Damola Awoyokun's article The Next Einstein and the Expressway Churches highlights the battles that need to be fought against unreason and religious induced irrationality:
The problem of the expressway churches in every nook and cranny of the country(Nigeria) is not essentially in their mushrooming, it is in the way they barge into our minds and corrode the roots of our thinking with what they preach. They start with fear. And fear like HIV is very polite and diplomatic, its effectiveness is in being unassuming, going on easy till it shatters your immune system and leaves you gullible to all sorts of senseless teachings and practices... Weirdly, Christianity no longer calls itself a religion, it is a way of life. So every time on any day you turn on your TV or radio, in the buses, in the offices, markets, on the Internet, a preacher is there retailing some messages or emails of mental bacteria. Little wonder there is an outbreak of mediocrity all over the country...Referring to the Neil Turok's TED prize wish he states:
Young African minds eager to be the next Einstein or Hawking must start by rejecting their being made sheep that the religions constantly find fulfillment in doing...Through the Enlightenment, Europe began to see progress when they squashed the prevailing grip of religion over their minds.
Echoing these points Dipo Bandele calls for Industries, Not Churches:
The problem with Nigerians is that reason has taken the back seat while gullibility takes the driver's seat. It is in this country that warehouses are being turned into churches while the opposite happens in Europe and America... For Nigeria to be a leading economy by the year 2020, we should be building industries and not churches. We have had enough of these churches, they teach us things that can not be proven or substantiated. No miracles have ever happened and no one would happen.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar