Cognative Dissonance Or Complete Ignorance
In my personal experiences over the years, religion has gradually become somewhat of a taboo subject amongst ‘Black’ people. It’s almost as if there exists a silent acknowledgement and agreement amongst our people, an unwritten rule perhaps, that Christianity is going to be the prevailing religion, and if anyone shows up to the dinner table or family cookout as a representative of anything other than the Christian religion, then it will be neither discussed or acknowledged.
Even if acknowledged, or brought to the surface of casual conversation, there exists also somewhat of a condescending tone when speaking to most Christians, as if the religion they practice is the only true religion, and any subscriber to any other religion is simply being rebellious, or going through a mere ‘truth seeking phase’, again as if Christians are the only true posessors of some sort of universal truth. The level of ignorance, narrowmindedness, and obduration is astounding when speaking to most Christians about what they believe vs what other people who dare not subscribe to Christian dogma and history believe.
One need not be well researched in history, one need not to be a rebel, one need not even to have been exposed to other religions; on the contrary, the only mental exercise one needs to employ in order for Christianity or any of the major world religions’ ‘truths’ and versions of history to be brutally shattered is common sense.
Any doctrine, that asks you to suspend logic and critical analysis in the way of “faith” should automatically be met with well deserved skepticism and cynicism, and should under no circumstances be taken as facts, or documented, verifiable events in history. And likewise, it can be said with somewhat of a degree of certainty, although a generalization, that anyone who has an unbiased cognizance of history tends typically to not be a person who would consider themselves “religious”.
LET’S EXAMINE THE FACTS
There are numerous heralded authors over the decades that have dared to tackle the subject of religion from a critical analysis point of view, and all of their various works can be laboriously referred to and cited here. However a list of authors and books would quickly become redundant, and are not essential to expressing the overall point of this article, because history speaks for itself.
A few of my favorite books that I typically refer to when pointing out facts are “Bible Myths and Their Parallels In Other Religions” by T.W. Doane, “The Destruction of Black Civilization” by Chancellor Williams, and pretty much any book from the late great Dr. Ben Yosef Jochannon. Most people, if asked directly and bluntly, would agree upon the importance and value of a knowledge of history, especially and particularly of one’s own culture.
Even in American public schools, where the typical student isn’t taught anything about Black/African history or culture pre-Columbus, and the only periods in Black/African history that are emphasized are the 300-400 years of American slavery and subsequent era of “Civil Rights”, one can still draw the following conclusions based off of nothing other than historical facts and logic:
A. Slavemasters forbid their slaves from reading, being taught to read, or owning books (why?)
B. The only type of sanctioned gatherings that were permitted were to go to church (why?)
C. The Slavemasters completely stripped Africans of their indigenous names, identities, and any other distinguishing features, and forbid them from speaking in their tribal dialect (why?)
D. European Slavemasters were almost exclusively Christian, mostly Catholic, and some Protestant
So without any background in history beyond public school, without being any type of historian or scholar, and without being particularly well read, there are a few common sense implications that can be rationally maintained based off of the well known facts at hand.
Why would a brutal, merciless, slave/plantation owner, who denied you the ability to read, to have an identity, or any type of Creator given human rights, give you a book or document that would liberate you? Why would you want to go to the same heaven that the book that the Slavemasters gave you says exists, and that the Slavemaster himself believes he is headed to? Why would you want any type of affiliation whatsoever with any type of organization, association, or religion that your Slavemasters belong to? Why would the same person who violently killed your next of kin, raped your wife, flogged you, hung you, starved you, seperated you from your family, worked you without pay, and degraded you at every opportunity, miraculously turn around and do something for you or give you something that was in YOUR best interest? All the above questions/statements sound pretty illogical to say the least, that is to anyone willing to apply logic and critical analysis to the subject.
A BRIEF OUTLINE OF HISTORY
Taking a deeper dive into history strengthens an already sturdy case, the case of cognitive dissonance vs. complete ignorance that is. It is a well known fact that every major religion has its roots in Kemet, or what is now called Egypt. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. all can be traced back to Africa, and more specifically the Nile Valley region, from present day Ethiopia all the way up to Egypt, which was the first “Mecca”.
The Kemetu people, or Cushites, spread their culture across the world, to almost every geographical land mass. And amongst almost every culture universally, there are pyramids, and a story of a diety who was conceived from a virgin mother, sent to teach the masses, performed miracles, and was eventually chastised, slain, and resurrected. Most of the “Holy Books”, the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, contain the same myths, or rather allegories, just with a different cast of characters.
It is a historical fact that Alexander the “Great” (he was only great to the Greeks) conquered Egypt in around 325 B.C. It is well known that when a nation invades and conquers another nation, the army and nation that is victorious is at liberty to help itself to whatever they deem of value of the conquered nation, and knowledge was no exception.
Greeks were free to pillage through and take any sacred documents and papyri they could find and understand from the vast number of temples and libraries in Kemet, which were not only used for initiation ceremonies, but as centers for learning and studying. From this invasion by Alexander and the Greeks, followed by a subsequent Persian invasion and another invasion from what later came to be known as “Arabs” (which were just a group of mixed Afro-Asiatic tribes), Christianity and Islam as it is known today started to form in Africa and in Europe.
As more and more Europeans came to colonize Africa, the majority of them did so under the guise of spreading Christianity, as if 1.3 billion indigenous Africans were all going to a firey hell without the intervention of the white man bringing the ‘word of Christ’, and his asinine concept of god. Meanwhile, in every single case, the true intention was to steal the land, extract the natural resources for commerce and wealth, utilize the labor of the indigenous population to do it, and rape the women that were subjugated in order to gradually whiten out and replace the indigenous culture with European culture. There is a common saying that whenever the white/European man showed up on foreign soil with intentions on seizing the land, he did so with the Bible in one hand and a gun in another.
After the Greeks were conquered by the Romans, world power and stranglehold over religion shifted from one group of white/European people in possession of plagiarized, poorly translated, and misunderstood documents and teachings to another. Every Greek god was simply a copy of an Egyptian Neter, just painted white and given a different name. Therefore, the same is the case with the Roman/Catholic Empire that came to power, who by keeping its citizens illiterate, and appointing a Pope as supposedly God’s second in command, was able to extort and control almost the entire continent of Europe through fear and ignorance.
The first “Holy Trinity”, was Ausar, Auset, and Heru, that is Osiris, Isis, and Horus. They were not physical human beings but were representative of creation and the cosmos, among other meanings. From these three Egyptian deities, the Romans in all of their brilliance and ingenuity decided to change them into historical figures named Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. You can swap Joseph out with the version of god in the Bible, and the assertion that these were living, breaving, flesh and blood historical figures is just as or even more ridiculous. During the Crusades, from about 1096 to almost the 1500s, all the way up to the Spanish Inquisition, millions of people were slaughtered in the name of religion, or in the name of God or Allah.
Christians and Muslims alike took turns committing mass acts of brutality. Women and children were slaughtered, men were beheaded, and whole cities were pillaged through and burned to the ground; however the Crusades were mainly initiated by European Christians against African Muslims and/or Moors, simply because Christians felt that the “holy city” of Jerusalem should not be occupied by Muslims/Moors/Africans, because Jesus was supposed to have been born there.
Again, this notion and the ensuing wars and mass murders that resulted from it is rendered even more foolish when we stop to grasp the aforementioned concept that Jesus was not a physical man born in some cave, but simply a white version of a misunderstood Egyptian concept and deity. During the Councils of Trent, and the Councils of Nicea, two sets of different conferences, Jesus was gradually given a human story to make him more believable, a feat that the Gnostic Christians disagreed with, and which caused them to be hunted down and assassinated, essentially constituting Christian on Christian crime.
INDOCTRINATION ON A GRAND SCALE
A closer examination, common logic, and critical analysis barely need to be applied when briefly glancing at the history of the papacy, and the amount of power and authority bestowed upon and wielded by the popes of history, mostly due to the general population’s ignorance. The notion that any man be closer to the Creator than another, or has an express line of communication with him or her that another man lacks, and that this appointed special person can speak for and grant special favors on behalf of the Creator is counterintuitive to religion itself.
The exploits of all the Popes and of the mafia known as the Catholic church are somewhat common knowledge. Extortion, murder, aldultery, homosexuality, and pedophilia, are just a few that come to mind. I can use another 1000 words and will not have come close to skimming the tip of the iceberg, which in keeping with the analogy of the corruption of the organization of religion in Europe, is more comparable to the size of Antarctica.
I have a really difficult time understanding why anyone would want to associate themselves with any type of cult or religion or organization whose history is littered with bloodshed and corruption, especially when most of the bloodshed was on behalf of their own ancestors. Again I ask, is it cognitive dissonance or complete ignorance?
I understand how indoctrination works. You grow up, hearing something on a regular basis, and that belief is reinforced through propoganda, which is nothing more than a four syllable word for a neatly packaged, often repeated lie. The lowest vibratory human emotion is fear; Is fear of going to “hell” when you die what keeps you from asking questions? Is fear of standing out what prevents you from taking a more analytical look at something you say you are(Christian)? Is your human ego to fragile to admit that you’ve been tricked? That you’ve been believing in myths, and told to use logic in every aspect of life except for when it comes to religion?
Most of us weren’t sat down when we were young, given a choice of all the world religions, and made an educated rational decision and chose Christianity. That’s not how it works. We were whatever our parents were. If our parents were devout Muslims, we grew up making salaat five times a day and venerating the prophet Muhammad. Believing that allegedly, at some point in this man’s life, Allah decided to send an angel or a bird to this illiterate man to teach him the Qur’an. If your parents were Jewish, you spent a lot of time in the synagogue, and believing that the six pointed star is a ‘star of David’, never being taught it’s true meaning. If your parents were heavily Christian, you were brought up going to Church and bible study.
Believing that an all seeing, all powerful deity just up and one day decided to do a science expirement and create man, then got fed up with his creation because he couldn’t stop the “devil” from making them do bad things, so he snapped his fingers and killed everyone except Moses and his folks in a flood. And that when Moses and his family had repopulated the earth sufficiently out of incest, that they got so out of hand again that he had to send his half human son to go to earth and die for everyone, so that their belief in Jesus alone was sufficient to atone for all their transgressions; This being opposed to slaughtering all the sacred lambs they could find, because they just couldn’t help themselves from “sinning”.
Most of us were force fed this comic strip verion of history as facts, taught not to question them out of fear of going to hell, and have spent our whole lives believing these Chaldean/Hebrew/Christian narratives of events; so much so that we violently reject any version of history, any book, any person who disagrees with those “facts”.
Most people defend religion with the argument of morality, and I often hear otherwise intelligent people attempt to justify their religious affiliation with the sense of values and morality that it supposedly contains. Agreed, there are many passages in any “holy book” that may contain moral lessons, inspirational quotes, or seemingly righteous verses. In order to find those however, one must be able to dig through and discern the myths and allegories, dig through all the scriptures that seemingly justify slavery, and turn logic on and off as if it were a light switch on the wall, cherry picking which verses, chapters, and books, they deem quotable and explainable.
GO TO THE SOURCE
If your physician told you that you were deficient in Vitamin C, would you proceed to the nearest powdered drink isle to pick out a few packs of Orange Kool-Aid? Or would you deem it a better idea to start incorporating oranges into your diet? The majority of us have been drinking religious Kool Aid for so long, regardless of the flavor, regardless of the religion, that when shown for the first time the actual fruit that the Kool Aid was engineered to emulate, we reject the fruit as fraudulent. All religions are fruit of the same tree, and that tree has it’s roots in the Nile River region of Africa. There are many more precious vitamins and minerals in the source than in the artificial simulation.
There is no way possible we as Black/African/Moorish people can unite under some type of common umbrella and pull together to have the strength and unity to overthrow our oppressors, while embracing a tool used by our oppressors in our own enslavement. Prior to Europeans stepping foot into the continent of Africa, there was no jihads, no crusades, no violent, tyrannical religious regimes. No popes, no paying for indulgences, no silly idea of someone coming back to save everyone from their own stupidity. Again I ask, is it cognitive dissonance or complete ignorance?
