Every once in a while some pseudo educated African tells us how bad religion is for us.  Damola Awoyokum, writing in the Guardian (May 22, 2008), talked about “How Religion is Under-developing Nigeria”.

I do not know if I have to stand on my head and make simple points before folk grasp them. Religion is what keeps many urbanized Nigerians alive.  If you know anything about the human psyche (mind, especially the subconscious mind) you would encourage religion in the people.

Nigerians are, until recently, a preliterate people; they were forced to transit to modern status. Their psyches were not prepared for the transition to a post modern society.

The white man was prepared for modernity by undergoing ascertainable stages of social and cultural (hence psychological) evolution: he went through a gradual process of transition to modernity: renaissance, reformation, enlightenment (age of reason), romanticism (poetic backlash against pure reason) industrialization and its attendant urbanization, science and technology etc.

Africans did not go through this process. We have a situation where men and women who, until recently, were living as animists, pagans etc were forced to operate in the world of science and technology. They have no intellectual frame of reference (framework or cultural reference group) to organize the challenges confronting them in the modern world. They are, therefore, confused and lost.  Most of our governance issues are actually rooted in this psychological confusion.

They seek solutions to their psychological problems. Unfortunately, their intellects are not yet developed to psychoanalyze their issues, to do the painful work of understanding why they do what they do. Like semi educated men every where, they seek simple but, ultimately, self defeating solutions to their psychosocial problems.

Some find solace in sex addiction (sex is the poor man’s copying mechanism, when under stress he has sex and in orgasm feels temporary release from his psycho-physical tension and, of course, becomes addicted to sex, as our so-called big men are); others seek surcease from their tension in alcohol and over eating, addiction to food hence their ugly fat bellies.

The many seek solace in primitive religions as offered by evangelical Christianity (such as Aladura Church, Cherubim and Seraphim and other Pentecostal Churches; read, syncretism found in Africa’s urban areas). Without these primitive religions many of our people would go berserk, amok, nuts, crazy, lunatic, mad, insane and psychotic.

These religions, foolish as they may seem to the intellectual, are what keep urban transitional folk alive.  Therefore, they are performing useful social functions and must be encouraged.

When our people become true middle class they would outgrow the need for primitive religions.

Ah, the much desired middle class status. That itself creates a different set of problem. Have you dealt with white American and European middle class folk?

By middle class, I mean those whose parents had university education, are professionals so that they grew up with books and money. This excludes most blacks, including black Americans, for, at best, the educated black person is the first-generation university educated person in his family and is best called petty bourgeois.

The real bourgeoisie, middle class, have their own set of problems. Their problems are mostly existential. They ask: what is life all about? Why do we live?

(Abraham Maslow talked about these when he looked at those who have self actualized and are now asking about the meaning of life; most Africans are at the lower ranges of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:… the needs are physiological, safety, social, esteem, self actualization, and as he added just before he died, being needs; most Africans are hungry folk and are at the first three stages: physiological, food, safety and social.)

And if they do not find answers to these ontological and epistemological questions may commit suicide and or take recourse to drugs.

Knowing about their dilemmas their parents send them to psychotherapists. The typical therapist sees children of the middle class and rich. You can be a therapist for your entire professional life and not see black folk come to you; for one thing, black folk do not have the educational frame of reference to understand therapy, it takes verbal skills to do so and most blacks are poorly, if at all, educated, indeed many blacks consider therapy a bunch of nonsense, they deal with their emotional issues by, as we say in the therapeutic community,  “fucking their hearts out or doing drugs”, and, for another, it is expensive, a minimum of $120 per fifty minutes sessions, once a week (multiple by 52 weeks of the year and figure out how much it costs per year, and since, on the average, it takes five years to go through the therapeutic process, multiply by five).

What do folk do in therapy?  The client talks and the therapist listen. The psychotherapist listens to folk talk about their issues, and, may be, talks for five minutes. What does he talk about? He talks about some of the things I write about (and give away for free).

Africans will soon produce a true middle class and their children would have existential problems and need psychotherapy, and can afford it monetarily.

Group therapy, the poor man’s therapy, is given the poor, such as black Americans; I am talking about such things as “anger management groups”; here, folks problem solve but do not explore why they do what they do and, therefore, do not get to understand their psychological make ups. Individual and family psychotherapy is expensive and, so far, mostly the white middle class can afford it.

In the meantime, what we have are poor and starving Africans and they need religion to keep them from going under.

Religion is the opium of the masses, the flippant Karl Marx said, but forgot to study the human psyche and understand that there are existential issues that economic issues do not overshadow.

Man wants to know where he came from, and whether he is only matter that dies out with his physical death.

We do not have answers to these philosophical questions but we try to have useful conjectures.

Depending on where you are in your evolution in space-time, certain answers appeal to you.

Africans are transiting from simple to complex society and primitive religions serve their needs; when they attain secular-scientific status they would seek psychology, secular and spiritual, for their needs.

In sum, folks should stop being superficial and study matters before expressing silly opinions on them. The religions we see in our urban areas are useful though largely irrational. Until you can give people an alternative to religion, which is psychotherapy, you must give them mass opiates, religion. (Psychotherapists, beginning with Sigmund Freud, are modern man’s high priests, those who understand the human psyche.)

People need those opiates to make sense of their existence. It is less than one percent of the population that can live with true atheism, the rest of the people need theism, rational or primitive. Deal with facts and stop flying into fantasy, such as delude your self into thinking that the masses can cope with life without religion.

First of all, ninety percent of the population is average in intelligence (IQ 85-115 and cannot understand abstract thinking and cannot really do science.  Only about five percent of the population is above average in intelligence (IQ 118-130) and can do real science. Only about two percent of the population has superior intelligence (IQ over 132) and can do original thinking, scientific and otherwise.  Two percent of the population is mentally retarded, IQ under 70, and cannot think at all.

Simply stated, the masses must have religion to enable them cope with the complex vagaries of being.  Our function is not to decry religions but to make them serve socially productive goals (some religions encourage escape from reality and, as such, must be discouraged).

Please stop living in the world of fantasy where you think that you can do away with religion.  Religion is always with us and will always be with us. In fact without religion the masses cannot behave morally. Religion is needed for there to be a moral civilization. Only a handful of human beings can use pure ratiocinative processes to figure out what is moral, live accordingly, without religion and or society’s threat of punishment for deviants from the norm being the source of their moral behavior. It takes a lot of thinking for one to be a rational humanist who uses pure reason to solve ones and social problems; the average person does not even think or thinks foolishly!

By definition, religion is irrational, for it deals with the unknown world; our job is to make it as rational as is possible but not to make fun of it, as infantile intellects do.

Science and pure reason, as Immanuel Kant pointed out (see his Critique of Pure Reason), does not answer ontological and epistemological questions; in as much as man has need for such answers and religion attempts to answer them, religion must exist in human society.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

June 25, 2008

ozodiosuji@gmail.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 Every once in a while some pseudo educated African tells us how bad religion is for us. Da...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 25.06.2008 15:37

denker  Villager

# 2 Two percent of the population is mentally retarded, IQ under 70, and cannot think at all. ...bruder, Dr. Osuji, na true you talk...udokaamah, a village dross is a good example...!:cool: Posted by denker| 25.06.2008 17:59

Onyeachonam-Okwu  JJC

# 3 Mz. Osuji has consistently, venomously and exclusively attacked his own tribe the Igbo with such belittling and custic diatribe that it is hard for me to even know how to acknowledge that this article is somehow good. However, Osuji has left out two important primitive religions - Islam and catholicism. Is this an error of omission or intended? One thing I'd like Mz. Osuji to address is how can the Igbo change what he is railing against. He has not done that to date as far as I know. How does he intend to solve the Igbo problem? How does he change the Igbo nature? He correctly stated that the Igbo and infact all black Africans south of the sahara, are at best one generation away from the "primitive" precolonial era mindset, but does not show the way forward. That makes him sound like those Igbo that were born in the Midwest that have such custic, abrasive and immense hatred of the Igbo. Was this bred in them during the war, or is it the rugged Igbo individualism? One thing, Osuji had never written any diatribe against the Yoruba or Hausa. I have never had Osuji vent on Islam. I have never had Osuji vent on Yoruba. His penchant is squarely on demeaning the Igbo. But why? Posted by Onyeachonam-Okwu| 25.06.2008 21:23

Alata  Villager

# 4 He correctly stated that the Igbo and infact all black Africans south of the sahara, are at best one generation away from the "primitive" precolonial era mindset, but does not show the way forward. One thing, Osuji had never written any diatribe against the Yoruba or Hausa. I have never had Osuji vent on Islam. I have never had Osuji vent on Yoruba. His penchant is squarely on demeaning the Igbo. But why? Onyeachonam-Okwu Would you feel much better if Ozodi 'Thomas' Osuji focuses on writing diatribes against, venting on, or demeaning the Yoruba? 'Thomas' Osuji Not all pre-colonial African societies were "primitive" or preliterate. Just because a person does not read or write an European language does not make them preliterate or ignorant. Anyone who does not know that African mystery religions, western occultism, shamanism and other 'paganisms or esoteric studies' combined, with fear and greed, were/are the philosophical and empirical basis of modern science and technology is ignorant of the underlying dynamics of human societies. Such an 'educated illiterate' person is to be pitied. Moreso, if their ambition in life is to attain a few dollars more so that they too can enjoy European middle class anxieties (sexual frustration, mental diseases, production-less consumerism, wealth-less professional careers). Posted by Alata| 26.06.2008 05:16

allaccess  Villager

# 5 Mr Osuji a product of “The God Hypothesis” himself will have us believe that “Primitive Religion Is Functional for Urban Africans” Therein lies some problems of Africa; mis-education and tradition-cultural upbringings that have become the bane of African societies. What I think this man is saying is Africans do not deserve better than delusions of the existence of those things that form religion and as such deserve to be kept in their current conditions. HE is a product of intellectual masturbation and rightly deserves to be kept in such a state himself. One must first wonder what went wrong when you see “highly” educated Africans who allowed their religious upbringings to overtake their mental ability for reason; when the average western educated person can separate God or gods from tradition and society the average Osuji-type African cannot. Religion may keep many urbanized Nigerians alive, but for the wrong reasons...the question is does Mr Osuji want it to remain that way for most of Nigeria’s lifespan? I will not encourage religion in the people insofar as it has become of tool for denigration and exploitation used by the western explorers, and today the many conmen of our societies. Religion in Islamic countries is no longer about Allah but a driving political force that wants to change the course of society, is this what Mr Osuji wants for Africans? Religion itself is a con, a fad, an abuse of the human intelligence; when a man cannot reason and arrive at a conclusive doubt that there is no evidence to suggest there is such a powerful force called GOD roaming around pressing buttons to effect good and bad changes then such a human may be educated, but has not fully explored their minds beyond the primitive. If there is no evidence to suggest the existence of God, why were Africans so easily led to believe such? Why did they accept such from their colonisers (who don’t practice much of it these days), one must wonder if we need to be going a different direction. Religion is borne out of fear and out of giving meaning to a life - that is no different from the other species - we inhabit the earth with. The purveyors of religion and their backers have caused more untold hardship to African societies; the same Osuji must have witnessed deaths among his kinsmen from Muslims, a religion that depends on conquest and expansion for survival. How is that “Functional for Urban Africans”? "The white man was prepared for modernity by undergoing ascertainable stages of social and cultural (hence psychological) evolution"... because he went through a gradual process, but Africans seems to be at a standstill. Where is the gradual progression here, and should it not start by Africans understanding that God may not exist and proceed to remove such myths from our societies? African susceptibility to religion explains how religions might spread like wildfire because of issues with morality and acceptance (he is a born again, he is a man of God, I wont touch a non-believer). Africans do not need religion to be good. Today, African societies (with their high content beliefs in religion) are still rife with murder, rape and robbery. Morality does not originate from the Bible; rather our moral progress informs what part of the Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss. The religion Delusion is not just a defense of atheism, but it also goes on the offensive against religion; this hostility justified because religion is subverting science, fostering fanaticism, encouraging bigotry against non-believers and influencing society in other negative ways. Indoctrination has done more harm than good to the African society; children like Osuji at birth are bring born fanatical and automatically dogmatised and educational attainment cannot change much of it. A society and belief derived from fraudulent ways will of course breed con. Posted by allaccess| 26.06.2008 10:36