On Miracles, Magic, Superstitions, Delusions and Emmanuel Television

Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 30 April, at 14 : 58 PM Print

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“We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans, and your reverential amens. All these amount to less than nothing. We want one fact. We beg at the doors of your churches for just one little fact. We pass our hats along your pews and under your pulpits and implore you for just one fact. We know all about your mouldy wonders and your stale miracles. We want a this year’s fact. We ask only one. Give us one fact for charity. Your miracles are too ancient. The witnesses have been dead for nearly two thousand years. ” – Robert Ingersoll

“Who can over estimate the progress of the world if all the money wasted in superstition could be used to enlighten, elevate and civilize mankind?” – Robert Ingersoll.

I have written several times in this column that I do not own a television and do not watch much television. Save for science or natural world documentaries, there is nothing the television stations offer that is worth wasting my time on.

In April of 2013, I spent two memorable weeks in the lush, lovely and peaceful Juabenland, in the Ashanti Region. Of Ghana. Juaben is one of the founding states of the famous Ashanti Confederacy.

It was two weeks of bliss and total immersion in natural living. Absent in Juaben is all the artificial pollutants that make healthy living impossible in the giant concrete jungles we call modern cities. Juaben air was so pure you could feel it cleaning your system. Fruits were so plentiful that ripe mangoes are left unmolested – unbelievable.

I don’t recall eating so much fresh and natural avocado peas in my life as I did in Juaben. It remains two unforgettable weeks I shall cherish for a long time to come.

I recommend a holiday in Juaben every time. See Juaben, the Africa that was not allowed to be.

As I enjoy myself in this lovely part of Africa, I cannot but feel sorry about how much we Africans have lost as a people. For sociologists, Juaben remains and it represents an Africa that was not allowed to be by the callous intrusion of those accursed colonialists, who cannot resist stealing what did not belong to them.

Throughout my stay in Juaben, I did not see a single policeman apart from the one guarding the rural bank – which I was told was part of the mandatory regulations on banks. There is a police post, all right; but it remains largely a symbolic presence.

At Juaben, I saw how people live healthy lives in total, I mean total, security. There was not a single time I see people engaged in any form of altercation or noise making. People were so friendly and they take time to greet one another.

As we busy ourselves moving from village to village in Juabenland, we left our video equipment under trees on the streets and wander around to do our job – no one stole a thing from us.

Despite the absence of policemen on the streets of Juaben, the place remain calm, peaceful and secured. People still leave their doors open in Juaben and go about their business.

Funeral posters show people living to 100+ years.

It remains incredible how we so-called educated and intellectual in Africa always fail to configure this unique feature of our African heritage in our analyses of traditional Africa.

All that we do is mimic and parrot the nonsense of a primitive Africa where people jump from treetop to treetop until they were rescued by European misadventures.

Like the complete idiots that we are, we continue to repeat the nonsense the colonialists wanted to impose on our psyches that we were ahistorical, good-for-nothing mindless little children who needed to be salvaged by some racist imposters.

Anyone with an iota of brain cell ought to ask how idiots could manage to establish the type of sophisticated, highly-cultured, complex, peaceful and totally secured environments like we have in the Juaben Traditional Area. We ought to ask how a people managed to build societies with no instrument of coercion (police, standing armies, navies et al) and yet remain peaceful and secure.

We then come to the gist of the present story.

Returning to our hotel after paying our homage to the day’s productivity, there is little to do except take a leisurely stroll around town and return to our hotels, where the only form of entertainment/recreation in the room was television. Flipping through the channels, I stumble upon a channel totally out of this world in utter crappiness with the name of Emmanuel TV.

I have watched my dose of uber stupid TV shows, but nothing comes close to what I saw on the channel that was said to belong to a Nigerian televangelist.

In what goes for modern day miracles, I saw pastors go around congregation purportedly restoring sightlessness, reforming deformed limbs and making supposedly palsied patients start jumping after a touch from the hand of the man of God!

Gosh.

I am in the video production business and I know staged events when I see one.

I have done enough of stage-management myself to wonder why any sane man, with an iota of intelligence at all, will believe the craps Emmanuel Television dole out as work of God!

This is insulting God!

A few years ago, I was interested in the art of magic. I got gigabytes of the ‘Breaking The Magicians Code – Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally,’ and spent hours watching the fantastic illusions magicians created in order to separate gullible people from their money.

One thing, however, one has to give the magicians great credit for sheer creativity.

Although I knew that I was been fooled, but I cannot but admired the creative efforts the magicians put into their trade as they concoct ideas on how to fool us, by making a dead fly rise and fly away; cut and saw their good-looking Blonde assistants and even make a whole Army truck disappear in our full glare.

Among the treats, the magicians made a Dump truck disappear in full glare of spectators; they escaped from spike torture; they made a Table Float without magnets; they turned a Bentley into a Lamborghini; they passed through a Steel Wall; they made elephant vanish; they shot an arrow through a woman and one even caught a flying bullet.

What I saw on Emmanuel TV was amateurish that I truly wondered why any homo sapien could even take it seriously.

Not only were the shows amateurishly scripted, but the acting was also pathetic. Everything about the show was so hare-brained, so goofily predictable. Even elementary school pupils, without acting instructions, should be able to enact better performances.

Gullibility does not even begin to describe anyone that believes the wretched shows JB Joshua and co put up to separate the credulous from their money.

What do the producers of such shoddy shows actually take people for?

There is hardly anything new that they introduce that other showmen in priestly garbs have not done before. The shows I watched did not introduce any single surprise; they were all so predictably boring.

Mr. TB Joshua only continues in the unholy sham Christians have perpetrated through-out the ages. Anyone with the courage and for whom doing simple reading plus a little bit of research will soon learn the very despicable history of the Christian religion – the one organisation that made its name and its fortune by telling lies, selling fake memorabilia, indulgences and committing all the other evils one can think of.

I quoted Ingersoll above where he told the Priests to show us a single modern miracle rather than keep telling us about ancient miracles that could excite only ignorant desert dwellers.

If Mr. TB Joshua and co are truly capable of curing palsied limb, there is nothing stopping them from setting up a clinic or a hospital to ply their trade.

If the fake and shameless imposters on Emmanuel TV can truly restore lost eyes-sights as they make-believe on their stupid shows, let them build eye-clinics.

No, we do not ask that they become charity organisations.

They can continue to make their good living albeit in an honest, transparent and legitimate way.

If any man discovers a cure (spiritual or medical) for say, Glaucoma, he can be assured of a Nobel Prize and has his name immortalized. If the charlatans that claim to be capable of performing miracles believe in their own nonsense, let them come to the public, and let’s put their claim to the test.

What point is there in gathering excitable people with addled minds in a place and purported to be performing miracles in the name of a god?

Below are the types of miracles that I believe in: During the course of our Video project, we had occasion to hold a Video Conference with attendees scattered around the world. A few years ago, such ventures would have been daunting challenges indeed. Today, armed with my laptop and a broadband modem; it was as easy as simply creating a Google Hangout and sending invitations to the invitees with Gmail accounts. At the appointed time, we all logged on, sat at the comfy of our homes and had our Virtual Meeting.

It was a breeze.

After such an experience, what am I supposed to think of someone telling me that he can perform wondrous miracles?

What is more miraculous than communicating in real time with someone at the other end of the world?

What could be more miraculous than the splitting of the atom, the splicing of genes and the decoding of our DNA?

Why should we be excited by the story of David killing Goliath with a slingshot when today, mere mortals kill their enemies with Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles and, now, Drones?

The type of miracles that excite me includes sitting in a Double-Decker Boeing 747 Jet and fly at high altitudes.

The types of miracles I like are when I sit behind my computer, fire up Adobe After Effects or Avid Media Composer and create any reality I can imagine.

The miracle I find wondrous is when I sit behind my computer, type some lines of code and see them control inanimate objects.

I get excited when I see mammoth Luxurious Cruise Ships that could carry the equivalent of a town.

I am wowed when I look at videos of the pure magic the Chinese wrought at the Three-Gorge Dam.

I feel overwhelmed whenever I see the engineering feat tiny Holland created at the Delta Project in their Zeeland province.

I am still amazed each and every time I power up my Laptop and see the tremendous power science and technology placed at my hands, to do things that were unimaginable a few years back.

I am simply dumbfounded whenever I watched what the NASA Robot does on Planet Mars.

I am humbled when I watch engineering and science programmes and see what magic human beings daily create in their laboratories.

I get excited whenever I go to ports and harbours and see heavily-laden container ships leisurely criss-cross the oceans.

After seeing all that science and technology birthed in the last few centuries, I feel nothing but great anger and sadness as I watched some shameless, totally amoral charlatans gather some excitable, uber fools and pretend to perform miracles.

Without a doubt, the magic and all the miracles purportedly performed by Jehovah and his imagined son, Jesus, are inferior to what modern scientists have achieved.

What is the parting of the Red Sea compared with the Dutch who created an entire Province out of the Sea and also helped in creating the new Islands in Dubai?

What is turning water in wine compared with what modern Chemists have achieved for us, or the big breweries that modern engineers have built?

What is the story of Jesus walking on water compared to heavy aircraft carriers more serious people have deployed in their navies?

I say it is time we in Africa, leave these shameless charlatans and their stupid antics behind and join the rest of the world in embracing science and technology.

Our parents slept blissfully through the other revolutions that swept and transformed the world.

Our children and posterity will not forgive us should we also fail to jettison our beliefs in stupid superstitions and embrace science and technology as other serious people did.

“They promised you Heaven so that they can steal this world.”

Poser: Does it make any sense for any African to think that those that came to Enslave, Colonise and Plunder will also bring a Saviour to those whose lives they destroy?

 

About the Author

Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.

Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.

He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.

His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:

1. Freedom Bookshop, near Apollo Theatre, Accra.
2. The Daily Dispatch Office, Labone – Accra
3. WEB Dubois Pan-African Centre, Accra
4. Ghana Writers Association office, PAWA House, Roman Ridge, Accra.
5. African Kitchen in Amsterdam Bijlmer

Where to buy them online:

On Lulu Books:

18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories https://goo.gl/Skohtn

Ghana: Basic Facts + More: https://goo.gl/73ni99

Africa: Destroyed by the gods: https://goo.gl/HHmFfr

Africa: It shall be well: https://goo.gl/KIMcIm

 

Africa: it shall be well

on Kindle books: https://www.createspace.com/4820404

on Amazon books: http://goo.gl/QeFxbl

on Lulu Books: https://goo.gl/SQeoKD

 

Africa: Destroyed by the gods

on Kindle books: https://www.createspace.com/4811974

on Amazon books: http://goo.gl/1z97ND

on Lulu Books: http://goo.gl/KIMcIm

 

My Lulu Books page: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/FemiAkomolafe

 

Get free promotional materials here:

1. Africa: it shall be well: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-introduction-in-pdf/

A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: It shall be well’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-it-shall-be-well-a-free-chapter/

2. Africa: Destroyed by the gods (How religiosity destroyed Africa) http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-introduction/

A FREE Chapter of ‘Africa: Destroyed by the gods’ could be downloaded here: http://alaye.biz/africa-destroyed-by-the-gods-free-chapter/

Read a review here

Contact Femi:

Femi’s Blog: www.alaye.biz/category/blog
Website: www.alaye.biz & www.akogun.tv
Femi on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/author/femiakomolafe
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LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/femiakomolafe

Email: fakomolafe@gmail.com

Kindly help me share the books’ links with your friends and, grin, please purchase your copies.

Comradely,

Femi Akomolafe

 

 

 

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