₦airaland Forum

victorels: Please Relax.
Love I said not war. Don't mistook Israel for Christianity and don't mistook sacrifice for foolishness.
Why would you desire to sacrifice yourself fo no benefit. Every body lives their lives the way they understand it including your grand father you mentioned (Trying to be funny).
Do you think they make their decisions in sentiment? They are responsible for their choice of life. If they are in hell as you imagined, they will hope that you will not come their and besides, you cannot tell whip of the H word they are.
I can see your heart for those that are suffering, but your love means nothing when you don't love yourself. Help yourself then you will find strenght to help others.
Righteousness, Peace and Joy is the Kingdom of God. No war or CHAOS.
If you can give the Kingdom God to these people you are prepared to go to hell for, They will no no pain even in death.
I wish you Joy and Peace today.

I don't think whoever wrote the above post has read the bible...the god of the bible, jehovah, is a tyrant.

First question is....which God are you directing your question to?

Many people live in hardship here in nigeria..in actual fact, most people aren't living what can be described as a good life...or are they? According to my dictionary app, the phrase good life means - a life abounding in material comforts and luxuries or a life lived according to the moral and religious laws of one's culture. So, there is the clue we've all been looking for. The reason why in the face of THINGS(I will describe THINGS later) Nigerians still soldier on with a smile on their faces,even though the glow of that light at the end of the tunnel seems to be diminishing.

What bestows us with this unprecedented kind of resilience? Why are we so inappropriately docile and incongruously aggressive? Yes...we are both at the same time. We are docile when we shouldn't be, where we shouldn't be and to whom we shouldn't be. We are also aggressive in the same sequence...inappropriately. So, back to the question: why are we the happiest people on earth? Why are we so irrationally resilient? What makes us the sheep we have become...majority of us?
Well, some might say whatever they want about fela but a particular song of his captures how we react to oppression, despotism, cheating and many other countless crimes committed against us, to our faces by unscrupulous element. I'm sure you can guess which song of his this is. Legend.

The THINGS I mentioned stare us all in the face everyday: bad roads, poor infrastructure, dearth of appropriate medical health facilities, poor educational system, poverty, food insecurity, harsh business environment, lawlessness, oppression, hyper-epileptic electricity, a deceitful and inept government, flagrant corruption....I need to stop now so I can have space for the meat of the matter.

How can anyone living under these conditions be happy? Do most of us take drugs that catapults us to another realm, another dimension? What exactly are the things that insulate us from our reality? We have very high maternal deaths, very high infant mortality rate, rife cancer cases, prevalent HIV cases, ubiquitous jobless youths in every corner of our society...yet, we are the happiest people on earth. There must be something we are either doing very right or doing very wrong.

Lies are comforting but it never should replace the truth, no matter how bitter a pill that is. We have accepted to "ostrichize" our situation, denying our problems and feeding their gremlins at night. How many times have you heard a sick person reply when asked about his/her health with "I am strong". Or a broke person saying to you when asking for money that "I am rich". Does this in anyway change their situation?

Across the world, if we do a survey of the heritage of human mammals that subscribe to the phrase "it is well", we might find that they are 100% Nigerian. It is our own hakuna matata...our wonderful phrase. Or is it? Boko haram killings, people dying from diseases, children being killed, adults being massacred for rituals...how does this connote wellness? How do these regularly occuring events indicate wellness?

We are happy because we are rest assured that those stealing money in government,money that should be judiciously expended for the greater good will either be punished by karma or in the hereafter. We don't need them punished here, no, we will wait for judgement day when we will laugh at them after God's gavel slams the pearly table(must be a pearly table at the pearly gates). So, until then, we keep hoping that "e go better" and keep chanting the magical phrase "it is well"(even in the well..?). I've read about parents whose child was flogged to death by a teacher in a school owned by their church did nothing but accept their fate as show God wanted it and left the matter to be judged by God.

Our docility in this case is a self inflicted, unwarranted one. We don't have to be resilient in the face of THINGS but we have chosen to be. Our parents laid the path for us as laid by their parents and in loyalty and with conviction, we are passing it on to our children..a viscous cycle of ingrained cowardice and denial. We pray for our leaders instead of making demands of them. How much good has that done for us collectively? It has only made the thieves more determined and more brazen in their quest at our collective expense. That's why I always laugh at our bootless efforts at change. Change bit us in the arse and ran off with a huge chunk without us even noticing. We can't keep making soup with the same ingredients and under the same conditions and expect a differs taste. That will amount to being delusional.

We are like the patient who goes to a doctor with complaints of a peculiar pain but doesn't really want to hear the diagnosis. Doesn't want to know if it is cancer..just want to keep ingesting the mild analgesics, treating the pain with Panadol. We keep telling ourselves comforting lies...oh we are the giants of Africa, our educational system is fantastic...are we suffering from a delusion self imposed, self inflicted on ourselves? Won't it be better if we identify and name our problems instead of the salad of lies we concocted for ourselves?

Daily, like North Korea, we are fed these lies..radio, television, books...everything around us, our reality, contravene these castles of lies we have built around ourselves but we refuse to acknowledge them. No wonder our problems now seem insurmountable, a gigantic monster trampling all of us, reminding us everytime of it's presence in our lives.

You can act numb as much as you like, you can look at your wallet and say to yourself, I have some wads of naira and everything is fine but i tell you it isn't. It isn't about you, it is about the country, the people..about the greater good.

We have problems, people and solving them starts with accepting them. Let's do away with the lies and the denials, let's incinerate the feel good phrases, let's tell those who use these phrases as the source of their daily bread that we accept our problems and want to resolve them and the change we seek will begin to take shape.

Lies can be comforting but they have grave consequences.

Let us keep it real!

This post was written long ago...I think it's over 80days now, right?

#FREEMUBARAK: HUMAN RIGHTS MUST SUPERSEDE RELIGIOUS RIGHTS IN NIGERIA

I had never met the victim before, I had never seen him around the neighbourhood ever, but I was concerned when i saw a man being beaten and rough handled by a bunch of other men on a Sunday morning. He was kneeling down, begging them to please stop hurting him, all to no avail. I approached them and held the one who seemed to be the gang leader...i found out he was being beaten over a spurious and unfounded allegation of stealing rubbles from the road in broad daylight. As goodness would have it, the rubbles he was being beaten over were mine. He was glad i stepped in and so was i.

It mattered less to me what his tribe was, which ethnic group he belonged to or which religion he followed, i saw a human being in desperate need of a saviour and i stepped in.

Mubarak Bala is a total stranger to me. My first interaction with him was just about a month ago. He seemed very lucid and logical from our first interaction and up to the most recent ones we had. I was shocked to hear that he had been remanded in a psychiatric ward by his father because he did not believe in the creation story!

Or humanity should matter more than anything else we might ever be associated with..everything else is extraneous..life should matter more than tribal, ethnic or religious affiiations.

The constitution of Nigeria clearly states

38. (1) Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

Remanding him in a mental home because he refuses to continue being a muslim is a violation of Mubarak’s human rights. This is an issue every human being should speak against. It shouldn’t matter if Mubarak is a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Eckanker, Jew, Bhuddist, Scientologist...his life is what matter. Human Rights should ALWAYS supersede religious rights.

We will like all Nigerians and all people around the world in joining us, the Lagos Humanists Movement, in campaigning for governments across the world to place Human Rights above all other rights!

“Look not above, there is no answer there;
Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;”
OMAR KHAYYÁM

“Remembrance of the Holocaust leaves me unsympathetic to attempts to justify the ways of God to man. If there is a God that has special plans for humans, then He has taken very great pains to hide His concern for us. To me it would seem impolite if not impious to bother such a God with our prayers.”
STEVEN WEINBERG

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Mortality

Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy.
Ambrose Bierce


In the dead of the night, armed men were said to have raided a secondary school in Borno state, carting away the resident young girls gathered there for WAEC examination. In total, the girls were said to have been about 300 in number. The men, members of the boko haram group, took the girls away successfully, to places unknown to any human up till now.
The plight of these kidnapped girls is not known to anyone, all we have are our imaginations. So many people have imagined so many possibilities but one thing is sure, they won't be reading Disney stories to them.
I wrote an article years ago titled WHERE WAS GOD http://deezzle..com/2013/07/where-was-god.html and this seems rather corollary to it. It has to be, given what my fellow citizens indulge in every time......keeping at the same thing that has produced no result for years.

For so many, it was time to turn up the volume on prayers...let us scream to the omniscient and omnibenevolent God who is also omnipresent. It is time to ask Him to #bringbackourgirls. This makes me wonder...do these people really understand this God? Do they really know how they ridicule Him with their vapid ideas and bootless cries to a seemingly deaf heaven? Let us analyze it, shall we.

It is a ritual for religious parents to pray for their children's protection and safe keeping whenever they are distant from them. In helpless situations, in situations when it seems one cannot physically do anything, it is self reassuring to ask God to act. These girls have parents who surely must have prayed to God for the protection of their wards. Many would also have made propitiations..pastors are good at ensuring this. Pay tithes if you want to move God's hand in your favor, they say. Sow a seed in order to reap, they say. A loving parent will do anything to ensure the safety of a child not in his/her immediate vicinity.

Then came the kidnap...if the reports are anything to go by, it was successful. These girls were carted away effortlessly...no opposition from anyone...human or celestial. This makes a reasonable person wonder. Where was God in all this?

To the believer, God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. They even go as far as referring to this God as omnibenevolent....the phrase "God is good all the time" emphasizes this. Now, I want to put these qualities to the test.

Omnipresent: if God is omnipresent, it means He must be everywhere at every point in time. According to Christianity, He is a spirit and is present everywhere. This is why many believers remain confident that He is able to protect them at all times and in all situations..although this comes with a clause. They must have faith!

Omniscient : omniscience means to know everything. I don't know any human that has that quality but we can analogize with an author of a poem who knows every word in his poetry. To the believers, God knows what will happen before it happens because He has planned everything ahead of time. This is why I wonder why people pray at all!

Omnipotent: this is one I think many say without really knowing what they mean. God is omnipotent. The dictionary meaning of omnipotence is almighty or infinite in power or having very great or unlimited authority or power. Unlimited power gives whoever owns it the ability to do ANYTHING. Nothing will ever be too big or small.

Omnibenevolent: The least used one by many but still part of God's attributes. It means God is all good, all kind and all fair! This is the most confused attribute of them all.

Let us now examine the situation...circa 300 girls have been reported kidnapped by armed human beings..mere mortals who aren't omnipotent. With no opposition, they easily carted the poor girls away some of whom have been labeled as Muslims and Christians. This labeling shows that God should know that they are His children, Allah as well (they aren't the same Gods). My question is this: why will a God(s) with the attributes given above allow such an act to occur and do nothing?
If He is omniscient, He must have seen this coming. If He is omnipresent, He must have been there watching what happened. He must be seeing whatever those girls are being put through by their abductors. If He is truly omnipotent, then stopping them would have been a piece of cake for him. I mean, aren't we talking about the creator of the universe here? If He is truly omnibenevolent, then He wouldn't have planned such a thing or allowed it happen in anyway.

One thing is sure in all this....these prayers aren't working!!!

How do religious people reconcile this? Victim blaming...either self indulged or finger pointed. Sometimes,the excuses are just downright ridiculous.
I've heard many people say the kidnapped girls were probably suffering the consequences of their sins, those of their parents or some generational curse passed down the DNA ladder. This goes against the claim of omnibenevolence. Some have said God is watching over them as they are in the hands of their captors...I wonder whether this omnipresent God enjoys seeing people suffer. He must have been there when boko haram slaughtered the young boys at that boarding house sometime ago too. This also goes against his omnibenevolence well as His omnipotent attributes.
Some people have said the kidnap isn't enough for God to make a move by Himself. To them, it is merely a kidnap, why should God waste His awesome powers over something as trivial and puerile as kidnapping of 300 girls. At that point I wonder, why do people pray at all when they know God won't act...or is it that He isn't claimed to act when things are obviously very bad.

By praying to God to bring back the girls, those indulging in it are either self validating, self comforting or victim blaming by inferring that those girls and their loved ones aren't worthy enough to have their personal prayers answered readily.

It has been 32 days since the kidnap and the girls are yet to be found. At this point, I drop my keyboard stating categorically that PRAYERS DON'T WORK AND THIS SITUATION MAKES IT OBVIOUS.

Chibuebem: God did not create suffering, everythin God created on earth was good. Its mans sin that brought suffering, sickness and death to this world, and jesus is the saviour of this world.

Chibuebem: God did not create suffering, everythin God created on earth was good. Its mans sin that brought suffering, sickness and death to this world, and jesus is the saviour of this world.

Chibuebem: God did not create suffering, everythin God created on earth was good. Its mans sin that brought suffering, sickness and death to this world, and jesus is the saviour of this world.

Check your bible!

Lagos Humanists and Skeptics invite the General Public to its Inaugural Forum

Date: Sunday April 28 2013

Venue: Department of Philosophy Postgraduate Room, University of Lagos

Time: 12.00 pm

Theme: Embracing Skepticism and Fighting Superstition in Lagos

Speakers: Douglas Anele Ph.D, University of Lagos

Jide Akeredolu M.D, Lagos

Leo Igwe, Research Fellow, James Randi Educational Foundation, USA


All curious, freethinking and critically minded friends, students, teachers etc are enjoined to attend

R S V P

Ike Email <ik_okey@yahoo.com> Tel 08065961800, Bamidele Email deleneye@gmail.com Tel. 08188710293

They seem to forget that part. Many of us had been worshipping god because we were indoctrinated from childhood. Took a lot to grow out of it.

Logicboy03: lol.....same as I have been saying all along. The op (Davidylan) and his pals know that their religion is false. All they are left with is to make false accusations against unbeliever and repeat the same questions after proven wrong.


Atheist; The case of other religious countries having endemic atheist discrimination- why would Naija be an exception when it is even more religious?

David and plas; blabla....lalalalal.....it is not Nigeria....no evidence!

Atheist; Leo Igwe attacked by christians in Nigeria?


David and co; We believe Anony's lies that he wasnt attacked for being an atheist. It is not atheist discrimination. (There are other christians against witch beating that didnt get targeted)

That's what their gods asked them todo, silly repressed bigots

As per the usefulness of atheists, some of the best pple on earth are atheist, atheists don't kill because they heard a voice or feel a need to defend thier god.

Your ignorance is not as astonishing as ur denial. Just showed u directives given in ur holy books. Isn't that where u got ur toy, god, from? Aren't u meant to follow it to the letter? Here it is again, in case u missed it

Those were links to my tweets

Ihedinobi: Ok. Why is it so hard to show this "known fact"?

What known fact

See what ur religion teaches you to shoes non believers

This should help.

Really sums up u god. Don fight guys. Choose on of them

mazaje: Nope there is a god and his name is Allah. . .

Ihedinobi: All irreligious peopke should take this summa whichever way they like: there is a God and His Name is Jesus Christ.