisbenogor:
Hello deep sight,
Thank you for your replies although after reading the link you gave I could not find where concrete answers to my questions, we will discuss natural law and conscience as time goes on because this is in effort to really fully understand your position and its implications. Thus I need an answer that is a little bit more substantial. Again I ask

1. Is some God/being really a prerequisite for meaning and purpose in one's life?
2. Are we really under any obligation to entertain the idea of something existing when it has no relevance to our lives?
3. Do you have any idea why God created us?

I do not want to counter your answers I just want to understand where you are coming from bro.
Thanks.

MyJoe:
I believe God does not intervene in human affairs because I have take a closer look at things and found this to be so. I strongly suspect that God created the world in the beginning, put perfect laws in place to govern it, and left it - not because he does not care but because the laws are sufficient to govern it. In the physical realm the world governed by the laws described in physics. In the spiritual realm it is governed by what they call Karma in the East.
When you die, you come back. The life you live now will likely determine the amount of difficulties you will face in the next life. If you were born into circumstances that afforded you a lot of comfort and happiness, it is likely because you deserve it. Same goes for those who experience suffering. If you close your palms to your fellow man, you may have nothing in your next life. If you share your last, you will have abundance so that you can continue the good work. If you are wicked, you will come back where you will suffer much difficulties so as to learn power is not your sole right. Many, on learning the truth about reincarnation, realise that their life encounters may be the result of Karma, accept it and try to move on - this is known as "meeting your Karma".
But the above should not be taken too literally to mean that someone who is born into wealth is being rewarded and someone who is born poor, blind or sickly is being punished. Sometimes it is all meant to teach you a lesson. It may be that you are poor and you think all rich people are wicked. You may be born rich to show you that is not so and to give you the chance to use money well. For example, I have a friend who has never tasted alcohol in his life. He said he had an uncle whose life was ruined by alcohol. Now, it is possible he was a drunk in his last incarnation and was sent there so he may learn early on in life.
My observation is that prayer changes nothing, except, sometimes, the person praying. God does not intervene. Religious people can afford to wicked to their fellow man because they claim to love God whom they can't see. If only they know that all God requires is that they love their fellow man.
This makes sense TO ME much more than the heaven taught by the Abrahamic faiths.

Chrisbenogor:
Is some God/being really a prerequisite for meaning and purpose in one's life?
Are we really under any obligation to entertain the idea of something existing when it has no relevance to our lives?
Does this supreme being matter?

bawomolo:
i've kind of always seen deism as an halfway house from theism to agnosticism/atheism.

Deep Sight - what was your original religion and what made you give it up?

wirinet:
I give it you you that you are brilliant lawyer. But in the end we are saying the same Thing, Natural Laws ensure survival and thriving of a specie. Naturally man being the most intelligent would have more elaborate Laws both Natural and Positive.

Do you consider sexual fidelity as defined by Marriage to a single partner a Natural law or a positive law?

wirinet:
I think you should understand the way science works, the Big Bang Theory is the raining champion now with extensive and when i say extensive i mean observation by prominent astronomers and physicists like Edwin Hubble, Allan Sandage, Steven Hawkings, martin Swartzschild, and hundreds of others, who dedicated their whole lives to letting us understand the universe. There are two theories of the creation and state of the universe - the Big Bang Theory and The Steady State Theory. In the beginning the steady state theory won among scientist including Einstein himself, but with observation from  more powerful telescopes Big Bang Theory carried the day.
Also hydrogen did not cause the Big Bang, It was the Big bang that cause hydrogen, which went on to form all the other elements in the universe.

huxley:
Did you read my post at all?  Did you read this

Suppose the society were to decide that it be grave wrong for someone to engage in any activities liable to affect others parties WITHOUT the active consent of the other parties and WITHOUT the other parties being brought under duress.  And that the other parties are fully cognisant of the activities they are engaging in.


How could you have read this and ask the questions you did?  Are these activities consentual activities, done with the full cognisance of the "victims", without duress?

Let me repeat again:

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Anything done to anyone without their explicit consent and under duress is a violation of their rights and is therefore morally wrong.
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Now, tell me how this legitimates murder, rapes, human sacrifice, etc, etc. Man, your legal training was a waste of your time and money, if you cannot grasp this simplest of concept.

huxley:
Sin - is a meanless word in my worldview. But in the theistic worldview, it is a contravention of god's will.

huxley:
SIN is a theological concepts whose referent is a God.

CRIME is a secular concept whose referent is humankind.

huxley:
Suppose the society were to decide that it be grave wrong for someone to engage in any activities liable to affect others parties WITHOUT the active consent of the other parties and WITHOUT the other parties being brought under duress.  And that the other parties are fully cognisant of the activities they are engaging in.

huxley:
Man, your legal training was a waste of your time and money, if you cannot grasp this simplest of concept.

wirinet:
i answered your riddle about 8 hrs ago, i do not know why my posts are deleted sometimes.

Here was my response;

Deep site, i give you more credit than you are displaying, if you do not understand something carrying extensive research, understand the topic at hand before reaching a conclusion from other peoples sites.

Let lets deal with your analogy,

Your above example makes sense in a theoretical isolated condition but in a practical situation it is hogwash. Why?, because you have to factor in the environment.

If in your above example "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" the environment put in certain restrictions on which letter that can stand together, then the odds are exponentially reduced. For example if T always goes with H, then any other letter coming after T would not be viable and therefore would not survive. After a Q the next letter must be a u, the number of letters after a Z is also very limited especially as a second to last letter of a word ie E, O and Y. So the probability of the statement "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" arranging itself naturally goes from almost zero to a certainty when the environment set the rules given enough time.

Atheists:
If we are to courageously pursue this question we have to ask who created the creator ?

noetic10:
@ Deep Sight

what is your belief about God? what is your position on Christ? are u a deist, christian or atheist?

Deep Sight:
How come no one has asked me the meaning of MOGANALA?

banom:
abeg wetin that one mean ?

Deep Sight:
Haba, Banom, how i go dey the list for hell na? I am a Deist, so unlike MOGANALA i believe in God, and am fair to everybody?

Call dat Angel back and revise your list o.

huxley:
Deep Sight,

Allow me to point you to this great legal philosopher Michael Sandel . You will find him very enlightening.