Supreme Being

About: Supreme Being is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 192 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1615 citations.

Igbo-african gods and goddesses

Abstract: Pantheon is a concept that is associated with religious worldviews that are considered polytheistic, usually to capture their gods and goddesses. Focusing on the Igbo world, this work makes a collection of selected deities in Igbo worldview. While arraying these deities, it maintains that the idea of Supreme Being is very strong in Igbo traditional religion. Thus, while there is a multiplicity of lesser gods, there has always been only one Supreme Being who is the source of all that there is, including the deities themselves. If we look at this issue from the perspective that these deities are only deans or messengers of the Supreme Being then there would be no conflict of supremacy. And in fact the supremacy of the Supreme Being points to the fact that Igbo traditional religion is a religion of structure, inextricably bound up with the total structure of Igbo traditional life. It is within this structure that the Igbo person’s existence, welfare and destiny are totally caught up. The hermeneutic approach is employed for the purpose of this study.

John Hick’s Philosophy of Religious Pluralism in the Context of Traditional Yoruba Religion

Abstract: This article is an interpretation of John Hick’s philosophy of religious pluralism in the context of traditional Yoruba religion. The ultimate goal of the article is pragmatic, viz . to provide a theoretical basis for peaceful coexistence among different religions in Nigeria. The methods adopted to achieve this objective are hermeneutical/analytical and comparative. Hick’s theory is interpreted and analysed before it is applied to traditional Yoruba theology. His concept of the Transcendent or Ultimate Reality is equated with the Yoruba concept of the Supreme Being or Olodumare. Both Hickean Ultimate Reality and Olodumare are conceived as transcategorial. However, Yoruba divinities are equated with Hick’s personae and impersonae of the Real: like the personae and impersonae of Hickean Ultimate Reality, the divinities are manifestations of Olodumare. This interpretative method can be used to account for differences in the conceptions of the Supreme Being among competing religions in Nigeria, especially Islam and Christianity in their conceptions of God. Keywords John Hick, pluralism, Yoruba, Nigeria, Olodumare, divinities

On the Non-worshipping Character of the Akan of Africa

Abstract: According to Wiredu, the Akan profess secular esteem rather than religious worship to supra-natural beings (including the Supreme Being), who they perceive in an empirical sense. He backs this up by re-reading what he sees as the Akan general ontology in a way that denies them of the concepts of the supernatural, the transcendental, the mental, the spiritual, and an ontologically distinct mind. At the end of denying the three criteria of worship as well as all of these other concepts which might otherwise be available to the Akan, one might struggle to find any evidence that the Akan even had a religion. I dispute this secular reading, and I more generally demonstrate that the characterizations of the Akan attitude to divinity as non-worshipping, non-supernatural, non-transcendent, and non-spiritual, are either conceptually flawed, factually incorrect, or both.

Another Look at God and Morality

Abstract: Most analytic philosphers hold-until recently, I numbered myself among them-that God can have no relevance to morality. This conviction is expressed rather vaguely, but it usually translates into the claim that the existence of God (even a supremely moral God) can have no legitimate bearing on the content of our morality-what we actually do or approve of as moral agents-or on the reasons we have for acting or thinking as we do-the moral arguments we give and accept. It is, I think, the latter point that will turn out to be especially crucial here: God cannot legitimately function, it is said, in any of our moral arguments, because morality, if we understand it aright, is entirely self-supporting. Of course, no one is so naive as to deny that God or the concept of God has in fact often been invoked in order to support certain moral commands or to provide a possible reason for adhering to them. But, as sophisticated philosophers, we know in advance that such appeal has no bearing one way or the other on the cogency such arguments have in their own right. Appeal to God is perhaps functioning in an emotive way, or as shorthand for referring to moral arguments so compelling or obvious that we must think of them as the only values a supreme being could embrace. But this does not alter the point: the morality we have must stand on its own. If we were believers and discovered God did not exist, or atheists who discovered that he did, our moral life, provided we understood what it was to be moral to begin with, would not change one jot. I will argue here against this view. It is rarely satisfactorily challengedlargely, I think, because in discussing it philosophers have focused on rather extreme examples, and these examples in turn obscure the nature of moral commitment and the nature of our relationship to God. Once a certain amount of drama is set aside, and a certain amount of genuine complexity is allowed to enter in, we shall find the standard view of most analytic philosophers on this problem to be seriously incomplete.

The supreme being in the beliefs of the Balovale tribes

Abstract: (1948). The supreme being in the beliefs of the Balovale tribes. African Studies: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 29-35.