Laws of God (Post 3)

'The fool who has said in his heart, there's no God above.'

I’ll tell you why we have different religions; we do because we are all different not just in the way we view the world and perceive our experiences but also because of other wider influences like our environment.

If everyone around us is Muslim, if all we see in our area are mosques, if we are confronted daily with Muslim programmes on TV or the radio and if all of this happened from childhood - a highly impressionable stage of human development, then naturally, we are quite likely to believe in Islam. Period. And that is how and why most of us have chosen our faiths.

So when, Muslims vehemently defend their religion up North and Christians forcefully push with theirs down South, all I see is a bulk of ignorant people who have never really questioned their faith, challenged their belief system or really identified their motives in ‘pursuing’ God.

Oh and don’t take any criticisms of mine too hard; being ignorant is not a crime – it happens. We are all ignorant at some level or another; of one thing or another. Staying ignorant though is another matter; it is the sin against knowledge that cannot be forgiven. And I am not asking anyone to shirk their religion as a step towards getting out of ignorance; no, I am asking everyone to think, to learn, to gain knowledge and when you have, then, make an informed choice on your way of life. After all, there are many in Europe who don’t believe in God and don’t know why; they are just as ignorant.

So, to sum that rant up, don’t be a Christian, Muslim or whatever else simply because everyone else is. That is simply sheepish.

Anyway, let’s get back to the main issue – Religion as a whole, that belief in the supernatural or in a supreme being who created the Universe and everything in it.

One of my first problems with Religion is the fact that people at some stage in the distant past assumed that because a supreme being must exist, they ought to worship him. Does the first necessarily mean the other – not in my opinion.

But people began praising and thanking this being for their lives and fortunes until they actually ‘discovered’ rules with which this supreme being would want them to lead their lives. And it gets better, these rules would determine if they got rewarded or punished.

Actually, the main religion guilty of this rule-led doctrine that I know of was Judaism, from which sprang Christianity and Islam. I can’t remember a traditional African religion or any ancient religious cults of Europe and the middle-East where the gods enforced any rules directly over the lives of the people. Oh, and most of these ancient religions also had a concept of a supreme being; Olorun for the Yorubas and Chukwu for the Igbos. And do you remember that passage in the bible where the Athenians are shown to have had an altar raised to the ‘unknown god’?

However though, their worship of their gods, supreme or lesser, has never been shown to directly interfere with social laws. Laws on how the society functioned, on how people treated one another, on politics and economics were totally created and enforced by the community. Take for example, in ancient Igboland; if someone committed murder, that wasn’t directly an offence against any god even though the murderer would be supposed as evil in the eyes of Chukwu or the other gods. But say an unmarried pair has sex, the pantheon wouldn’t give a toss. The community, solely, would take such matters in hand.

These religions were inherently selfish; the gods and the people looked out for themselves; the people honoured the gods, approaching them with gifts for favours, protection or appeasement – not much more.

But enter the Hebrews of the old testament who, by the way were often lured towards pantheism and, unusually, their God begins giving out rules to govern their social affairs. These rules are still used today by many Christians of whatever race or culture.

But it is easy to see that the laws that are detailed in Deuteronomy are simply a collection of Jewish moral and religious codes. Moral codes – to govern their society; religious codes – to guide their worship, just like all our societies have. So, because the author of this book claims that these laws were given by their ‘God’ (what society wouldn’t) doesn’t necessarily make it so.

Choices (Post 2)

'The fool who has said in his heart, there's no God above.'

Everyone usually attaches a location or activity to a significant event. So for example, it is now a treasured piece of information to say where you were or what you were doing when John F Kennedy was shot – when you heard the news.

For most of us who have still got a full head of hair though, our benchmark would be 9/11 – the twin towers coming down. Where were you; what were you doing when the news reached you?

What was the moment you decided to become a policeman, a teacher, a politician, to go back to school, to re-sit GCE, to leave school, to learn a trade, to become a Christian – whoa! Hang on.

If you are from Southern Nigeria, that last question has a very hazy answer. The closest to a definitive answer we get is Pentecostal Christians saying, ‘I have always been Christian but now I have decided to accept Jesus as my Lord and personal saviour, to have a personal relationship with him.’

I say that is the closest because even though Catholics have the sacrament of Confirmation, this sacrament is, in my opinion, mere ritual for often uncomprehending but mainly indoctrinated teenagers.

But that is no Alleluia for Pentecostals. A decision by a Christian to accept Jesus as Lord is like a shepherd deciding to take time to appreciate and savour the taste of lamb. Well done Shepherd! Who saw that coming?

Such a choice is already suggested; the basic premise had already been set firmly in the mind of the Christian – that Jesus is the Son of God, and Lord and that it would be to their own advantage to enter a personal relationship with him. No surprise there.

I remember the day I decided to be non-Christian, a choice that quickly snowballed into atheism. I was standing on a red-brick tiled corridor that connected two walkways of the same hue. I asked the fellow opposite me, ‘Would you be a Christian if you’d been born up North to a Northern family?’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he replied.

‘Why are we Christians then?’ I asked back.

‘I haven’t a clue,’ he said. Then he laughed and added, ‘It is all a random thing – your religion is really about your environment.’

For me, it was deeper than that though. I had been asked my whole life to believe stories and doctrines about a religion and a God for which there wasn’t hard evidence other than individual subjective claims of miracles and the bible, which itself was written to promote the same faith, therefore, making it biased. And I would have been asked the same by Islam in equal measure had I been born up North to a Northern family.

If I had no real reason or proof to believe in either faith or any faith for that matter, was I then a Christian simply by suggestion – of my family, upbringing and environment? The answer is, undoubtedly, yes. And if I had no proof for the beliefs of my faith, believing in them would come down to a matter of choice – simply choice.

And then all of a sudden, I felt ashamed. Had I been stupid enough all the years before to wholly accept as true and accurate religious beliefs for which I hadn’t been provided evidence or proof – beliefs that had ranged from the just believable to the downright insane? I, who had always considered myself to be not unintelligent, had fallen for the sort of direction given to kids.

Because, you see, that is essentially what I think of religion – a fairy tale, but this time directed at adults.

Oh! And you may be screaming at the screen now of the ‘reasons’ why you believe in God; perhaps, you call these reasons evidence for God. Fine, I am not going to argue that point just yet. But while all Nigeria in their different religions will unite to ‘show’ me that there is indeed a God, the same Nigeria will break down when they try to ‘show’ me the reasons for their different religions – who is the greatest and most authentic of the founders? Big question. Divisive question.

So then, show me, no show yourself real reasons, evidence and proof why you have chosen your particular religion. But remember Nigeria, there is one un-debatable logic about this: if it is real proof, it will be undeniable, universal and, therefore, accepted by everyone.

So, why then are there different religions in the country?   

Hello Nigeria (Post 1)

'The fool who has said in his heart, there's no God above.'

I am Nigerian and I am an atheist. As it happens, I seem to belong to a rare breed of people, hard to find by design and even more difficult to stumble into by accident. The Nigerian Atheist is elusive in their purest form because they are generally confused by the religious melee around them, constantly bombarded by the frequently supposed and sworn feats of the supernatural and silently threatened to be misunderstood – at the very least – or seen as arrogant, stupid and misled.

So I am writing for you Nigerian atheists since like you, I bemoan daily the plight of our Nation that is hampered by religion, along with its henchmen – superstition and ignorance.

This is not to say that all religious people are ignorant – far from it. It is just that while some minds open to belief in the supernatural have been found to be very informed and to have achieved respectable heights in knowledge, standards generally devolve from there. In a nutshell, the more ignorant someone is, the more open they will be to faith. Or how else does the phrase ‘blind faith’ originate?

But let’s not hack away at the religious; that is not what I am about. Believe me when I say that I am not writing to divide but to unite. Unity, in my opinion however, is easier when there are fewer barriers to breach. Our ethnic lines – which shouldn’t have – have already proved to be much of a hassle and our religions have evidently only added to that problem, a very unnecessary addition in my view. I won’t bore you with details to highlight the problems underlined by our religious divisions, either real or as a product of political exploitation; any living Nigerian knows them already. And I certainly don’t assume that all the strife in the country will cease with an absence of religion – that is too facile a hope.

I only aim to educate (dare I say that) on the option of atheism and the thinking behind it. I aim to question our staunch reliance on the world of things unseen while we abandon what is right before us. And I hope to prod minds into thinking a little differently from and outside the pressurised box that our broken Nigeria is. Maybe, when we start making more informed and educated choices for our lives than what religious faith requires, we will inevitably be drawn towards a firmer sense of accountability and responsibility – about the one thing that the country generally lacks.

Every week, therefore, this column will display an article to show the devastation, oppression and stagnation our religions have orchestrated and sustained in our history as peoples and as a country. I will open up and defend the option of atheism not only as the way to go but, perhaps, the only safe way left to us Nigeria. And, of course, I expect the views I express will be controversial but you don’t get change without a measure of chaos. I have been ashamed for far too long of a Nigeria steeped in religion but lacking in the basic human qualities of knowledge and self-advancement and attributes of empathy and co-operation.

Of course, some might be thinking now how I must be a fool and such a thought, for them, would be well founded as it would be based directly on the Bible, wouldn’t it? ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God above.’ Please don’t expect me to give you book, chapter and verse; this is not a biblical discourse.

Because of quotes like the one above, the bible has become the bestselling book of all time; it affirms that they are fools who deny God and, I suppose, it would have nothing but praise for those who choose the bible as the word of God. Plainly, it is very self-advertising. This time, however, - and quite unusually - the ‘fools’ are in the minority.

So, I will begin by making a defence for us fools, touching on the bible a lot as it is the one religious book I am familiar with and as it did the labelling of us with the word ‘fool’. But don’t mistake me to be anti-Christian; I have far more time on my hands than that. I am anti-religion and vehemently decry the bypassing of reason that we Nigerians demonstrate each day, giving credence instead to things for which there is no proof or any plausible logic.

So we’ll begin with choices. I mentioned earlier about informed choices. I strongly believe that underneath those lies a depth of self-awareness that marks out the enlightened individual. Whether we are religious or not, the question is; did we make a definite choice for either path and if we did, was it an informed choice or a suggested one?

Because even though the religious demographic in Nigeria suggests otherwise, I am very sure, being Christian, Muslim or whatever else is not genetically inherited.