joseph1013:


The question about the Sabbath is: Is it right for a Doctor to refuse to attend to someone who suffers a heart attack because the Bible commands that the Sabbath day must be kept Holy? That way it is easy to see how not working on the Sabbath affects accident victims.

Morals/Ethics by definition is simply the principles of right and wrong; right and wrong with respect to other humans.

NB: I just looked up the definition of Ethics. It gave me "moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity." That explains the Strong Work Ethic part.

PastorAIO:


I thought that you meant that taking a day of work in the week was morally flawed. Sorry, I misunderstood.

I agree that Morals/Ethics is simply the principles of right and wrong. However I disagree that it is right and wrong specifically with respect to other humans.
It covers the whole range of right and wrong whether you're engaging with others or not. it can be right to clean your home though it does not affect anybody else. It can be wrong to eat bad diet though it only affects yourself.

I see Ethics as a Scale of Values from Right/preferable/Ideal down to Wrong/unpreferable/To be rejected. This value scheme is used to assess our options and thus governs our actions.

joseph1013:


Well, you know it won't make sense to people if you say you are moral because you clean your room. Or say you are moral for feeding well. Most won't term them as moral acts, they won't even see the correlation. That is why Moral is not just right or wrong, but right or wrong as it relates to others. For most people, the activity has to be as it relates to other people for it to be judged as moral or not.

From my study, it seems that's how Morals and Ethics are differentiated. Moral relates to others; Ethics could relate to oneself, maybe.

PastorAIO:


Okay, but some will say masturbation is Immoral though it affects no one else.


And some will not say that driving a car that causes pollution is immoral although it affects everybody else around.

It seems that there are some colloquials contexts in which the word 'moral' is used which do not properly reflect the true meaning of the word.

joseph1013:


Masturbation is not immoral. On the contrary, it is even healthy. It is the addiction, just like sex can be an addiction that[color=#990000]is wrong, not even immoral. Religious zealots have a way of twisting that, though. But again, religious books have been shown not to provide objective moral truths.

Air pollution is immoral, how else would you describe the ban on private cars off the roads this week by the Chinese government in Beijing as well as the Indian government ban on government diesel cars in Delhi.

Really, it's easy to define if you look it up from the angle of how it affects others.[/color]

PastorAIO:



You will never drag me into a debate over the meaning of a word. You've defined your terms and I accept your definition for the purposes of this your discussion. 'Morality means Empathy and doing right by others' to paraphrase you. No wahala.

obviously you don't even think something being wrong is immoral.

you also seem to think that something being illegal automatically makes it immoral. So when Nazis legally forced jews to wear an arm band that would have been moral, abi?

joseph1013:


Let me ask: why do you think masturbation is wrong and what's your source?

Go back to my definition of Morality and the Nazi vs Jew confusion would be clear.

Nazi forcing Jews to wear arm bands was but one of many psychological tactics whose intention was to isolate, harass, and humiliate Jewish people, and further embed Nazi ideology that Jewish people were different from everyone else by marking them out from the rest of the population.

So based on my definition, is that a moral thing to do or not?

How does that compare to banning diesel cars to prevent air pollution?

Go back to my definition of Morality and the Nazi vs Jew confusion would be clear.

Air pollution is immoral, how else would you describe the ban on private cars off the roads this week by the Chinese government in Beijing as well as the Indian government ban on government diesel cars in Delhi.

joseph1013:
[b]THE MUSLIM WHOSE PRESENCE DEFIED CHRIST
by Pius Adesanmi

Modees Usman, one of my protégés, was supposed to come and see me at the Ake Arts and Book Festival last month in Abeokuta. The gentleman is a patriotic Customs officer and, in my estimation, one of the brightest hopes for the sort of pan-Nigeria I envision ceaselessly in my public reflections. A devout Muslim, his sensibilities and advocacy for Nigeria reach across all our fault lines and bitter divisions. He is a picture perfect portrait of my ideal Nigerian. Suffice it to say, he did not make it to Abeokuta for our meeting. However, he sent a carton of non-alcoholic wine to me through another wonderful pan-Nigerian patriot, Remy Binte Oge.

My protégé couldn’t make it to Abeokuta because he had to travel to Calabar to attend the wedding of his childhood friend. He was in fact the designated best man at the occasion. I sent word to him that his attempt to bribe me with a carton of wine would not work: he would still have to pay a fine for failing to somehow find a way to visit me during my last trip to Nigeria.

I had no idea that a little drama was playing out in Calabar…

Modees, obviously, is a Muslim. His best friend who was getting married is a Christian. A Muslim was going to be best man in a Christian marriage! The Christian groom and his Muslim best friend thought nothing of this until wedding day and the officiating Pastor somehow caught wind of the faith of the best man and refused to proceed with the ceremony. It was bad enough for Modees, a Muslim, to have come to defile the body of Christ in his church! To approach the pulpit as the best man in the wedding was adding insult to injury! All entreaties to the Pastor failed. No Muslims allowed here!

The story of this foolish fundamentalist Christian Pastor in Calabar is the story of Nigeria. It is indeed the story of Africa. It is the story of the failure of critical intelligence. It could very easily have happened the other way round. It could have been Modees getting married and his Christian friend being bundled out of the ceremony for defiling a Mosque. The trouble with Nigeria, the tragedy of Africa, is that in a world of mutual connectivity and global influences and interactions, we have not figured out a way of making whatever we accept from the outside, whatever is forced on us from the outside, sit on the solid foundation of our own worldviews and humanity.

We forget that Christianity and Islam did not invade Africa purely as faith. They couldn’t have for they are much more than faith. They are also cultures for they took on the cultures of either their places of origin or their sources of global dissemination. Europeans and Arabs injected a great deal of their cultures and values, of who they are, into the versions of the creeds that they introduced to Africa. Because he lacks critical intelligence in his embrace of these two religions, the African thinks that the African in him must die as a pre-condition for his being a true Muslim or a true Christian.

This is the source of a strain of pathological fundamentalism that is strange even to the 'owners' of those religions in Europe and the Arab world. This explains why the modern Nigerian Christian – the sort who jots his Pastor’s sermon on an iPad – condemns the New Yam Festival in his village as a pagan practice while enthusiastically invading the Ikeja Mall to buy Halloween costumes for his children. That is why people demonstrate peacefully in Saudi Arabia whenever Europe draws cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed but Nigerians kill fellow Nigerians on account of ideological conflicts between Europe and the Middle East.

That is why Modees was thrown out of a Christian wedding in Calabar.

Modees was thrown out because Muslim and Christian faithful in Nigeria have killed the spirit of accommodation, humanism, and tolerance which informed the religions of their forefathers. They do not know that African Traditional Religions, like every other faith, also come complete with values that should inform their approach to the foreign religions they now practice.

Nobody is saying that you should discard your Christianity or Islam and go back to worship Ogun or Amadioha. But, at least, reduce your ignorance of what they thought of the other; reduce your ignorance of how the faith of your forefathers handled difference. Let me invite one of Africa’s foremost thinkers, Professor Ali Mazrui, to instruct you. Let me quote in detail from Professor Mazrui’s book, Resurgent Islam and the Politics of Identity:

“Of the three cultural legacies of Africa (Indigenous, Islamic and Christian) perhaps the most religiously tolerant is the indigenous tradition. It is even arguable that Africa did not have religious wars before Islam and Christianity arrived. Precisely because these two latter faiths were universalist in aspiration (seeking to convert the whole of humankind), they were inherently competitive. In Africa, Christianity and Islam have often been in competition for the soul of the continent…Indigenous African religions on the other hand are basically communal rather than universalist…By not being universalist in that sense, the African traditions have not been in competition with each other for the souls of other people. The Yoruba do not seek to convert the Ibo (sic) to Yoruba religion or vice versa. By not being proselytizing religions, African creeds have not fought with each other. Over the centuries, Africans have waged many kinds of wars with each other but hardly ever religious ones before the universalist creeds arrived.”

There you have it. The Ogun worshipper did not seek to convert or kill the Sango worshipper. The devotee of Obatala did not try to break the ikenga of the devotee of Amadioha. Tolerance was the foundation of the faith of your forefathers. How does adopting this foundational spirit of tolerance and injecting it into the Islam and Christianity you practice in Nigeria today make you any less a Muslim or a Christian? How exactly does the presence of Modees as best man in the wedding of his Christian friend diminish your Christianity?

In Zaria, you are even dividing and killing each other within the same faith along Shiite and Sunni lines imported from the Arab world – with the Army pouring petrol into the fire and committing possible crimes against humanity by mowing down civilians in a residence after clashes initial clashes on a road, all sides trading accusations.

Yet, the Pastor who threw out a Muslim from his Church will not hesitate to break the law by organizing a Christian event to block major roads in Calabar and make life difficult for his fellow Christians locked in a hellish traffic jam. Every Friday, Sambo Dasuki, Nigeria’s greatest thief at the moment, still does very public photo-ops from the prayer mats of the Mosque he attends.

Fundamentalist professions of Islam and Christianity have not stopped you from making Nigeria a cesspool of hate, theft, and corruption.
Tolerance was the foundation of the religion of your forefathers. You are welcome to continue to spit on these ancient religions and condemn them as pagan or idolatry. That is your wahala. But, know this: any Christianity or Islam which requires you to forego the tolerance inherent in the religions of your ancestors is leading you straight to hell for you will steal, hate, and kill in the name of such a Christianity or Islam.[/b]

INTERVIEWSTOP STORYSHARE ON:
Mubarak Bala answers questions on his atheism in Nigeria
By Atane Ofiaja on December 18, 2015 — Islam is sacrosanct in Northern Nigeria. Suffice to say that denouncing the religion can come with dire consequences. It’s just not something you do. Last year, a young man named Mubarak Bala from Kano bravely did just that. He announced he was an atheist and humanist, and rejected Islam. This came with serious consequences, including alienation from family and friends, physical assaults and death threats. It’s been over a year since this happened and TIA wanted to speak to Mubarak to hear what he had to say and to see how he was doing.


Photo: Africa Independent Television

TIA: Please tell us a bit about yourself and your background.

Mubarak Bala: I’m a chemical engineer. I was born in Kano State, northern Nigeria in the mid 80s. I attended the Saudi funded Islamic Foundation Aliyu Bin Abi Talib primary school. I was trained in the Wahhabi Islamic thought, with a jihad ideology. I later attended an all-Muslim private science secondary school, Hassan I. Gwarzo, in Kano State, where Islamic (Qur’anic) study is given a very high priority. Both schools aim to groom the mind into a versatile and educated Muslim that would in the future help the Islamic religion in any field and capacity. I was very good in science & Arabic/Islamic courses. Along the way, I compared both and picked the truest, discarding the mythical.

You came into the international spotlight last year when the news broke of you being held against your will in a psychiatric hospital for renouncing Islam against your family’s wishes. Can you tell us what transpired?


Mubarak Bala,Photo:Chrisitan Today
As you may know, the Islamic sharia demands that apostates be murdered, but the procedure before that is to lock up the offender for three days and plead with them to recant their stand/statement. If they don’t, then a medical exam is next, where it’s determined whether or not the individual is crazy to deny the lovely religion of peace. If they’re certified sane, beheading follows, if mentally ill, compulsory medication is necessary.

They can’t imagine a world where someone would just leave. That’s what happened to me.

PastorAIO:
Joseph, have you heard of this guy?



http://thisisafrica.me/atane/


Interesting read.

joseph1013:
WHEN TO BELIEVE

Something is not believable because it is not impossible, or because it makes you feel good, or because someone you respect told you, or because it is written in a book, or written in a very old, best selling book.

It is not believable because millions of people believe it or because some intelligent people believe it or because people have believed it for a long time.

It is not believable because it has never been proven not to be true. Something is not believable because you hope it is true or even because you think the world would be a better place if it were true.

Something is believable when, and only when, there is sufficient, validated evidence showing it is perverse NOT to believe it. Until then remain sceptical—that will surely save you from believing countless things that are not true.

PastorAIO:
Believability is a function, not of the thing to be believed, but of the person doing the believing.

joseph1013:


Please elucidate.

PastorAIO:


I believe you.

But is it because you're believable.

Or because I'm gullible.

believability is a trait (function) of the believer and not of the thing believed.

joseph1013:


If it is because I'm believable, sooner than later, you will be deceived. Ben Carson is believable, yet he has said many erroneous things in the course of the Presidential campaign. Intelligent people sometimes say dumb things.

If it is because you're gullible, that can be easily remedied. Learn to withhold believe in the face of insufficient evidence. That's what being sceptical is all about.

PastorAIO:



Everybody is deceived, sooner or later. All evidence is insufficient evidence. It is quite arbitrary where you draw the line. Do you require two corroborating witnesses? Or 5?

joseph1013:


I will say it another way: There is no one that has not been deceived before and there is no rational person that is 100% sure of being deception-proof going forward. However who is more susceptivle to deception: he who critically examines what is presented to him or he who takes everything at face value? Which would you rather be?

PastorAIO:


What if it is all deception but some deceptions take longer to unravel than others?

joseph1013:


What is wrong in withholding belief?