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March 28, 2002
“Sensible theories about something as large as the Earth [Life] do not arise from rational thinking. Textbooks may imply otherwise but theories often start from intuition.” Foreword
A lot of anger will be felt by all those who hold strongly to the view that religion is an untouchable ‘sacred’ subject but a lot of relief will similarly be felt by all those who hitherto had doubts about religion and who had been searching for answers to clear these doubts without success. This writer is not interested in scoring any cheap goal of moral superiority but would like Nigerians to see this essay as an objective attempt by a seeker of truth to share with fellow seekers some truths of life as revealed to him by The Spirit of Truth. Introduction
Nigeria is a country populated by of all sorts of religious fundamentalist. A look at the census data (whenever they are made publicly available) will show that over 90 per cent of the population claim allegiance or affiliation to one religious faith or the other. If this figure is right, the question gnawing at my heart is, does adherence to any particular religious teaching/practice has any effect whatsoever on the worldview of Nigerians? Does it have any impact on the national values and ethics that govern such philosophical and social elements like: morality, virtues, excellence, love, goodness, neighbourliness, piety, mercy, fairness, honesty, economic success, achievement, leadership, corruption, robbery, lies, murder, arson, gluttony, ostentation, vanity, vulgarity, etc.? Have the values that pertain to the question and meaning of life and which derive from this religious affiliation influenced positively or negatively the moral principle and fundamental philosophy of the Nigeria nation? Has our religious institution contributed to the socio-political underdevelopment or development of Nigeria? Can we rely on the ever-growing large number of the so-called spiritual leaders in our midst, who are fond of pawning lies and deceits for the sake of their bellies, to show us the way out of the self-inflicted national problems? The Origin and Nature of Religion
The moral and philosophical values of a nation are the springboard and the powerhouse of change and progress. The process of identifying and defining a society’s aspirations, the goals and the standards of achievement have often sprung from a body of belief of what the society has agreed either formally or informally as desirable or undesirable. This body of articulated or unarticulated beliefs is sometimes referred to as the philosophy of life. This body of religious, social, political and economic beliefs which ossify into societal values or traditions or customs or mores is simply the interpretation a family, a community, a tribe or a nation has given to what is adjudged the essential meaning of life. This discourse is an attempt to unravel the mystery of why a so-called religious nation has gone to the dogs, in spite of our loud claims to religious superiority or holiness; in spite of our daily and weekly attendances at various houses of worship; in spite of our incessant hourly and daily prayers, sacrifices and other religious rituals; in spite of our holy dresses, garments, appearances and behaviours; in spite of our weekly and yearly fast and ablution; in spite of our tithes, charity and zakat; and in spite of everything we claim to be doing in the Name and for the love or for the fear of God. Personally, this writer believes that religion is the name given to a particular interpretation of the meaning of life. It can also be used as the name given to a complete way of life of a people which encompasses the philosophy of what life means or the name given to the daily or weekly or annual rituals devised for symbolising the interpretation of what life means to the founder of the religion. In the decadence world of today, this founder’s interpretation which have been wholly or partially and cleverly tainted or transformed or further interpreted by religious eggheads who followed after the leader is what is now been fed to the hapless followers as religion. It is very common in general discussions to use beliefs and values interchangeably. However, for the purpose of our discussion, we shall recognise that our values grow out of our beliefs and similarly our beliefs can also be a by-product of our inherited ancestral values. The most dangerous form of belief is that which flows from cultural or religious indoctrination that neither give a person an opportunity to query any aspect of the inherited values nor the opportunity to ask fundamental questions about the origin of faith. It is again further demeaning when followers are discouraged from engaging in original reflection on the sense or the senselessness of some of the packaged artefacts of inherited values of religion. In a philosophical reflection, beliefs are the final product of a process of sensory observations, sensory processing of observable and collectable stimuli, and the interpretation of the processed information. This synthesis of sensory activities is the foundation of all sound knowledge. In a nutshell a person has knowledge through what the sense organs feed to the brain. For most people, the sense organs are never put to good use. Such people go through life with almost all their sensory outlets firmly shut or barely opened. They are not blind but they never see. They are not deaf but they never hear. They have no opinion about anything under the sun except the garbage fed to them in their infancy. It is as a result of this gullible majority that religion has developed into big business all over the world. A religious belief grows out of the articulated interpretations of life offered by a charismatic personality in a community who has, contrary to his indolent contemporaries, taken time to observe the environment of his existence. In the process he sees beauty, mystery, power, energy, force, simplicity as well as complexity in the orderly designs of the universe. The next stage in the life of this awakened individual is to analyse and make some sense or meaning out of or give interpretation to his observation as they relate to his person. This analysis will lead our budding philosopher to form and hold various opinions, hypothesis and theories about the origin of life, about The Creator (TC) of life, on the relationship between himself and TC, on the relationship between himself and his fellow men, on the relationship between himself and other living things and non-living things and so on and so forth. The birth of religion follows if our charismatic observer and student of life decided to inflict his interpretation on the members of his society. If the thinker succeeded in convincing them to accept his interpretation either through sound logical reasoning and presentation of his findings or by the use of fear dressed up in myth and superstitions or by the use of force, a new religion can be said to have begun. The next stage that will concretise this new faith is the creative process of devising and designing symbols, orders, rules and regulations that will govern the observance of the logic bestowed by the ‘holy man’. This is where the real gods of every society is created - artistic images, saintly icons, The Holy Books, sacred figurines etc. The tag of holiness is never too far away as soon as the theories of the charismatic personality are accepted by his society. Traditionally, the institution of religion often evolves by accident as an aftermath of a particularly unprecedented social phenomenon. For example, if our charismatic personality succeeded in curing a particular natural disaster in the society by the application of an inspired ritual put together to appease the forces of nature which he has discovered to be responsible for all natural activities; and if the pattern of such disaster and the rituals to avert it becomes very repetitive it will gradually get institutionalised into one of the body of ceremonies of the society. With time it becomes compulsory for all members or a selected few to participate and to contribute to the organisation of these ceremonies. This is a sure road to the erection of a new way of life or a culture or a religion. The next and the next generations of believers born into the community of the faithful, most times, would not bother to look back and investigate the origin and the history of their avowed faith anymore. This New Age generation will assume, since the belief was good enough for their fathers and their forefathers before them, that it is good enough for them as well. They will therefore forbid any review of the rituals of faith or any questioning of the foundation of their grand religious rituals. In essence the rituals and not the meanings of the rituals have become the religion. These latter day believers would have forgotten that the rituals were mere symbols of a body of knowledge or philosophy that the founder of their faith put together after a very careful study of the observable physical phenomena of the world around him, as he understands them. It is very unfortunate that the majority of people in the world merely pass through this planet with their eyes and all other senses firmly shut. They have no awareness or recognition of the awe-inspiring universe, the magical specificity of its structural design, the unfailing seasonal programmes, the perfect organisation of the world of nature, the ageless reoccurring mystery of creation of life in all its glory and grace, and the perfect unchanging laws that govern, synchronise and hold the universe together. Because most humankind have neglected to develop and sharpen the ability to observe, to admire, to marvel, to investigate, and to enjoy the beauty of nature, the reasoning faculties have become atrophied. Consequently, they could therefore not develop a pattern of reasoning that would have led first to labelling or naming and next to identifying simple or complex phenomena in order to discover the intricate connections between the various observed physical matters around them. It is therefore left to the charismatic individuals in the community who have devoted ample time and energy to this business of careful observation of nature and the universe to help their fellow travellers in the journey of life to see and to understand what all these things mean or could mean. It is the interpretation offered by these devoted individuals that would ultimately coalesce into the collective belief of that generation. A belief therefore emerges from the sum of the interpretations given to the sensory stimuli fed to the brain. In other words, beliefs have a lot to do with our senses - the sharpness or dullness of our sense organs will determine to a large extent our perceptions. If our organs of perceptions are defective, the views or the images supplied to our brain will also be defective. Again, these sensory stimuli must be processed appropriately by our sense organs so as to accord recognition, meaning, interpretation and weight to every observable phenomenon. If our brain has not been primed by training and practice for reasoning, most of the information collected by our senses will go to waste. It is like a factory that has so many raw materials in the storehouse but has no electrical power (NEPA) to run the machinery in the production line. Definitely no manufactured product can be produced. Senselessness or Mental Laziness
The psychology of fear created and magnified by the spiritual leaders has become a veritable weapon for holding on to the believers. A person born and bred with a weekly dose of hell fire sermons ringing in his ear at every turn must be extraordinarily strong-willed to remain unyielding to the fables beautifully dressed up and passed on as the gospel truth. It is again made worse when the educational curriculum of schools that could have rescued our youths from the damage of this hell-fire bashing is not geared towards liberal education and the development of reasoning skills. Most Nigerians therefore grow into adulthood with serious psychological deficiencies leading to unbalanced and damaged personalities. When we say the religious garbage being passed around lacks higher philosophical thought, we are looking at philosophy as the simple practical art of using observable sensory facts as raw materials for analysis of human existence and computation of hypothesis or theories of what these observations mean and how they influence our lives. This level of reasoning seems to be the missing link among both the elite and the general masses. Instead, Nigeria is rich in myth, superstition, folklore and taboo of all kinds. Even though these beliefs have no scientific basis but all the same, they have strong psychological effect on both the fundamental and general outlooks of all the nationals. For one thing, they have succeeded in etching the necessary fear in the psyche of the people that is needed by every religion to make the believers as subservient and as pliable as possible to the whims of the spiritual leaders. The result of this kind of attitude and tendencies among Nigerians have led to the careless submission of their sensory faculties and intellects to the courts of the religious charlatan in our midst. To my mind, this is the bane of our social, economic and political problem as a religious nation. It is surprising that nationals have not been able to see through the veil under which religion and the custodian of artefacts of religion have sheepishly led us over the years by the nose. The only claim our spiritual leaders have to God is their ability to memorise and chant religious passages or their fluent oratorical skills as they sermonise on the history of the great feat of their religion in ages gone by. For the problem of our age, these religious leaders will feign miracles, will lie, will deceive, will cajole, and will be swift to condemn into hell-fire all those who raise doubts on the claims and dogmas of this religion. Despite their irrelevance to our age and to our national problems, these fraudulent religious leaders have succeeded in building magnificent altars all over the land collecting sacrifices and appeasement for the gods they have no knowledge about. Since the religion of Babangida became popular, Nigerians have learnt to settle ‘God’ as well in a big way. Stories abound of armed robbers or pen robbers or contractors who specialise in over-invoicing scams and other such kinds reporting to their very supportive spiritual leaders with Thanksgiving and gift-offering of Mercedes Benz cars or other top brands of cars or briefcase stuffed with currencies or keys to a whole newly completed mansion or a house of worship. The grateful follower will say, “This is for you, Imam or ‘Alfa’ or Bishop or Reverend or Pastor or Evangelist or ‘Baba/Mama Aladura’ or ‘Babalawo’, or ‘Dibia’ or ‘Marabou’ just to say thank you for all your prayers. Without your prayers, all these blessings which are now mine would not have been.” The grateful Nigerian villain or robber or murderer will go home secured in his faith that since he has settled the gods from the bounty of the riches notoriously acquired, he has no cause to fear the wrath of the gods anymore. This is why it is so easy for Nigerians to lead a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde life style without any feeling of guilt. In their religious community, a typical Nigerian is a pillar of faith but in the business community he or she is a villain. On Friday or Sunday, every member of the family is gaily dressed up for worship in the houses designated for the gods. They will breathe and exhume holiness in every orifice of their body. They will look holy, talk holy, walk holy and do all holy things but the only place that is important, their hearts/minds, are full of all kinds of mayhem and heinous thoughts. For one day in a week, all the followers of religion will put on the pretence of a holy worship. Since it is a mere pretence, the worship, the sacrifices, the charities, the zakats are all wasteful exercises. The reason for all this human wastefulness is that Nigerians have not, individually, taken the pain to challenge the dogma of their faith, to question the philosophy, and to review the origin and the rationale of the rituals of faith. There is nothing wrong with the rituals of any faith, at least for the age they were addressed to or designed for. But for a man or woman in the twenty-first century to accept all these rituals without making effort to think them through and to identify the essence or core philosophy of the faith beyond these ritualistic dressings smirks of mental laziness. The realm of physical knowledge has so expanded in the last two thousand years that it is share gross intellectual madness for any person in this age to neglect all these wealth of knowledge as he or she embraces any religion. Making use of these wealth of knowledge will not diminish the belief in the power and love of TC but it will sure diminish the suffocating and domineering power the cruel religious leaders wield over the life of fellow nationals. As it is, the religious leaders are the only ones doing the natural thinking with respect to the first principle of our existence as human beings. Even then, the kinds of thinking these religious frauds are engaged in are of the degrading type. The evidence of this is found in the example given above with respect to the manner of gifts and sacrifices traced to the accounts and persons of these men and women of god that were collected from the scumbags of our societies. A man of ‘God’ (as they loved to be addressed) who has truly found TC because he or she has been awakened or born again cannot descend so low. The fruit of true knowledge will show in the modest life style and in the great effort they make daily and ceaselessly to teach the acquired knowledge of deliverance that can free all men and women from the shackles of ignorance. But instead and because they are equally as blind as bats, they have reduced all their followers and associates to the same base level where only myths and soft psychology are spun like a spider’s web for enticement and enslavement. What we are trying to draw out so far is that the origin of religion is the effort made by a particular visionary in ages past to seek the truth of life and the courage he displayed, contrary to the prevailing popular views and beliefs of his/her contemporaries, to disseminate such discovered truths. In this discourse, we aim to disabuse the mind of everyone that there is anything special in the efforts of the men whose original thinking and sayings, as they search for the truth of life, were collated by political astute men and women of their generations to form the basis for the creation of all received popular religions. In fact what they have done is what is expected of each member of the human family as we journey through this life. We are expected to use the massive faculties of our God-given senses and brain to seek and to understand this vast edifice called the universe. Our Creator, the Omniscience and the All-knowing, is exceedingly happy when any of the Homo sapiens break free away from the wretched existence of day to day life towards the pinnacle of spiritual adventure. Spiritual is used in this sense to connote a state of being a person has reached when he/she has gone beyond the matter of flesh to the halo ground of contemplation and adventure of wonder and amazement on the higher things of life. Such as, the origin and existence of life; the forces, power and wisdom behind creation; and the position and the role of self in the cosmos of life. The desire to know and to understand is the only form of worship acceptable to TC. It is a great disservice to TC when persons, according to the holy books, created in the image of God reduced themselves to the level of a robot-like automaton and mechanically following a path of religious rituals, as prescribed by some holy eggheads. Of course, the custodians of religions are happy to tell us that these rituals were as laid down by the dead ancestors, or messiahs or prophets of years ago. It is therefore sacrilegious, according to the unwritten article of faith, to vary by any bit the pattern and the step-by-step procedures of faith claimed to have been laid out by the founder. By such senseless habits, all blind followers of religion have degraded the potentials in man for growth that are in-built and are essential part of the natural wealth bestowed on mankind by TC. By nature, human kind is expected to learn in order to grow into the halo ground of an achiever and conqueror in the wilderness of nature. A mechanical worship of TC as adopted by all religions is not and cannot be the worship The Creator of the universe expects from mankind. The whole wide world, at least our galaxy, thanks to serious men and women of science whose daring effort have made this knowledge available to all, is supposed to be our terrain. We say daring in the sense that if the scientists had not shown the courage of their conviction and if they had allowed religion to have its way the world would have been denied all the advancement of the last 500 years. This terrain is mammoth and it shows bad manners for any living human being not to show an inkling of interest that could lead to some understanding of a bit of the work of our Creator. I believe, we who claimed to be the children of The Great Lord, and the highest in hierarchy among all the living beings on planet earth, ought to show some respect and pride in the work of TC. By admiring the beauty and by making effort to learn and understand the architecture, the structure, the mechanics, the chemistry, and the complex organic nature of the universe, I believe, is the only worship worthy of us. This type of knowledge cannot be left to just a few among us. It is the duty of the whole human race to learn and to seek to understand the natural laws that govern our universe in order to be able to manage it efficiently for the satisfaction of our needs, joys and happiness. This type of knowledge can never come through the dogma of rituals instituted by all our religions. In fact some religious bodies frown at their members that seek and search for knowledge outside the religious teachings. They merely encourage the followers and their children to learn by rote the prescribed holy books and the selected history of the founding fathers of their faith. This type of careless show of unconcern in the work of The Creator could be compared to an earthly father who spent money, time and effort to build a house of his dream for his family. On the completion of the house, he took the whole family down to see the new house. At the site, he was waiting for the wow of amazement from the children but none was forthcoming. He took them inside to show the marvellous workmanship, the decor, the design, the construction and the expensive chandeliers but still they were unimpressed. They offered neither a word of compliment nor show any sign of admiration. There is no doubt in my mind that the joy of this father would drop by some notches. He would have expected the children for whom he has laboured so much to show appreciation and some pride in his effort. If all these were missing, it shows either the children have a very low intelligence or are totally lacking in manners. This is exactly what we the Homo sapiens do to our Great Creator of our known universe. The least worship expected of us is to show admiration for the works of TC - the beauty and the designs of all that surround us - particularly the blessings that flow to us from this gigantic universal edifice. Every professor in the university knows how minuscule the amount of knowledge a man can master in a lifetime. It is indeed a very wide world and very wide field of knowledge as well. But the important thing is for each of us to take time out to study any part of nature that appeals to him or her. The beauty of this exercise in the search for knowledge is that any part of nature we focus our attention on shall take us straight to the throne of TC because ‘knowledge is power’. And since TC is the Power, therefore TC is the knowledge. QED. In a nutshell the only worship TC wants from any Homo sapiens is the worship in knowledge. In seeking to know the truth of life through any of the natural creative works of TC are sure testimonies of respect, admiration and love for TC and the works of TC. There are great lessons to be learnt from the kingdom of plants, of animals, and of insects. Even the tiny one-cellular amoeba has something to teach about TC. The fission system of amoebic reproduction can be compared to the manner TC divides and shares itself equally with all creations ensuring that every living creature has an equal part of TC. Wonderful awe-inspiring revelation can also be gathered from the world of rocks, mineral ores, climate, stars, moon, sun, other planets in our galaxy, etc. This kind of love for knowledge is the only worship acceptable to Our Lord and Creator. The Search for the Truth of Life
These three elements have formed the conceptual basis for all philosophical scholarships since the times of Socrates. As soon as thinkers step out of the visible physical matter they have no other choice for terms than to use soul and mind to underpin the discourse of metaphysical subjects. This writer does not wish to make this discussion sound like an academic dialogue. We shall therefore refrain from unnecessary quotes of what earlier thinkers have said or have not said about the meaning of these terms. The soul, to the best of my understanding is the purest and wisest part of man. It is the only contact of communication with the cosmos or TC. In fact our soul is the bit of TC that makes us a living being. The soul is the life force of all living things. It is not far from the truth to say the soul is TC or a share of TC that every living organism carries in his or her person. When we say a share of TC, this could be used synonymously to mean the soul as the clone of TC in every living being since it is identical in every respect to TC. Let us illustrate this with a simple example of the seawater. If a bottle filled with seawater is taken to the inter-land of the continent, say 1,000 kilometres away, does the name or property of the water in the bottle change just because it is no longer in the Ocean? No, the bottle will still be referred to as a bottle of seawater. Of course we are no longer by the seashore, yet the basic property of the water in the bottle will still remain as salty as any seawater. Also, because the quantity of the water we’ve taken is so small, would the mighty ocean diminish in size or feel the loss of this bottle of water. Again, the answer is No. It is in this same sense that each of the living beings carry a bit of TC without diminishing the size, power or force of TC. Is it not true that all the great books and great teachings of the world have the following accolades for TC? TC is spirit, formless and invisible. TC is immortal and eternal. TC is Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscience. TC is power. TC is love. TC is Wisdom. TC is Light. If all these attributes describe TC alias God and if we agree that our soul is the clone of TC, does it therefore not follow that our soul must carry, albeit even though in very tiny microscopic proportion, all the properties of TC mentioned above? This is very much true. In the case of the mind, our mind is the repository of memory and all the acquired earthly knowledge. The mind of every human being is blank at birth and so it has to be filled with information and facts through the activities of the sensory organs of the body. Every piece of knowledge acquired from the time the baby is in the womb through infancy is used as the building block for the construction of a sound mind. Our strong fervent desires and the cravings of every sensory matter in our body to know at infancy is a testimony to the auto-programme in the nature of all living things. Our nature is divinely designed to seek and to search for knowledge. The richness and the abundance wealth of our mind is therefore the result of great effort, enthusiastic industry and painstaking diligence. This is much helped if the environment of our birth is well stocked with stimulating materials that could aid this natural tendency for learning in every human being. There is therefore no point gainsaying that the desire and the search for knowledge is a must for every human being if we intend to have a rich mind full of worthy materials that can help us to enjoy good life to the fullest. But, this is not the end of the story. The fruit of knowledge is only the first step to a higher and more enduring benefit. Knowledge is the only energy force that is capable of energising the soul to an active state. The soul, because it is a part of TC, is the oldest and wisest part of the three components of a person and it is the repository of all age-long wisdom of the universe. But unfortunately the soul cannot work with an empty mind. This is the reason why a good proportion of earthlings pass through life without enjoying the abundant wisdom of the soul. As long as the mind remains blank, there can be no contact with the soul. And since the soul is the receptor of the life force from TC or the eternal mechanism of communication with the Source of Life, then the person with a blank mind can be described as spiritually dead or soulless. A spiritually dead or soulless person can therefore easily lead a perverted life such as is common in Nigeria because he/she is totally cut off from The Light of the world. These perverted people are perpetually living in darkness. Even though, they sometimes make effort to be good persons. They will resolve at the beginning of every year with wonderful resolution to turn a new leaf but at the end of every year these resolutions would have come to nothing. The fundamental problem is found in the body. The body, the third segment of our make-up, is the weakest element in our construction. The materials from which the body is fashioned are corrosive and corruptible. These materials are similar to the body of many beautiful new cars that at delivery sparkle and shine. But after a year or two rust sets in and destroys the beauty of the car irrespective of the care and attention the owner has given. The simple reason for this is that the materials used for the forming of our body contained corrosive properties both internally and externally. The design of our body is programmed to grow to a particular peak and to regress afterwards towards eventual death. This is the original design. It is not caused by any original sin or any other concocted fables of that nature. A spiritually dead person therefore spends more time than necessary on the outer dressing of the human person. Driving itself to nought in order to fulfil the insatiable demands of the body and in the process forgetting to take care of the soul via the mind. The body is just like any garment we put in the wardrobe. Cloths are useful mainly to cover our nakedness. The body is the shell or garment the soul uses as it’s covering to give it a form. Since the soul is eternal or immortal it should be the only element of our being that is worth keeping. The body is a disposable but recyclable material (as fertilisers) and so it should be treated as such. After a disposable nappy has done its duty it has to be thrown away or discarded. Its usefulness is over. Therefore to get unduly obsessed with a corruptible disposable body is foolishness indeed. We need to get a proper life. Our journey here on the planet earth is a form of a picnic or holiday from our real home. We, at least the rich among us, know about holidays in distant countries or foreign countries. No matter how enjoyable the holiday is, at the appointed time, you must return home to fulfil your day-to-day obligations. Would you therefore for that brief two weeks holiday change your personality - language and accent, skin colour, taste and other life styles etc. to the extent that when you get back to your natural abode nobody recognises you anymore? Would you mess up your holiday resort (planet earth) with filth and corruption to the extent that other would-be visitors were completely turned off from going there? Would you act in such a disgraceful, reckless and abandon manner that the name of your country of origin (heaven) is forever in disrepute? Would that be a wise thing to do? >> next page
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The Ungodly Religious Nation