alpontif: Hello Maazi HardMirror.
Very excellent decision you have made, if only God did not truly exist. Now I am not going to start quoting scripture for you, I hate doing that shit, it destroys objective reasoning. I am only going to tell you a bit of my own experience too.
I was born into a Muslim Family. I didnt finish secondary school before starting to doubt Islam, by my second year in the University, I had left Islam for good. It just did not make any sense to me.
Now, I dont just take decisions, I take informed decisions. I was a scholar then, I had covered both the Sunni and Shia sects of Islamic Knowledge and Jurispudence, I even studied the Intricacies of Sufism for a while, Could read the quran in my sleep, studied all the accepted hadiths, read the riyadul soliheen, bulugl malram, fiqhu sunnah and other classical Islamic texts...etc.
What I discovered was that it was a whole bunch of nonsense, the Ifa Corpus, if written down, makes more sense than the whole field of Islamic knowledge and Injunctions.
So what did I do?
I left Islam. for What?
For no Religion.
All this time that I was a Muslim, I also studied the bible, I not only studied the Bible, I studied the history of the present Bible we have, which most people dont know is a collection edited from collections of other Christian texts by the Catholic church. I have been studying the bible from my primary school days, back then, I always had the highest scores in CRK, in the whole school. It was my best subject, I saw it as a collection of very interesting stories , nothing more.
I understand all the idiosyncrasies of the Bible, the Contradictions, The differences between the Old testament Jehovah and the New Testament Jehovah, the Blood Filled pages of the bible, the genocides, the patricides, the massacres...etc.
It got to a stage that there is nothing any pastor can tell me in the bible that I cannot counter. I used to have a lot of fun atthe expense of Jehovah's witnesess, who I will deliberate lure into Biblical Arguments I know they cannot win logically.
An Example, If God is omniscient, and omnimerciful, That means he know Adm will eat the apple before he even created him, if he knew he will eat the apple, that means it was all part of his plan, if it was part of his plan, that means it was unfair to punish Adam for eating the apple, can we now say he is unfair, if he is unfair, that means he is not a merciful God, If you insist he his a merciful God, that means, he doesnt know Adam will eat the apple, if he doesnt know, then that means he is not ominiscient, if he is not omniscient, that means he is not God, which means he also has a creator blah blah.....
I tell you, the kind of logical fallacies I show to preaching pastors from the Bible was so much that I started pitying them whenever they make the mistake of trying to preach at me.
So you see, I was very deep in Logic and Philosophy. Objective reasoning was my thing, and i also have a pet peeve with the arrogance of chrisian preachers who do not even know anything about my ''religion'' before concluding that it is wrong. To preach to someone, you have to understand that person's point of view, you need to have an open mind, you need to know that you do not neccessarily have all the answers.
Also, some christians were so idiotic that they were actually very militant about Christianity. these are the ones you will see going indide mosques to preach to muslims, you will see them go to shrines to destroy Idols, they just go up and down exhibiting their ignorance for all the world to see.
At the same time as I was doing a ll this, I was also exploring the Ifa corpus, reading up, asking questions( that is a story for another day) I studied the intricacies of Yoruba mystical knowledge, I could tell you the differences between, aasan, ofo, ogede, ayajo etc. This esoteric forms of knowledge is steeped in serious mystery and very very deep.
I have always been a fan of knowledge, any knowledge, I listen to every form and kind of music, from Yoruba apala, to Igbo ohafia war dance chants to classical music. I watch all sorts of things, and I consume every piece of knowledge I come across. This has given me the ability to be open minded, and objective. I could read something, analyse something, understand the reasoning behind something, even consider something , without accepting it.
I read all the great philosophers, from plato to betrand russel, to kant to thomas paine, etc. I always read things from two points of view, the protagonist and the antagonist.
So , in a way, you can say I was worldly wise.
I have also studied the bhagavad gita, the Tao, the analects of confucius, the egyptian book of the dead, several books of the apocryphal bible collections, and other books too esoteric to mention.
So, listen carefully to what I am going to write next.
I am not going to commit the fallacy of appealing to my ''superior'' knowledge to make you change your view.
Nor will I even attempt to convince you on the ''error'' of your way. The only thing I will ask for from you is that you have an open mind.
See,
Nobody can prove God exists. its just impossible.
But it is also impossible to prove God doesnt exist.
Inspite of all my explorations, I have stumbled on one simple fact, and that fact is that God exists. I do not claim to understand the ways of this God, nor do I claim to know the character of this entity.
How did I happen upon this fact?
I reasoned. Objectively.
If I cannot prove something doesnt exist, that means it will be fallacious of me to say It doesnt exist, the best thing I could be is be agnostic. Atheism is pure ignorance, because the way it cannot be proved that God exists, is also the way it cannot be conclusivelly proved that he doesnt exist.
I have not seen any proof that anybody besides me dream. but does this mean that people do not dream?
At the end of the day, logically speaking, the best thing anyone can be is be agnostic, it is logically fallacious to be atheistic.
So what am I then, a Christian?, an Agnostic?,
To know God, is a personal journey of self discovery for everyone. there are many ways to the market, and while i do not accept most christian doctrines, I have come to accept christ Jesus as my lord and saviour.
Logic did not lead to accepting Jesus, in a million years, that will have been impossible for me. But there are spiritual things that are beyond the realm of logic, and based on the Spiritual reality of what I have seen, I know God exists, and I know Jesus is real. very real.
Yet, I do not believe God will throw people in hell, forever, he is not a wicked God, he is not built in the image of vendetta seeking humans, nor do I believe that Only Christians will enter paradise, God is not petty.
God will help you, and show you the way to him, be it via atheism, Christianity, or any other way he deems fit.
Just have an Open mind.
Thank you. Love you bro. Nice one. |