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No one knows better than the African American as a whole that
the brochure of America is better than the reality. Yet the
consequence of the black church to the welfare of the African american
human condition are not apparent to African americans as a whole.
However, for enlightenment, it only needs to be asked “is the African
American condition well today?” And then ask “What has been the
institution or device African Americans have utilized to bring forth
recovery, healing, and wellness in their community as a whole since
being brought to the Americas and later implementation of the 13th
amendment to the US constitution?” History will show it is the
teachings of the church and more recent the mosque too. Since most
African americans will admit their condition is not well(i.e.
economically, legally, educationally, medically, spiritually), it only
follows that the all the religious institutions used to bring wellness
to this community of peoples has failed. And when a solution for
repair is a time tested failure, it is time to try something else.
Why African American Christians Believe in their Oppressors Religion
When engaging young African American Christian indoctrinated
minds, that are friends of my sons and willing participants, I often
will enlighten them with the facts around dinosaurs' existence. When I
make the inference that dinosaurs' existence disproves the supposed
time line it took the mythical god of Christianity to create the
universe in Genesis(not to mention all the other irreconcilable verses
in the first 1-24 of the book) I generally get the same response when
I follow up with "How did the dinosaurs come into being?". And it goes
usually like this "god did, he created everything". The tragedy in
this reply to me is not that it would be anachronistic to the old
testament or put man before dinosaurs in the history of species on our
planet, but that these young children cannot conceive or fathom
anything (language, thought, imagination, perception or reality)
outside of the unproven myths of the old testament as it has been
passed down to them in the-god created everything-delusion of
religious child rearing.
Like the greater American society this same type of sheep
mentality rules the present for the majority of African Americans who
are socialized with the early messages of Christianity as the only
existential scope in which to view the universe. Unfortunately, today
the masses caught up in this Great Distraction as the only way to view
existence and creation, includes most of the well or higher educated
and politically powerful African American intellectuals (Cornell West,
Tavis Smiley, Al Sharpton) as well as the uneducated and uninformed.
Most of the educated and intelligent elite are respected to the point
that they are able, through access to media, speak for the majority of
African Americans. It is a well known testable experiential fact in
the African American community that putting the word reverend in front
of a person's name means immediate and mostly unquestioned respect and
legitimacy in knowledge to the nature of existence. It is my
estimation that many African American social activist call themselves
Christians for the mere purpose of being able to be considered
legitimate in speaking to and for the African American community. Most
African americans, in my experience, won’t take any wholly secular
humanist African American serious as having any influence in or
representing anything in or for the African American community(and
this goes for the Africentric community as well).
The consequence of this religious socialization and its supposed
validity for African Americans comes in many false equivalencies and
poor reasoning. One of these fallacies is expressed in the Latin axiom
argumentum ad numerum (it must be true if so many people believe it).
Aside from being a spiritually lazy argument, it concludes that one
does not need to investigate validity in 'holy writs' because the
proof of truth lies not in any evidence, but in the number of those
who believe to those who do not believe. And again the ugly head of
innate separatism arises, as there are many followers of the three
different Abrahamic faiths and their hybrid late corners (Mormonism
and the like), all with different end of times stories and all with
different mores to live by. Therefore, they will be eternally at odds
with one another and forever overlooking the fact that all mammals are
connected through nature and that the number of people who believe in
one thing or the other does not separate that forever connectedness.
These fallacies are also manifested in the cult of personality
and various symbolisms. An example is seen when African American
athletes and entertainers, politicians etc., who point to the sky or
verbalize that god is the reason for their success or the mover of all
things. In doing so the African American (and whoever else for that
matter) sub-consciously derides and therefore obliviously overrides
the fact that the fortune of being born and other social, cultural,
economic, and internal fortitude variables are the reasons for any
individual's idea of success. If challenged on those assertions in
private or public(which rarely happens) these public figures have the
same cop out or bailout rationale as every other believer when
challenged with current knowledge that disproves the assertions of the
ancient and limited knowledge of the 'holy writs' they believe explain
everything. The question doesn't lie in what inspires what and/or why
events take place. It lies in if there is or ever has been any
evidence to validate the source that one chooses as the source that
spawns what and why events take place. No events can be acknowledged
if there is no existence. It is only the religious, again through
socialization, who refuse to acknowledge there is no evidence to date
that allows humans to know the source or purpose of creation. And this
refusal of acknowledgment by theists, allow them to credulously,
callously, and arrogantly give thanks to their beliefs specified
creation source as the reason for how or why human events occur.
A source, of course, whose very myopic and limited context of
evidence, if stacked up to present day knowledge, would fall
infinitely short of any hint of credibility. A source backed by a
folklore that would very closely resemble what present day adults and
children, if read without being socialized as truth and 'divine',
would think of as just another epic fairy tale or fable, a la the
Iliad or Gulliver's Travels. A source that, as evidenced by history,
will take the same inevitable path of all the past "true" religions of
the Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and Roman beliefs that have since faded
into humanities chronicles as truths proven untrue(mostly due to
scientific and technological discovery with some political power
grabbing mixed in). These civilizations and hundreds of others like
them and their then "truthful" explanations (see H. L. Mencken
Memorial Service for a historical list of many of them) of creation
are now categorized as proven historical mythological fable and
parable folklore.