by Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi
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| Atheist teen girl holding a banner |
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.
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| 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.”
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| Aquinas |
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.
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.
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| Kierkegaard |
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| Locke |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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?
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 instruction. We 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.
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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