personal story

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without
dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over the essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until, as Lowell put it, the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison

There are for all of us certain moments in time or place when we say something changed our lives, for me it is most often music or the written or spoken word. When asked what attracts me most to someone, it is the way they speak, the words they choose to use, the way they romance me with their words, not by gender but merely by being, or it is in a certain phrasing or idea or the way words are written and woven, it’s often a sentence or two that stays with me long after I’ve closed the back cover of a book or novel, or even the last page because that last page is often read after the first four or five, it’s always been so for me, the need to know how something ends before it’s even truly begun.

WHY I AM NOT RELIGIOUS
Leo Igwe

Religion refers to the belief in god or gods, in spiritual entities or supernatural powers, including activities connected with their worship and veneration. While reason stands for the power of the mind to think in a logical way and to understand in terms of causes or to provide explanations for something that is or something that has happened or what somebody has done. Reason can also mean what is possible, sensible, practical or right. (Random House Webster’s Dictionary)

Hence I want to state that I am not religious because religion is opposed to reason. And reason is what distinguishes me – a member of the Homo sapiens - from other animals. Religion is founded on the mysterious, the incomprehensible, and the inexplicable and the irrational. Religion thrives on the impossible, the nonsensical, the impractical, and the absurd. Religious beliefs and practices are not of any use to any rational or thinking being as such except for his/her poetic enjoyment or theatrical amusement. That means that a reasonable fellow ought not take religion seriously.

But more than that, I consider religious claims false and harmful. The entire religious superstructure is founded on a lie- a very big lie- THAT THERE IS GOD (ALLAH, OLORUN, CHINEKE, ABASI…add the rest); that there is a God that created us, and that intervenes in our lives. That there is a god that is waiting somewhere (or everywhere) in heaven to send those of us who are atheists and unbelievers to Hell - which he- a benevolent deity created for us! God is a figment of a primitive, timid, intrepid and indolent mind. God is an oppressive fantasy, which held sway at the infancy of the human race. God is a bogeyman that is used to frighten and control children or adults with childlike mentality. God is what the Igbos in Nigeria call Ndii(goblin). Indeed the Bible was wrong for saying that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is not so. Because there is no wisdom in a life of cowardice and trepidity, which is what religion all about. There is no wisdom in a “virtuous life” inspired by the fear of fictitious heaven and hell. The fear of the Lord is rather the beginning of foolishness and stupidity. It marks humankind’s tragic descent into zombie-like and anomic existence.