Scott Douglas Jacobsen (Email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com)

Publisher, In-Sight Publishing

Fort Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Received: October 19, 2025
Accepted: December 15, 2025
Published: December 15, 2025

Abstract

This interview with Tauya Chinama—a Zimbabwean freethinker, educator, and human-rights advocate—traces an intellectual and moral transition from religious training toward agnosticism and, ultimately, apatheism. Chinama recounts how sustained engagement with theodicy (the attempt to reconcile an all-good, all-powerful God with pervasive suffering) undermined his prior commitments, as real-world pain and injustice outpaced the explanatory power of familiar theological defences. He critiques common responses to evil grounded in free will or determinism, arguing that each fails to preserve the traditional attributes of God while offering little ethical clarity for human responsibility. Alongside philosophical concerns, Chinama highlights the psychological and social costs of departing faith-based institutions—stigmatization, ostracism, and the demand for personal resilience. The conversation culminates in a secular moral orientation: that human beings are “on our own” in the sense that alleviating suffering and building justice are human tasks, not deferred to divine intervention.

Keywords

Agnosticism, Apatheism, Augustine of Hippo, Catholicism, Determinism, Dasein, Ethics, Free Will, Human Responsibility, Logical Analysis, Problem of Evil, Theodicy

Introduction

Tauya Chinama is a Zimbabwean freethinker, educator, and advocate for human rights and cultural preservation whose intellectual path runs through the dense intersection of philosophy, theology, and lived moral experience. Trained in religious study and once oriented toward priesthood, he gradually came to view the traditional problem of evil not as a technical puzzle for theologians, but as a sustained challenge to intellectual honesty. For Chinama, theodicy is not merely a debate about metaphysical consistency; it is a test of whether a worldview can confront the reality of disability, disease, natural disasters, and human vulnerability without dissolving into contradiction or moral deflection.

In this short exchange, Scott Douglas Jacobsen invites Chinama to articulate the central question that shaped his training and the turning points that reoriented his identity—from believer, to agnostic, to what he calls an apatheist with “a touch of cosmopolitanism.” Chinama examines standard theological responses to suffering, critiques their logical coherence, and describes the personal consequences of choosing candour over conformity inside religious institutions. The interview also gestures beyond metaphysics toward a practical ethical conclusion: if suffering persists without reliable divine remedy, then responsibility for justice and compassion rests squarely with human beings and the societies they build.

Main Text (Interview)

Title: Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage

Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Interviewees: Tauya Chinama

Tauya Chinama is a Zimbabwean freethinker, educator, and advocate for human rights and cultural preservation. Trained in philosophy and theology, he transitioned from religious study to humanism, emphasizing intellectual honesty, dialogue, and heritage-based education. As a teacher of heritage studies, he works to integrate indigenous knowledge and languages into learning systems, arguing that language carries culture, history, and identity. Chinama is active in Zimbabwe’s humanist movement, contributing to interfaith dialogues, academic research, and public discourse on secularism, ethics, and education reform. He champions the preservation of Shona and Ndebele while critiquing systemic barriers that weaken local language education.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When you were doing your training, what was your main specialization? What was the core research question?

Tauya Chinama: I had several questions, but my primary focus was on theodicy: the relationship between the existence of God and the problem of evil.

That was the question that led me to think more deeply. Years ago, I preached about an omniscient, omnipotent, all-good God. But then I looked at the reality: people who are disabled, people dying in natural disasters, people dying from diseases. Why is God not ending all this suffering? Where is he? Is he enjoying it?

The key issue is theodicy. The Greek words are theos (God) and dike (justice). Is it just for God to allow these things to happen? That question pulled me further. I came to feel that I could act more justly as a human being than the God being preached, who supposedly is capable of ending poverty, disease, disability, and natural disasters, but does not. Why should I believe in him? Why should I revere him?

The realization was: we are on our own. We are responsible, and we must act to address what is happening to us. That was the key lesson that pushed me from being a believer to an agnostic, and then to what I now call an apatheist—a person indifferent to God’s existence. Today, I describe myself as an apatheist with a touch of cosmopolitanism.

Jacobsen: For theodicy, what were the standard arguments? How did theologians justify evil, suffering, and pain?

Chinama: A number of them talked about free will. Others leaned on determinism. But this did not make sense to me. If we say that human beings have free will, then it means God is not omniscient—he does not know everything that will happen before it occurs. If he knows it all, then free will does not exist.

On the other hand, if determinism is true, then we are simply victims of a plan. We cannot resist; we can only follow the flow. We are what Martin Heidegger might call Dasein—a being-toward-death. We are thrown into existence, moving toward death, with limited choice. That line of argument, whether from free will or determinism, did not make sense to me.

It could not resolve the harm and suffering I saw in the world. The defences of theologians like St. Augustine of Hippo also did not persuade me. Augustine introduced the doctrine of original sin and linked sexuality to sin, claiming virginity was a higher state. But none of this made sense to me. He had emerged from Manichaean philosophy, which emphasized dualism—light and darkness, good and evil as opposing forces. His framework seemed more like a leftover from dualism than a convincing defence of Christian doctrine.

Jacobsen: Was it the weakness of the theological arguments for God in the face of evil that made you drift away? Or was it the strength of non-religious arguments that convinced you to adopt a non-religious way of looking at life?

Chinama: It was both. When you look at the theological arguments and test them through logic—a branch of philosophy about correct reasoning—you quickly see the conclusions do not follow from the premises. That leaves you confused.

So I moved from being a believer to an agnostic, saying, “Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am right.” Over time, you sober up. Sometimes you even become militant, but then you realize militancy does not work. You calm down, or you risk messing things up.

I remember when I was training to be a priest. I confided in a particular Indian priest—I will not give his name—that I was slowly losing my faith. He told me something shocking: that many high-ranking figures in the Catholic Church, including bishops and cardinals, do not actually believe the doctrines they defend.

I was surprised. Here were people defending the Church’s teachings every day, yet privately admitting they did not believe them. He even told me he had gone through the same phase and had never fully recovered his faith. His advice was: “Do not fight it. Just go with the flow.”

But I felt I was too honest to live that way. I could not simply go along with something I did not believe.

Jacobsen: In the end, was your decision to leave a faith-based position and move to a non-religious position more an intellectual exercise, or more about changing how you felt? Or was it a little of both?

Chinama: It was both. Several factors led me to change. It was an intellectual practice, but also an emotional realization that what I thought religion was turned out not to be. The whole motivation collapsed, and I was left with no choice but to withdraw.

I do not regret it, but it was a hard decision. There is stigmatization, ostracism, and other consequences that come with choosing such a path. It is serious—you need to be mentally strong. For me, it was primarily intellectual, but I also required mental resilience to overcome it.

Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Tauya.

Discussion

Chinama’s account frames apostasy (or, more precisely, disengagement) less as rebellion than as an evidence-driven recalibration: when the promises of an omniscient, omnipotent, all-good deity collide with a world saturated in undeserved suffering, the explanatory burden becomes acute. The interview’s philosophical centre is his dissatisfaction with the standard repertoire of theodicies—especially those that appeal to free will or determinism. In his reading, free-will defences struggle to preserve divine foreknowledge without hollowing out freedom, while deterministic accounts risk portraying human beings as trapped in a plan that renders moral protest performative. The result is not merely a theoretical impasse; it is a moral one, because the justifications appear unable to honour the gravity of suffering they seek to explain.

A second theme is integrity under institutional pressure. Chinama’s recollection of confiding in a priest—who suggested that some senior Church figures privately disbelieve doctrines they publicly defend—introduces a sociological dimension: religious systems can incentivize outward loyalty even when inward conviction erodes. Chinama presents his exit as a refusal to inhabit that split. This casts “deconversion” not only as an intellectual event but as an ethical stance against performative belief, sustained by psychological resilience in the face of stigma and ostracism.

Finally, the conversation resolves toward a secular ethic of responsibility. Chinama’s apatheism is not portrayed as cynicism; it is a posture of indifference toward unverifiable divine claims paired with heightened concern for human action. The implicit thesis is that moral seriousness survives the collapse of theological certainty—and may even sharpen under it—because the work of reducing suffering cannot be outsourced to providence. In that sense, the interview is less about losing faith than about relocating duty: from the heavens, back to the hands of human beings.

Methods

The interview was conducted via typed questions—with explicit consent—for review, and curation. This process complied with applicable data protection laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), i.e., recordings if any were stored securely, retained only as needed, and deleted upon request, as well in accordance with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Advertising Standards Canada guidelines.

Data Availability

No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current article. All interview content remains the intellectual property of the interviewer and interviewee.

References

(No external academic sources were cited for this interview.)

Journal & Article Details

Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Journal: In-Sight: Interviews

Journal Founding: August 2, 2012

Frequency: Four Times Per Year

Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed

Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access

Fees: None (Free)

Volume Numbering: 13

Issue Numbering: 4

Section: A

Theme Type: Idea

Theme Premise: Humanism

Theme Part: None.

Formal Sub-Theme: None.

Individual Publication Date: December 15, 2025

Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2026

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Word Count: 944

Image Credits: Photo by Damian Patkowski on Unsplash

ISSN (International Standard Serial Number): 2369-6885

Acknowledgements

The author acknowledges Tauya Chinama for his time, expertise, and valuable contributions. His thoughtful insights and detailed explanations have greatly enhanced the quality and depth of this work, providing a solid foundation for the discussion presented herein.

Author Contributions

S.D.J. conceived the subject matter, conducted the interview, transcribed and edited the conversation, and prepared the manuscript.

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

License & Copyright

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012–Present.

Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.

Supplementary Information

Below are various citation formats for Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage (Scott Douglas Jacobsen, December 15, 2025).

American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition)

Jacobsen SD. Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage. In-Sight: Interviews. 2025;13(4). Published December 15, 2025. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage 

American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition)

Jacobsen, S. D. (2025, December 15). Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage. In-Sight: Interviews, 13(4). In-Sight Publishing. http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage 

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT)

JACOBSEN, Scott Douglas. Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage. In-Sight: Interviews, Fort Langley, v. 13, n. 4, 15 dez. 2025. Disponível em: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage 

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition)

Jacobsen, Scott Douglas. 2025. “Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage.” In-Sight: Interviews 13 (4). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage. 

Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition)

Jacobsen, Scott Douglas. “Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage.” In-Sight: Interviews 13, no. 4 (December 15, 2025). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage. 

Harvard

Jacobsen, S.D. (2025) ‘Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage’, In-Sight: Interviews, 13(4), 15 December. Available at: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage. 

Harvard (Australian)

Jacobsen, SD 2025, ‘Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage’, In-Sight: Interviews, vol. 13, no. 4, 15 December, viewed 15 December 2025, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage. 

Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition)

Jacobsen, Scott Douglas. “Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage.” In-Sight: Interviews, vol. 13, no. 4, 2025, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage. 

Vancouver/ICMJE

Jacobsen SD. Tauya Chinama on Theodicy, Humanism, and Preserving Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage [Internet]. 2025 Dec 15;13(4). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/tauya-chinama-theodicy-humanism-preserving-zimbabwe-cultural-heritage 

Note on Formatting

This document follows an adapted Nature research-article format tailored for an interview. Traditional sections such as Methods, Results, and Discussion are replaced with clearly defined parts: Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Main Text (Interview), and a concluding Discussion, along with supplementary sections detailing Data Availability, References, and Author Contributions. This structure maintains scholarly rigor while effectively accommodating narrative content.