La Raison is a monthly magazine published by the Fédération Nationale de la Libre Pensée (National Federation of Freethought) in France.
We were interviewed for the January 2012 edition.
Many of us understand the importance of thinking things through when it comes to forming beliefs about how best to deal with different aspects of our lives, such as when it comes to making important decisions.
Examples:
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Should I invest in this business scheme?
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Should I buy this car?
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Should I vote for this politician?
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Should I try this herbal treatment for my illness?
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Should I pray for a miracle?
Still, we often make bad decisions. Why?
It could be because there are roadblocks we’ve erected in our minds that prevent us from examining all the evidence objectively, or impartially, prior to forming beliefs. These mental roadblocks might be pre-existing beliefs that have been informed by culture, religion, political/social ideologies, personal prejudices, peer pressure, etc.
Having these mental roadblocks is one problem; the other problem is not knowing that you have those mental roadblocks. But perhaps the worst problem of all is not acknowledging that as human beings all of us are susceptible to having these mental roadblocks, at any given time. Acknowledging this should compel us to structure our thinking in such a way as to minimise, as much as possible, the degree to which these mental roadblocks might impede our ability to think objectively.
We should be willing to evaluate all kinds of information, including information that might go against what we currently believe about something, without allowing our mental roadblocks to interfere with that evaluation process. We also need to train ourselves to be able to use logic effectively – and to consistently use it when trying to make inferences about what it is we are forming beliefs about. This, in a nutshell, is what it means to think critically.
Edward M. Glaser in his 1941 book “An Experiment in the Development of Critical Thinking” describes critical thinking as:
A persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends.
Youtuber Qualia Soup explains what critical thinking is in this video:
As a freethinker, I advocate for the application of critical thinking across the board, on all issues, and I also encourage people to be consistent in their application of it. Indeed, I often have to remind myself to be consistent as well, because I know that mental roadblocks can pop up anytime, and unbeknownst to me, some might already be lurking about in my mind.
It is not easy to consistently apply critical thinking – but there is great value in striving to be as consistent as is humanly possible in our application of it.
THE DISCUSSION
In a world where all kinds of people are offering all kinds of get-rich-quick schemes or miracle cures for all kinds of ailments, it greatly helps to be a critical thinker. A person who applies critical thinking will be less likely to lose money to professional con-artists fall prey to medical quackery. He or she will also be able to do a better job of analyzing problems and finding solutions to them. People who think critically will probably make better business/investment decisions as well, as compared to people who don’t.
From a social perspective, a good critical thinker is also less likely to hold prejudices that would prompt him or her to discriminate against people on the basis of race, tribe, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. He or she will also be less likely to engage in extreme forms of religious expression that are detrimental to their well-being, and the well-being of others.
What we’d like to discuss at the upcoming Freethinkers’ Night is HOW to communicate CRITICAL THINKING to the general public.
How do we encourage people to apply critical thinking, and to apply it consistently, in their lives? How do we get people to recognize that their mental roadblocks might be preventing them from thinking objectively?
Let’s discuss.
This is a crucial issue for us, as it touches on what we consider to be our mandate as Freethought Kampala, which is:
Promoting Reason in a Highly Superstitious Society
Much of our focus for the last two years has been mainly to apply critical thinking in the evaluation of popular mystical/religious claims that abound in this country’s spiritual landscape – because there was simply nobody doing it. We acknowledge that the scope for critical thinking is much wider than this, but for strategic reasons we initially chose to narrow our focus to an area which we felt was completely being neglected in the national discourse. Perhaps at this meeting we might also talk about this focus, and whether or not we should broaden it.
The January 2012 Freethinkers’ Night will take place on Thursday, 26th January, at 4 Points Bar & Restaurant, Centenary Park, Kampala, starting 6PM. Entrance is FREE.
If you are an open minded person whose opinions are formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason and are interested in meeting like-minded individuals – you are more than welcome to join us.
Oh, and we’ll also be marking 2 years of Freethought Kampala as well!
Thursday, 29th December, at 4 Points Bar & Restaurant, Centenary Park, Kampala, starting 6PM. Entrance is FREE.
If you are an open minded person whose opinions are formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason and are interested in meeting like-minded individuals – you are welcome to join us for our end of year party.
Just one thing, though…
I dug up some photographs from my recent trip to the UK. I thought I’d share with you some interesting things I saw in the city of Cardiff while I was there.
From afar it looked like a church:
Closer inspection revealed that it was actually a shop!
Care for Durex condoms? No problem…
…just check right below the hookah (sheesha pipe).
This shop actually used to be a Presbyterian Church, once upon a time. People stopped going, and it got sold off.
Now it’s a shop.
Related posts:
I work at Sanyu FM, a radio station catering to the the 18-35 English-speaking urban middle-class male/female demographic, as host of the morning show.
Our news department had the idea of doing some kind of ‘special’ for Christmas during their news bulletins – where they’d present some background to the origins of Christmas, analyse its significance for Christians, and ask various people how they plan on celebrating it.
Today they aired the first in this series of specials, and their first interviewee was an atheist you might know. He talks about his understanding of the origins of Christmas, and why he plans on joining in the celebrations, even though he is a non-believer.
I’m in the mood for sharing; it’s Christmas, after all, right? So here’s the audio, just for you 
.
Last Sunday, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, wrote an article in the Monitor called Uganda needs Jesus to end corruption.
The article deviates from the familiar defeatist attitude many religious leaders in Uganda have about corruption, where they urge Ugandans to rely on ‘God’ to save them from corruption, since, in their minds, all other approaches seem to be offering no solution because ‘Satan’ probably has his hand in it. The Archbishop instead appears to call for religious introspection:
The best our government can do – the IGG, the Anti-Corruption Court, laws passed by Parliament and enforced by our police and other agencies – is to give us moral and civil speed governors, external rules that are followed by us only because the police force or parliamentary investigative committees have been expanded to put fear into our hearts and ensure our compliance and proper behavior.
But, God said through the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament, “The time is coming when I will make a new covenant…It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers….This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel…I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.”
In other words, my fellow Ugandans, we must acknowledge that the problem beneath our rampant corruption, witchcraft, child sacrifice, domestic violence, and immorality is the problem of a sinful human heart.
Only Jesus, whose laws of love are written on our hearts because he lives in our hearts, can solve this problem Only acknowledging our human problem of a corrupt heart will lead us to the ultimate and true solution to our problems – Jesus – because his name still means “he will save people from their sins.”
I guess what he’s trying to do here is to appeal to Christians to clean up their act by recognizing that they are ‘sinners’. Corruption is ‘sin’. So by accepting Jesus and turning away from such ‘sin’, then everything will be okay and there will be no more corruption.
Of course this is a rather simplistic approach to dealing with the problem of corruption in Uganda – one that does not take into account the cultural and economic realities on the ground (vis-à-vis our all-too-rapid transition from a historically traditional African society to a pseudo-democracy) that give rise to the conditions that make nepotism and patronage inevitable.
As for witchcraft, the Church is doing a rather fantastic job of promoting, and reinforcing extant cultural beliefs about its efficacy, isn’t it? With magical thinking as the driving force of Christian theology (and more so among the charismatics/born-agains), the church is very much complicit in validating the irrationality that is witchcraft in this country.
Anyway, this post isn’t intended as a point by point critique of Orombi’s article, but rather to bring attention to the fact that Peter Kisirinya, chairman of the Uganda Humanist Association, wrote a response that was published three days later, also in the Monitor, titled: Uganda is a Christian-dominated nation but why the corruption?:
The Archbishop suggests that belief in Jesus as Saviour is the only important thing. But evidence shoes that this belief alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to improve our society. The Archbishop says of Jesus that “he will save people from their sins”. But we are the ones who must save ourselves. If we pray, that is fine, but we must also act. If we believe, that is okay, but we must also be good. If we worship Jesus, fair enough, but we must also respect our fellow humans beings regardless of their religious beliefs.
Anyone can say they believe in any religion, but what matters is their personal integrity. Do they respect what is fair and just? Do they want to empathise and understand other people? Do they contribute positively to society? The world is learning that these are the important questions.
Whether we happen to believe in the divinity of an ancient Nazarene preacher is one thing and it is easy to say that you do. But can you truthfully answer “yes” to these questions? Would the people that know you answer “yes” on your behalf? It is not our faith which make us, it is our values and actions – and that is what Christmas is really about.
I have frequently been asked about the Uganda Humanist Association. I must confess that at this juncture there is not a lot that I know about them. They have a cool website – check it out.
My criticisms of religion specifically center around what I think are dangerous beliefs they promote. Beliefs, when taken seriously, have deleterious effects upon society.
My recent talks in the UK focused particularly on the dangerous beliefs that were being promoted by the charismatic Christian belief system (Born-Again/Pentecostalism/etc).
I have always contended that charismatic Christianity plays an IMPORTANT role in promoting and reinforcing beliefs about the efficacy of witchcraft in this country. In this post, I am interested in presenting direct evidence of this contention. I will look at two widely read charismatic Christian books in Uganda (and sub-Saharan Africa).
Snatched from Satan’s Claws:
The book, “Snatched from Satan’s Claws”, was given to me by my mother two years ago. She felt that, being an atheist, I needed to be reminded of the threats we face as humans in this demon haunted world. Being reminded of these threats, she thought, might make me think twice about not accepting Christianity. She implored me to take seriously what was written in it.
Reading this book, I concluded that the authors of this book must either be deliberate liars or fraudsters; or they are insane and in need of psychiatric help. There is simply no other way to make sense of the blatant and outrageous assault on rationality that emanates from this book.
The book, co-written by Pastor D. D. Kaniaki and Evangelist Mukendi (from the Democratic Republic of Congo), is about Mukendi’s alleged ordeal as a former sorcerer, who later converted to Christianity.
Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:
Uganda is currently experiencing what may be described as a population explosion. From the World Watch Institute:
Within the next few decades, the east African nation of Uganda is likely to have the highest population growth in the world, according to a new report from the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group. The country’s current population of 27.7 million is projected to explode to 130 million by 2050, a nearly fivefold increase, notes the study. According to Carl Haub, a demographer at PRB, such expansion will entrap the country in poverty and instability. “No one would consider such a rate of growth to be sustainable,” he says.
At 3.6 percent, the African island nation of Mayotte, an overseas collective of France located in the Comoros chain, has the highest annual rate of natural increase today, according to the study. Uganda’s current growth rate is 3.1 percent, while the world average is 1.2 percent.
The Ugandan government’s lack of commitment to family planning is the main reason for the country’s extraordinary population growth, says Haub. The PRB study indicates that only 20 percent of married Ugandan women between the ages of 15 and 49 have access to contraception. Women in Uganda have an average of 6.9 children, compared with a global average of 2.7 and an African average of 5.1. Some government officials consider this a boon and may in fact be encouraging high birth rates; President Yoweri Museveni has called the nation’s population explosion a “great resource.”
This situation seems unsustainable. There are simply not that many jobs, or economic opportunities available to cater for this rapidly growing population. This population also puts tremendous pressure on the country’s limited resources in the provision of social services such as basic healthcare, decent education, and so on. Of course, the likely outcome will be that poverty and sickness will increase exponentially.
What can we do to reverse this trend? Is it possible to slow down this rapid population growth?
Or are you in agreement with President Museveni, who seems to see this population explosion in a positive light?
Uganda’s growing population is our most important asset that should be used for increased productivity in order to achieve economic transformation for the country, President Yoweri Museveni has said.
He said Uganda’s growing population is not a problem, but it is important to exploit it in order to address the country’s development needs. He added that the Cabinet has adopted a revised National Population Policy for social transformation and sustainable development.
Come and discuss!
If you are an open minded person whose opinions are formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason and are interested in meeting like-minded individuals – you are welcome to join us at the meeting.
The November 2011 Freethinkers’ Night is going to take place on Thursday, 24th November, at 4 Points Bar & Restaurant, Centenary Park, Kampala, starting 6PM. Entrance is FREE.
Many thanks to Andy Thomson, Trustee of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, for donating to us 2 signed copies of his latest book “Why We Believe in God(s) – A Concise Guide To The Science of Faith.”
James Onen
Ritah Nakuya
Phillip
Hassan Higenyi
Guest Writer
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