The Supreme Being (God) and Man: Who Is to Blame for Bad Destiny?

Abstract

In Yoruba traditional thought, human destiny has a mysterious power that controls human events. It is believed that every person has their life history before coming to the world. This implies that anything one does is not something done out of free will is done in fulfillment of a preordained or preordained sequence of events. However, Yoruba has such a controversial understanding of the meaning, nature, relevance and reality of the concept of destiny (ayanmo), which has long elicited philosophical interest. While various metaphysical interpretations have been given for this issue, it could be said that most of these interpretations may be seen in four forms: fatalism, predestination, soft-determinism and hard-determinism. However, less emphasis has been placed on man’s free will in determining destiny. Who is to be blamed for bad destiny between the Supreme Being (Olodumare) and man was not completely resolved. Therefore, this paper re-examines who is responsible for the bad destiny suffered by man, between God and Man. Having used critical analysis, this paper argues that in the light of human moral responsibility, character, afterlife, justice andjudgment, there is a shared responsibility between Supreme Being (God) and the man on the bad destiny suffered by man.