₦airaland Forum

Tell him what you tell yourself, and ask him to take your answer on faith.

In the scheme of creation, it is hard to find where angels fit in.

Most of us consider man to be the peak of God's creation. However, there are beings known as angels. These beings are more powerful than man, and they have free will. They may or may not have been created after man. However, since these beings exist, what exactly was the point of creating or sustaining mankind? There is, after all, nothing that we can do better than an angel.

Their existence can be justified if we are to them what animals are to us. This would explain why fallen angels haunt us for sport, just as some of us hunt animals for sport. Did you notice that hell is basically a giant grill for humans? Lol

That aside, why are there angels? Between us and them, one is unnecessary.

So God is sending an earthquake to one of the most religious nations on earth and in order to avert the threat we are to become more religious. Did he also show you what he will do to the less religious nations?

And if he does not kill some of the unbelievers with this earthquake, he will not be able to kill all the unbelievers on judgment day.

Omni corner corner God.

I guess no muslim has died of EVD so we can give thanks to Allah for his protection.

And note that you are now the one saying something about EVD and religion. What irony.

mazaje: Thank you brother, the universe is not a human society and I wonder why he expects the universe as a whole to operate as a human society. . .

Me too oo

MrAnony1: To say that something is evidence of another doesn't necessarily amount to it being "the only explanation", however it means that it is the best explanation. What do I mean by this?

Here is what I mean; take for instance that i saw dog footprints on the sand. The footprints are evidence for the presence of a dog. This is the most rational explanation. A person may want to argue otherwise - he may might say for instance that it is a result of wind blowing the sand and by chance the grains of sand ended up arranged as dog footprints - but he will then have to bear a much greater burden of proof.

The same applies when we observe a specific complex yet intelligible functioning order such as is found in a piece of machinery or written language or the functioning of the universe, the most rationally consistent explanation is that it is a design. To argue that it is otherwise means that you will bear a greater burden of proof

You are welcome to put forward other possible explanations for specific and intelligible functioning order apart from design and why these explanations deserve more merit.

Only explanation, best explanation, same difference. You called it evidence because you wanted to pass across how compelling you think it is.

If I also see dog footprints, I'll agree that there is a dog around. But we haven't decided yet what kind of footprints we're looking at in the universe. You are jumping the gun with this analogy. (You even chose to use 'dog' which is simply 'god' in reverse) :-)

By "complex specified yet intelligible functioning order" I hope you mean the same order that we say exists in the universe and not some made up idea like the one Dembski used in his book on specified complexity. If that is the one you are referring to, saying it is designed involves making more assumptions than leaving it to chance. A series of events does not require a designer.

It is not sufficient to explain design with more design. Unless your target in the first place was an insufficient explanation.

Not quite. Please try to understand the analogy. "Light" refers to order, "sight" refers to consciousness, "blindness"(lack of sight) refers to a lack of consciousness.
I don't think I got you wrong at all. You are of the opinion that it is our consciousness that makes sense of a series of events therefore imposes order upon it. I am saying that you are wrong, and that the true case is that your consciousness observes the order in a series of events and that this order exists independently from your consciousness.

This can be demonstrated by how your mind can tell the difference between an orderly series of events and a disorderly one. In fact your mind can understand things on a scale of less to more orderly/chaotic. If your consciousness was imposing this order, then you wouldn't be able to tell that anything was more chaotic than another because your consciousness would make all things orderly. Since we know of things that are more disorderly than others, then we must hold that your consciousness is observing order and not imposing it.

You are always welcome to disagree with the above by either denying that you observe things that are more chaotic/ordered than others or you can explain why your consciousness is so discriminatory such that it imposes more order on some things and less on others.

Bear in mind that for you to even be conscious, certain constituent parts need to work according to a very specific functioning order. If as you hold, consciousness makes order, then you will need to explain why the order that functions for your consciousness to work works independent from your consciousness.
If you argue that it is merely "a series of events", then you will need to explain how this series of events is any different from a "specific functioning order" since they both seem to work in exactly the same way and achieve exactly the same result i.e. your consciousness. If you fail to explain this, then we must take your "series of events" to be nothing more than a synonym for what I refer to as "order" and hence your argument will become nullified

The fact that humans have the ability to identify chaos shows that it is not true that humans will find any world they happen to be in orderly. Secondly, for humans to even exist at all let alone be conscious of the world around them, there must be a specified functioning order existing prior to the human being that makes it possible for him to exist.
Now that said, your second statement where you hold the existence of any world depends on certain defining rules is not exactly true and is very misleading because it is possible to have an utterly chaotic world where events happen randomly. You might argue that the rule operating in such a world is that it must be chaotic and therefore it is orderly in that sense but this will be begging the question...and that's why I said that your statement is misleading.

I didn't that say our minds impose order on the world. That's a ridiculous thing to say. I said that the order exists only in our minds, and what actually exists is a series of events. Can you think of a world where there are no events or events that do not happen in series?

I already mentioned that chaos refers to unpredictability of outcome. As long as all outcomes must not be equally unpredictable, there is no reason why there should not be degrees of unpredictability, and therefore degrees of chaos.

Perhaps it is your specified functioning order that is a euphemism for series of events?

In a truly chaotic world, what was true one minute would be false the next, a minute would be as long as a second and then as long as a year, and the laws that keep the world in existence would deny themselves and disappear. Such a world cannot exist. When you say chaos, what you have in mind is unpredictability of outcomes, not the kind of world I described. Your world where events happen randomly is also one such world that cannot exist.

Again, you are mistaken here. The fact that things happen in turn does not necessarily equate to order. You can have a possible world of random numbers appearing at random intervals. It will be misleading to argue that such a world is not chaotic because the numbers don't all appear at once.

A world of random numbers appearing at random intervals is chaotic in the sense that given the fixed initial conditions (random number at random time) outcomes are unpredictable. We have such unpredictability in this world. I think you misunderstand what chaos is.

This is like saying that "there is no order in an automobile, no design, the interaction of it's constituent parts just happen and when we can predict their behaviour, we say they are ordered". If you don't hold the above statement to be true for a car, why would you deny the same conclusion for a universe which has a far more complex interaction of it's constituent parts?

The universe is not a car. We can see a car being designed. We know who the designers are. Have you seen the universe being designed? It is for this reason that it is easier to accept that a car is designed.

Point of correction, no argument for design assumes that the designer is necessarily a design. We know that we humans didn't come from nothing because we are temporal beings.

If the designer is not a design, then what is it and why can't we be that thing instead? (We refers to our world, not just human beings. We are discussing our world)

I think this is where you try to evade the point. The question before us is not "why anything?". The question before us is "does the universe have a designer?" Therefore "does nairaland have a designer?" is very analogous to it since in both questions we explore a design/designer relationship.
Note that the question is not "who designed nairaland?" nor is it "who designed the universe?" because both already assume that the nairaland and the universe are designed. Though I believe it to be true, I do not want to make that assumption, rather I want us to explore if the universe shows evidence of design by comparing it to other things that you believe show evidence of design.

"Does nairaland have a designer?" is not a philosophical question. Why do you expect the answer to it to be arrived at by the same method that we use to answer the question "is the universe designed?"

Anyway, we know nairaland has a designer because nairaland does not occur in nature. There.

The only other things that show evidence of design are man made objects, which are modeled after the universe in the sense that they are merely a manipulation and redirection of physical laws or natural forces. They cannot help but share similarities with the universe. I don't think they make a good basis of comparison with the universe. That, in effect, would be comparing the entire universe to a part of itself in an attempt to determine the nature of the universe.

macof: Well for one, that there's an unseen consciousness all around our world

At times I'm inclined to believe that.

Like when I wonder where the survival instinct of the first life forms (according to the evolutionary theory) came from. The mindless creatures could not possibly know the difference between life and death. Why prefer one over the other?

But then you realize that the ones that preferred to die, have died. This doesn't entirely explain the presence of the survival instinct, but its a start. And it does not require such an extraordinary explanation as a universal consciousness.

I would rather have ordinary explanations.

Kay17: For some people, they cannot bear to live without God, so are not ready at all to consider the existence of God. Their worlds would come crashing down. It is better to serve a carcass that fall into nihilism.

While for some of us, the nonexistence of God opens up a new chapter in our lives.

True. The way they get offended about the issue of God's existence suggests that they believe in God not for his sake, but for theirs. I wouldn't get that offended if somebody told me the sun does not exist.

Lol. That's a funny and serious question.

In christianity, drinking may or may not be a sin. The jury is still out on that. If it is a sin, the punishment for it is not death.

When we pray before eating or drinking, we usually pray that any poison put in the food or drink will not harm us. We expect the poison to be lethal.

If drinking is a sin, and the punishment is not death, then asking God to neutralize any lethal poison in your drink is a meritorious prayer that should be granted.

This is because refusing to save you from certain death as a result of a lethal poison put in your drink is the same as letting you die for drinking. Whereas the punishment for drinking is not death.

If God allowed every harm to come to us because we were sinful, all of us would be dead yesterday, despite all our prayers. Instead, we see God preserving us and granting our prayers. Even adulterers and homosexuals have their prayers granted.

I don't command God, but he should grant a prayer uttered before unknowingly consuming a lethal poison. It is in the realm of juju that protection is broken because you did this or that.

So don't shy away from that bottle.

(Not a christian, but I give legal advice. This is my interpretation of biblical laws)

Cheers.

macof: well to a degree as you.must have.realized that Various tales about "Gods" represent some truths in our reality

Possibly. What kinds of truths?

Right. These are the top 6 reasons christians will miss heaven:

1. Unrighteous.

2. Too righteous.

3. No GPS.

4. They read google maps metaphorically.

5. No heaven.

6. Heaven belongs to Allah.

But your bias is alarming sha.

Your topic says atheists were offended about prayer over an injured child

Now look at the letter the atheists are alleged to have written:

"An FFRF attorney fired off a letter to the superintendent of Seminole County Public Schools – accusing them of having an adult lead the prayer for the injured child.

A school district spokesman told me the injured child, who is the son of the team’s head coach, has since rejoined the team.

“It is our information and understanding that Seminole High School (is) allowing an adult, a local pastor, to act as a ‘volunteer chaplain’ for the football team,” FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel wrote.

The attorney said the school cannot “allow a non-school adult access to the children in its charge, and certainly cannot grant that access to a pastor seeking to organize prayer for the students.”

The FFRF told the school district to “refrain from having a ‘volunteer team chaplain’ at Seminole High School."

There is no mention of any injured child in it. Did this escape your attention? I don't think it did. I think you just hate atheists.

Atheists are not the ones who made prayer ineffective. No vex with them. If they don't want to hear you praying, you can just pray to God in your mind anyway. Its not like he needs to hear your voice before he answers.

mmsen: I don't know why you care about being liked by delusional people.

I'm merely asking people who dislike atheists to state their case clearly.

macof: I know wat I mean when I say God is just a concept.
An idea, you can say

Yeah I get you. Concept or idea, I doubt God is more than either.

mmsen: Why expend energy attempting to placate sheep?

Placate? Have I offended anybody or am I responsible for their happiness? Me I just de yarn o

hpk: something in me is patiently waiting on religionists to spit trash on this thread. blindly they shall argue!!!

Lol. I think they are in agreement with me on this one tho. Atheists are reviled.

macof: People usually misunderstand the concept of God.

That's the problem

I don't know if you can even misunderstand something like that. I mean, its a mirage in the first place. Its not an actual thing. I think that's one of the reasons why everybody has a different idea of it.

macof: Op, I enjoyed your words

I await more people to comment

Thanks man.

wittytezzy: That there is no God? So you are complaining of being deviled? But I tell you it is a disservice to common sense and to one's God to devile, for indeed you deserve to be hanged! Yes I mean it

People going after false gods does not take away the oneness of God from him & its not an excuse to "tasting" other forms of religion. You can draw wisdom from how students give wrong answers to questions. Does that amount to that there are several possible answers or no answer at all as you have chosen to believe?

It is purely a question of mental prudence, So deviling you as olodos too are deviled at failing exams is not so bad a move #I_tell_you

How many true Gods are there?

Did your God permit you to evangelize on behalf of other Gods? If not, what do you mean when you say I must believe in one God or the other?

By 'atheist' I'm referring to every person that does not affirm the existence of a creator.

It's a long post

It is no secret that atheists are reviled by majority of the world. The hatred directed at Richard Dawkins or the hate mail received by the church of the FSM are testimonies to this. Here on nairaland, any post or thread with atheistic leanings opens the poster to contempt, pity and even subtle or overt expressions of ill will. Personally, I've received soul shattering insults and treatment from people to whom I've shown my indifference towards a creator. Fortunately for me, there is no soul.

We are generally considered mad for not knowing God. Or diabolic. It is this 'knowing God' that set me thinking. It would be nice to know God.

Clearly, there is or isn't just one God, but apparently we all are expected to believe in one form of God or the other. It is alleged that all forms are the same God or not. Oh well. How does one know God in such a situation?

It occurred to me that, possibly:

1. There is one true God, who has revealed himself to every person on earth, but not in the same form.

2. There is one true God, who has revealed himself to a select group of people, and has left the others to the elements. The elements include demons.

3. There is no single true God.

In the first case, you could say that God does not place much emphasis on how he is perceived. He has appeared to everybody tho. So atheists actually perceive God, but they think it is chance they are seeing, and God does not mind. Just as he doesn't mind that some people think he is a cow, or a Jew. Why should humans mind? Knowing God is a given then and there is no reason to find atheists strange in this case.

In the second case, you could still say that he does not place much emphasis on how he is perceived, since he has refused to reveal himself to most of the world. So humans to whom God has not shown his true self believe in shadows of him, or they are misled by demons. Why should atheists not believe in shadows or be misled by demons? And why should humans mind that God does not place much emphasis on how he is perceived? Knowing God in this instance is only possible by direct revelation, and atheists are in the same class as people that did not receive the revelation of the one true God. Should they be singled out for revilement? No

In the third case, atheists alone are probably screwed. That is, after the Gods settle the squabble over who gets to roast the atheists. In this case, everybody is right to call us strange.

Since only the 3rd case explains why we are viewed as strange, I gave it the most credence and proceeded to remedy my situation based on it.

But how? Perhaps faith then. Faith in who? Someone suggested I have faith in Jesus, so I did that. Then another suggested I have faith in Allah, and I obliged. A short while later I had faith in Ekwensu. After a quick calculation I realized I had fewer days than Gods to have faith in. If I had a sufficient number of days, I might have faith in all the Gods in turn and start all over from scratch.

So I decided to leave faith alone and just worship the most frightful God. But that's just me. I don't know how other atheists manage.

Anyway, I thought the 3rd case would be enough justification for finding atheists strange, until I realised that most Gods do not approve of any other God, and that most religionists would rather have you worship another God than no God. So religionists approve of what their Gods do not approve, and then claim authority from their Gods.

Why are atheists reviled again?

MrAnony1: This is a good question but before I answer it, I must first clarify: Do you at least grant that specific and intelligible functioning order is evidence of design?

I agree that it could be interpreted as the work of a designer but I don't know that it is evidence for a designer. Calling it 'evidence' for a designer suggests that the only explanation for it is a designer, and that is not the case.

If the series of events continued to happen in the same way regardless of whether you are conscious of it or not, then I don't see how it's order depends on your consciousness.

If you must hold that order depends on what you can understand, then you must necessarily hold that things you don't understand (e.g. Mandarin Chinese, Latin, neurology, aeronautic engineering or any subject you don't understand) must necessarily be chaotic. This is an odd position to hold.

I'm afraid that you've really said nothing here. "If all were blind, sight would not exist", "if all were deaf, hearing will not exist" if all did not eat meat, eating meat won't exist" e.t.c. these sort of statements actually lead us to nowhere.

You're just not getting it. You said my position amounts to saying "if all men are blind, light does not exist". I clarified by saying "if all men are blind, light would exist, but not sight".

In your example, blind refers to consciousness, right? And light refers to order. This is wrong and that's why I clarified. Light refers to the series of events operating independently of any observer, and sight refers to the sense we make of the series, or in other words, order.

Any world that humans find themselves in is a world that they will find orderly. This is because for any world to exist at all, there are rules that it must follow. Once it follows rules, it becomes predictable.

What you call order, is something that cannot be done away with in any type of existing world. Things have to happen in turn, ie temporal order. There has to be cause and effect. (Or effect and cause). Any existing world must have these things. You cannot conceive of a world without such properties. Even God cannot do without temporal order. I think it is presumptuous to now turn around and say that it is because of God that we have what we call order.

There is no message in the universe. No design. These things just happen. When we can predict their behaviour, we say they are ordered.

How does knowing who designed the designer prove or disprove the designer in question? i.e: You believe that Seun is the creator of Nairaland.com. Did you need to know who designed Seun in order to come to this conclusion?

The question of "who designed the designer" is an irrelevant question employed to draw one away from the contested point into infinite regress. It is usually an indication that the person asking the question has no real intention of discussing the issue at hand.

The question who designed the designer has to be asked because the argument from design is based on the assumption that there can be no design without a designer. If this is true, then a designer must be designed itself, and we would like to know who did it, otherwise we would not have bothered asking in the first place how we got here. if the designer could come from nothing, then why not us?

Who designed nairaland is not a philosophical question. It is not in the same calibre as the question 'why anything?', for which the answer 'God did it' is insufficient.

dorox: You are so fixated on this scaling idea of good and evil that you fail to see that good and evil is only a measure of how our actions measure up to some standard. Good and evil does not exist objectively in isolation, they can only exist with respect to a standard, of which God is the originator standards.

Okay. I would have loved to know what determines the goodness of God, but never mind.

dorox: So you are in agreement that the politician is evil for building a bridge that can potentially take the lives of others. Would you not also agree that all the politician and the contractor needed to do in order not to be evil was to adhere to building standards?
If your answer is yes, can you now see that good and evil is a measure of how well a standard is met? So contrary to your initial claim, it is possible for everyone to be called good even if no one is bad.

You're still not getting it.

This your standard, imagine its a scale from 0 to 1. 0 represents good and 1 represents evil. If either half of this scale suddenly ceases to exist, this scale would no longer be able to measure good and evil anymore.

Now, imagine God before any other thing was created, when he was the only thing in existence. Evil is said not to have existed at this point. Good however existed. What scale was used to measure and arrive at the conclusion that God was good? It certainly can't be a scale that has values for evil, since there was no such thing as evil at that point. And if nothing is evil, what is good?

Only if good and evil existed objectively, uncreated by God, could God's goodness have been measured. Just as there are objectively good and bad bridges and we measure any bridge according to this objective standard. In such a case, good and evil are no more in God's control than they are in yours.

dorox: So how would you describe our politicians and contractors that build substandard roads and bridges that contributes to accidents and economic hardship of the people? Good, or evil? If i get you right, your positions is that it is just a bridge, so it doesn't matter.

What the politicians and contractors do is abhorrent but it is meaningless to speak of evil bridges. You would have to locate the blame elsewhere, possibly on the politicians and contractors.

dorox: You are yet to show why one cannot dertermine good from bad based on meeting a standard. In fact, good and bad would have no meaning if there is no standard to be met.

You didn't seem to understand me. What I mean is this; the goodness of God is not of his making so he cannot be the final authority on what is or is not good.

TheBigUrban2: MrAnony1 is a simple minded fellow.

He doesnt realise that "order" is a very anthropomorphic phenomena. Our brains are wired to see patterns, even where there are none.

That pattern seeking is also order. There is no order without a pattern.

What Anony fails to see is that for every orderly thing we see, there is an anti-orderly thing negating it.


For instance, the blue skies you see is a result of chaos. Many molecules in the atmosphere plus reflections of different spectrum of lights.

But no, Anony sees God's work in the sky, not knowing the schizophrenic bombardment of molecules and matter that occurs to give it that blue colour.

Is he? I don't know Mr. Anony.

But the argument from design remains an unconvincing argument for God. It is hard to see how God himself can exist without order. In such a state, one minute he will be omnipresent, and the next he is not.

Any theist should ask where the order that guarantees God's continued existence comes from, since he could not have created it.

MrAnony1: Yes but not necessarily in the same way that his creation is orderly.


I appreciate this argument but I think you are wrong. It is not because we identify how something works that makes it orderly, The said thing would have been orderly even before we understood it. For instance, the fact that I don't understand the order in which Chinese symbols are written doesn't make Chinese writings disorderly. My point is that order is independent of our understanding.

Now I agree with you that a conscious mind is required to perceive order but I must point out that this doesn't mean that order cannot exist outside the perception of a conscious mind.

Your argument is like saying that if all men were blind then light necessarily wouldn't exist. That's simply untrue.

Whatever form it takes, it is still orderliness. Why is God's own taken for granted?


Outside the perception of the conscious mind, what exists is merely a series of events.

Figuring out how this series operates leads us to say it is ordered. That it is ordered means we can predict it.

Without us, the series exists but it is merely a series of events.

And if all men were blind, light would exist, but sight would not exist.

You know, this is just another variant of the argument from design. You still have to ask who designed the designer.

macof: everybody must die. Death is not evil...infact lemme stop trying to think like a Christian and state the real fact here...

There simply is no such thing as evil in reality, it Is all in our heads, so we take one thing as evil and the other as "moral holiness"
Back some 300yrs ago in Calabar, twins were evil now they are not

I say ur god because anything u read in the Bible is the law of ur god
When ur god said you Must kill witches, I expect Christians to be a killing army against all witches of the world..

The same God said you should nt kill but he has instructed to kill witches...in other words KILLING is not the sin, rather KILLING WHAT GOD DIDN'T TELL YOU TO KILL

Nice one. Especially the last paragraph.

dorox: Basically, good is when we meet standard set by God and evil is failing to meet the standards

That's nice. But if God finds himself existing as a good God, he cannot turn around to determine what is or is not good.

Fitz22: I don't want to waste my time so I won't reply. It is well with u, Pele.

Okay, I understand. Cheers

dorox: My initial response was to challenge your assertion that one cannot know how to be good in the absence of evil, and I think I was able to make that point by showing that you can build a good bridge without first having to kill people in a bad bridge.
So if it is possible to do good on the basis objective alone, the premise upon which your argument stands is faulty.

I wasn't discussing knowledge, didn't mention it.

But even at that, can you know how to be good in the absence of evil? You know without 'evil', you cannot mean anything by 'good'.

Note that I'm using 'good' as the opposite of 'evil', before you come and start telling me about fitness for purpose. In that sense, can a bridge be evil? No, because it is meaningless to speak of evil bridges.

A bridge is just a bridge. Not evil, not good. If I am to understand God by the analogy given, then he is also neither good nor evil.