15 Dec 2018

Re: We won’t bother if after death we discover God exists—Atheists

by Jonathan Ekene  Ifeanyi
Atheist teen girl holding a banner
We won’t bother if after death we discover God exists—Atheists, was the title of an interview published by Punch newspaper on September 16, 2018. I saw the headline on the day it was published but didn’t have the time to read the entire interview until days later. When I eventually did, I was able to recognise someone I know among the “Nigerian atheists” who were interviewed by Punch—and that was their very master himself, Mr Leo Igwe. (Their pictures were featured in the newspaper). I wrote this response then but later forgot about publishing it! I just remembered it yesterday (December 15)!

Leo Igwe is the Chairman of Humanists Association of Nigeria. He is now a Doctor (PhD), and a “scholar of religion”. I met Igwe for the first time at the University of Ibadan sometime in 2010 during one of their conferences which was held at the Large Lecture Theatre of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan. I had heard of the lecture on the very day it was held and indeed hurried eagerly to attend because I had some serious questions to ask the atheists. But by the time I got to the venue the programme was already about to end and, apart from that, I was totally disappointed by the time I heard the speakers. Put simply, there was nothing like any philosophical discussion there; rather, Igwe and his colleagues were just talking about sex—just about freedom to have sex since there is no God to impose punishment, and things like that—so I totally got disappointed but kept calm until they rounded up. I later met Igwe personally after the programme but felt no need of questioning him. We even took a group picture after the programme!  

In his current interview with The Punch, Igwe vomited similar trashes I heard him vomiting on that day at the university in 2010, the only difference being that he didn't talk about freedom to have sex this time around. In fact, in this article I won’t be countering Igwe except on one point. I tried making sense of all he said but could only extract two paragraphs. Here, only one of his colleagues seems to deserve our attention. The Punch reporters Gbenga Adeniji and Williams Babalola interviewed four of the Nigerian atheists—Alfred Ayodele, Isaiah Akorita, Daniel Nnaji and Leo Igwe. Among the four, only Ayodele captured my attention. Let’s hear from him then.
On why he does not believe in God, Ayodele said:

“Although I was a born-again Christian in the Assemblies of God, a time came that I questioned some of the beliefs in Christianity. For example, when I prayed to God and I didn’t receive answers, my pastor would tell me to exercise patience that God would answer my prayers when it was the right time. At the time, I discovered that given enough time, most of the things I didn’t pray for but wished and worked for came to pass. Then I questioned what was the difference between a God that does not exist, and that who ‘answers’ prayer at the right time when in reality you could get whatever you need if you work hard and are given enough time irrespective of whether or not you pray. That meant logically that I could still get what I wanted irrespective of my praying to God, believing or not believing in Him. So, gradually, I started questioning everything.”

My response: Ayodele is here manifesting his profound ignorance of the very ways of God. He simply doesn’t know the reason why man ought to pray to God. For him, we—our massive sins notwithstanding—ought to pray to God only if God will be ready to solve our problems. But the Bible flatly counters him. We see Christ’s teaching on how a Christian should live in this world in the Gospel according to St Matthew:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? ...Therefore, do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble”. (6: 25; 31-34).

When Ayodele was in the Assemblies of God did he seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness? The answer is evidently NO. In fact, even if he had sought it, he simply wouldn’t have found it there because he was worshipping in a wrong place. So, as we can see, the fault was both his and the false place of worship where he belonged. Pentecostal “churches” like the Assemblies of God delude their followers with the doctrine of “prosperity gospel”, which teaches that once any Christian accepts Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour all his problems vanish. This is simply erroneous. The Bible, in fact, says quite the opposite, namely that to accept Christ as Lord and Saviour is not to have all your problems solved but in fact to face problems in this world, to face persecution—TO SUFFER.  As Our Lord puts it:

“Whoever wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels”. (Mark 8:31-38).

Again we read, in St Luke’s Gospel:

“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his father and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brother, and his sister, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Anyone who cannot carry his cross and follow Me, cannot be my disciple”. (Luke 14: 26-27).

Christianity of riches? When a certain rich man came to Jesus asking what he should do to inherit eternal life, Jesus did not waste time telling him to sell all he had, become poor, and follow him. And the man, as the Bible puts it, “became very sorrowful, for he was very rich”. Then Christ warned his disciples:  

“How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”. (Mark 18:18-25).

I have often warned my friends that anyone who wishes to hear the true teaching of the Bible—like the verses I’ve just quoted—MUST come to the Catholic Church which remains the only Church established here on earth by Jesus Christ. But in today’s Nigeria sounding such a warning—especially to the Yorubas whose idea of “Christianity” is not only radical Protestantism/Pentecostalism but also their own invented, indigenous, “Christianity”—sounds crazy. As I have already pointed out, Ayodele’s “Assemblies of God” is simply not Christianity.

The cross, which the Lord talks about in the above passage, is a symbol of our redemption—a redemption which comes through suffering, a suffering which the Master Himself first endured. The way of this cross, Jesus tells us, is the very way that leads to eternal life. In fact, from the biblical point of view, anyone who claims to have accepted the Christian Faith, while rejecting this cross, cannot be saved. Thus when Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that He would suffer many things, Jesus did not waste time to call him Satan. (C.f. Mark 8:33).

When Ayodele was praying for God’s blessings—as his criminal pastors taught him to do—but wasn’t getting any positive answer, it wasn't because God wasn’t seeing him, no. It was rather because he was praying wrongly and God simply doesn’t answer such a prayer. God was taking him to this narrow path of suffering—which indeed every true Christian must pass through—but Ayodele was busy following his criminal pastors with their promise of earthly paradise—“pastors” whose God, according to St. Paul, “is their belly”! As St Paul puts it—speaking about these fake pastors even in the first century:

“Be ye followers of me, brethren, and observe them who walk so as you have our model. For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping), that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things. But our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3: 17-20).

In other words, true Christians must always look up to heaven, where “our conversation is…”, says St Paul. They must have nothing to do with the enemies of the cross of Christ, (like today’s fake pastors) “whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame…” (See my internet article:  NIGERIAN “PASTORS” AND THEIR PROSPERITY “GOSPEL” where I treated this issue in detail).
                                                                                                  
Again, Ayodele added, according to The Punch, that in the past, before the advent of social media, people thought perhaps he was mentally challenged for saying there was no God. He said:

“They often supported themselves with Psalm 14:1. However, my immediate family joked about it saying, “It is because of too much science knowledge.” But that is all different now because many Africans learnt through social media that there is something called atheism. Most people that discovered that I am an atheist always want to ask me more questions and they often get bewildered to discover that atheists are many in Nigeria.

“There is nothing like ‘convince’ because atheism is not like religion where you preach. You don’t convince someone. You only show people how to reason and question things. There is no dogma, creed or rule. And again, you have to understand that atheism is not a belief. It is a lack of belief in any deity. If you don’t play any sport, nobody will describe your lack of sport as a sport in itself! My two siblings are now atheists too because they found out themselves that religion has no true answers to life’s questions.

“Even though I am an atheist, I show understanding when talking to believers about the non-existence of God. Since I was once a believer like them, I truly understand how they feel. Religion has a very strong effect on its followers especially in this part of the world where science knowledge is very low among the population, and people link astronomical and other physical events to the existence of a deity. Most times I ask my believer-friends that we debate our points so that we could both learn from one another.”

Before I respond, let me quickly include here Igwe’s comments I earlier referred to. Igwe, the very boss of all Nigerian atheists, said:

“In fact, it is utterly disingenuous to think that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent being could be proven. Who does that and how? Who does that and from where? How does a finite being demonstrate the existence of an infinite all-encompassing being distinct from and in itself? I don’t know how the religious minds came about such idea that the existence of God, the totality of beings, could be proven. It is a clear demonstration of poverty in thinking and reasoning.
                      
“All arguments to demonstrate the existence of god are exercises in futility and a reductio ad absurdum of the God idea. There is no power outside the omnipotent, no knowledge besides the all-knowing, no place outside the omnipresent, no being outside the totality of being. So God’s existence is fundamentally disproven. It does not need an atheist to declare this. God is an imaginary idea, the creation of the human mind. The God of religion is inexistable; that is why God is designated as invisible, unknowable and inscrutable. These are labels to give it a semblance of existence.”

My response: Igwe’s argument above—about a finite being proving the existence of an infinite being—sounds like one of my old articles totally twisted! Here is what I wrote, in my 2009 article  RELIGION: AN OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE? An Enquiry (published in Students' Voice magazine):

“God is the primary object of every religion. Put simply, He is outside human language and knowledge. In other words, man, being a finite being, can never fully know God as He completely is since He is an Infinite Being. Or how can a finite know the very nature of the Infinite? To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature since God is man’s happiness. For man naturally desires happiness and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him.” Hey Mr Igwe! I will be right back.
Igwe
Now back to you Mr Ayodele. Not to believe in God is because of “too much science”? No! Quite the opposite—just lack of basic scientific knowledge! Before the intellect rises to the formation of scientific or philosophic judgments it has certain natural, spontaneous insights into the nature of man and the structure of reality, a kind of reflection of the native evidence of things in the mirror of the intellect. Among these insights is the knowledge of the existence of a Supreme Being upon whom the world is dependent. But the problem arises when the intellect is clouded by prejudice or a false teaching—which unfortunately is what we usually see in all the atheists.  

Ayodele says people thought he was mentally challenged simply because he doesn’t believe in God. Yet, in his poverty of thought, he doesn't know why they think so. Of course, people think so because—as St. Augustine would put it—the whole world is simply convinced that God exists—which is just a fact. As St. Thomas Aquinas puts it, “There is a certain general and confused knowledge of God in all men. ...because by his natural reason man is able at once to arrive at some knowledge of God”. The findings of modern anthropology confirm this observation. No matter how remote in time or how primitive in culture, it is just impossible to find a tribe or a nation which has not believed in the existence of some kind of a god, however vague or twisted their idea might be. As Otto Karrer rightly puts it in Religions of Mankind, “There is a ‘consensus generis humani,’ an agreement of mankind so far as our present knowledge extends, in the belief that there exists an absolute and Supreme Being above ourselves which has ordered the universe and human life in particular. ...History knows of no people godless and devoid of religion, though here and there particular groups, schools of thought or governments may combat religion.”
Aquinas
The knowledge of God’s existence—this universal conviction of mankind about God’s existence—is not something that anybody out there ever taught us. No. It’s rather an inborn knowledge—something that is natural in every man or woman. To tell an ordinary man on the street that God doesn’t exist will sound as senseless to him as telling him that his father or mother never existed. Sure, he hasn’t seen God with his physical eyes, yet he believes he exists—just as he wasn’t yet conscious when his mother gave birth to him, but yet believes—as an adult—that she is his mother. In other words, the knowledge of God is just natural in all men—God is naturally known to all mankind. It’s therefore quite stupid to say “Prove to me that God exists”.

The philosopher St. Anselm, working in the tradition of Plato and St. Augustine, holds that our knowledge is intuitive in character, derived from flashes of the eternal, unchanging types which are reflected in our souls. To know means to scan with the eye of the mind this inner sky of intelligible reality. When you do that, when you sincerely do this scanning, you will see God.

Igwe’s comments above are just the usual ranting we've heard over and over again, and atheists have no argument to make except to continue repeating this ranting monotonously. To join Igwe in attempting to “prove” or “disprove” the existence of his materially conceived god is indeed nonsensical since God—the true God—is purely an Immaterial Being, whose existence, as already stated, is naturally known to all men. We are all conscious of that and this is the very reason why even the atheists are always preoccupied with the issues of God—always talking about God! As the notorious modernist, Prof. Karl Rahner would put it in his so-called theory of “anonymous Christian”, by talking about God always the atheist is only encountering Him! (But note that Rahner’s belief that non-Catholics, including atheists, have the “grace of God”, an error which today is still being championed by Vatican II modernists, is simply heretical).

Ayodele says: “There is nothing to show that God is in existence, we only claim God’s existence through faith. That we do not understand how the universe came to be is not enough reason we should fill the vacuum with faith. Faith is the opposite of knowledge. When you have proof of something, then you have the knowledge and faith disappears. To show that God created something, you will need to prove it logically, not with faith. Faith does not show anything; it only claims.

“When you see something in the universe, you don’t automatically link it to a deity out of faith, you research it. We all learnt from the Bible that God created the stars on the fourth day and then rested on the seventh day. But Hubble Space Telescope and other orbiting telescopes have been beaming pictures of stars being freshly formed across the universe to earth stations on daily basis. So where do you place that?

“The universe is still forming. Hundreds of stars die while hundreds are born every day. The universe is not fixed but expanding contrary to Bible claim. Therefore, until religion comes up with logical proof about its claim of God’s existence, I will remain an unbeliever.”

My response:  “Faith” is belief without evidence. Christians don’t present evidence for God.” These are simply the two well-known atheists’ dogmas. Christians say our belief is backed by evidence, which atheists often rebut by denying that evidence—they say it’s not evidence after all—which leads to some serious questions. When atheists claim that faith is belief without evidence, do they ever present any evidence for making that claim? If they do, is it evidence that meets the level of proof they require Christians to present before they will count our evidence as truly “evidence”?

For it’s common for the atheist not to allow theistic evidence as “evidence” unless it meets a level approaching absolute proof. Of course, this violates the usual definition of evidence, and indeed a whole lot of epistemology. More to the point here, it’s a standard they don’t live up to themselves when they say that faith is belief without evidence; because the evidence they offer for that claim is nowhere near that conclusive. Thus in those terms, their charge is self-refuting. They cannot call Christian faith “belief without evidence” without defining evidence virtually as equivalent to proof; but if that’s how they think the evidence is defined, then on their own definition, they have “no evidence” for their charge. Does that mean, then, that they believe it on “faith”?!

Indeed, atheism has nothing to do with sound reasoning or seeking the truth.  It’s just all about lies which of course is very characteristic of the devil himself. 

For instance, many atheists claim that religion generally was invented just to fool man—Lenin called it “An opium of the people”. But if you venture to ask the question, “Who invented it?” you hear unimaginable stories!

Ayodele cautions that we must not base everything on faith; that we should rather do “research”. Fine. Now when we really do research (though if only Ayodele knows what faith means; if only he knows that without faith no one, not even the atheist, can research anything!); if we research the origin of religion, for instance, we surprisingly discover that religion is just as old as man on earth—whereas atheism that questions religion, historically speaking, is not even up to five hundred years old! (See my article: Descartes and the roots of modern atheism).

Again, if we research the origin of Christianity, we surprisingly discover that it’s just as written in the Bible. We surprisingly discover that Christ, the founder, actually walked physically on this earth about two thousand years ago. We discover that, just as written in the Bible, He performed wonderful miracles—including raising the dead to life. We discover that eventually this Christ—in accordance with prophecy—was crucified by sinful men. He died. He was buried but he resurrected three days later. Afterwards, He was seen by many physically ascending into heaven. These are historical facts on which the belief of Christians is based. But, for no justifiable reason, the atheists TOTALLY reject these facts. Yet, they are the great “researchers” while we Christians are just being deluded by faith; and they have “evidence” to support their belief that “faith is belief without evidence”!

Ayodele is also guilty of limiting faith within the religious circle, which is just a misunderstanding of the concept. Put simply, no man or woman does not have faith. But there are different kinds of faiths—Christian Faith, Islamic Faith, Atheists’ Faith, and so on! When St. Paul writes that “faith ...is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8), he is peculiarly referring to the Christian faith, not just any kind of faith. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus offers many definitions of faith, one of which is a “firm belief in something for which there is no proof”. From the Christian perspective, that is just a wrong definition of faith—but indeed an appropriate definition for the kind of faith many non-Christians have. For instance, when a Muslim suicide bomber decides to kill himself just to ensure that he kills other “infidels” why does he do that? Because he believes that seven virgins are specially preserved for him in paradise. That’s faith—not a Christian faith but an Islamic faith. He has no “proof” that seven virgins are actually waiting for him in paradise, yet he believes! Similarly, when Ayodele stated that “I could still get what I wanted irrespective of my praying to God, believing or not believing in Him”, that’s a manifestation of faith—not a Christian faith but an atheist’s faith. Now how does Ayodele know that he can always get what he wants? What “proof” does he have? Of course, he has none, yet he believes! He is just convinced that any time, whether he prays to God or not, he will always get what he wants. Again, in Nigeria currently, politicians are boasting of how they will win next year’s presidential election even though they have no “proof” that they will actually live up to 2019. Why? Because they have faith—not a Christian faith but the faith of politicians.

Now Christian Faith, quite contrary to Ayodele’s erroneous assertion, is not the opposite of knowledge but a faith solidly based on knowledge. The New Testament (Letter to the Hebrews 11:1) defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” NOTE: One can actually prove the existence of something he cannot see. For instance, my university certificate was not given to me on the very day I graduated from the university. By then I hadn't seen it at all, yet I believed it existed (or would soon start to exist) and could indeed prove it. (Not just me, everybody does this!). That is a faith based on knowledge. Knowledge of what? Knowledge of the fact that I had successfully passed through the process of getting a certificate and was indeed qualified to get it. I had the assurance that I would get it even though I hadn’t seen it. The various causes I studied successfully were the “proof” that the certificate existed (or would soon exist). Hence I knew it existed even though I hadn’t seen it. That’s a strong faith—a faith based solidly on knowledge, a reasonable faith. Christian Faith is just something similar. 

Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was guilty of prioritising faith even to the point that it becomes positively irrational, while English philosopher and physician and father of Liberalism John Locke,  emphasizes the reasonableness of faith to such an extent that a religious doctrine’s irrationality—conflict with itself or with known facts—is a sign that it is unsound. “Faith”, he writes in one of his works, “is a persuasion of our own minds, short of knowledge”. (A Third Letter on Toleration, quoted by M. Polanyi in Personal Knowledge, p. 266). These are the men who unfortunately have deluded Ayodele’s mind.
Kierkegaard
Locke
In his famous passage from Romans 1:20, St. Paul champions a natural theology against those pagans who would claim that, even on Christian grounds, their previous lack of access to the Christian God would absolve them from guilt for their non-belief.  St. Paul argues that in fact, anyone can attain to the truth of God's existence merely from using his or her reason to reflect on the natural world. Yet, in 1 Corinthians 1:23, he points out that Christian revelation is folly to the Gentiles (meaning Greeks). He points out that the world did not come to know God through wisdom; rather, God chose to reveal Himself fully to those of simple faith.
St. Paul
St. Augustine, quite contrary to Kierkegaard and Locke, defines faith as “assenting to reason”—what I like to call “cooperating with reason”. You’ve seen something which is true and your reasoning keeps telling you that this is indeed true. If you refuse to cooperate with that reasoning, it’s not because you’re a “great thinker” but because you have a bad will—because your mind is clouded with prejudice or prejudices. Why do I believe in Christ? Of course, it’s because I have indisputable evidence—namely the marvellous things He did, and my own personal encounters with Him even in this present life—which, to me, shows that He is indeed God. That’s the meaning of “assenting to reason”. To believe is "to think with assent" (credere assensione cogitare). It is an act of the intellect determined not by the reason, but by the will. 
Augustine
Augustine made a contribution to developing a thinking faith, a legacy which is still with us today. We see this in action in his sound teaching on the divine unity and his teaching on original sin. For Augustine, it is not a question of contemplation or action in this life, but both; not faith or works, but faith and works; or again, not faith or reason, but faith and reason.

Years before St. Augustine, both Plato and Aristotle had developed versions of natural theology by showing how religious beliefs emerge from rational reflections on concrete reality as such. An early form of religious apologetics—demonstrating the existence of the gods—can be found in Plato's Laws. Aristotle's Physics equally gave arguments demonstrating the existence of God—or the Unmoved Mover—as a timeless self-thinker from the evidence of motion in the world.
Plato and Aristotle
Again, Ayodele’s assertion about “Hubble Space Telescope and other orbiting telescopes” that “have been beaming pictures of stars being freshly formed across the universe to earth stations on daily basis”—which leads to his conclusion that “The universe is still forming. Hundreds of stars die while hundreds are born every day. The universe is not fixed but expanding contrary to Bible claim”—is just another massive illusion. Put simply, the way the universe is now is just the way it was on the very first day it was created by God. That’s why we see the sun, the moon and the stars appearing at their due season exactly the same way our forefathers who lived thousands of years ago saw them. What modern secular scientists do is just to speculate, but unfortunately after speculating they impose their assumption on the whole world as a “scientific fact”!

However, Hubble himself didn’t do exactly that—quite contrary to Ayodele’s assertion.

Who is Hubble and what is Hubble Space Telescope?  Hubble is the American astronomer who played a crucial role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as the leading observational cosmologist of the 20th century. His full names are Edwin Powell Hubble and he was born in Marshfield, United States, on November 20, 1889, and died in San Marino, California on September 28, 1953. 
Edwin Powell Hubble 
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy.
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Hubble was the central figure in the establishment of extragalactic astronomy in the 1920s and '30s. Starting with Albert Einstein’s 1917 paper Kosmologische Betrachtungen zur Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorien (“Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity”), a number of physicists, mathematicians, and astronomers had applied general relativity to the large-scale properties of the universe. The so-called redshift-distance relation established by Hubble and Humason was quickly meshed by various theoreticians with the general relativity-based theory of an “expanding universe”—an idea which is just a massive assumption. The result was that by the mid-1930s the redshift-distance relationship was generally interpreted as a velocity-distance relationship such that the “spectral shifts of the galaxies” were a consequence of their motions. But—interestingly—Hubble throughout his career resisted the definite identification of the redshifts as velocity shifts. Hubble hoped to shed light on this issue by investigating the numbers of extragalactic nebulae that lay at various distances in space. He conducted these studies in part with the distinguished mathematical physicist and chemist Richard C. Tolman. But, again, writing in the mid-1930s, Hubble and Tolman stressed the uncertainty of the observational data. They declined to choose publicly and unambiguously between a static and a non-static model of the universe. In fact, Hubble later argued that the evidence seemed to favour the concept of a stationary universe! But he did not definitely rule out an expanding universe. Ayodele should research well before pontificating!

If you say that the universe is expanding then we ask a simple question: Where is it expanding to? If the universe is moving then we in Africa (and indeed everybody in different parts of the world) simply can’t be here now. We all will be moving with it because we live within the universe. Just a crazy idea!

MacIntyre
And then, how come about those stars and galaxies up there? And the other heavenly bodies—the sun, the moon—too?  How did they come into being? If you ask atheists these questions you hear unimaginable stories. In short, the whole idea of this “Hubble Space Telescope” was inspired by the concept of Big Bang theory, a massive illusion which ascribes billions of years to the existence of the world. 

Scottish philosopher Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre once stated:
About fundamental human reality, the natural sciences are and must be silent.” I have already shown the utter absurdity of the Big Bang in my article Evolution Compatible with the Bible?

In fact, there I demonstrated that Evolution, the Big Bang and such nonsense are not even results of natural sciences! I recommend a thorough reading of that article to Ayodele. On his belief that “The universe is not fixed but expanding contrary to Bible claim” I recommend The Illusion of Expanding Universe, an article by W. Jim Jastrzebski. 

Finally, on how he would react if, after death, he discovers God’s existence, Ayodele said:

“Both atheists and religious people face the same dilemma when asked this question. It is like asking a Christian what would happen if he dies and finds out that Christianity is not the way but Islam; or what a Muslim would do if he dies and discovers that Judaism is the only true religion. But to answer this question directly, I don’t play Pascal’s Wager. I would still not be bothered if I die and find out that the God of Christians is the right God. This is because I have studied the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and found only a single place where Satan actually took the life of someone and at the permission of God. Millions of people were killed in the Bible by God himself or under His instructionWe read in the Bible where God was said to have intentionally hardened King Pharaoh’s heart so that God could kill all the innocent firstborn of Egyptian families. This is barbaric and I wouldn’t want to be associated with a figure of such unstable behaviour. So, if I am to evaluate the personality of God and that of Satan as presented in the Bible, Satan is not responsible for any evil but God. And moreover, it is better to die for a good cause. If I could be good to everyone on earth and still find myself in Satan’s hell-fire because I didn't accept a man as my lord and saviour, then I will be glad to live in such lake of fire.”

My response: No, Ayodele, it is not as simple as you seem to think. If you die in your current state, you will without a doubt descend into an everlasting lake of fire, where you will burn for all eternity. It’s just as serious as that. No amount of accusation you bring against God can save you. Only a change of heart can.


Ayodele’s comparing of God to Satan also betrays his utter lack of basic theology. Yet, he has read the entire Bible—from Genesis to Revelation!

Put simply, all human beings and all the angels in heaven as well as demons in the underworld—including Satan himself—were created by God. As such, God has ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY over all these beings. He can choose to destroy anyone if He wishes, and if he does that it won’t be unjust because He created ALL and ALL belong to Him.  

That said, God is ABSOLUTELY RIGHTEOUS AND JUST. He has never been unjust and can never be unjust. His very nature is simply JUSTICE. Our very idea of justice comes from Him—without Him, in fact, Ayodele won’t know anything about justice.

On the accusations he brings against God, Ayodele just reminds me of Michael Hardman who once raised similar questions when I stated that every single killing of a human being in the Old Testament is perfectly justifiable.  The answers I provided—which is equally relevant to Ayodele’s current accusation—can be read in the article, Old Testament filled with violence just like the Koran?

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