₦airaland Forum

Nigerians appreciate and love Fela.

I'm at the Shrine every now and again, and this is a place where cannabis is smoked openly - a nation unto itself.

Kalakuta Republic.

No policeman nears the place. No army nears the place. No navy. No airforce.

In a country where cannabis is by law, illegal.

They all know what goes on at the Shrine. Everyone knows, including the Inspector General of Police. Including President Goodluck Jonathan.

But nobody will ever give the order to raid the Shrine.

To desecrate the Shrine.

What greater tribute to Fela can there be than that?

What if you had a huge statue of Fela in the center of Lagos, and welcomed visitors to the country with his Afrobeat at the airports, yet Shrine was destroyed, turned to just any other club with the usual pompous, effeminate restrictions?

Of what use would that be to Fela's memory?

Is that not what happens in Jamaica?

I've been to Jamaica. Bob Marley's residence as well. It's a national tourist attraction. But the rebellious soul has been ripped out of the place.

The smell of resistance, the smell of ganja, of rastamen blowing hot and cold against Babylon in Marley's large, tumultous compound, has given way to manicured lawns, pretty-faced tour guides, glossy leaflets, and shiny souvenirs.

I prefer the real honour we give Fela. Allowing his Shrine to live, and making him truly OVER AND ABOVE THE LAW, as he is worthy to be.

If I might add, there's nowhere on earth that I feel as free as I do within the Shrine.

Fela's spirit is well and truly alive in that place.

May Kelly said:

@poster,

No need to judge God Almighty with Satan for God will certainly KILL you  and you will not have mouth to talk. The Biggest Mistake here is that you have mouth - But I am assuring you, it won't be too long He will kill you.

You say ''God loves'', ''God is love'', all smiley, warm, and cuddly, etc etc, but, like the turncoat monster in the movie, he gets real murderous, his face contorted in hate, vendetta, and blood lust the minute you sway from his dictates.

The real ''sinners'' on this earth are the imbeciles like you who've turned the Source of Life into this caricature of a cartoon character, based on this mythical garbage you've been brainwashed with.

Brainless Dummy.

omanzo02 said:

@playmode,

Your analysis there was spot on, most Nigerians abroad really have this overbearing area boy/girl syndrome, They tend to display high value is a very obscure and undecorous manner, I see them alot in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, east london, Texas and  Hamburg to mention a few. Its a pity the uneducated ones succeeds  in finding their way there, and instead of developing themselves with the enormous opportunities around them, they stuck to the same backward situations that held them down. It's actually a pity.

The notion that anything BLACK/Nigerians is a targeted specie by police is not actually true, as long u live by the rule and stay away from crime, nobody give a damn about who, where and what u are.

Jobless people like you with nothing better to do on your hands than to go around sniffing your nose at Nigerians whom you think you are better than because you have ''education''. But you fail to realise that some of the most braindead people on this earth are the most ''educated'', and that a people's flamboyance or otherwise is absolutely  nothing to be ''ashamed'' of, unless you already felt they were inferior or unworthy to begin with.

I go around the world as well and no one is as brash and arrogant as an American or an Italian, or a Spanish. Yet somehow their attitude is looked upon with a smile and an admiring shake of the head, but Nigerians? Oh. He must be a devil for being so brash and arrogant. He must be insulted, and called every name under the sun. Afterall he is supposed to be quiet and humble.

Nasty idiots.

playmode said:

U are right about that.   what a painful way to go!

It is the norm here ,almost every South African complain about our phone manners.What baffles is why some of us hold our cellphones with our elbows pointing sidways instead of downwards.I guess it is a new way of showing off that they are "BIG MEN"   .You can't mistake that loud baritone "GUY HOW FAR NOW,WETIN DEY HAPPEN?" anywhere in SA even from a 100 meters away       

One South African once asked in his own word "bro ,why do Nigerians like fighting a lot?" ,I was like "excuse me?" .He said " I have noticed every time I see Nigerians talking either to someone or on their cell phone they are always fighting because they shout at the top of their lungs and you can the expression on their face that it is intense".

Needless to say i burst out in laughter and explained to him that that is how most Nigerians talk.       .The dude didn’t believe me, he said people don't talk like that unless they are fighting.   

The SA police can easily spot a Nigerian because of they way most of them dress here.Their signature dress code is :

Shirt with the two top buttons open to expose their hairy chest.
Un-bottoned blazer or Suit
Jeans or Trousers
Pointed Italian shoes (nicknamed by South Africans as Nigerian shoes)
At least 2 gold chain and 2 gold rings
Big Gold or Silver watch
2 to 3 cellphone in their hands
Dark Sunglasses even at night
Toothpick in their mouths even when they had their last meal 10 hours ago]
Sometimes a walking stick with a red hat and feather

and to top it off ,they walk like something is stuck up their backside ,with their chest out and their arms spread apart like they are about to fly         

You see them hailing each other like : "Chairman sir", "Igwe" , "Chief chief" , "Honorable chair", "Odenigbo 1 of ojuoma local government" ," maga must pay","ezego" and all sorts or annoyingly ridiculous fake titles and nicknames which they have bestowed on themselves because they have some small change in their pockets.

What i can clearly see is that most of these guy are from the "village" with little or no education and absolutely no IQ (except for 419 and drugs)

Go and HANG yourself if you cannot stand the sight of Nigerians who supposedly fit your stereotype.

That's who we are. You don't like, you FUUK OFF.

If they were Italians acting the same way you'd probably be drooling over them, you dumb self-hating buffoons.

Same applies to the  South Africans who ''can't stand'' Nigerians.

Do they think we can stand THEM?

With their crappy 70s Afros, queer accents, geeky ways, and subservient attitude to whites and ''coloureds''?

Pathetic. (Spit)

Meanwhile the same idiots coming here to talk rubbish about 'how Nigerians behave' are probably spending all their waking moments mimicking the culture of black Americans and Jamaicans, in dressing, accents, demeanour, and music - people even more ''brash and loud'' than Nigerians.

Oh but of course they're conditioned to regard non Africans as gods, while shouting down Africans whom they consider to be stepping ''above their station''. But just because YOU feel inferior does not mean that the majority of Nigerians do. So go cure yourselves of your inferiority complex, you nasty idiots, and stop bothering the rest of us.

texxazpete said:

Don't make me laugh. Is it the same America that has been systematically frustrated by China in the level of sanctions that could be applied to Sudan, Iran and North Korea?
It matters not if the man is an 'IMF puppet' or whatever you say. The people of Cote d'Ivoire chose him to be their leader. That is the only thing that counts.

YOU'RE DEAD WRONG ON THAT. IF THE PEOPLE CHOOSE AN IMF PUPPET AS THEIR LEADER, HE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO LEAD. END OF STORY. AND YOU CAN TAKE YOUR ''DEMOCRACY'' AND STUFF IT UP YOUR ASSSS.

I just can't stand when people without a scintilla of military knowledge in terms of current capacity of Nigeria or other nations, or their current weapons procurement regimes, can come out shouting about 'we lack the capacity'.  Ask them to mention the names of just two weapons systems at our disposal and they'll stare you blank in the face, yet they just know we ''lack the capacity''. Compound buffoons.

What did Buhari do in power apart from get his military boys to whip people into public queuing?

Meanwhile suitcases stuffed with dollars were being moved out of MMA as 'diplomatic baggage'.

Seems a plausible sequence of events I'd say. 

PhysicsMHD I'm afraid you're talking a lot of tripe. The black Moors rescued Europe from the Dark Ages. They brought CIVILIZATION to much of Europe (some say MOST of Europe) by their greater schooling and mastery of the sciences. That's just a fact of history. I've no idea where you're coming from talking about Spain as if everyone does not know that the Moors were responsible for the civilization of Spain. You talk as if the whites spontaneously developed in the 1500s out of nothing. But development does not occur in a vaccum. It was the Moorish civilization of the region from the 700s through to the 1500s when they were defeated, that led DIRECTLY to the European Renaissance.

And you really have no reason to attack scholars who research and publish their findings with regard to the African origin of Chinese civilization, of Indian, Mexican and Meso-American civilizations etc.

The argument that such scholars do not research the histories of African kingdoms within Africa is baseless. Some do, some don't. The late Dr Chancellor Williams for instance, was a reputable African American historian who spent 16 years of his life in Africa, visited up to 40 countries on the continent,  researching ancient kingdoms and states which most of us have never heard about.

His book, The Destruction of African Civilization has been described as the black man's bible, so thorough is it in its investigation of the African story starting from 4,500 BC!

http://www.amazon.com/Destruction-Black-Civilization-Issues-D/dp/0883780305/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1295739470&sr=1-1

So please try to read more widely before coming here to attack scholars and people who wish to learn about their  history.

THE FUTURE OF AFRICAN GODS
THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS

ACCRA - W.E.B. DU BOIS CENTER 


-----------------

by Professor Molefi Kete Asante
 
I am pleased that you have come to hear my lecture tonight and I want to thank the organizers of this event for their diligence and generosity. In particular I would like to publicly thank Dr. Kofi Anyidiho, and Executive Director Moore, the staff and the Board of the DuBois Center for making this occasion possible. I give praise to Nyame, Asase Yaa, and the Nananom nsamanfo for whatever clarity I am able to share with you.
 
I shall begin my lecture with a conclusion: Until an African leader publicly acknowledges, honors and prays to an African God, we Africans will continue to be viewed as pathetic imitators of others, never having believed in ourselves.
 
So powerful is the concept of religion when we discuss it in connection with civilization that to deny the validity of one's religion is to deny the validity of one's civilization. Indeed to deny one's religion as valid is to suggest that the person is a pagan, a heathen, uncivilized, and beyond the sphere of humanity. So to talk about religion is to talk about our views of ourselves, our understanding of our ancestors, and our love of our culture.
To establish my argument that we have a crisis in civilization because we have a crisis in religion I will make several points dealing with the themes of tradition, history, religion, and human action.
 
Traditions

There are no people without traditions and traditions are the lifeblood of a people. A people who refuse to express its love and appreciation for its ancestors will die because in traditions, if you are not expressing your own, you are participating in and expressing faith in someone else's ancestors. No person is devoid of an attachment to some cultural fountain. Whose water are we drinking?
 
Our African history has been a recent orgy of forgetfulness. We have often lost our memories and accepted the gods of those who enslaved and colonized us. This is something the Chinese and the Indians have fought hard to keep at bay. While we have often embraced our enemies gods they have found those gods to be anathema to their interests. Show me the gods we Africans worship and I will show the extent of our moral and ethical decay.
 
Those who speak to us of Christian or Islamic morals have often been the very ones who had defiled our ancestors' memories and called out sacred rites paganism. Malcolm X once said that the world pushes the African around because we give the impression that we are chumps, not champs, but chumps, weaklings, falling over ourselves to follow other people rather than our own traditions.
 
The distribution of religion represents the distribution of power. African distribution is minimal and exists in a few places in the diaspora like Brazil, Haiti, Jamaica and the American South. The religion that people practice is based on the influences that have captured their imaginations. In the American South and the Caribbean and in South America one will often find the Yoruba religion. It is Africa's most powerful religious export to the Americas, but this is still a minimal influence when one considers the fact that others have imposed their religions on us and we have accepted the imposition often without a fight from our traditional leaders. Indeed our traditional religious leaders have often been hijacked by the material goods offered by the purveyors of these migrating gods.
 
History

The great African pharaoh, Menes, united the two lands (TAWY) bringing 42 clans or nomes under one government around 3100 B.C. By this time already Africans had formulated the first human response to the unknown. If anything we knew God before anyone else, not because we were wiser but because we were first to be civilized.
 
If you take any of the scientific reports we know that the first hominids were from Africa. Australopithecus afarensis is 4,200,000 years old and Australopithecus ramidus, 3,800,000. When Richard Johnason discovered Dinqnesh, later called Lucy, by the Europeans, he claimed to have found the earliest example of a hominid in Ethiopia. Until 75,000 years ago all humans were black. Did they have an appreciation for the almighty? Did they formulate a response to the unknown? Of course they did; they were human and human before anyone else.
 
Our ancestors brought forth the first civilizations and gave the world the oldest organized cosmological explanations. Thus, Ra as Ptah, Atum, Amen, Khepera, Khnum - the many names of the one, the Supreme, created Shu and Tefnut, air and moisture, Geb and Nut, earth and sky. Then came Ausar, Auset, Nebhet, and Set. Ausar was killed by his brother Set and Auset put him back together with the assistance of her sister, Nebhet and her son, Heru, who avenged his father by killing Set. This is the story of good over evil.
 
The purpose was to create Maat, balance, harmony, justice, righteousness, reciprocity, order. These are the key concepts in any ethical system and the fact that they emerged first in the Nile Valley of Africa suggests that other ideas, related to these ideas, found their way into the very practices and beliefs of our people throughout the continent. The deliberate attempt by the European to separate Africans from the classical civilizations of the Nile is one of the biggest falsifications in history. Only when we reclaim our history will we be able to see that the origins of many religious ideas are African. How is it that the parent has become the child?

Thus, not only do we have the earliest emergence of God, we have the first ethical principles, reinforced by proverbs, and refined in the oral and artistic traditions of our narratives.
 
The ancient name of Egypt was Kemet (''black nation'') and it was the culmination of classical Africa's achievements in science, art, architecture, medicine, astronomy, geometry, and religion. The Greeks honored the Africans as the originators of the science and art practiced by the Greeks themselves. It would be the Europeans of the 15th through 19th centuries that wouild try to divorce Europe from its African origin and deny Africa any role in civilizing the world.
 
The early Greek historian, Herodotus claims that nearly all of the Greek gods came from Africa. We know that the Greeks worshipped Imhotep as Aesclepius, the God of Medicine, and that the name Athens, Athena, is from Aten.
 
When Constantine in 325 A.D. took ideas from African spirituality and created a control mechanism at Council of Nicea he was trying to organize a system for using African spiritual ideas. The early Christian church had to deal with the fact that Christians had used many African ideas, the son of God, eternal life, and the resurrection, in their religion. The sad fact is that since we have forgotten so much we do not know that we are the originators of religion.
 
The abandonment of our history, indeed the abandonment of our gods, the gods of our ancestors, have brought us deep into the quagmire of misdirection, mis-orientation and self pity. When the missionaries forbade our shrines and punished us in the Americas when we called the names of our gods and sounded our mighty drums they were looking for the Pavlovian reaction they finally got in millions of Africans: African is bad, it is inferior, it is pagan, it is heathen.

We often hear others cursing our ancestors in ways the Chinese, the Lebanese and the British would never allow. Why is this? Are we truly shamed by our military defeat? Can we no longer think about how right our ancestors were in exploring human nature and positing ways to combat the unknown? Cannot we create new forms out of the old mold or must we throw away the mold?
 
What would be anymore pagan than the wanton willful destruction of millions of Africans, Jews, Native Americans, and Chinese by Christians Europeans? How could white men pray to a god on the second floor of a slave dungeon while on the first floor they held our ancestors, yours and mine, in horrible bondage? What kind of religion denied our humanity at the same time they were raping our women, brutalizing our children, and demanding our wealth and our souls?
 
It is true that the idea of Christian names or Muslim names promotes and advances those cultures. Why must you change your name even if you chose to buy into a foreign religion? What is wrong with your name? Any religion that asks you to do what others do not have to do is asking you to abandon your mother. The question is, why would you abandon your mother?
 
Religion in General

What is religion but the deification of ancestors, the making sacred of traditions within the context and history. How can we honor any god who was used against us? The only people who accept alien gods are defeated people; all others honor and accept their own name for the Almighty. We must learn to appreciate ourselves and our traditions. What is wrong with the African God?
 
What would we think of a Yoruba who accepted Chinese ancestors as his own? We would find it quite interesting and wonder how it came to be. But what of Africans' acceptance of others' gods? Is there no tradition with these alien gods? Of course there is tradition with these gods! To accept the Jews' god or the Arabs' god or the Hindu's god and so forth is to valorize those histories above your own. Indeed, it is to honor the names in those myths and stories higher than your own stories, it is to love the language, the places in their stories above your own. Why is Mecca, Rome, or Jerusalem more sacred that Bosumtwi? Quite simply, it is imperialism, not by force of arms, but by force of religion which sometimes comes armed.
 
Joel Kotkin's Tribes - a book about people ready for the 21st Century claims that only Jews, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and British are ready. These groups have some commonalities which include (1) strong sense of identity, (2) international network, and (3) a passion for technology.
 
He does not include any African community or ethnic group. In fact, he believes that the African people were best organized under the leadership of Marcus Garvey who believed that Africans were not only capable of achieving without the whites; Africans had to achieve without whites in order to be seen as fully participating in the drama of history. Kwame Nkrumah believed in much the same idea.
 
Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations claims that there are six major civilizations: Chinese, Japanese, Orthodox, Hindu, Western, Islamic. He says each one has a nation that is vanguard, deeply committed to its religion and history. Africa has no such vanguard nation and furthermore Africa has yet to emerge from under the cloaks of its interventionists. Of 53 nations only one nation is more African in religion than either Christian or Muslim. That nation is small Benin.
 
Benin is 87% popular traditional African Religion. But it is a small nation with limited influence in a propaganda fashion. As such we do not expect African traditional religion to play a major part in the civilization of Africa for a long time to come, but we can begin to examine the questions, to raise the issues, and to interrogate our practices.
 
Let me explore African Religion with you to provide some common understanding.
 
African Religion

In the first place it is important that we call popular traditional African Religion everywhere by a common acronym, Ptare. This means that Akan, Yoruba, Igbo, Zulu and Shona are the same religion with different branches. Just as Christians may be Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics, and just as Muslims may be Mourrides, Sunni, or Shiities. There is no difference in speaking of Ptare as one religion and speaking of Christianity or The Great Religion as one religion.
 
I believe that Popular Traditional African Religion everywhere (Ptare) is as old as civilization, indeed, it is much older than either Christianity or The Great Religion. The major characteristics of Ptare are found in all of the traditions from East to West and from North to South. The fact that we have often misunderstood the legacy we have inherited is not the fault of those who left it; it is our fault for preferring the oppressors' legacy over that of our own ancestors.
 
The characteristics of Ptare include:
 
Creator God

Domicile of Gods - Presence, Shrine

Priest/Priestess of God

Devotee of God - medium (Noc??)

Herbalist - Pharmacist

Psychiatrist - mental harmonizer

Diviner - scientist, Hunter's/explorers

All ritual in Ptare seek a return to Maat (wholeness and peace).
Everything is one - we are a part of the whole and nothing is disconnected from the Almighty. That is why we recognize Mother Earth as well as Nyame.

What Europe sees and teaches as limitations in Ptare are really advantages:
No vast interpretative literary corpus to say what is and what is not - Ptare's interpretations are often dependent on a multitude of situations that demand attention.
 
No concentration on the material manifestations of the God's house. All temples started as shrines and from the shrine place people build other edifices. Buildings should have some historical or religious significance.
 
Advantages of Ptare

The ethical principles are more conducive to community, not so geared toward individualism. Some religions demonstrate their power by showing what they can build but this is only a matter of financial not moral wealth. Are you more civilized because you can build a nuclear bomb?
 
We must not be impressed by the things which can be created because we are human and have the same capacity and can create the same things out of our own minds. But our African gods do not advance destruction. They have never been gods of death, but of life.
 
The material manifestations of religion are not the wisest standard of how good god is unless your god is money. The new religions seem to bring schools and hospitals but we have always had those institutions without calling them by those names. Now it is time that the practitioners of Ptare explain the interrelationship of the traditions of ordinary life in the context of institutions. Our entire existence is religion. Our shrines are sacred places on sacred land given by the ancestors. Our health is interconnected to our spirituality.
 
We Africans have always believed in a supreme deity whether the name was Nyame, Oludumare, Abasi, Nkulunkulu, Woyengi, Chukwu, Mawu and Lisa. This is true although others have said we did not. They have confused a lot of us.
 
When the white missionaries translated the bible in our languages, they asked our ancestors for the name of the Almighty and they used the names our ancestors had always used for the Almighty and then told us that we did not have a belief in the Supreme.
 
But we now know that our priests were no less wise in their observations than the Greek sophists, the Hebrew prophets, the Arab ulema, or the Chinese literati.
 
Our ancestors believed in pluralism without hierarchy --- many expressions of God without saying mine is right, or the only one, and yours is bad, pagan, and heathen. Perhaps had we done that we would have stopped the alien religions at the shore, but we are the world's first humanists and we allowed others to come with their goods and their gods.
 
They came with a political ideology in the name of religion. It was imperialism. Imperialism brings destruction, obliteration. How could we fall for it for so long? The introduction of a book or a gun caused us to lose our
footing, to stumble on our way, to denounce our fathers and mothers.
 
There are no other people on the earth who have had to denounce their ancestors in order to become better people. Is it because our ancestors are so strong that we are forced to denounce them before our conquerors? This is one thing you shall never find me doing because I know too much about my African contribution to history.
 
Contributions of Ptare

The first naming of the divine, netcher, god, or netcheru divinity from which some say the English word nature is ultimately derived.

The first trinity: Ausar, Auset, Heru which has been repeated by Amen, Mut, Khonsu and then God, the father, God the son, God the holy spirit. The Christians took out the mother who represented Auset -and gave Christians a virgin Mary, but she was no god. Asase Yaa is Mother Earth, but no one can have a son without a mother.

The first idea of a son of god or a daughter of God. Sa Ra or Sat Ra.

The first black stone altars - long before the Kaaba was revealed at Mecca.

The first example of the resurrection from the dead Ausar. This is also where we find that the Neb Ankh- Lord of Life was not a sarcophagus, that is, not a flesh eater, but something that spoke of life.

The name of god Amen now used by others in their prayers.

The idea that your good should outweigh your evil, that your soul should be lighter than a feather, that perfection is not what is sought after, but overwhelming goodness.

The complementarity of males and females, different roles but not subjugation, Mawu and Lisa, male and female - Auset and Ausar, complementarity.

The first records of ancestors' wisdom. The books of Ptahhotep, Kagemni, Duauf.

The idea of heaven and earth, Nut , Geb, Auset is called, Lady of Heaven.

Here in Africa humans have prayed to God longer than on any other continent. When the pyramids were finished, Europe had given the world not one organized civilization, even Asia was just stirring. Just look at a broad chronology:

2500 B.C. - The African people along the river valleys of the eastern highlands floated
stones down the Nile to help build monuments to God.

2500 Hsia Dynasty rises in China.

2200 BC. Harrapa and Mohenjo Daro were found in India.

800 BC Homer is the first voice of the Greeks.

500 Romans come to power in Europe.

639 A.D. Arabs are able to cross into Africa with force under General El As from Arabia-Yemen.

Africans made the idea of the beautiful and the good one world nfr - nefer.

Ptare gave the world its first ethical system: Maat - balance, harmony, justice, righteousness, reciprocity, order - Maat was the only major deity without priesthood since all were priests of Maat.
 
The idea of eternal life - Ankh neheh was African.

The first libations, offerings and burning of incense as ritual forms.
The ten commandments were preceded by the 42 confessions in the Egyptian Book of the Dead or more accurately the Egyptian Book of the Coming Forth By Day.
Ptare gave the idea of collective and communal salvation rather than a rampant individualism which says save me and the rest of the world go to hell.

The Future

All futures are made by human beings. But the begin with consciousness which precedes Afrocentricity.
A few days ago I walked into a Kumasi restaurant and found that I could get Ghanaian food only by pre-arranged request. But western food was immediately available. Imported. Are African Gods only on request? We determine this by how we live.
 
The Wolof and Senegal say wood may remain in water for ten years but it will not become a crocodile. We live Africa by living its tried and true values and customs, this is a credit to our gods. Almost all of the disarray in Africa can be traced to the disruption of the traditional religion. In fact, one can go from country to country and find that the cause of the problems can be laid at the feet of alien civilizations. This is not a wild statement; it is based on deep reflection and study.
 
I believe in the African gods and believe that just as we have exported our cultural forms in music, art and science, the world needs a more sane and sensible ethic.
 
What Must Be Done

We must talk honestly to our elders --- those who have not abandoned the traditions - consult the priests, learn from them, and discover the source of our problems.
 
Remove all images of a white Jesus. This is not correct even if one is Christian. The historical Jesus had be black in color despite the missionaries' attempt to paint him English and Swedish.
 
We must believe that our names are as sacred as Arabic or European names.
 
We must understand that when others extend their values, religion and institutions they are penetrating our traditions with the poison of alien power that teaches us to hate ourselves and to love our oppressors. Meanwhile, they never follow the prescriptions they leave for us.
 
We must enhance the economic, political and military power of African states because a lack of such power creates self doubt, identity crisis, and a search for the material gods of the west who seem to produce these things. But spirit is greater if we use it and we can only use it if we practice.
 
We need boldness from our leaders to accomplish this transformation.
 
The British called Harry Lee the best Englishman east of the British Isles when he finished Oxford. He changed his name, converted to Confucianism and they wondered what happened to him.

He learned Mandarin Chinese and became Lee Kuan Yew, a leader who rejected Western values.
Asians are calling for Confucianism as they emphasize tradition. The Japanese are calling for Nihonjinron, Japanese values. Why must we be stuck with the attitudes and values of the European, so-called Christian values, particularly since they have shown themselves to be bankrupt on many fronts?
 
We can achieve our aims not so much by modernizing African traditions as Africanizing modernity itself. We are the modern people. Our ecological values, relationships values, respect for others values are the keys to the future.
Conclusions

I recognize that humans cannot advance without answering some basic questions like, Who Am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of existence? Who are we as humans, Africans, Ghanaians, Gas, Ewe, Guans, Akans, African Americans?
 
Religion provides compelling answers and often small communities of others who believe like we do. African deities and the Almighty God of Africa do that for us. They give us identity and direction.

We are the children of the Supreme God sustained by our ancestral connections, formed to glorify the best values of Maat, encouraged to assume responsibility for each other in a community of consciousness.
 
Failure to do this is a deviation, an abomination and we can only re-connect through rites of ablution--- making, doing or sacrificing time, money, energy in the name and interest of Africa. The concept of the gift is the idea, not what we give.

This may change given education, science, sensibility, scarcity, etc., but we need to sacrifice for Africa.
But our God must not be one of exploitation, egocentrism, conservatism and westernization. If so, we shall go to hell.
 
We must create our African personality and identity in art, dance, medicine, education, science, and religion and if we cannot do it here in the land of Okomfo Anokye, Nkrumah and Du Bois, then it cannot be done in Africa.
 
If we do not do it here in the land of Yaa Asantewaa, then we can never be the hope of the hopeless.
If Africa cannot find its way, then I fear the prospects of the world.
 
But Africa will rise to throw off the vestiges of mental enslavement and there shall be rejoicing among the Nananom nsamanfo. The ancestors will say: Rejoice! Rejoice! Let the Gods of Africa Rejoice!


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Professor Molefi Kete Asante is the author of 42 books, more than 200 articles, and the creator of the first doctoral program in African American Studies. http://www.asante.net/

Jakumo the spirit world is not hallucinatory. It is real.

We call it the 'spirit' world, with all its quasi religious connotations, but in reality what it means is the inhabited world within the 99.9995% of the universe invisible to our five human senses.

Humans only 'see' matter that reflects light. This is what scientists call the electromgnetic spectrum. This constitutes 0.005% of all matter in the universe. In reality we're virtyally BLIND as humans.

When we 'die', our consciousness, or soul, which is not dependent on our electromagnetic reflection we call a 'body', to exist, continues to exist and be visible in the REAL WORLD ie the 99.995% of the universe.

This is the region we call ''the spirit world'' but in reality the entities there are no more 'spirit' than we are. They're just more exposed and powerful.

Looking at the tiny earth in relation to our solar system alone, never mind the universe (we're actually an invisible speck) it is foolhardy in the extreme to imagine we are the only planet in the universe with intelligent beings.

Really, how dumb can you be??

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''They are our fathers and we are their children''

That basically sums up the disgusting slavish mentality in question and it is absolutely shameful.

I mean, he didn't even have the dignity to phrase his dependence in a less slavish fashion.

We need more Kwame Nkrumahs and Malcolm Xs in power in Africa and less Buthelezis, Clarence Thomases, and Condi Rices. Dependent idiots brainwashed into thinking they cannot do anything for themselves without reaching desperately for the nearest whitey.

The British will never train you to think independently. Because that renders them irrelevant.

The problem people have here is they do not take a historical look at things.

You, BigB1 asked why Nigerians are in university overseas etc. But the reason this is more acceptable is that at least we know that we are learning what they themselves are learning/teaching their own students etc etc. It is 'generic' learning.

The Yar Adua idea on the other hand is different. Here, the Brits, before coming, will devise a 'Nigeria-specific', training, with different motives from that which dictates policing in the UK, JUST AS THEY DID WHEN THEY FORMED THE NIGERIAN POLICE IN THE YEAR 18whatever.

The occupier mentality of our policemen issues from their BRITISH training!

The colonialists created a police force which regarded the people as enemies. Go and read the history of the Nigerian police. Their brutal conduct is straight out of the colonial era.

So INVITING the same British to come and train them is naive indeed, as Britain STILL plays a role in ensuring Nigerians are governed in line with neo-colonialist principles (federalism, 'free trade', privatisation, market liberalisation etc) and the inequities engendered by those policies, which would require an occupier mentality among the police to enforce on the people.

Therefore it will be foolhardy to expect much noticeable change from the Nigerian police as a result of their ''British training''.

Kobojunkie said:

We were strong and able to do it all on our own. And then somewhere we lost all that and found ourselves colonized and now we are no longer colonized. It has been over 47 years now in Nigeria alone and you know what the situation is. We have in almost 50 years of decolonization been killing each other.

Depends on what you mean by 'killing each other'. People kill each other in every country. It's just a question of degree. 47 years is really not a long time at all, particularly when set against the length of time the nations you're comparing us with have been independent.

And it's not been ALL bad news since independence. The British who ruled for 60 odd years failed to build a single full fledged university in the country. Today we have over a 100 unis. Literacy rate at independence was 5%. Today its closer to 70% owing to massive investment in education by Nigerian leaders.

Back in the days of British rule, they say we were 'more content'.

But of course we would be 'content'. There was no electricity, but no one complained, since most had no experience of it.

There were few motorable roads, but none complained, because there were virtually no cars to drive.

There were very few hospitals, but none complained, since most were used to the herbalist anyway.

Today we have all these infrastructure on the ground, power lines, roads, schools, hospitals, not sufficient, but still there, unlike what obtained in the past.

So we ARE moving forward. It's not as if the British could not have done all those things. They just chose not to.

Unlike Nigerian leaders.

Babasin I agree with your sentiments. Many of our people have no shame.

Our ''father'' indeed. 

Get me a bucket. I need to puke.

Saddest thing is, many of our leaders think the same way.

Naijaway well written.

For everything we need to invite whites to teach us. Even how to police ourselves.

Worse still our former colonial rulers.

If that is not a sign of MENTAL SLAVERY I don't know what is.

Until we regain some degree of dignity, pride, and self-belief - and start looking to brainstorm and do things OUR WAY, we will know no progress.

Who did the Chinese invite to 'help them' train their police? Nobody.

At the most they went around and checked out other functioning systems - not just from one country - and returned home to build a force that worked for them.

Until we develop the confidence to do things this way, we will forever be the laughing stock of the world.

Rubbish.

I was referring to xcape or whatever who wrote that Ancient Egypt was 'not black'.

I simply had to educate him.

As per the time period you mentioned, well that's not really the point. If anything it goes to show that blacks are extremely capable not just of self-governance, but of wide-ranging progress.

We do not need colonised, brainwashed people of today telling us otherwise.

So there we have it. In remote times, BLACK PEOPLE in antiquity were the foremost civilizers, educators, mathematicians, physicians, poets, and scientists on the planet. For thousands of years before there was ANY western civilization, African empires had risen and fallen. By the time the white man stirred out of his cave in Greece in 800 BC, the pyramids were already ancient relics.

Already a collector's item.

I studied the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism and to my surprise I discovered that the early depictions of Krishna and Buddha were of BLACK NEGROID MEN.

Some feel these were ancient Egyptian priests sent to those places on civilizing missions and later deified in those regions.

The world has an awful lot to thank black people for.

Additionally, in light of the foregoing, where we've seen the REAL history of blacks as unencumbered by contemporary western obfuscation and lies, it becomes all the more absurd to hear such things as ''blacks cannot rule themselves'' coming from WHITE people.

People who were children when we were grown ups, civilizing the world and inventing things.

The world really has turned upside down.

More from Diodorus of Sicily - Ancient Greek Historian.

Diodorus devoted an entire chapter of his world history, the [i]Bibliotheke Histo[/i]rica, or Library of History (Book 3), to the Kushites ["Aithiopians"] of Meroe. Here he repeats the story of their great piety, their high favor with the gods, and adds the fascinating legend that they were the first of all men created by the gods and were the founders of Egyptian civilization, invented writing, and given the Egyptians their religion and culture. (3.3.2).

"Now they relate that of all people the Aithiopians [Ethiopians] were the earliest, and say that the proofs of this are clear. That they did not arrive as immigrants but are the natives of the country and therefore rightly are called authochthonous is almost universally accepted. That those who live in the South are likely to be the first engendered by the earth is obvious to all. For as it was the heat of the sun that dried up the earth while it was still moist, at the time when everything came into being, and caused life, they say it is probable that it was the region closest to the sun that first bore animate beings".

Diodorus continues:

"They further write that it was among them that people were first taught to honor the gods and offer sacrifices and arrange processions and festivals and perform other things by which people honor the divine. For this reason their piety is famous among all men, and the sacrifices among the Aithiopians are believed to be particularly pleasing to the divinity,"

"The Aithiopians [Ethiopians] say that the Egyptians are settlers from among themselves and that Osiris was the leader of the settlement.The customs of the Egyptians, they say, are for the most part Aithiopian, the settlers having preserved their old traditions. For to consider the kings gods, to pay great attention to funeral rites, and many other things, are Aithiopian practices, and also the style of their statues and the form of their writing are Aithiopian. Also the way the priestly colleges are organized is said to be the same in both nations. For all who have to do with the cult of the gods, they maintain, are [ritually] pure: the priests are shaved in the same way, they have the same robes and the type of scepter shaped like a plough, which also the kings have, who use tall pointed felt hats ending in a knob, with the snakes that they call the asp (aspis) coiled round them."

"There are also numerous other Aithiopian tribes [i.e. besides those centered at Meroe]; some live along both sides of the river Nile and on the islands in the river, others dwell in the regions that border on Arabia [i.e. to the east], others again have settled in the interior of Libya [i.e. to the west]. The majority of these tribes, in particular those who live along the river, have black skin, snub-nosed faces, and curly hair".

(Diodous Siculus, Bibliotheke, 3. Translated by Tomas Hagg, in Fontes Historiae Nubiorum, vol. II: From the Mid-Fifth to the First Century BC (Bergen, Norway, 1996)

xkape said:

You cannot explain away the genetic nature of human traits in a bid to protect yourself from percieved inferiority or superiority
Some people will always be better at some things than others simple. wether by nature or by nuture. if you're so convinced it is nuture then we should nuture our children so they can dominate the world instead of staying here m,aking excuses for ourselves
Anytime someone points out the backwardness of the black race in terms of technology, someone points out Egypt
1. There is no proof that the people of ancient egypt were a homogenous group of negroid africans. In fact evidence sucjh as hairs obtained fromhundreds of mummies suggest otherwise. a black mans hair cannot lie can it? At best ancien egyptians were a mixed race group with different races achieving dominance over centuries
2. much  of the culture and civilization of ancient egypt was obtained from ancient phoenicians and other meditereanean groups who are definitely not black.
3. the kingdoms of zimbabwe were dfinitely unique among african kingdoms interms of the grandeur of their buildings but this was not sustained over the centuries nor did it spread effectively to the rest of black africa.

I've never read so much ignorant rubbish in my entire life, made even worse by coming from an African.

Listen up Mr. You know absolutely NOTHING about Ancient Egypt.

The name which the Egyptians called their country was KEMET (Black nation). They called themselves KEMMUI (blacks). On inscriptions at the temple of Edfu, they report that they ''came from the south''. That they were led to Egypt by the God Horus. (The Orisha, Lisa, Olisah, Oliseh pantheons of African religion are descended from Horus-at. The full name of the deity.)

All the ancient Greek historians, Aristotle, Diodorus of Sicily, Plato, reported that the Egyptians were ''very black'' ''with wooly hair''.

The practices of the Ancient Egyptians are mirrored in contemporary African societies - divinity of kings, matrilineal succession, bride price, circumcision, festivals, oracles, shrines, pouring of libation, masquerades etc.

There is no other region of the world most of these things are practised but in black Africa.

Is it linguistics? The Wolof language today spoken in Senegal is said to be a virtual carbon copy of the ancient Egyptian language Mdu Ntr (pronounced Medu Neter).

Cheikh Anta Diop, eminent African historian, researched and published inter alia, stunning congruences between Medu Neter and other West African languages, as did Olumide Lucas with regard to the Yoruba language.

For instance Dwarf in Yoruba is called Danga.

Dwarf in Ancient Egyptian? Danga!

Water in AE: Miri

Water in Yoruba: (O-mi)

Water in Igbo: Miri

There are numerous other congruences.

Many ethnic groups in West Africa and beyond have a tradition of ancient migration from the Nile Valley. Oduduwa for instance is believed to have fled Egypt with his folllowers to avoid conversion to Islam when the Jihadists stormed the empire in 600 AD.

TRUTH IS - BLACK PEOPLE CIVILIZED THE WORLD.

By the way, in ancient times, all of Africa south of Egypt was known as Ethiopia. Kush (or Nubia) was also a powerful black kingdom in present day Sudan whose pyramids are OLDER than those of Egypt.


The Ancient Chronicles   
 

The KJV Bible
   And the sons of Ham; Cush (Nubia), and Mizraim (Egypt), and Punt (East Africa), and Canaan (Palestine).  And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.  He was a mighty hunter before the LORD: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.    And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.  Genesis 10:6-10

   And they (the sons of Judah upon entering Canaan) found fat pasture and good, and the land was wide, and quiet, and peaceable; for they of Ham had dwelt there of old.  (Perhaps why the biblical curse on Canaan was invoked, for the Semites had long coveted this land.)  I Chronicles 4:40

   Israel also came into Egypt; and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham, They forgat God their saviour, which had done great things in Egypt; wondrous works in the land of Ham, and terrible things by the Red Sea. Psalms 105:23, 106:21-22

   And the lord said, like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia.  For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.  Isaiah 20:3, 43:3

   And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.  Ezekial 30:4

   (Pharaoh's daughter)  I am black, and comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. Song of Solomon  1

   Ethiopia and Egypt were her strength and it was infinite. Nahum 3:9

Kebra Nagast (Ethiopian bible - "The Glory of Kings"
   Solomon has taken a wife not of his color, who is moreover black, for he has married the daughter of Pharaoh.


The Greek Chronicles

Herodotus (Known in trhe west as the Father of History)

Origins of the Oracle of Dodona

'' At Dodona, however, the priestesses who deliver the oracles have a different version of the story: two black doves, they say, flew away from Thebes in Egypt, and one of them alighted at Dodona, the other in Libya (Africa), The story which the people of Dodona tell about the doves came, I should say, from the fact that the women were foreigners, whose language sounded to them like the twittering of birds, As to the bird being black, they merely signify by this that the woman was Egyptian. -book II

Colchians are of Egyptian Descent
   But it is undoubtedly a fact that the Colchians are of Egyptian descent, My own idea on the subject was based on the fact that they have black skins and wooly hair, and secondly, and more especially, on the fact that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians are the only races which from ancient times have practiced circumcision. -book II

Aristotle
   Those who are too black are cowards, like for instance, the Egyptians and Ethiopians.  But those who are excessively white are also cowards as can be seen from the example of women, the complexion of courage is between the two - Physiognomy, 6

Diodorus of Sicily

Origins of the Egyptians

''The Ethiopians say that the Egyptians are one of their colonies, which was led into Egypt by Osiris.  They claim that at the beginning of the world Egypt was simply a sea but that the Nile, carrying down vast quantities of loam from Ethiopia in its flood waters, finally filled it in and made it part of the continent, They add that the Egyptians have received from them, as from authors and their ancestors, the greater part of their laws.'' -Universal History, book

I think it's an absolute disgrace that we see fit to call the British to come and ''train'' our police force. Are we really this shameless? Someone said ''we tried on our own and it didn't work''. Nonsense. We've NOT tried anything on our own beyond lip service by avaricious overlords. What we need is sincerity and self-belief by those who call themselves our leaders, failing which they should vacate their positions for those better qualified and able.

It was the same Britain that created this Nigerian police force, whose main negative characteristic is the occupier mentality it retains from its colonial past, and evidenced by the often contemptuous, brutal treatment meted out to the citizenry.

It therefore smacks of foolishness and naivety of the most extreme kind to invite the same British to return and ''train'' the Nigerian police - again.

I see nothing but bad coming of it. Until we start to regard the British and Americans as our ENEMIES (which they are) we will never know peace.

Reba said:

To all Stephanie haters:

I really do not know whats up with some of the Nigerians women.
Cos they like to criticize even where it doesn't fit. Just look @ the ones that are saying that Steph is one of the most annoying actress,

Stephanie is one of the best actress in Nigeria, if you don't know. She is even one of the few actress that we understand her English. She speaks perfectly clear English unlike some who speaks typical Nigerian English & sometimes we don't understand wether they are speaking English or their vernacular language.

You're the most brainwashed, deluded and ignorant person I've ever read on a forum.

'Typical Nigerian English'. Excuse me?? And just WHAT is wrong with 'typical Nigerian English' you inferiorized air head?

Our traditional languages you refer to as ''vernacular''.

Is your head correct at all?

You need a radical dose of black consciousness learning to gain some pride in yourself and where you come from. Right now, you're just a pathetic slave.

For God sake, don't think that its only the Nigerians who watch those movies but a lot of people from different countries, therefore we need real people who speak the language well like Steph, Dakore, Genev, Rita, Ramsey, Kate, Pat Attah, Omo, Stella, Desmond,Iyke & many others, just 2 mention but a few.

Urban Nigerian accent unspoiled by a faked American twang is understandable to every English speaker in every nation. In other words, Stephanie does not need to fake her accent to be understood by non Nigerians.

Well you did state that kojeiwa needed to travel to America before he knew flowers = romance. Or you've forgoten what you typed?

Moodylady, EVERYONE in Nigeria knows flowers=romance. You do not need to travel on a 'free visa' to the US to know that.

The bloke is right. Maybe you ARE local.

The way you reason is very primitive.

Some of you make me laugh. You've no idea how big Nollywood is now. I just returned from Jamaica and I can swear every family there has at least one Nollywood DVD. Same as other Carribean nations like St Lucia, Barbados and Grenada. Even Papua New Guinea!

This is why it's called the world's third largest film industry after Hollywood and Bollywood.

Nollywood movies have completely transformed the image of Nigerians and Africans in those places. On my Jamaica trip, some openly expressed surprise that we had so many beautiful houses in Nigeria. And well-heeled people.

These are things they never knew existed in Africa, owing to pervasive western media misrepresentation of the continent,

So on many levels, Nollywood is a big thing.

Th rest of Africa was long sewn up. Eki Nigeria is what Ugandans call their number one craze - Nigerian movies. Nollywood stars are household names in all those countries, from Kenya to Zimbabwe, SA to Malawi.

The key to appreciating Nollywood is to be a true Nollywood fan - then you get to know the best movies and not simply judge the industry based on a passing acquaintance, from some possibly pirated b rate film you saw at the hairdressers or gym.

Sites like www.izognmovies.com are where you can read fan reviews of each movie before watching for a couple of dollars.

To the person who said Ghana movies are ''better'' than Nollywood output, YOU especially need to visit that site and educate yourself about the real Nollywood, as you've absolutely  no idea what you're talking about.

ESU said:

If you call the car Nigerian car ( BTW, Igbo is still part of Nigeria) will that make the haters buy it? Natural haters will still ask who the owners of the company are. If they see only Okoro names on the board list, will they buy the car, even if the factory is located in Zungeru?

Then get some non-Igbo industrialists on the board. Make it inclusive. You know the mentality of the people. Work by it, rather than seeing it as an impediment. If anything, you'll sell more vehicles. You'll gain a wider market.

You could go further and name the different brands of your cars after different regions of the nation.

There is a social aspect to development as well that needs to be recognised by the would-be Nigerian innovator of whatever ethnic shade.

It is a laudable project, and even more impressive in my view is the innovation of ethanol based, bio-degradable fuel by PRODA to run the engine. THAT would be a real revolution.

If the CIA, Mossad, and other dark foreign interests will allow them, they could easily compete globally in green friendly markets within the next decade.

ricadelide, you make me laugh. You expect me to provide 'cogent reasons and evidence' to show that Jesus did not exist? But quite apart from the fact that it's decidedly hard to prove a negative, the onus for all intents and purposes surely falls on YOU to prove that he DID.

All we can show you is that there was nothing contemporary written about him. That there are no inscriptions of him, no artefacts, no letters, no records, etc.

Unreliable ''gospels'' from unknown sources, traceable to an original document(s) mysteriously known as ''Q'', which materialised several decades after the purported events from God knows where, and in a language foreign to the alleged participants, and thus highly dubious.

Lastly, you've stated more than once here that ''widespread archaelogical evidence exists'' to show that Jesus lived on earth.

Care to furnish us with one or two?

And please do not hesitate to cut and paste. We need verifiable references, not just YOUR word.

KAG said:

It matters because copy/pastes - especially, the long ones - tend to stifle debtes and dialogue - after all, if people wanted to debate Walker, they would have said as much. Furthermore, the fact that you seem to be the kind of person that mistakes copy/pastes for debates doesn't help matters, because - as has happened in this thread - if a full rebuttal is offered to the copy/paste, without even acknowledging the many points that may have been raised in the rebuttal, you just copy/paste yet another long article. It's, basically, disrespectful and intellectually dishonest.

I never read anything so ridiculous. You do not instruct people on how to get their points across. I THINK THEY need to 'copy and paste' if anything.

All THEY do is come on here and argue completely off the top of their heads, no citations, no sources, no references, simply ''Oh Paul said that, did this, and the Church fathers believe this'' Or (as is ricadelide's specialty question ''All bible scholars believe Jesus existed. Who are YOU to question them''. Or picking inconsequential holes in the author's presentation - interspersed with insults - while ignoring the thrust?

Is THAT what you call 'full rebuttal' of my posts? I call that people being too lazy to research their own religion, and sitting on their backsides echoing the next piece of foolishness that issues from the church's lips or their bible.

THEY should post citations. Post sources. Post archaeological remains, Make it a PROPER informed debate.

Don't attack ME for being the one doing the above. Blame THEM for being too damn lazy and arrogant to care to look where they should be looking for sources to buttress their viewpoints.

ricadelide, your objections are frivolous to say the least. Why not concentrate on the topic rather than worrying yourself about whose words I use here and there to make my argument?

And there's no such thing as an ''unsubstantiated opinion'' here. ALL of what's written above comes with sources, credible, cited sources, and I have EVERY RIGHT to use another's line of argument where it corresponds with mine without unduly citing the former.


Afterall, this is not an exam or thesis where such considerations are required or necessary.

I've nowhere claimed to be the original author of everything I've posted, so your 'plagiarism'  charge is ludicrous and diversionary.

The very length of the articles posted, on a discussion forum such as this, is in indicator on my part of the significant external input involved, and for plagiarism to apply, you need to show specific intent to deceive.

This you have not shown. So your charges are ludicrous.

Now if this were a Phd thesis for instance, the situation would be entirely diferent. There, there is an overt and implicit acknowledgement that one's presentation would be indigenous, in order to gauge appropriately one's academic merit, abi?

So this is not an exam, my brotha. We're only seeking the truth about ''Jesus''.

Now, the sources YOU ought to be worried about, I have posted. Those sources involve quotes, from relevant authors and their works, churchmen, theologians etc, and the references are generally cited.

Thus where for instance Ignatius Loyola was quoted as saying that LIES and DECEPTION are ACCEPTABLE, or where Iraneus was quoted as saying likewise - the sources are posted.

THAT'S what should concern you. THAT'S what you should be looking up, not whether I use another's words to elucidate the truth.

Stick to the point at hand Mr MAN and stop DODGING THE ISSUE.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm debating with illiterates.

I will not turn this into a nit-picking session of what ''Paul'' said or did not say. Certainly he never claimed to have met Jesus. Except in a ''vision'' on the road to Damascus.

But he never mentioned anything about Jesus' supposed life on earth - virgin birth, crucifixion, miracles etc. The very thing christians preach, he did not, no doubt because before he wrote his epistles, the Jesus stories had not yet been invented.


ricadelide, the fact that you're demanding ''proof'' that the gospels were written decades after Christ signifies your extremely poor knowledge of the bible, and of modern knowledge of theologians and bible scholars.

If you did a google and actually conducted some research like I do, you will QUICKLY discover that virtually no source, even church sources,  puts the dating of the first gospels at earlier than 55 AD

Raymond E. Brown, in his 1996 book An Introduction to the New Testament, presented the general scholarly consensus regarding the gospel dates:

Mark: c. 68–73
Matthew: c. 70–100 as the majority view; some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70 date, particularly those that do not accept Mark as the first gospel written.
Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85
John: c. 90–110. Brown does not give a consensus view for John, but these are dates as propounded by C K Barrett, among others. The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Here are the dates given by a christian source in the modern NIV Study Bible:

Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s
Matthew: c. 50 to 70s
Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s
John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70 .

This in addition to the fact that nobody contemporary to 'Jesus' wrote a word about him.

Now some christian scholars propose the view of an earlier dating of Matthew’s Gospel owing to claims by early church leaders such as Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius who recorded that 'Matthew' first wrote his gospel for Jewish believers while he was still in Palestine. In fact Eusebius, (a bishop of Caesarea and known as the father of church history), reported that Matthew wrote his Gospel before he left Palestine to preach in other lands, which Eusebius says happened about 12 years after the death of Christ.

This would place the writing of Matthew as early as A.D. 40-45 and as late as A.D. 55.

Now, Eusebius, Iraneus and co, are the ones whose quotes we've all read. They are the ones who propose falsehoods and lies as a modus operandi for the church.

Why would anyone believe them if any of those guys wrote that 1+1 =2? Their testimonies are for all intents and purposes, worthless.

I'd go with independent sources who place the gospels at much later dates.

And for all your bluster, ricadelide, you've stil NOT shown us why here are no non-christian writings about a 'Jesus the Christ'.

There is not one single piece of archaeological, forensic or documentary evidence that shows Jesus was ever alive.

The only non Christian record of Jesus was by Josephus, and HE was born in 37 CE, long after Jesus had 'ascended'. Thus all he could spout was hearsay. Not to mention that most scholars, including christian apologists, accept that the verse where he referred to 'a Jesus known as the Christ' was an interpolation (forgery), orchestrated probably by Iraneus.

Of course, there is plenty of evidence that people believed that there was a man named Jesus who was killed, but none that he was alive. By that I mean nothing exists from the time of the supposed life of Jesus. No letters exist that mention Jesus the preacher or miracle worker. No Christian letters or diaries, no Jewish ones, no Greek ones, no Roman ones. Nobody wrote about a single aspect of his life while he was living it.

Just think for a moment about what the man was supposed to have done. He was supposed to have had meetings with thousands of people. He was supposed to have cured people, even raised a man from the dead. He was supposed to have entered the city of Jerusalem at the head of a triumphal procession and yet nobody wrote anything about it at the time. Not a book, not a diary, not even graffiti. Isn't that just a little hard to believe?

There is not a single physical description of Jesus, not one. Isn't that a little odd? Had the man got no distinguishing features at all?

The lack of evidence is quite alarming.

There are many gospels, many more than are accepted in the official church canon, but none of these are contemporary. All are written in the past tense: there was a man named Jesus who died and was returned to life, and this is his story. There are no rough drafts available from the time the authors didn't know the ending.

Walter R. Cassels, the learned author of "Supernatural Religion," one of the greatest works ever written on the origins of Christianity, says: "After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Christ."

How can Gospels which were not written until a hundred and fifty years after Christ is supposed to have died, and which do not rest on any trustworthy testimony, have the slightest value as evidence that he really lived? History must be founded upon genuine documents or on living proof. Were a man of today to attempt to write the life of a supposed character of a hundred and fifty years ago, without any historical documents upon which to base his narrative, his work would not be a history, it would be a romance.

Not a single statement in it could be relied upon.

Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his disciples are said to have been Jewish fishermen. His language, and the language of his followers must, therefore, have been Aramaic -- the popular language of Palestine in that age. But the Gospels are written in Greek -- every one of them.

Nor were they translated from some other language. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, four hundred years ago, has maintained that they were originally written in Greek.

This proves that they were not written by 'Christ's disciples', or by any of the early Christians.

Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue, several generations after the death of those who are supposed to have known the facts -- such is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived.

But while the Gospels were written far too late to be of authority, the original documents, such as they were, were not preserved. The Gospels that were written in the second century no longer exist. They have been lost or destroyed. The oldest Gospels that we have are supposed to be copies of copies of copies that were made from those Gospels. We do not know who made these copies; we do not know when they were made; nor do we know whether they were honestly made.

Do some research yourself. Do a google of the Q document said to be the blueprint for the gospels. Nobody knows who made it!

Between the earliest Gospels and the oldest existing manuscripts of the New Testament, there is a blank gulf of three hundred years. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the original Gospels contained.

There were many Gospels in circulation in the early centuries, and a large number of them were forgeries. Among these were the "Gospel of Paul," the Gospel of Bartholomew," the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," the "Gospel of the Egyptians," the "Gospel or Recollections of Peter," the "Oracles or Sayings of Christ," and scores of other pious productions, a collection of which may still be read in "The Apocryphal New Testament."

Obscure men wrote Gospels and attached the names of prominent Christian characters to them, to give them the appearance of importance. Works were forged in the names of the apostles, and even in the name of Christ. The greatest Christian teachers including Eusebius, Ignatius Loyola, and Iraneus,  taught that it was a virtue to deceive and lie for the glory of the faith.

Dean Milman, the standard Christian historian, says: "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed." The Rev. Dr. Giles writes: "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written with no other view than to deceive."

Professor Robertson Smith says: "There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views." The early church was flooded with spurious religious writings. From this mass of literature, the Gospels were selected by priests and called the inspired word of God. Were these Gospels also forged? There is no certainty that they were not. But let me ask: If Christ was an historical character, why was it necessary to forge documents to prove his existence? Did anybody ever think of forging documents to prove the existence of any person who was really known to have lived? The early Christian forgeries are a tremendous testimony to the weakness of the Christian cause.

Spurious or genuine, let us see what the Gospels can tell us about the life of Jesus. Matthew and Luke give us the story of his genealogy. How do they agree? Matthew says there were forty-one generations from Abraham to Jesus. Luke says there were fifty-six. Yet both pretend to give the genealogy of Joseph, and both count the generations! Nor is this all. The Evangelists disagree on all but two names between David and Christ. These worthless genealogies show how much the New Testament writers knew about the ancestors of their hero.

If Jesus lived, he must have been born. When was he born? Matthew says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. He could not have been born during the administration of these two rulers for Herod died in the year 4 B.C., and Cyrenius, who, in Roman history is Quirinius, did not become Governor of Syria until ten years later.

Herod and Quirinius are separated by the whole reign of Archelaus, Herod's son. Between Matthew and Luke, there is, therefore, a contradiction of at least ten years, as to the time of Christ's birth. The fact is that the early Christians had absolutely no knowledge as to when Christ was born.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Christians count one hundred and thirty-three contrary opinions of different authorities concerning the year the Messiah appeared on earth." Think of it -- one hundred and thirty-three different years, each one of which is held to be the year in which Christ came into the world. 

He was called "Jesus of Nazareth"; and there he is said to have lived until the closing years of his life. Now comes the question -- Was there a city of Nazareth in that age?

The Encyclopaedia Biblica, a work written by theologians, the greatest biblical reference work in the English language, says: "We cannot perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city of Nazareth in Jesus' time." No certainty that there was a city of Nazareth! 

Not only are the supposed facts of the life of Christ imaginary, but the city of his birth and youth and manhood existed, so far as we know, only on the map of mythology. What amazing evidence to prove the reality of the ''Son of God''! 

Absolute ignorance as to his ancestry; nothing whatever known of the time of his birth, and even the existence of the city where he is said to have been born, a matter of grave question! 

After his birth, Christ, as it were, vanishes out of existence, and with the exception of a single incident recorded in Luke, we hear absolutely nothing of him until he has reached the age of thirty years. The account of his being found discussing with the doctors in the Temple at Jerusalem when he was but twelve years old, is told by Luke alone. The other Gospels are utterly ignorant of this discussion; and, this single incident excepted, the four Gospels maintain an unbroken silence with regard to thirty years of the life of their hero.

What is the meaning of this silence?

If the writers of the Gospels knew the facts of the life of Christ, why is it that they tell us absolutely nothing of thirty years of that life? What historical character can be named whose life for thirty years is an absolute blank to the world?

If Christ was the incarnation of God, if he was the greatest teacher the world has known, if he came to save mankind from everlasting pain -- was there nothing worth remembering in the first thirty years of his existence among men? The fact is that the Evangelists knew nothing of the life of Jesus, before his ministry; and they refrained from inventing a childhood, youth and early manhood for him because it was not necessary to their purpose.

Luke, however, deviated from the rule of silence long enough to write the Temple incident. The story of the discussion with the doctors in the Temple is obviously mythical by all the circumstances that surround it. The statement that his mother and father left Jerusalem, believing that he was with them; that they went a day's journey before discovering that he was not in their company; and that after searching for three days, they found him in the Temple asking and answering questions of the learned Doctors, involves a series of tremendous improbabilities.

Add to this the fact that the incident stands alone in Luke, surrounded by a period of silence covering thirty years; add further that none of the other writers have said a word of the child Jesus discussing with the scholars of their nation; and add again the unlikelihood that a child would appear before serious-minded men in the role of an intellectual champion and the fabulous (as in fabu  ) character of the story becomes perfectly clear.

John tells us that the driving of the money-changers from the Temple occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry; and nothing is said of any serious consequences following it. But Matthew, Mark and Luke declare that the purification of the Temple took place at the close of his career, and that this act brought upon him the wrath of the priests, who sought to destroy him.

Because of these facts, the Encyclopedia Biblica assures us that the order of events in the life of Christ, as given by the Evangelists, is contradictory and untrustworthy; that the chronological framework of the Gospels is worthless; and that the facts "show only too clearly with what lack of concern for historical precision the Evangelists write." In other words, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote, not what they knew, but what they imagined.

Jen33 did not write the Encyclopedia Biblica, ricadelide, Church Fathers did. 

And one more thing.  If Christ performed the miracles the New Testament describes, if he gave sight to blind men's eyes, if his magic touch brought youthful vigor to the palsied frame, if the putrefying dead at his command returned to life and love again -- why did the people want him crucified?

Is it not amazing that a civilized people -- for the Jews of that age were civilized -- were so filled with murderous hate towards a kind and loving man who went about doing nothing but good, who preached forgiveness, cleansed the leprous, and raised the dead -- that they could not be appeased until they had crucified the noblest benefactor of mankind? Again I ask -- is this history, or is it fiction?

In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word about Christ's virgin birth.

The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvellous manner in which Jesus is said to have come into the world. For this silence, there can be only one honest explanation -- the story of the virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. A large portion of the Gospels is devoted to accounts of the miracles Christ is said to have wrought.

But you will look in vain through the thirteen Epistles of Paul for the slightest hint that Christ ever performed any miracles. Is it conceivable that Paul was acquainted with the miracles of Christ -- that he knew that Christ had cleansed the leprous, cast out devils that could talk, restored sight to the blind and speech to the dumb, and even raised the dead -- is it conceivable that Paul was aware of these wonderful things and yet failed to write a single line about them? Again, the only solution is that the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus had not yet been invented when Paul's Epistles were written.

Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching of Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels preached a famous sermon on a mountain: Paul knows nothing of it. Christ delivered a prayer now recited by the Christian world: Paul never heard of it. Christ taught in parables: Paul is utterly unacquainted with any of them. Is not this astonishing? Paul, the greatest writer of early Christianity, the man who did more than any other to establish the Christian religion in the world -- that is, if the Epistles may be trusted -- is absolutely ignorant of the teaching of Christ. In all of his thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus.

Paul was a missionary. He was out for converts. Is it thinkable that if the teachings of Christ had been known to him, he would not have made use of them in his propaganda?

Can you believe that a Christian missionary would go to China and labor for many years to win converts to the religion of Christ, and never once mention the Sermon on the Mount, never whisper a word about the Lord's Prayer, never tell the story of one of the parables, and remain as silent as the grave about the precepts of his master?

What have the churches been teaching throughout the Christian centuries if not these very things? Are not the churches of to-day continually preaching about the virgin birth, the miracles, the parables, and the precepts of Jesus? And o not these features constitute Christianity? Is there any life of Christ, apart from these things? Why, then, does Paul know nothing of them? There is but one answer. The virgin-born, miracle-working, preaching Christ was unknown to the world in Paul's day. That is to say, he had not yet been invented!

The Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are two entirely different beings. The Christ of Paul is little more than an idea. He has no life story. He was not followed by the multitude. He performed no miracles. He did no preaching. The Christ Paul knew was the Christ he saw in a ''vision'' while on his way to Damascus -- an apparition, a phantom, not a living, human being, who preached and worked among men. This vision-Christ, this ghost, was afterwards brought to the earth by those who wrote the Gospels. He was given a Holy Ghost for a father and a virgin for a mother. He was made to preach, to perform astounding miracles, to die a violent death though innocent, and to rise in triumph from the grave and ascend again to heaven. Such is the Christ of the New Testament -- first a spirit, and later a miraculously born, miracle working man.

A large body of opinion in the early church denied the reality of Christ's physical existence. In his "History of Christianity," Dean Milman writes: "The Gnostic sects denied that Christ was born at all, or that he died," and Mosheim, Germany's great ecclesiastical historian, says: "The Christ of early Christianity was not a human being, but an "appearance," an illusion, a character in miracle, not in reality -- a myth.

If Christ lived, if he was a reformer, if he performed wonderful works that attracted the attention of the multitude, if he came in conflict with the authorities and was crucified -- how shall we explain the fact that history has not even recorded his name? The age in which he is said to have lived was an age of scholars and thinkers. In Greece, Rome and Palestine, there were philosophers, historians, poets, orators, jurists and statesmen.

Every fact of importance was noted by interested and inquiring minds. Some of the greatest writers the Jewish race has produced lived in that age. And yet, in all the writings of that period, there is not one line, not one word, not one letter, about Jesus.

Great writers wrote extensively of events of minor importance, but not one of them wrote a word about the mightiest character who had ever appeared on earth -- a man at whose command the leprous were made clean, a man who fed five thousand people with a satchel full of bread, a man whose word defied the grave and gave life to the dead. A man on whose death earthquakes occurred, and the daylit sky turned black.

John E. Remsburg, in his scholarly work on "The Christ," has compiled a list of forty-two writers who lived and wrote during the time or within a century after the time, of Christ, not one of whom ever mentioned him.

Philo, one of the most renowned writers the Jewish race has produced, was born before the beginning of the Christian Era, and lived for many years after the time at which Jesus is supposed to have died. His home was in or near Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have preached, to have performed miracles, to have been crucified, and to have risen from the dead. Had Jesus done these things, the writings of Philo would certainly contain some record of his life. Yet this philosopher, who must have been familiar with Herod's massacre of the innocents, and with the preaching, miracles and death of Jesus, had these things occurred; who wrote an account of the Jews, covering this period, and discussed the very questions that are said to have been near to Christ's heart, never once mentioned the name of, or any deed connected with, the reputed Savior of the world.

The only reason for this is that the man known as ''Jesus Christ, the son of God'', did not exist!