Center for Inquiry-Uganda – Humanism and Science in Uganda

Author(s): Deo Ssekitooleko and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Assorted In-Sights (In-Sight Publishing)

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2016/11/24

The term humanism implies multiple interpretations dependent on the domain of endeavour in life. According to the American Humanist Association, numerous definitions exist such as Literary Humanism, Renaissance Humanism, Western Cultural Humanism, Philosophical Humanism, Christian Humanism, Modern Humanism, Secular Humanism, and Religious Humanism. Each implicates different areas. Every area devoted to aspects to humanism. On

 What is Humanism (2008) states:

Literary Humanism is a devotion to the humanities or literary culture.

Renaissance Humanism is the spirit of learning that developed at the end of the middle ages with the revival of classical letters and a renewed confidence in the ability of human beings to determine for themselves truth and falsehood.

Western Cultural Humanism is a good name for the rational and empirical tradition that originated largely in ancient Greece and Rome, evolved throughout European history, and now constitutes a basic part of the Western approach to science, political theory, ethics, and law.

Philosophical Humanism is any outlook or way of life centered on human need and interest. Sub-categories of this type include Christian Humanism and Modern Humanism.

Christian Humanism is defined by Webster’s Third New International Dictionary as “a philosophy advocating the self-fulfillment of man within the framework of Christian principles.” This more human-oriented faith is largely a product of the Renaissance and is a part of what made up Renaissance humanism.

Modern Humanism, also called Naturalistic Humanism, Scientific Humanism, Ethical Humanism, and Democratic Humanism, is defined by one of its leading proponents, Corliss Lamont, as “a naturalistic philosophy that rejects all supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason and science, democracy and human compassion.” Modern Humanism has a dual origin, both secular and religious, and these constitute its sub-categories.

Secular Humanism is an outgrowth of eighteenth century enlightenment rationalism and nineteenth century freethought. Many secular groups, such as the Council for Secular Humanism and the American Rationalist Federation, and many otherwise unaffiliated academic philosophers and scientists, advocate this philosophy.

Religious Humanism largely emerged out of Ethical Culture, Unitarianism, and Universalism. Today, many Unitarian Universalist congregations and all Ethical Culture societies describe themselves as humanist in the modern sense.

Center for Inquiry (CFI) follows these perspectives, which tend to associate with “science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.” About (2016) by CFI provides description of the fundamental beliefs, principles, and values of the institution. CFI argues “scientific methods and reasoning should be utilized in examining the claims of both pseudoscience and religion.”

 Both pseudoscience and religion represent counterproductive forces within societies. Pseudoscience defined by beliefs and practices presented as science without meeting proper scientific criteria. Religion defined by belief in a superhuman power in control of everything outside of human beings, whether singular (God) or plural (gods).

CFI rejects “mysticism and blind faith” and promotes “human values based on a naturalistic outlook.”3 CFI created programs to assist in these endeavours such as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism.

CFI cautions in “aiming to foster a secular society, we do not seek to abridge the rights of believers. We vigorously object to government support of religion and the use of religious dogma to justify public policy; we do not oppose the free exercise of religion.”

Reason and compassion become the basis for the advancement of secularism and humanism with rights and dignity of everyone respected and implemented within all societies. CFI targets three objectives in general:

1. an end to the influence that religion and pseudoscience have on public policy

2. an end to the privileged position that religion and pseudoscience continue to enjoy in many societies

3. an end to the stigma attached to being a nonbeliever, whether the nonbeliever describes her/himself as an atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker or skeptic.

CFI-Uganda follows the same tradition in values from the institution of CFI and the efforts to advance secular humanism. Humanism in Uganda, at least in its philosophical, secular, and scientific orientation, was officially introduced in Uganda with the formation of the Uganda Humanist Association (UHASSO), which became a loose umbrella of numerous independent associates and affiliates.

It includes the more vibrant Center for Inquiry International-Uganda (CFI-Uganda). CFI-Uganda is supported by and affiliated with the Center for Inquiry International (transnational), Amherst, New York, USA. In Uganda, we try to translate intellectual, scientific, secular, and philosophical humanism into practical projects that can easily make a positive impact on communities.

Where as in the USA there are such issues as pseudoscience, in Uganda and Africa at large, humanists are disturbed by beliefs in primitive witchcraft practices and the insurgence of evangelical Pentecostal beliefs from the USA.

Witchcraft practices in Africa are diverse in nature, form, and impact on society. It is a combination of diverse ancient African beliefs that include gods, spirits, ghosts, animism, and all other superstitions flavored by all forms of exploitations by the respected practising charlatans.

These beliefs claim to control humanity in form of health, life fortunes, success and failures of all kinds. On the other hand, apart from witchcraft, which is a combination of superstition and use of traditional herbal medicine, there are purely traditional healers who

use only traditional medicine without superstition.

The problem with this latter group is that their medicine is not scientifically tested and the diseases they claim to treat are not scientifically diagnosed.

It can be easily observed witchcraft is both a traditional belief system and a superstitious pseudoscience used by charlatans to exploit society. They take advantage of the African situation characterised by poverty, low levels of formal education, especially in villages, limited social welfare, political conflicts, inadequate health welfare, and high prevalence of diseases such as malaria, AIDS, and many other diseases of the poor.

Africans, therefore, have limited choices, but to resort to witchcraft as an intervention force, to ameliorate their situation on earth. Witchcraft has been responsible for some of the following disturbing ills in our African societies:

• Infertile women contract HIV/AIDS from which doctors who mislead them to have sex with them before their husbands in order for the medicine to be effective.
• Witchdoctors discourage people from accessing modern hospitals as they claim to have powers to treat all diseases using superstition and herbal medicine. It is unfortunate that many people die of such treatable diseases such as malaria, dysentery, cholera, tuberculosis, and influenza.
• Government immunization programs are undermined by witchdoctors leading to the deaths of many people by diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and tetanus.
• The war against HIV/AIDS is increasingly being undermined by witchcraft because AIDS victims are discouraged from scientific counselling and treatment with anti-retroviral therapy (ART).
• Witchcraft has promoted disharmony in society. Many old people, especially women, are accused of many ‘evils’ in society such as famine, failed rains, and outbreaks of diseases. In most cases, if police fail to intervene in time, they are banished from their homes or their property is destroyed. Surprisingly, this is normal news on our Radio and Television stations; both private and public.
• Witchcraft gives people false hope to succeed on earth – be it in marriage, business, academics, and politics without analyzing the factors responsible for success or failure. This undermines peoples’ ability to appreciate, realize, and utilize their human potentials. They submit to the will and advice of the witchdoctors in all human endeavors.

In all their work, witchdoctors demand offers in the form of consultation fees, land plots, houses, cattle, and poultry – thereby promoting poverty in society. Unfortunately, apart from humanists with a limited voice and means, there is no one speaking out against witchcraft.

The religious leaders try, but they are guilty of promoting other forms of superstition. The Ugandan government has officially licensed the non-scientific traditional healers in the spirit of promoting indigenous African medicine and in the spirit of Pan Africanism! Even further, many people in government believe in witchcraft.

Apart from witchcraft, the other non-scientific issue that disturbs African humanists is the insurgence of American-born and sponsored new forms of Christianity known as evangelical Pentecostal churches, but named with various trade or company names according to the choice of the owner or promoter. In most cases, the Preachers, known as Pastors, are devoid of even basic religious ethics.

They preach the prosperity gospel of wealth and success on earth as they exploit their folk and enrich themselves. They preach miracles and faith healing. They claim to treat all diseases including HIV/AIDS. Their only difference with witchdoctors is that they claim to get their powers from Jesus of Nazareth, Jewish ancestors/spirits, and their one God in the Middle East.

Yet, the Ugandan witchdoctors claim to get their powers from African spirits, or ancestors, and their gods. The other difference is that the Pastors are both more educated and extremely very rich. They have easy access to American Dollars from their donors and they easily financially exploit their folk.

Witchcraft and Pentecostal beliefs pose a challenge to humanist action and response in the following ways:

• Many people including politicians, public officials, and academicians believe in various forms of superstition because our African parental or grandparental families originate from superstitious lineages which combined culture, African traditions, history, and beliefs all in one. The advances of Western religion, culture, and
• secularism some 120 years ago have changed the African mainly in nominal identity, but not in philosophy.
• Because Western religions are also superstitious and yet they were the first ones to found formal schools in Uganda, their product; the current typical educated Ugandan is also superstitious. Ugandan education system is devoid of critical, skeptical, rational, and science skills. It emphasizes acquisition of factual knowledge rather than life skills.
• Pentecostals and witchdoctors have easy access to media outlets such as radio and television sets.
• Pentecostal Preachers and witchdoctors are very rich and have easy access to communities and policy makers.
• The local and international laws favor religious charlatans who exploit society. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights has an article on freedom of belief and religion, which has been enshrined in most national constitutions.

CFI-Uganda is trying to grow and stand up to do some work in some small Ugandan village communities. The first approach is to limit armchair conference humanism in big towns and the city because such an approach is expensive with no tangible impact. Many sensitization seminars on the dangers of superstition, and the values and advantages of rationalism, have been organized.

We train communities about health and community development. Health seminars help participants to identify causes, prevention, and treatment of various diseases, which include, but are not limited to malaria, cancers, diabetes, and HIV/AIDS. Our work is to supplement government work in its health departments, which, unfortunately, do not highlight the role of superstition in undermining health systems in Uganda. In most cases, it is the community members who select the topics of their next training.

We have done a lot of work in organizing health counselling, disease testing, provision of condoms and immunizing people against killer diseases. Last year, we commemorated World AIDS DAY. However, in most of our campaigns, we highlight humanist principles of reason, skepticism, free inquiry, and critical thinking. Apart from health, we have a program of rural development through informal community skills education.

We promote skills such as bee keeping, fish farming, horticulture, agroforestry, and food processing among others. CFI-Uganda started a program to reach out to schools to supplement formal education with informal skills education. We engage teachers and students with science skills, especially with topics taught in schools such as evolutionary theory, environmental science, climate change, standard Big Bang cosmology, planetary systems, recycling of resources, and so on.

We promote debates about human rights, history, international affairs, and so on. Every year, starting from this year, 50 selected students and some teachers will always attend a humanist conference on life skills. We expect to use such fora to build a network of activists and fellows to promote our advocacy and visibility. CFI-Uganda has tried to promote intellectual philosophical humanism by organizing the pioneering evolutionist Charles Darwin birth day. We expect to revive this as a core project.

During the previous event we organised a civilized jovial and intellectual dialogue with non-religionists and religionists of various sects. We debated religion, philosophy, and science. Participants debated evolutionary theory, standard Big Bang cosmology, origin of life, and the prospect of life on planet other than Earth and the possibilities of the afterlife.

Advocacy campaigns are necessary to influence policymakers and the public at large. As we find it difficult to access mainstream media, we must resort to social media. Nonetheless, CFI-Uganda must intensify fundraising efforts to have at least a one-hour Radio or Television program every week. CFI-Uganda hereby makes a formal appeal to link up with all people who want to make a positive rational contribution to improve the situation in Uganda.

References

1 Edwords, F. (2008). What is Humanism. Retrieved from http://americanhumanist.org/humanism/what_is_humanism. 

2 Center for Inquiry (2016). About. Retrieved from http://www.centerforinquiry.net/about.

3 Ibid.

4 Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. (2016). Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Retrieved from http://www.csicop.org/.  

5 Council for Secular Humanism. (2016). Council for Secular Humanism. Retrieved from http://www.secularhumanism.org/. 

6 Center for Inquiry (2016). About. Retrieved from http://www.centerforinquiry.net/about.  

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