Religion 101: Get in here; let’s reason together.
(Genuflects)
You are highly welcomed to the seat of religious intelligence and reasoning centre. This thread is solely aimed at clarify doubts, raising and answering timely questions. It is also saddled with the responsibility of accommodating our unbelieving brothers and answering their questions.
100% of the world’s population has something to do with religion; no one is left out from the Christians to the Muslims to the Hindus to the pagans to the zoroastranist to the atheist to the agnostic and to other religious beliefs. With the coverage of over 7 billion of people, a reasonable number of persons are duly represented on Nairaland and this thread is one that may last even till when my boss, Seun decides to put a final full stop.
There should be no insults here as tolerance is one of the cardinal principle of inter personal relationship as this thread may also be directed towards solving contemporary inter-religious problems. Also, there should be no hate, bullying and use of indiscriminate and vulgar language like f*ck, Holy Sh*t, and the likes. There should be no spamming. At this point, I humbly hand over to you.
Above all, if the sky is big enough for all the birds to fly without hitting each other. It is my belief that this thread is accommodating enough to house all of us. Have a nice time asking questions, answering questions and helping others. All responses and contributions are highly welcomed and appreciated!

“Towards the end of his life…St Augustine confessed that Christianity was ‘a religion of threats and bribes unworthy of wise men’ – Tony Bushby

Question one: The biblical account of creation states that the world was created in 6 days and God rested. The book of Genesis says, “God created light on the first day to separate day from night.” Does this mean that the creation of light might have taken more than a day and what was God’s definition of a day?
Remember: The bible says a thousand years is like a day before God.

AYOBAMEE911:
Question one: The biblical account of creation states that the world was created in 6 days and God rested. The book of Genesis says, “God created light on the first day to separate day from night.” Does this mean that the creation of light might have taken more than a day and what was God’s definition of a day?
Remember: The bible says a thousand years is like a day before God.

God's definition of a day was probably a season during which His intentions developed into a new reality that would become light.

It's also possible that day and night existed from the reading of that verse, but it was not separable from night. This is not strange for planets without a star providing enough light.

This would be a long read.
i stumbled this while reading God's Debris.
Lets read this extract and COMMENT. lets comment on the issue of free will as presented and the contemporary religious day to day interpersonal living.

Four billion people say they believe in God, but few
genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would
live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich
people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone
would be frantic to determine which religion was the true
one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they
might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into
27
eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other
unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives
to converting others to their religions.
“A belief in God would demand one hundred percent
obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of
this brief life on earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few.
The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs—an
earthly and practical utility—but they do not believe in the
underlying reality.”

They say that they believe because pretending to
believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell
other people that they believe and they do believer-like
things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don’t
do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true
believer would haveto do.
“If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will
jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck.
If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get
out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is
not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and
hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starva-28
God’s Debris
tion. When belief does not control your most important
decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief
in the usefulness of believing

Upnext: Common Questions Atheist Ask And Answers. any More objections should be highlighted for clarification, healthy argument and resolution.

on this note I call my seniors whom the cap fits well, Cc: Olaadegbu, Seun, Reyginus, KingEbukasblog, Amokeme, Feran15, Fynestboi, ifenes, urahara, HardMirror, Agentofallah, sonoflucifer, otem4eartum, otemanuduno, johnydon22, swaggzo, Hahn, born2freak, freecocoa, jospeh1019, Joseph1832, plaetton, dblackninja, joshthefirst, ValentineMary. I love you Guys no matter your religious beliefs.

Bosses check out the previous questions

Q- Believing in God is the same as believing in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.


A-What I love about this well-worn atheist ‘argument’ is that it actually serves to demonstrate how vastly different a belief in God is to these myths and imaginations. When one honestly assesses the Judeo-Christian doctrine of God he will find multiple thousands of years of human testimony and religious development; he will find martyrs enduring the most horrific trauma in defense of the faith; he will find accounts in religious texts with historical and geographical corroboration; etc (these fact are of course not ‘proofs,’ but rather ‘evidences’ that elicit strong consideration). Pit this against tales of the Tooth Fairy, Santa, and Spaghetti Monsters and one finds the exact opposite: no testimony or religious refinement, no martyrs, no historical and geographical corroboration, etc. Instead, one finds myths created intentionally for children, for point making, or for whatever. It’s strawman argumentation at its worst. Again, just to be clear, testimony, martyrs, geography, etc., are not “proof” that God exists, but rather proof that comparing faith in God to faith in fairies and Santa is totally different.

History is full of mother-child messiah cults, trinity godheads, and the like. Thus the Christian story is a myth like the rest .
Answer: This argument seems insurmountable on the surface, but is really a slow-pitch across the plate. There is no arguing the fact that history is full of similar stories found in the Bible, and I won’t take the time to recount them here. But this fact should not be surprising in the least, indeed if history had no similar stories it would be reason for concern. Anything beautiful always has replicas. A counterfeit coin does not prove the non-existence of the authentic coin, it proves the exact opposite. A thousand U2 cover bands is not evidence that U2 is a myth. Ah, but that doesn’t address the fact that some of these stories were told before the Biblical accounts. True. But imagine if the only story of a messianic virgin birth, death, and resurrection were contained in the New Testament. That, to me, would be odd. It would be odd because if all people everywhere had God as their Creator, yet the central event of human history—the game changing event of all the ages—the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ had never occurred to them, in at least some hazy form, they would have been completely cut off from the prime mysteries of human existence. It seems only natural that if the advent of Christ was real it would permeate through the consciousness (or, if you prefer, ‘unconsciousness’) of mankind on some level regardless of their place in history. One should expect to find mankind replicating these stories, found in their own visions and dreams, again and again throughout history. And indeed, that is what we find.

Q- The God of the Bible is evil. A God who allows so much suffering and death can be nothing but evil.

A- This criticism is voice in many different ways. For me, this is one of the most legitimate arguments against the existence of a good God. The fact that there is suffering and death is the strongest argument against the belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God. If suffering and death exist it seems to suggest one of two things: (1) either God is love, but He is not all-powerful and cannot stop suffering and death, or (2) God is all-powerful, but He does not care for us. I devoted a separate article addressing this problem, but let me deal here with the problem inherent in the criticism itself. The argument takes as its presupposition that good and evil are real; that there is an ultimate standard of good and evil that supersedes mere fanciful ‘ideas’ about what is good and evil at a given time in our ethical evolution, as it were. If there is not a real existence—an ontological reality—of good and evil, then the charge that God is evil because of this or that is really to say nothing more than, “I personally don’t like what I see in the world and therefore a good God cannot exist.” I like what C.S. Lewis said on a similar matter: “There is no sense in talking of ‘becoming better’ if better means simply ‘what we are becoming’—it is like congratulating yourself on reaching your destination and defining destination as ‘the place you have reached.’” What is tricky for the atheist in these sorts of debates is to steer clear of words loaded with religious overtones. It’s weird for someone who does not believe in ultimate good and evil to condemn God as evil because He did not achieve their personal vision of good. So, the initial criticism is sound, but it is subversive to the atheist’s staging ground. If one is going to accept good and evil as realities, he is not in a position to fully reject God. Instead, he is more in a position to wrestle with the idea that God is good. This struggle is applauded in the Orthodox Church. After all, the very word God used for his people in the Old Testament—“Israel”—means to struggle with God.

Q-Evolution has answered the question of where we came from. There is no need for ignorant ancient myths anymore .

A- This might be the most popular attempted smack-downs of religion in general today. It is found in many variations but the concept is fairly consistent and goes something like this: Science has brought us to a point where we no longer need mythology to understand the world, and any questions which remain will eventually be answered through future scientific breakthroughs. The main battle-ground where this criticism is seen today is in evolution vs. creationism debates. Let me say upfront that there is perhaps no other subject that bores me more than evolution vs. creationism debates. I would rather watch paint dry. And when I’m not falling asleep through such debates I’m frustrated because usually both sides of the debate use large amounts of dishonesty in order to gain points rather than to gain the truth. The evolutionist has no commentary whatsoever on the existence of God, and the creationist usually suffers from profound confusion in their understanding of the first few chapters of Genesis. So, without entering into the most pathetic debate of the ages, bereft of all intellectual profundity, I’ll only comment on the underlining idea that science has put Christianity out of the answer business. Science is fantastic if you want to know what gauge wire is compatible with a 20 amp electric charge, how agriculture works, what causes disease and how to cure it, and a million other things. But where the physical sciences are completely lacking is in those issues most important to human beings—the truly existential issues: what does it mean to be human, why are we here, what is valuable, what does it mean to love, to hate, what am I to do with guilt, grief, sorrow, what does it mean to succeed, is there any meaning and what does ‘meaning’ mean, and, of course, is there a God? etc, ad infinitum. As far as where we come from, evolution has barely scratched the purely scientific surface of the matter. Even if the whole project of evolution as an account of our history was without serious objection, it would still not answer the problem of the origin of life, since the option of natural selection as an explanation is not available when considering how dead or inorganic matter becomes organic. Even more complicated is the matter of where matter came from. The ‘Big Bang’ is not an answer to origins but rather a description of the event by which everything came into being; i.e., it’s the description of a smoking gun, not the shooter.

Q- There's no evidence for God's existence

A- There is at least one major problem with this line as it is typically presented. One often hears, “there is no evidence for God, therefore Christians believe in fairytales,” (or something to that effect) when what is actually meant is more like, “there is no physical proof of God’s being in the physical world, therefore Christians believe in fairytales (since all ‘real’ things for the atheistic-materialist are assumed to be physical).” The fact that Christians have never claimed to believe in a physical God – as merely one more physical being among all other physical beings in the universe – does not stop these sorts of atheists from thinking they have laid waste to 40 centuries of religious thought, experience, and refinement with the mere mention of this evidentiary boogieman. It rarely occurs to them that such physical proof would actually run 100% counter to Judeo-Christian theistic claims. Their argument against a physical God is actually applauded and defended by Christians. Simply put: Christianity believes in a immaterial God, thus to demand material proof of His existence is nonsensical. This fact is not, of course, proof that the Christian claim is true, but merely proof that with such attacks the atheist has not even begun to swing in the direction of Christianity. However, if what they mean is something more like, “There is no logical evidence of God’s existence…” then the straw man suddenly becomes a brick wall. The logical arguments for God are vast and time tested against some of the greatest minds of all time working tirelessly against them. They are well-known arguments and can be easily found online or in print, but let me give one quick example. I recently read someone who claimed that I conceded the atheist’s argument that God is not real since the faith teaches He is not physical. Let me help those who might struggle with this idea using a quote from David Bentley Hart: “Why can’t there be a physical explanation of existence? Because anything physical is, by definition, something that exists. So there cannot be a physical cause of existence.” The faith claims this non-physical, yet real, entity is God. His absolute “existence” is more real than physical existence by order of priority. But besides logical arguments an additional reason why atheists often fail with this approach is because they run up against Christians with living experiences with God. There is no amount of speculative babbling from the uninitiated that can oppose the one whose faith is built on a living subjectivity to the presence of God. On these matters Kierkegaard had it right – in objectivity there is no truth for the single individual; the truth is subjectivity.

If God created the universe, who created God?


A- This is one of the more peculiar arguments I’ve ever come across. Those who use this charge as some sort of intellectual checkmate have simply failed to grasp what Christians understand as ‘eternal.’ It is an argument usually levied once a theist posits that God is required for the existence of the universe (an absolute upon which all other things exist by way of contingency). Some atheists then shift the weight over to the theist saying, “Well then who created God?” (which demonstrates a failure to understand God as the source and ground of being, follow this link for more.) What is a Christian to do with such a question? God is the antecedent of all things in creation and is eternal. If God had a Creator then His Creator would be God. God is God precisely because He does not have a creator. Think of it in the old ‘Cosmological Argument’ sense. Whatever begins to exist must have a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore it had a cause. But God never began to exist; He always was, i.e., eternal. Thus, to ask “who created God” is to ask a nonsensical question. For those who would cry “Special Pleading” at this must defend the alternative, which is strictly illogical, that of absolute contingency and/or unconditional conditionality of the physical universe (assuming they believe in the eternality of nature; if not, if they believe the universe had a beginning, then they must defend an even more fantastic illogical leap, that of “just-thereness” of the universe, which differs very little from pure magic). But the belief that God is eternal is not special pleading to begin with for the simple fact that the subject matter is something truly unique, justifiably “special”. If one cannot claim that at least one thing is Absolute, or “Necessary” in philosophical parlance, then reality as we know it is irrational. Better to be wrongly accused of a logical fallacy then rightly accused of a logical absurdity.

Q . God is not all-powerful if there is something He cannot do. God cannot lie, therefore God is not all-powerful.


Answer: Bang! Owned. Not so fast. This argument would be fantastic— devastating maybe—if God was more of the ancient Greek god persuasion, where the gods themselves were subject to fate and limited to their specific roles in the cosmos. The Orthodox doctrine of God is much different. Christians (at least Orthodox Christians) view God’s ontology as subject to His perfect free-will. Why is He good? Because He wills to be good. Why does He not lie? Because He wills to be honest. Why does God exist as Trinity? Because He wills it. He could just as easily will to not exist. And yes, He could just as easily will to lie. The fact that He doesn’t is no commentary on whether He could. (Note: Due to the immense amount of discussion that this point has raised, one clarifying statement is worth noting. An argument based on strict logical word games can render the idea ‘all- powerful,’ or ‘omnipotent’ self-defeating. When one considers the juvenile question, “Can God create a rock so big that He can’t lift it?” this point becomes clear. But in reality, such an argument winds up further solidifying what Christianity means by an all-powerful God. For the Christian it simply means that all power and authority are God’s. Following the logical word game above forces the believer to make a redundant proclamation in order to remain consistent: “God cannot overpower Himself.” But this fact is anything but confounding, it merely stresses the point that there is no power greater than God, so much so that one is forced to pit God against Himself in order to find His equal.)

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