As a humanist, Leo Igwe doesn't believe in divine intervention — but he does believe in the power of human beings to alleviate suffering, cure disease, preserve the planet and turn situations of poverty into prosperity. In this bold talk, Igwe shares how humanism can free Africans from damaging superstitions and give them the power to rebuild the continent.
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The President Obama’s sign language guy ??
A very interesting viewpoint. I agree with much of what he said, although I don’t believe humanism and religion go against each other. Nonetheless, these ideas could lead to great innovation and advancement.
People, I understand that you are passionate, but if we work together to settle our differences and find some common ground instead of arguing angrily, we will learn from each other instead of angering each other. I would agree that humanism and Christianity are mutually exclusive; I cannot make a blanket statement about all of ‘religion’ though because I have not studied every religion. There are however certain Christian off-branches that believe a non-contradictory combination, usually branded ‘self-help.’ Anyway, define the terms you use; if everyone had the same definition of broad terms on what is ‘religion,’ I imagine that we would see that we agree more than we think.
Italo Rafael Machado Santos if you are religious ull be humanist.
Religion goes against reality.
Avaricious Cenozoic: I feel like that is a hasty generalization. Some religious doctrine is flawed, definitely, but some ‘religious’ beliefs have been found valid. Many secular historians believe based on historical findings that in reality a man named Jesus was crucified by romans. Few people would find the commands to not murder or steal ridiculous, and the Chinese proverb ‘a man who chases two rabbits catches neither’ has redeemable value.
> I don’t believe humanism and religion go against each other.
How would both of those complete the following sentence?
“The world can be saved by […]”.
I believe the fundamental disagreement lies exactly there.
Hear, hear
The fact that humans still live disharmonious is proof that we’ve been following the wrong rules.
Salix Zander: Firstly, God does not punish us for using free will, but for disobeying Him (which would be something we could not do without it). I again turn to the parental analogy; your parents know what is best for you, they make rules accordingly, and then punish you because they know the punishment is lesser than what you would face if you did not obey the rules. God’s law is like this. Secondly, I believe we are using differing definitions on the vague word ‘love.’ You are talking about romantic love, while the love for God is something else. It is a voluntary thing that accompanies the decision to follow God. If you ask a long-married couple, they will probably tell you that about 5 years into the relationship the hormones or whatever wore off, and they probably witnessed marital problems. The love for God is like this; you have to choose to love your spouse for who they are as love truly becomes less of a feeling and more of a choice.
How are we livin disharmonious?
Zac Goodwin: But I don’t think the parental analogy fits well in this case. Parents set these rules to teach you something, but you won’t learn anything if you will be punished for eternity. There is no room for improvement. And again, if god knows what is best for you and he wants to maintain your free will, even then he could just create an environment in which the free will never goes against the orders. To stay with your parental analogy, should a better parent lock up the dangerous stuff in the kitchen out of the reach of the children, or just punishing it when it plays with knives? To the second point, your right with love being a vague concept, but you were using it in the first place to describe this vague concept. But even then I again wouldn’t agree on love being a choice. Love in the way you stated it for instance for your spouse would, relies (in my opinion) on trust, respect, a feeling of safety and the concern for the other persons well-being. You can’t chose either of these attributes, they depend mainly on experience. You can choose if and how to express that love, you can choose to behave as if you love, but you can’t choose how to feel.
Or maybe it is a consequence of people claiming the world would be harmonious if only everyone adhered to “the right rules”, whatever that person thinks those are.
“Faith without works is dead”
UltraAar the idea of cause and consequence is derived for our perception of time and space. But it us well known that time and space don’t behave accordingly to our senses. One can say ” God exists because every intelligent effect happens due to an intelligent cause, God is the primordial cause of the universe”, but let’s do de fallowing mental exercise, imagine if you live in a society that can handle fire, but you’ve never seen fire occuring spontaneously because of a lightning, and you don’t have any idea about the Constitution of the lighting; therefore, you will most certainly think that fire is an intelligent effect correct? Try to think out of the box, we actually don’t have any idea of how the universe came to be, we have five common senses, and our intelligence is guided through them, how many ways of feeling the universe might exist that we are simply anware of? How can we say that something like “God” exist when we can’t even cure câncer? God is no more than an illusion created to fulfill our ego when it’s faced with lack of knowledge. ” Well I know nothing… But I know a God that is allmighty powefull, created the universe and stays with me all the time, he even looks like me, so I am basically the second most wise and amazing thing in the universe, perhaps even the first, cause I love God right, but if he was really that amazing he wouldn’t need to create me, right? I’m am like the primordial dumb end for the existence of everything, I am so special that I don’t even need to be wise, like good, in order to my life have meaning”.
Disciple David I don’t get, I have faith in antibiotics, electronic, internet, the things that I can touch and are useful to me, those things probably exist. I don’t get which theory you thing I have faith in.
fiona I have trouble in understanding what u r saying.
Jonah Lynx words to live by
Personally… I believe in a mix of faith and Humanism. I do not really believe in god in traditional sense, but i do believe forces are out there to nudge people to the right direction…. but that direction is sometimes a choice. Sometimes you do have to use your efforts, sometimes you have to use your own will and power to find the solutions to your own problems and the problems of the universe we live in. If we are to allow faith in our hearts that people can change or that circumstances can become better even when we don’t know how to get through it, then we truthfully can be as faithful in our life as much as a atheist is in science. But with or without a religion, we must choose our paths, and know that while that faith can lead some of us on the right path, without the will or choice to do so out of love or life’s beauty, it is without sense or peaceful reasoning in mind.
busTedOaS sorry i did that.
Don’t be, I was joking.
busTedOaS lol. But yeah even if i do admit my stance is neutral i wont deny if there are flaws in my stance. Just i still think with or without flaws we should learn to balance out and learn what all perspectives have to offer. Instead of hating one just because it doesnt agree with you or a groups sensibilities. So long as its good natured and not out to hurt another without proper cause or reasonable doubt.
You seem like a good dude. Just that slur about atheists bugged me hard. Not just because of that “science is faith too” thing, but because it sounded like trust in life and trust in science stand in some kind of opposition. Plus, I’m not an “let’s balance all perspectives” kind of guy. There are so many bad ideas to be had at every corner. But what we surely agree on is that all ideas should still be heard and listened to, without that premature judgement and ideological warfare that drives some of the media nowadays.
busTedOaS oh i didn’t mean to intentially make a slur out of that. I am sorry. And thank you for telling me your perspectives. I respect them. Really i mean that that faith is as necessary as much as the facts and reality we live in. And i dont mean faith even in religious sense. Just belief that one can live through and enjoy that life even knowing facts that would be upsetting or hard to accept.
Faith is what makes this obviously good video controversial. Please do yourself and everyone else a favor. Don’t believe things without evidence.
Pascal Puttee if only you knew the liberty you could gain through Christ you would be truly amazed, maybe one day you may come to know him in this life, but if not you will still know the truth when you die or when Jesus returns, and i do sincerely pray that you may pray for help in these things before it is too late, whether you find what i say rubbish or not, these things are a reality and truth whether you like it or not, and one day the glory of God shall be known to all, and i pray you won’t leave seeking God too late, if you would like to have further conversation please feel free to message me via fionaa.tran@gmail.com
I can come up with an experiment to show if they love you. Easily. next.
fiona You mean you deluded yourself into thinking you sinned. Religion is great at telling you, you are bad and deserve to be tortured forever, when you did nothing wrong. And how can obidience by something free, when you get tortured forever if you don’t?
silence if only sin was a delusion, but i think it’s no debate to say that we have all done wrong in our lives, and it only takes one wrong offence to separate us from God, and that shows the holiness of God and the seriousness of sin, whether you believe these things or not, they are true according to the Bible, and one day when you die or when Jesus returns it will be too late for you repent and live your life for God, and in those moments you will remember the moments that people have told you about these things, please do not let it come to this point, whether my sentences have any impact on you, one day you will know, please feel free to email me if you would like to know more information on how you can seek and find God and have liberty and meaning in your life, if you think you have those things already, if you come to know God, you will understand that your current liberty is far from freedom, fionaa.tran@gmail.com
fiona There are neuances to wrong actions. Not every bad action has equal worth, and it doesnt show God’s “holyness”, but rather his temper, oddity and malevolence. If one miniscule bad action is enough to piss off God and suffer the consequences, then God cant be called alloving nor just.
You have deluded yourself into thinking that every bad actions has equal worth. Is murder equal to lying, because in your logic, it is. That is what tried to say.
You didnt quite answer my question. How can it be a free choice to obey God if the other option is eternal torture? If God valued freedom, then you wouldnt make the other option so unpleasant. Especially when sin is supposedly inbeded into our nature, after our great, great, great, and so on, anscestors made a wrong choice, and we have to suffer it, because God didnt have enough.
yes, well said.
So you agree with Communism then?
Awakend2Truth – when you take such radical stances against nonbelievers they will never listen to you. Be more gentle – gentleness is one of the fruits of the spirit after all. I myself and a christian, yet even I am offended that you would call someone a communist for believing in humanism. In fact, from a secular point of view humanism makes a lot of sense. Remember that you cannot change hearts – only God can do that.
+Michael Daubenmier Who told you that you were truly born again? (Matthew 6:24-34, Mark 8:34-38 / Luke 9:23-24, 14:27, 17:33 / John 3:3-5, 3:16, 12:24-25 / Galatians 5:19-26 / 1Corinthians 1:30-31, 1Peter4:17-18 etc)
Faith is not a virtue, it’s gullibility.
Brian Le as much as people have different perceptions of what faith is, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an objective definition and source of what true faith is
Brian Le and faith comes from God, we can’t force ourselves to believe something, it is through prayer that God gives us faith in him and understanding of his truth, true faith is not about how hard an individual can believe but coming humbly to God and asking for help
fiona Let’s agree to disagree. True faith is only achievable when one applies their genuine beliefs to it. Case closed.
Brian Le but someone’s beliefs can only be genuine if those beliefs are true!
fiona Who’s to say that they aren’t… Besides everyone is entitled to their own belief. If they’re not bothering anyone, no one should shove their own belief down someone else’s throat.
Finally a clear thinking African on TED. If more people did what he said to do Africa would be better off.
Overonator The world would be better off.
Overonator Africa is suffering from being enslaved by big countries & it isn’t the result of them being lazy..
They work the hardest.. If they find comfort in religion then that is better than Chinese who are committing suicide for going through less stressful situations..
Compare the African children enslaved in chocolate factories to those adults working in Apple industry in China.. African children are working so hard while someone like this guy speaks bad about Africans and ignores the real problems facing them.
ن يوسف
Hey I agree with you on the after effects of slavery and the hundreds of years of colonization where every valuable resource was exported and the only imports were Abrahamic faith, disease and kleptomatic dictators. However I think there is a case to be made that Africans in general, West Africans especially, have been intellectually lazy and this is what has allowed thousands of years of superstition and faulty logic on many fronts. they all love their imported white Christian god, they speak of people (usually men) with magic powers and divine intervention on the daily, perform both male and female genital mutilation because they believe at the core that these things are real and important, and they burn their own children as “witches”…maybe the Bible, If it’s a book about truth, should have told them that witches don’t exist.
Africans have always worked hard, I know many personally, but until Africans start working and living smart, really looking at the reality of the world around them, discerning what’s real and what’s not, they will always be slaves to man’s superstitious ideas and their own necessary carnal desperations. They will continue raping, stealing, practicing cannibalism, fornicating without protection, fathers will keep killing daughters and sons will kill their families..then turn to Christianity to be “saved”. It’s hight time to stop making excuses and listen/look at what is going on in Africa and take those choices people make as what they are. That was my take away from what this guy said. I think the speaker loves Africa and wants to see it progress without faith because that is nothing but gullibility.
Btw I think comparing secular suicidal Chinese adults to African sweat shop children who need Jesus to get by is a bit of a fallacious argument. Stress is relative, so is pain, social happiness and life purpose.
Veiled racism
Religion while can be morally uplifting and can be used for good by building community is also steeped in lies and superstition and in cases like the past and africa now a great way to persecution and vilify people on baseless accusations and even justifying killing them I feel humanism is better because it doesn’t have a god to make you feel superior or that your on the good guys side with humanism everyone is equal and everyone must take responsibility for their actions and themselves
Pittsburgh Bear but the problem with religions is that u can justify anything with way less effort. You don’t even have develop some kind of sophism. You just have to say ” the Lord said” or “Mohamed said” or “Krishna said” and bang!! If u are a charismatic convincing person you can instantaneously make an army of dumb people committed to any kind of monstrosity. You can try to use science to do it to, but you will need way more effort, and there’s no case throughout human history where science committed an error and didn’t correct itself. Differently from religions with holy books that treat themes such as rape like normal events.
Italo Rafael Machado Santos that’s not true. You could also lie and say, “Einstein said,” or, “Newton said,” and people will still follow People will justify horrible things with science too. Take IQ levels. Someone can easily look at them and justify saying whites and Asians are superior, let’s kill the others. You don’t even need that. Someone could literally just say blacks are worse. Why? I dunno, just because. Again I say, people will justify horrible things with or without religion. And what major religions actually say the it’s followers should go and rape? Besides Islam(and even with that you have to ignore the context). And remember that reporting and condoning are two separate things. Saying rape happens(it’s “normal,” which it still is, but that doesn’t make it good) and saying go rape are way different.
the punishment for rapping a virgin “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.”
Threre`s no scientific basis to say that Asians or white people are smarter than black people. And even if there were it would not imply that black people should die. Modern science would never endorse it.
+Italo Rafael Machado Santos
“the punishment for rapping a virgin “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.”” Hey maybe instead of just putting random stuff in quotes, you put where it is so I can actually see if you’re right. Otherwise that requires me to have faith in you. And even if you’re correct, that isn’t saying, “yes, go rape women, that’s a good thing.” But hey, I’ll wait for you to provide the source so I can be sure.
“Threre`s no scientific basis to say that Asians or white people are smarter than black people.” Yes there is. At least in a specific way(IQ).
“And even if there were it would not imply that black people should die.” Didn’t say it did. I said people would still use it as such.
“Modern science would never endorse it.” Again, didn’t say it would. Just like most major religions don’t endorse it just because a few people that claim to be subscribers of that faith decide to.
Religion is man made, and throughout human history it has been used to control and dominate others, which is interesting because most religious leaders deny this simple fact.
busTedOaS, My reasoning is I have proof, and no one has refuted it satisfactorily yet. Is that wrong? What hypotheses would you like to share?
> My reasoning is I have proof
Now that’s different. Humanity’s biggest riddle, finally solved, on Youtube. I’d enjoy hearing it.
Pedro Meza suuuure marx
busTedOas: For the same restriction that you mentioned, being in the YouTube comment section, I am not going to start listing evidence. However, if you honestly would like to hear it (and you’re not just attacking people in the YouTube comments for sport) the two sources I listed might be a good place to start as well as “Man, Myth, Messiah” or “The Case for Christ,” which just became a motion picture (most also suggest further reading).
fiona the Bible is man made. Google marcion of sinope pretty please. Marcion wrote the first new testament and the church and Bible we have today are reactions to what marcion and his fellow gnostics were teaching at the time. These individuals lost the proto-orthodox holy war and were either burned alive, flayed or crucified, in some cases all 3. As you may have heard, “history is written by the Victor” or something like that. Research for yourself.
Second, if the Bible is divine and not man made why are there so many errors and immoral advocations, like slavery for instance? Why does your god make us rely on interpretations of copies of copies of translated copies of dead languages written by anonymous authors that include known forgeries? Whats wrong with your god talking to us directly about what he wants?
Third, assuming your god knows the standards of evidence that anyone utilizes to discern truth from fiction and come to reasonable justification for any conclusion made about literally any topic why doesn’t he use those methods? Why does he make us rely on faith and unfalsifiable anecdotes from over a thousand years ago instead of even a sliver of proper evidence? The faith you have is no different than the faith a Muslim has, a Hindu or a voodoo shaman. Faith is not a path to truth at all it just helps you feel better about not really knowing.
I challenge you to find in the Bible where God commands to write a book and a make a church. The Bible doesn’t instruct or command the construction of the new testament at all. Men did it of their own volition as a response to what other men were teaching at the time. All of the references to false prophets and teachings in the Bible (eg. 2 peter 2) are indirectly talking about Simon magus, Marcion and the other heresiarchs who lost the war of ideas.
Bravo! Even Africa is waking up. The world is really changing!
SunDown The arrogance in your statement baffles me.
And what’s wrong with arrogance if you’re right?!
I’m a Christian here, but I do think that religion isn’t a reason to discriminate and belittle.
Then why are you a Christian? Why not Jainism or Buddhism? Tell me one reason.
Avaricious Cenozoic why question her religion? If she’s Christan then let her be. She just wants to know why no faith – having assholes like to talk down on god and faith.
I feel bad for the people here that bash on Christians or other religions. That means they were wronged by someone that claimed to be religious or a scripture told them to not do something that they love doing, And that’s not what my faith is all about. I try to be a good person but I’m human. I can only do so much. I’m not perfect.
Sure, if some people bash on religion it means they were wronged, your religion couldn’t possibly be wrong. Your religion is always right because it says so in a book with talking snakes and donkeys, written by some goat herders about 2000 years ago.
I wasn’t wronged by someone who claims to be religious, and I wasn’t told not to do something I love. What makes you think these are the two things that make people bash on christians?
I mean, I don’t like bashing people regardless of their faith or lack thereof. But If I see someone telling a kid that they’re going to suffer an infinity of torture unless they forcefully follow their holy book, I call that abuse. and I will tell them they’re being abusive. Is that bashing?
Renato Pascon personally I’m Christian but I believe that you should believe in what you want too. I won’t force My Religion down anyone’s throat. Not even my children if they don’t desire it. That’s how I was taught. ( My parents aren’t that religious ) These are my beliefs that I will pass on to whom ever is willing to listen. But who am I to tell someone how to raise there child? Now if it’s a random stranger completely then yes. You have by all right to step in. But if it’s not yours I say stay away. That child will find his or her own truth someday.
He nos da wae
This was well said. Thanks for sharing!
He doesn’t understand what is ( religion)!
Faith never was just a wishful thinking! Faith is WORK & asking God to make our efforts work.
You can do everything to achieve something & if God doesn’t allow it it won’t work.. That is a reality that we live everyday…
Humanism is de wey
I think, religion is slowly dying. As it should.
Good speech.