Topic: The Nature of Religious Beliefs and Faith in Nigeria (Read 51 times)

Religion has become a disease in Nigeria, and with me being Nigerian, there's a level where I'd been brainwashed while growing up. I started knowing things at the early stage of my university days and yes Internet has been helpful in a way too. The majority of our fathers, mothers, uncles, and elders have all been brainwashed to the extent that they thought only religious belief could put an end to the country's hardship.

The believe that system of the major three religions are differ with their Operations and actions and because of their differences in operations and actions hatred and malice comes to play among the believers if the three religions. What Christianity sees as good as not sees as good in Muslim and the Traditional Worshipers. Even the killing at the Northern part of the country also come from the Religious Faith of the Muslim. Though many people are trying to justify the belief system of the Christian fold by trying bring new things to system but the conservative preachers always against that move because they believe that the Holy Book can not be changed by any human but they can only completement the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they can't change the concept because the language is already stated clearly in the bible from the book of Moses and nobody is interested to change that but to continue. And to sum it up they general believe of the church is sacred and everyone must obey that.

The dialectics of individual beliefs and practices are usually built on three major domains in the Nigerian context. The Islam, Christianity and the tradition, each of the domains stands on a philosophical tune of rejections and acceptances of what is termed good or bad on either moralistic grounds of society or established dictates of these religions.
 
Over the years Christian history has failed to justify the concept of belief but, the Christian history and its influence of power has somehow dominated the meaning and affiliation of belief within this purview, careful views of the concept has declared belief mostly a Christian concept due to the large number of believers. What seems to be dynamic about the concept belief is the language disparity in explaining the concept.

Belief in terms is an '' affirmation of identity, emotional commitment, belonging and authenticity within a sacred community.  In sum up, belief is  a matter of confessional affiliation, most often whether the believers were Catholic or Protestant; in others it is a matter of attitude of the Church(es) or the Clergy, in particular whether the church men were pro- 0r anti-clerical and yet others saw religion from behavioural? Criterion, in particular whether or not (or how frequently) the church men attended religious services.

Thoughts can live only on grounds which we adopt in the service of a reality to which we submit. These dynamics are further illustrated by moral somatic processes . By this, it means to explain the use of variances in the explanations and meanings of the concept "belief". In other words, belief could be adopted or accepted thoughts of morality and social ethics in what human hold as reality.

A concept of interpretive drift on the nature of belief posited that, belief is a gradual transition from the suspension of disbelief to a period of submission to a circle of thoughts, emotion, interpretation and commitment which develops the role of imagination.

He further argued that, the imagination and affirmation which causes belief enables voluntary determination to involuntary determination of individuals arising from visual and auditory experiences of individuals.

The voluntary determination is caused by a conscious effort to belief while, the involuntary determination causes an unconscious or unintended effort to belief and defend it.

For a belief to be established in an individual, there must be a conscious rejection of some issues of doubt for the acceptance of emotional and interest attachments. The human emotions and interests toward a particular religion set in sentiments that causes defense of that religion.

Despite the dividable nature of human, individual still exists at the level of social, relational or inter-subjective views. Even with the true nature of this fact, individuals are distinct in point of views and experiential.

Man, not only as a social, cultural and historic being is a thinking being that is informed with orientations about the world and engagements with that pattern of orientation.

These orientations which are either thoughts or experiences about physical and spiritual existence leads to Some physical engagements or practices of worship or rites. The engagement in human made Carlise to see belief  as a subjective Commitment to observed truth or what human hold as truth.

The observed truths are from the social-cultural ground of norms and principles of conduct that are observed within a Committee of beliefs and these physically or abstractly observed truths of human social-cultural conducts and environment creates a belief in society.

One of the contentions is the issue that is still fresh is the reality of belief In describing the reality of human belief, it will not be out of place to ask what makes man believe that, what makes up his bclief pattern is real.

The reality of mans' belief remains a belief that lacks realistic evidence but. that depends on the imagination, imagery and self conviction without realistic evidence. What makes the reality of belief are mind pictures, audio, audio-visual experiences of man causing brainwaves and visions, circumstantial experiences that are beyond human semantic comprehension.

In the Nigerian context, belief systems are uniquely distinctive among individuals in the three major religions What seems to be relative is their conceptualization of "God'" as an invisible existence and being in an abstract realm, His/Her supremacy above the human physical existence. The interpretive variances and perceptions on concepts and interest seem to be a problem as all religions carries out imaginations in accordance with self accepted and evaluated norms or ethics of practice. Commonly what forns religion in Nigeria like other third world nations starts from the gradual suspension of disbelief to a state of observation of supreme existence or super natural beings.