₦airaland Forum

m_nwankwo:
God is perfect. If you claim that I define perfection by my understanding, then define perfection as your god will define it. There was never a time when an eye for an eye is the law of God or survival of the fittest is the word of God or every man will kill for his on survival. I strongly dispute those claims and hold that that they do not come from God. Look at world events and you will see ample evidence where God was used to justify the most abhorrent evils. The crusades, the jihads, the inquisition etc were carried out because the pepatrators believed that it is the word of God to do so. Several doom day cults have murdered their fellow human beings because they believed God told them. Apartied was justfied by some people because they believed it is according to the word of God. Whenever a claim is made that something is the word of God, I will ask is it perfect, is it holy, is it just, is it love. Love, justice, perfection, omniscience, omnipotence etc are the attributes of God and that should form the correct appraisal for the right faith in God.

Is perfection and imperfection only an illusion? By the way, what is perfection? Can a perfect being give rise to imperfection?

m_nwankwo:
Thanks for the citations. I see your point but I do not agree with it. The premise of my argument is that God cannot commit evil since evil or sin negates the very nature of God. There is no justification for evil under any circumstance. That is my point.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE NATURE OF GOD? How do you come to know that he cannot commit evil? But Can he create evil?

m_nwankwo:
The belief that God can kill, maim, rape and commit all sorts of atrocities is complete nonsense. God is incapable of evil in all its raminifications. No exceptions can be made in this matter.

I take it, your god is not the god depicted in the old testament, is it?

I shall respond later. But I noticed you mentioned Billy Strayhorn and that got me all excited. Am a great fan of his work with Duke.

Grouppoint:
@Obalende,
Very good explanation you proferred. However, I pray that Huxley is willing to see with a spiritual eye.

@Huxley.
The old testament is a shadow of the New testament, and a shadow of things to come. You will need to understand that the killings in Jericho etc represents God's judgement to come.

So for those who believe that there is no hell fire or that God is too kind to allow billions of unbelievers in China to go to hell. Please look at the story of Noah's Ark, Jericho, etc. God did it before and he will not strive with man forever. He has now given examples from the past. He will do it again!!!. Please better safe than sorry.


So rather than analyse whether God is good or not, first accept that He is at least good enough to have warned us.

This is where you lost all notions of intelligibility. Are you suggesting that the event at Jericho and the Flood were real events that happened in the past? And that this is just a foreshadow for things to come? What if I tell you that there is no evidence for either of these events and that these are just mythological fables? What would that do to your theology?

Why is your god addicted to so much violence? Do you think he enjoys killing his own creatures?

Interesting videos


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJVyrpqzSQ8&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wOVIuIEyoU&feature=related

Enjoy

On the issue of measure of development, I think the HDI (Human Development Index) comes really close to measuring the quality of life and development in countries. Check it out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index.

The problem with Nigeria and most of Africa, is the credulous zealotry with respect to superstitions and archaic traditional mores.

Omoovie,

Thanks for your great effort. I shall follow up some of the people you cited.

In the community I grew up, there were such superstitions as;

- You should not clean the house at night
- That twins had psychic and telepathic powers
- That if you go on your knees and put your hand together, you could speak to someone called god.
- That you could eat the body and drink the blood of this god.

EXPONENT:
SLAVERY!!!!!

RECONSTRUCTION

JIM CROW

CIVIL RIGHTS,


Africans from all areas of African came to the US. and when they arrived they met other Africans (they never knew existed).

nigerian, mandika, angolans, sierra leonians, ghanians, liberians, cote de ivorians, camaroonians, Togians, Beninians, Congolease et. al.

They were a people with common bonds.

Skin color

and

Oppression.


They taught each other everything and help each other tremendously. THAT WAS THE LAST TIME AFRICANS got along, They turned into negroes, colored, blacks, African Americans,

They are still AFRICANS, who have been oppressed by the Whiteman.

Now they "appear" to be making strides and living the life, Thus, continential Africans seen this and now they want that life.


We all can get along , if you choose too. But seriouly, I think we will NEVER get along, because Continential Africans are fugged up in the head - and gullible, and live to sniff the white man's azz. [b][/b]

What do you think it would take for AA and continental Africans to get along?

No thought, ever community has it own social and internal problems. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the interface with other communities. It is at this interface that questions of identity begin to raise their heads. AA have had to deal with this for hundreds of years. In fact, with the new global village, ever community has had to deal with in. It is no doubt that some communities will find aspects of its culture reprehensible or superior viz-a-viz other cultures. Cultures learn from one another. Thats a basic human trait.

Are you suggesting that the AA community has got it social problems resolved? If not, why not? And how do you suggest the deal with such problems? Take for instance, the "racial" prejudice that exist amongst AA of light/dark skin colour. Why is this a problem and to what extend does this mentality impede the societal development of AA and Africans?

I am surprise at the tone of some of the critics of Hero. Hero raised a very good point and whilst most of his questions are transferable to most of Africa ( and Eastern Europe, South America, South Asia), Nigeria is the country under discussion at the moment. Evasion and denial are classic ploys of the refusal to deal with problems confronting one, and it is the case that most countries criticized for system corruption hide behind these ploys.

African countries have some of the lowest Human Development Indices (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index). At the current rate of development, it is estimated that most of Sub-Saharan countries will half their level of poverty in about 160 years. This is deplorable and Africans must make active efforts at improving their rate of development.

I was also horrified at the "racial and ethnic" hostilities to Hero. This is another diversionary tactic which yields no real answers to the questions at hand. Hero may be AA, but amongst Nigerian, ethnic tensions contribute significantly to the poor governance of the country. In fact, the fact that the so-called "enlightened" Africans could go so far as to calling names to Hero is testament to problems we have still got to overcome.

Debates about the nature of JC is not new. The first 300 years of Christian belief saw the following christian factions:

Marcionism - Christ was purely a spiritual entity
Nestorianism - Jesus and Christ were two different entities
Docetism - Jesus appeared physical, but he was really incorporeal
Apollinariam - Jesus had a human body and human soul, but a divine mind
Arianism - Jesus was the son of God, not God himself
Catholicism - Jesus was both God and the son of God


What accounts for this wide variety of belief about the nature of JC bearly 300 years after he is supposed to have lived?

In the same way that the Catholic faction won the victory over the nature of JC, if the faction that believed JC to be black were to win the ideological battle, we would see a black christology developing.

Belief in god (in fact, belief in anything) can be induced by the power of suggestion, otherwise known as hypnosis. Follow the story in these videos;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I

Enjoy

Watch these videos to see how this effects could be reproduced by any trained hypnotist;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sq-YUdq1OI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DylNVUN_3I

Enjoy

Consider the creation narrative, in which god creates Adam and for several days allows Adam to look for a mate amongst the animals;

Genesis 2:

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.


Was Adam really made to look for a helper from amongst the animals? Was there any chance of him finding a mate amongst the animals. Was the creation of woman, Eve, an afterthought, a change of mind?


BTW, how long would it have taken Adam to name all the beasts of the earth? 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, 10 years?

What does the expression "to change one's mind"? Is a change of mind typically followed by one or more of the following emotional states;

1) Regret
2) Elation
3) Disappointment
4) Enthusiasm

Consider the creation narrative, in which god creates Adam and for several days allows Adam to look for a mate amongst the animals;

Genesis 2:

18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Was Adam really made to look for a helper from amongst the animals? Was there any chance of him finding a mate amongst the animals. Was the creation of woman, Eve, an afterthought, a change of mind?

In fact, can god be said to have a mind? If so, where is it housed?

How should one pray and worship?

Matthew 6: 1-6

"Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. , And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites; they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you."

Should you really be telly us this?


Matthew 6: 1-6

"Be careful not to parade your uprightness in public to attract attention; otherwise you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. , And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites; they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you."

Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
by New York Times


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Tablet Ignites Debate on Messiah and Resurrection
By ETHAN BRONNER

A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

Daniel Boyarin, a professor of Talmudic culture at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the stone was part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that Jesus could be best understood through a close reading of the Jewish history of his day.

"Some Christians will find it shocking — a challenge to the uniqueness of their theology — while others will be comforted by the idea of it being a traditional part of Judaism," Mr. Boyarin said.

Given the highly charged atmosphere surrounding all Jesus-era artifacts and writings, both in the general public and in the fractured and fiercely competitive scholarly community, as well as the concern over forgery and charlatanism, it will probably be some time before the tablet's contribution is fully assessed. It has been around 60 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were uncovered, and they continue to generate enormous controversy regarding their authors and meaning.

The scrolls, documents found in the Qumran caves of the West Bank, contain some of the only known surviving copies of biblical writings from before the first century A.D. In addition to quoting from key books of the Bible, the scrolls describe a variety of practices and beliefs of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus.

How representative the descriptions are and what they tell us about the era are still strongly debated. For example, a question that arises is whether the authors of the scrolls were members of a monastic sect or in fact mainstream. A conference marking 60 years since the discovery of the scrolls will begin on Sunday at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the stone, and the debate over whether it speaks of a resurrected messiah, as one iconoclastic scholar believes, also will be discussed.

Oddly, the stone is not really a new discovery. It was found about a decade ago and bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector who kept it in his Zurich home. When an Israeli scholar examined it closely a few years ago and wrote a paper on it last year, interest began to rise. There is now a spate of scholarly articles on the stone, with several due to be published in the coming months.

"I couldn't make much out of it when I got it," said David Jeselsohn, the owner, who is himself an expert in antiquities. "I didn't realize how significant it was until I showed it to Ada Yardeni, who specializes in Hebrew writing, a few years ago. She was overwhelmed. 'You have got a Dead Sea Scroll on stone,' she told me."

Much of the text, a vision of the apocalypse transmitted by the angel Gabriel, draws on the Old Testament, especially the prophets Daniel, Zechariah and Haggai.

Ms. Yardeni, who analyzed the stone along with Binyamin Elitzur, is an expert on Hebrew script, especially of the era of King Herod, who died in 4 B.C. The two of them published a long analysis of the stone more than a year ago in Cathedra, a Hebrew-language quarterly devoted to the history and archaeology of Israel, and said that, based on the shape of the script and the language, the text dated from the late first century B.C.

A chemical examination by Yuval Goren, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University who specializes in the verification of ancient artifacts, has been submitted to a peer-review journal. He declined to give details of his analysis until publication, but he said that he knew of no reason to doubt the stone's authenticity.

It was in Cathedra that Israel Knohl, an iconoclastic professor of Bible studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, first heard of the stone, which Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur dubbed "Gabriel's Revelation," also the title of their article. Mr. Knohl posited in a book published in 2000 the idea of a suffering messiah before Jesus, using a variety of rabbinic and early apocalyptic literature as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his theory did not shake the world of Christology as he had hoped, partly because he had no textual evidence from before Jesus.

When he read "Gabriel's Revelation," he said, he believed he saw what he needed to solidify his thesis, and he has published his argument in the latest issue of The Journal of Religion.

Mr. Knohl is part of a larger scholarly movement that focuses on the political atmosphere in Jesus' day as an important explanation of that era's messianic spirit. As he notes, after the death of Herod, Jewish rebels sought to throw off the yoke of the Rome-supported monarchy, so the rise of a major Jewish independence fighter could take on messianic overtones.

In Mr. Knohl's interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone's passages were probably Simon's followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — "In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice" — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words "L'shloshet yamin," meaning "in three days." The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is "hayeh," or "live" in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, "In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you."

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says "Sar hasarin," or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of "a prince of princes," Mr. Knohl contends that the stone's writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

"This should shake our basic view of Christianity," he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. "Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story."

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was "hayeh," or "live." Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl's thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. "There is one problem," he said. "In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl's tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words."

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, "Gabriel's Revelation" and Mr. Knohl's analysis deserved serious attention. "Here we have a real stone with a real text," he said. "This is truly significant."

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and "Gabriel's Revelation" shows it.

"His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come," Mr. Knohl said. "This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel."

RedHotChic:
Are you suggesting that Jesus Christ committed suicide?

Euthanasia is not suicide.

Who creates evil? Well, here are your answers from the bible:

* I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7, KJV)

* Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? (Amos 3:6, KJV)

* Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? (Lamentations 3:38)


So, now you know!

I wonder who creates all this evil:

* I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7, KJV)

* Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? (Amos 3:6, KJV)

* Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? (Lamentations 3:38)

Let me try and invent a new commandment. "Thou shalt NOT enslave your fellow man"

Is there such a commandment in the bible?

Is you church compassionate, or are the elders of the church only concerned with recruiting more tithes-paying members , hassling other people to join your church, etc?

Jesus is the Greek rendition of the Jewish name of Joshua. So in a way you could say that Jesus was named after the brutal and sadistic murderer, Joshua, of the old Testament.

Why is this important in anyway? Would you re-organise your life based on the bible's (or K-ran's) stipulation on matters of diet?

Did Jesus ever exist? Watch this debate!

http://www.atheistdebate.org/

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

Enjoy

Well, check for yourself here;

http://www.youtube.com/user/klomckin
http://members.aol.com/ckbloomfld/

Enjoy

Anybody attends a church like Peter's? Do you have a Peter acting as your Pastor?

Sisikill:
@ Huxley,
It's probably too late now seeing as I've already done it but I'd like to know if there are any copyright issues we should be aware of.

The quick and honest answer is "I don't know". That is why I also always provide a link to articles I post (or use) so that there could be no misconstrual as to the authorship of the article.

davidylan:
is huxley sure such a video exists? I have tried in vain to search for any reference to it and come up with zero so far. We shld be careful with running away with rumors.

Seriously. This video once existed on YouTube but has been censored. I too have been searching for it for a while now but have come up blank.

I have send a mail to Ali G's contact requesting either a copy or a write-up of the incident. I shall share with you what I get back from Ali G, if I get anything back.