Shall there be evil in a city, and the lord has not done it? Amos 3:6

The omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence capability of a god begets a lot of question for the critical mind, one we must never overlook. Rowan Atkinson said “To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas-even if they are sincerely held beliefs-is one of the fundamental freedoms of the society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed”  Religion has a great effect on the world and we must not stop in analyzing and criticizing the dangerous aspects of it, in a war to make our society healthier.

Let us look at these god-qualities critically, assuming religion not being man made. According to the creation story in the bible, every creation step always ends with a phrase “and God saw that it was good” which means everything created is perfect. A world of perfection with tsunamis, hurricanes, wildfires and so many other natural disasters is a paradox. An omniscience god that created Lucifer   (whom the adherents of Christianity claims is responsible for the world plagues today), was well aware of the consequences of creating such a being, also went ahead to create humans knowing fully well that the forbidden fruit will be eaten and that majority of the world will burn in hell fire according to his standard. This same god has the power make everything all good but will not do it. It’s worrisome for the sane mind.

The standpoint of god being omniscience springs up a lot of question such as; does freewill really exists? If god knew you before you were formed in the womb, knew the situations you will grow up to face, knew the prayers you will say about it, knew the ones he is going to answer and also knows whether you are going to end up in hell fire or not; how does freewill come into that? Then we are like puppets and life becomes movie god has seen so many times. Being omnipresent, god was fully around when the serpent deceived Eve, but kept quiet refusing to re-enlighten a being who does not know the difference between good and evil. It is like a stranger putting food a baby’s mouth, the baby is only aware it is food and is not wise enough to care who it is coming from. Yes, anyone who does not know the difference between good and evil is as good as a toddler.

The question of the origin of evil is the biggest challenge to the omnipotence of god. The presence of evil in a world created by an all-powerful god is an indication of malevolence on the path of the creator. It is a far cry from the overused title “merciful”. The Great Lisbon earthquake was a disaster that happened on November 1; the holy day of ‘All Saints Day’. This earthquake destroyed almost all the major churches in Lisbon, namely the Lisbon cathedral, the basilicas of Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Sao Vincente de Fora, the Misericordia Church and a large percentage of the congregation died. It caused a lot of anxiety and confusion among the citizens of a staunch and devout of Roman Catholic Church. A lot of people lost their faith and you cannot blame them and of course many saw it as the divine judgement. This led to a lot scientific, philosophical and theological write ups, a necessary reaction by the academics. The noted writer-philosopher Volataire used the earthquake in ‘Candide’ and in his Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne (“Poem on the Lisbon disaster”). He attacks the notion that all is for the best in a world that is closely supervised by a benevolent deity. It made it obvious this world is not created perfect but “god saw that it was good”. If we are to blame the devil for the vices in the world then he seems more responsible for things happening in this world, so where is the omnipotent.

The one who knows all does not make mistakes, but the god of the bible seems to make mistakes, complain and then make corrections that are not adequate enough to fully solve the problem on ground, so much for an all-powerful and all-knowing being. From the story of Noah in the bible, water was devised as a means to cleanse the world, but even after the celestial orchestrated genocide; the world today does not look like it has once been cleansed. The story of cleansing of Sodom and Gomorrah by genocide, so as to rid the world of immorality such as sodomy which still exists in the world today is another epic fail. These show a trend of mistakes, corrections and confusions.

At the end of the day the god of the bible regretted creating humans, regret is not supposed to be an attribute of the all-knowing. A verse of the bible also said “I form good and create evil, i the lord do all these things” that makes the world an amusement park tuned by the celestial being. We should ask ourselves the questions Epicurus asked;

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he’s not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

‘Let us make Gods in our own image…’

The advantage of higher cognitive capacity man enjoys over other animals has made him a creator. He creates whatever he desires in order to fulfil a particular need. The universe is such a mystery and man understands very little about it, hence the need to create a supernatural. When Albert Einstein turned 50 he granted an interview in which he was asked point blank, do you believe in God? “I am not an atheist” he began, “The problem is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. He does not know how. He does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being towards God. We see the universe marvellously arranged and obeying certain laws but dimly understand these laws.”

The primitive men of the ancient religions created gods for themselves in order to fulfil one of the philosophical desires of human; finding his source and purpose. This led to a lot of creation myth varying from each god, a series of accounts less convincing than evolution and the big bang theory. There has always been a gaffe in religious accounts of creation and astronomy. The most common ones from Abrahamic religions being the sun standing still (as if it was rotating in the first place), existence of day and night before the sun, the earth being held by pillars and the creation of plants before the sun (which is technically impossible).

It is acceptable for an illiterate to think the sun is rotating around the earth, hence the occurrence of night and day. So are we to say an omnipotent god is as smart as a primitive middle easterner? Man created gods for all forms of element that do not seem so understandable to him. In the African traditional religion he created Ogun for iron with the same mind set the Greek created Zeus for thunder and lightning. The average man is averse towards what he don’t understand e.g. homosexuals - hence his god feels the same way. So he creates a law against them in the religious books he made for his gods. Let us agree for a minute that humans could rebel against god and give chance for perversion, what case can we make for homosexual monkeys, ducks who engage in necrophilia and the masturbating penguins?

Most religion was created at a time when they live by the sword or survival of the fittest was the order of the day, hence the woman was termed ‘weak’. They couldn’t understand that a menstruating woman is just shedding linings of the uterus, so they thought it was impure and their god thought the same as usual. The famous story of the journey to promise land by the Israelites was just another occurrence of tribal invasion of foreign lands by primitive men, an occurrence which was the order of the day prior to civilization. The so called promise land happens not be special after all, a divine force would have directed the Israelites towards Saudi Arabia or Qatar; a land filled with lots of crude oil.

A lot of gods has come and gone, lots of religions have gone extinct, lots are still around and people worship god in their own different ways with the notion that their god is the one true god(s). Have we ever wondered that if there is one true and all powerful god, why allow the proliferation of thousands of counterfeit religions. Gods are created by men, that is why all that religion encompasses is all that man can think about, and we never heard of pandas in the bible because there are none in the middle east - and the creator of the Abrahamic religions were oblivious of its existence. The greater proliferation of a particular religion(s) or larger presence of a particular faith on earth has nothing to do with the divine; rather it shows a history of violence against humanity and the relevance of its tenets in the subduing of masses and control of economic resources – with its most useful ingredient being afterlife.

Most theists find it difficult to swallow that we do not fully understand how we -the living beings got here, or how some elements of nature came into existence. We find it common attributing our ignorance to a god entity, rather than saying we do not know. Had it been that any religion is divine and not man made, its texts would have actually been a blueprint to many scientific discoveries that we have today, but sadly it’s not the case. No matter how hard theists try to reconcile faith and logic; they are two parallel lines, they cannot meet. While churches are being turned to pubs and apartments in Europe, we tend to rake together politicians’ loots, widows mites, and the average man’s sweat to build worship edifices when our hospitals and schools are in bad shapes. We should soft pedal on religion; it is causing more harm than good in the African society. Don’t you think so?

What is wrong with being Black?

What can we say is actually wrong with the black nation? The assembly of black people all over the world is plagued with all sort of social vices. The abundance of melanin has gone beyond just skin deep, it fills every atmosphere it infiltrates with a sense of primitiveness, self-destruction, menace, hedonism and debauchery. Looking back to the Africa continent, the most developed section of it belongs to inhabitants with the fairer skin. Looking outside the Dark Continent, the Caribbean islands with the black majority are going through the same problem as us. Are we now safe to say something is wrong being black? Our consolation is in the fact that black people such as the ancient Egyptians and the Moors left a footprint of sophistication in the world, even when the whites were incapable of it. The sphinx is not the image of a white man and this was created alongside other wonderful feats such as the pyramids of Giza and all other pyramids scattered over Sudan, Uganda, eastern-Nigeria etc. The moors enjoyed years of dominating the white man in Spain and its environs. It is evident that the black man is a wise man. It has also been genetically proved that the only difference between blacks and whites is the colour of their skin, which has no influence on the body’s physiological processes - hence, it is safe to say we are the same.

The average black man has been made to believe that something is inherently wrong with his natural state, and has been given an unhealthy precedence to follow before being accepted by the outside world. This unhealthy and deprecating set of standards has led to a chain of reaction of low self-esteem involving all black generations and the ones yet to come. He is not to be blamed for accepting these standards because when he looks around all he sees is vices, environmental degradation, poverty and conflicts. We have been made to believe that the fairer skin is beautiful; hence a lot of people bleach their skin to look good. The black hair can be stubborn, but it’s amazing and most black women cover it up and feel ashamed when it is exposed. It is also very shameful that we look down on those who speak our local dialect even though they are learned, some are even very proud to say they can’t communicate in their mother tongue. When Spaniards and Italians murder English; we say it is ‘sexy’, but most times we are ashamed of our accents and praise those who talk through their nose and call them enlightened. These sets of sickening double standard are too much mention. The mind is a strong tool and when it has been trained to accept these standards, it becomes the norm even when the real is staring in our eyes. Nothing is wrong with a thick woolly hair. Nothing is wrong with your accent and native names. Absolutely nothing!

Nearly every culture on the African continent has been badly battered by Christianity and Islam. While we were told that we worship idols and have to discard our gods, but if we are to be sincere and compare these religions; these gods are only different by name and related in terms of worship, sacrifice, wrath, rules and jealousy. We found it easy to leave a god that accepts human sacrifice for one that permits genocide and slave trade. Is it that we fail to compare or we were trying to meet up to standard of our fellow developed humans? I hear someone murmur the New Testament, but if our religion were to be left alone maybe we will have the new testament of African Traditional Religion too. The truth is that every God is an idol.

Asia and Africa has once been pillaged by the Europeans and most Asians have gotten over it. They have successfully retained their language, culture and religion and they hold it in high esteem over every other western alternative. The Asians have gone further to develop some countries on their continent to a first world and they have the largest economies in the world. This is a set of people that we have been through the same situations and another point to tell us that if we put in the work all will be well with our continent. We need to stop judging ourselves with unrealistic standards and set out to think independently as self-reliance is the first step to greatness. Every black man needs to get knowledge, read  about his history, know what shaped his existence and then set out to think independently outside these factors with the mind-set that he and his kin is capable of wonderful scientific feats, capable of good governance and making his continent proud as it was once were.

We have had black inventors and great scholars in the likes of Lewis Latimer, Frederick Jones, Granville Woods, Charles Drew and a lot others. Some had their intellectual property stolen and sold to corporations and then persecuted to keep quiet. We have also had good systems of government before the encounter with Europeans; a good example is the Benin and Songhai empires. So why do all these now seem as a myth to us? These are facts the young generation needs to be aware of to help prepare an unbiased mind-set, but sadly most history books nowadays starts with ‘when the white man’s boat approached’.

Slavery is behind us, our destiny has been in our hands for scores of years and it seems like we can’t even cater for our own. Our continent is a very religious one and the average black man is hoping for a New Jerusalem, rather than build a new Africa. It’s time for the black man to educate his folks, as ignorance is the bane our problem. Let every one of us not just get education, but actually become enlightened. Know your history, identify your problems and proffer solutions, even if it means going the hard way. Nothing is wrong with black man!

Suffer Suffer for World

In the words of the late Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo Kuti, “suffer suffer for world, enjoy for heaven” Sadly this is an excerpt from a song that has been over twenty years old and it still remains the condition today, perhaps religious delusion is one of the most difficult things to overcome.

We live in a world today where the system is built to make the poor poorer and sadly, religion that is supposed to be the hope of the common man plays a major role in keeping the system this way. The idea of worshippers suffering on earth and enjoying in heaven while their collective wealth is being used to finance the flamboyant lives of their pastors is evidence that religious delusion is a mental illness. A recent blog post circulated the news where the name of those who couldn’t pay tithes was pasted on the church notice board, a time where the church should be helping its members by providing palliatives to cushion the effect of the economic recession. The popular saying ‘Do not rob god’ should be changed to ‘Do not rob your pastor’ as god is not the occupant of the big houses they build nor does he share the expensive suits with them.

The idea of pastors owning jets while most of their congregations do not have their own cars is a proof that religion and politics are two opposite sides of the same coin. The series of continuous cost incurred from owning a private jet is a burden carried by these middle class and impoverished families. Religious leaders climb on the pulpit and preach the direct opposite of their lifestyles to the gullible congregations and then go further to protect their selves with the ‘touch not my anointed’ phrase. A popular pastor with fierce looking bodyguards surrounding his pulpit and then at the end of the service goes forth to pronounce protection on his sheep with ‘the blood of Jesus’, such double standard and contradiction!

It is obvious our religious houses are fast becoming business conglomerates or how do you explain universities built by churches, whereby most of the congregations cannot afford the tuition fee. It is common knowledge that education is expensive, but it is also injustice to set up an establishment and deny the major stakeholders opportunity to partake in the benefits, while being hoodwinked with blind faith. It is synonymous to a situation whereby the federal universities in the country is affordable only by the rich and wealthy in a country where majority is poor. Another of our popular pastor who is famous for hedonism displayed a Gucci bag worth over a million naira in a selfie on social media, and some of his gullible followers came to his defence that a man of god cannot be poor. No one is saying a pastor should be poor but these gods of men that have no other means of livelihood should not feed fat on the sweat of their congregations up to the level of luxury. The issue of double standards within the religious sphere cannot be overemphasised as we see the flamboyance and exhibitionism the daughters of the Muslim billionaires display on social media and I ask myself ‘Is hijab and modesty only for the poor?’

The average Nigerian churchgoer prefers to pay his/her tithe than to pay tax and we wonder what is wrong with our country. Blind belief has been sold to us and we are hoping for a New Jerusalem after this world, instead of us to create a new Nigeria here by being hardworking, diligent and stop being good people only on Sundays. These so called men of god celebrates politicians who are common thieves, and give them the best set of cushion close to the pulpit on one of the very few days they come to their place of worship, and even anoint them publicly and give them their fake prophesies as usual in return for their brown envelopes and cheques. And we ask ourselves, this god they talk about is it Money? Because it seems like that is the only thing they give the slightest regard.  

It is time for us to stop hoping for a new Jerusalem and start building a new Nigeria, because even the owners of Jerusalem that houses mount Horeb (which the Jehovah Witness claim will be the first bus stop during the second coming) have went ahead to develop their country to a first world after being resettled in the 50s. I heard the Christian association of Nigeria organised prayers to battle economic recessions, haven’t we been praying hard since 1930? The iconic times of Apostle Joseph Ayo Babalola, have our prayers been falling on deaf ears? Or is this a continuous chain of event to continue keeping us in the dark? What about the atheists countries that are far better off than we; the most religious nation? This is a strong indication tht we should work not pray about it.

We should hold our politicians responsible, be truthful to our country, work for its utmost good and stop being pawns in the hands of these conmen.

Happy Independence Day