THANK YOU, BISHOP KAMBALAZAZA!

Science & Critical Thinking
Thank you, Bishop Kambalazaza
By Harold Williams  Published in Malawi's Sunday Times, 20 January, 2011
QUOTE:
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours. Aldous Huxley.
(Self-styled charismatic 'Bishop' Kambalazaza featured in a full page article attacking Secular Humanists in Malawi)
Thank you, Bishop Kambalalaza, for bringing my god back to life. His name is Thor. You haven’t heard of him? His name is a noun – a personal noun. And by your own definition anything that is a noun MUST EXIST. I thought this God of my Teutonic ancestors was dead, slaughtered by monotheistic myths from the deserts of Arabia. He is only one of a logical pantheon that my ancestors worshipped.
Poor Thor - no longer worshipped! He gave his name to a day of the week – Thor’s-day. The French call it Mardi for the Roman/Latin god, Mars. ‘Mardi Gras’ is ‘Lachinai la mafuta’ a day when people go wild, in ways that the ancient Romans would have loved, with parades that all sexually-oppressed Christians should condemn. In Rio de Janeiro, they celebrate with their lewd Carnival. In New Orleans’ Mardi Gras parade, Christians have a wild time fooling themselves that they are having a good old Christian fling on Holy Thursday before the period of self-denial that they call Lent – an ancient Germanic name, still in use, for the European planting season of Spring. It is a pagan festival of insemination, fertility and birth taken over by Christianity.
Moon-day is the day of the Goddess of the moon. Latinate speakers use the root ‘luna’ – ‘moon’ – as the base for French ‘lundi’ ; Spanish ‘lunes’; Italian ‘lunedi’. The god Wodin gave his name to Wodin’s-day. The Latin god was Mercury - ‘mercredi’ (French), ‘miercoles’ (Spanish), ‘mercoledi’ (Italian). The god ‘Frigg’  of my ancestors, ‘Venus’ of the Romans gave us – Frigg’s-day and Vendredi. The god Saturn gave us Saturn’s-day, the ‘sabbath’.
Thank you, Bishop, for bringing these nouns-gods back to life.
By your definition, if man has named it, it MUST EXIST - just like dragons and fairies. And you expect atheists to disprove your wild imaginings? It is for you to provide the proof. My imagination cannot fill in by wishful thinking what my intellect rejects. No one has come back after death to say they have seen god. Not revelation but the logic that I use for other phenomena will guide my beliefs.
My northern European ancestors gave up their own gods for the Christian god who had migrated over centuries, originally the god of Jesus the Jew, from Palestine through Greece and Rome. In the process Christianity underwent many man-made changes adopting Christmas, Easter, the Trinity, the virgin mother – oh, a whole host of stuff not mentioned in the Bible – familiar concepts from their old religions to make the new religion acceptable to people unhappy to give up their ancient gods, more often not through spiritual conversion but on the command of their rulers.
Over a hundred and fifty years ago the Europeans brought their god to Malawi. The majority in Malawi adopted the ruler’s religion.
God-nouns still exist. If being a ‘noun’ proves existence then all the gods of all times, in all regions, still exist. So how can there be only one true god? Or are all these gods really one god?
How to decide on the conflicting claims? War amongst religions of ‘peace’ is the normal outcome!
Coming upon so many conflicting and equally ridiculous concepts of god, we must agree that all gods are merely the inventions of man.
 In rejecting all gods, including the gods of my ancestors, we acknowledge that all are equally illogical.

IHEU REGIONAL DIRECTOR ON INTELLIGENCE & CRITICAL THINKING

Critical thinking and the African identity
By Leo Igwe,
 Published in Malawi's Sunday Times on 29 January 2011

 Nigerian, Leo Igwe, is the regional representative of IHEU. We edited an article of his that is relevant to cultural considerations of witchcraft which was published in the regular ASH Science & Critical Thinking column in Malawi's SundayTimes

If lack of critical thinking or inability to apply common sense to issues is what makes one an African, then I am not an African. I hereby renounce my African identity if it means that I should not exercise my critical intelligence or apply reason and science. 
If being African means I should suspend my thinking faculty and blindly accept whatever any person or prophet says or preaches, don’t count me as an African. I make this assertion because often blind faith, dogma and fetishism are identified with African mentality.
Whenever I apply logic, critical reasoning and science during debates, I am often accused of not thinking like an African. I am told that I think like a white man. As if critical thinking or the scientific outlook is for westerners alone or that it can only be exercised by people from a particular race.
Even in this 21st Century, reason and science are still perceived as western, not African values. How did we arrive at this mistaken idea? It is often portrayed as if the African does not reason and dare not reason or does not think or cannot think critically - thinking like an African means suspension of logic or common sense! Thinking like an African means not thinking at all – but thoughtlessly thinking in spiritual, occultic or magical ways.
Whenever I challenge or question the irrational and absurd claims of witchcraft, charms and other ritualistic and religious nonsense that dominate the mental space of Africans, I am often reminded that my mentality is western. Whenever somebody alleges that a position is western, though it may be reasonable or may have a superior argument, does it mean that it is unacceptable? Is that not unfortunate?
Whenever I expose the absurdity of witchcraft accusations or the persecution of alleged witches or wizards, many often urge me to set aside my ‘white man’s mentality’, as if critical thinking is for white people while mystical thinking is for blacks and Africans.
The white race and the West have recorded significant achievements in science and technology, and in rational and critical discourses. That does not make the values of science, reason and critical thinking western or white. These values constitute part of human heritage, which all human beings can lay claim to, exercise, access, express, celebrate, cultivate and nurture. The progress which the West has recorded as a result of their institutionalisation of reason and science is one which any society can realise. Africans should stop hiding behind this misrepresentation that reason and science are un-African western values. Africans should embrace critical mindedness and work to dispel the Dark Age and barbaric mentality that looms large on the continent.
Those maintaining that critical thinking is alien to African identity and mentality are doing the African race and civilization a great disservice. They are frustrating the African enlightenment, emancipation and emergence.