Saturday, October 23, 2010

I don’t want to be saved, period!

“Religions are the cradles of despotism.” - Marquis de Sade.

What manner of arrogance made the Christians believe that they have the right to disturb my sleep? Is it not presumptuous for them to arrogate to themselves the right to intercede between me and my supposed creator?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of religions in the world, have the Christians pause to think of what bedlam it would be if the other religions are arrogant like they are - waking people up to listen to ‘good-tidings’ in the middle of the night.
What would our towns and cities look like if the Moslems, The Hindus, The Buddhist, the Traditionalists and the rest of the religionists wake up every night and start peddling their versions of piety? Were they to so do, our villages towns and cities will be nothing but hospitals for the insane.

“Religion is a fraud, but it must be maintained for the masses.” - Frederick the Great.

After much reflection, Karl Marx said: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

If opium is a sedative, then Karl Marx was only half-right. Religion has become, at least in Africa, the amphetamine of the people. It has also become big, very big business. How else do we explain the hypocritical fraudsters who tell their malnourished congregation that ‘everything on earth is vanity,’ and yet tool around in the latest hi-tech cars and live in posh houses?

These damned parasitical priests are living the most decadent lifestyles one could imagine; yet they shamelessly tell their congregation the ungodly untruth that they have to wait for their own paradise after death!

It seems as though Africans now need a dose of spiritual injection in order to draw breath. Our land is dotted with every description of churches. Ill-fed ignoramuses, who believe that their god in heaven has answer to earthly problems, accost us on the roads. On the streets, in the trotros, the Christians are everywhere, falling over themselves in their bid to take us to ‘alujanah.’ The hypocritical, sham charismatic charlatans leading them are crowding our airwaves with their fake American accents, pretending, in the words of Robert Ingersoll, to stand between our helplessness and the wrath of the gods. The ignorant congregations are shouting hallelujahs to their false claims of ‘miracles.’

Why does any normal being needs a miracle? If these tricksters can heal the sick, cure blindness and barrenness etc, etc, why don’t they simply build hospitals? We will be grateful to them for it.

Anyhow, I know, as any thinking person should, that all miracles, all magic, are essentially fakeries.

“It is not God that is worshipped but the group or authority that claims to speak in His name. Sin becomes disobedience to authority not violation of integrity.” - Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

We have to be thankful that most modern states are now secular. I shudder to ponder what it would be like to live under a theocratic rule. Why can’t these men and women who go about preaching love and tolerance practice what they preach? What is more intolerant than shoving your religion down someone else’s throat? What’s more intolerant than believing that your god would damn someone who only asks to be allowed to enjoy his sleep? There are, at least, six churches near where I live. If I need to go there, I can easily find my way to them. No, it is not enough for the Christians to disturb our sleeps with their constant drumming and singing; they have to come right into my house and try and shove their nonsense down my throat.

I believe religion to be a private thing. Every human being should be able to find his or her way to the creator. If my father is in heaven, why does he have to talk to me through another person? If I need to talk to my son, I talk to him directly and not through another person, not even his mother.

I believe in live and let’s live and I wish the Christians would learn this elementary courtesy. I believe that I’ll be ‘saved’ through my own efforts and not through some ‘holy’ book of dubious origins filled infantile tales of pornography, absurdities, massacres, mayhem and false astronomy.

I am fully prepared to face my creator and account for my actions. I don’t need any Christian to teach me anything about morality. I need no one to tell me to love my fellow-being because common-sense tells me that I cannot expect love from those I hate. I don’t need a religion to tell me not to steal; I’m fully contented with my station in life and I’ve trained myself not to want anything I cannot afford. I don’t need a preacher to preach to me about fornication; I am not only afraid of AIDS but I know that there’s much more to life than horizontal jogging. I don’t need eternal life; one life is simply enough for me. I don’t want any paradise in the sky; I want to build mine right here on earth. The nature of my work calls for no prayer: I cannot find lost hard disk clusters by reading the bible; neither could I fix a modem, motherboards or any computer hardware problem by supplicating to my almighty father. Religion has nothing to offer me, so the Christians can take their pie-in-the-sky lies and sell it to whoever will appreciate it. Kindly leave me alone.

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” - Thomas Paine

A great mind has opined that we Africans are in the fine mess we are because we spend more time preparing to go to heaven than on improving our material lives here on earth. While other people are slicing genes, interacting with one another thousands of miles apart through electrons and doing their utmost to improve their physical and material environment, we are busy wallowing in our ignorance-engendered poverty.

We occupy our days and nights with useless religious rituals, chanting futile hymns, and we pretend not to know why we are as poor as we are.

Instead of parading our streets with ramshackle followers purporting to teach a religion they barely understood, I will be glad if our religious leaders can mobilize their followers to plant and harvest. What a beautiful sight it would be to see a Methodist’s Corn Farm or a Presbyterian Yam Farm or a Catholic Cattle Ranch or an Anglican Cocoa Plantation!

Are there biblical injunctions against the establishment of Electronics and Computers Academies, instead of the plentiful Bible Studies schools we have? Is there any reason why our numerous churches cannot build factories and help alleviate our chronic unemployment? Many churches are built right inside dirty swamps, violating the injunction that cleanliness is holiness, why are our preachers not interested in improving their own earthly environment instead of sermonizing about a glorious, beautiful heaven?

The Christians should not be too emboldened because some of us are not countering their outrageous lies; it’s simply because we have better employments for our time.

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" Never use both feet to test the depth of the sea." - African proverb