Is anyone surprised?
There is a related article in the Huffington Post by Ana Kasparian:
There is an epidemic in Africa that has not been covered much by the mainstream media. Thousands of Nigerian children are accused of being witches by religious pastors. As a result, they are the victims of horrendous torture through exorcisms. In most cases, the children are murdered by their own family members.
The kids who become victims of the bloody exorcisms are usually poor, orphaned, or disabled. Often times, the families that these children come from are so financially disadvantaged that they feel relieved to have one less mouth to feed.
The witch accusations come as a result of a recent religious boom in the country. There has been a rapid growth of Evangelical Christianity in Nigeria, and because of this, churches outnumber schools, clinics, and banks put together. According to the Huffington Post, it’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft.
Unfortunately, the lack of education leads people in Africa to believe in the superstitions.
Education is not really what is missing, after all, in Uganda even the highly educated among us believe in the efficacy of witchcraft, in devils, demons, and all manner of superstitions. What is missing in Africa is critical thinking.
I have literally spent hours arguing with my university educated friends (who are believers) about whether it was true that a witchdoctor made a bible disappear before their eyes, as they were claiming. They really believe this nonsense.
We have already seen how holding certain specific religious beliefs makes it possible for even city-dwelling, masters degree-holding corporate executives to believe in the efficacy of witchcraft. Among this class of Ugandans, Evangelical Christianity is extremely popular, and it reinforces those beliefs.
We must do what we can to ensure what is happening in Nigeria does not happen here in Uganda as well.
We need to encourage critical thinking, and make it known to people in our communities that there is nothing to fear from witchcraft – because witchcraft simply does not work.
At Freethought Kampala we consider this to be one of our top priorities.
(This and other related issues will be discussed during the up-coming Freethinkers’ Night on Thursday 25th March 2010)
Freethought Kampala 
15 comments
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March 22, 2010 at 7:49 am
phillip
i remember watching a documentary on BBC that was actually investigating this practice in DRC (former Zaire), and the interesting thing was they were following a young man forced from the UK by his parents to his native home in Congo for exorcism… he was literally tortured… denied food, flogged. can you imagine! (just because he was stubborn he was dubbed a WITCH!). i can’t even bear to wonder about the poorer kids who don’t have a voice or means… i wonder how many have died as a result of this barbarism!
http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2007/11/21/children-cast-into-the-streets-as-witches/
http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/000309.html
March 22, 2010 at 10:44 am
James Onen
It’s really a big shame that these practices persist to this day. It’s so terrible.
March 22, 2010 at 10:39 am
The 27th Comrade
I guess it is time I ran up to this flank and got in the trench and started pointing out lies. 😀
That’s a lie. Then again, it is journalism, so that was an implicit concession already. One has to sell news, no?
In case you had not noticed, also, the majority of theists do not sacrifice children. Fads, even in theism, do come and go. As for atheism, it implies abortion, which is sacrifice of children at the altar of the gods of consumerism and convenience. Now, that is something most American atheist women do. And I’m not even trying to sell news.
Can critical thinking lead to the conclusion that there are being that are not corporeal? Or is “critical thinking” a euphemism for eliminative materialism.
For that sentence to be scientific (as I presume you intend for it to be, this being a New Atheist blog), you have to define witchcraft. When you do define witchcraft, you will see why scientists of yore were called (and sometimes burnt as) witches, and why chemistry comes to us straight from witchcraft. (Hint: science, to science, falls in the same category as religious belief, and therefore witchcraft.) If you will heal people of belief in witchcraft, you cannot use atheism, because it is incoherent and self-refuting based on critical thinking alone. One should not swap an evil practice/belief for an illogical one.
March 22, 2010 at 10:41 am
James Onen
Ha ha Comrade, do you actually believe witchdoctors wield magical powers?
March 22, 2010 at 11:47 am
James Onen
I also don’t know why you are attacking the journalists who write these stories. There’s lots more:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/05/children-accused-of-witchcraft-tortured-killed//print/
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/18/nigeria.child.witchcraft/index.html
Sorry if they shock you, but for goodness’ sake don’t stick your head under the sand and pretend its not happening. Instead, try and actually do something about it.
Jeez.
March 22, 2010 at 12:39 pm
The 27th Comrade
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again.
Try as I may, I have not been able to prove that they do not. (I have a strong vested interest in proving that they do not. But I have failed to arrive at that conclusion.)
Perhaps you can show me how you proved it. 😀 You seem quite confident that they do not, and I want a piece of that cake quick-quick.
I attacked the “most” in “In most cases, the children are murdered by their own family members.” That is patently false. We would have no children left. Can you furnish proof of that, rather than just saying “All the journalists are saying it, therefore it is true!”
As you can see from my (repeated) first response, I want to do something about it. But I do not know how you got your ammo, and you should show me. (I can’t be for FK Night, though. Sorry.)
Also, please furnish me with proof that I stick my head in the sand and pretend it is not happening. I think of the two of us, you and I, I was the first to mention these practices on this blog (albeit, of course, in the comments). Latest sighting: here.
Now, will you stop ducking around and answer my questions? Thanks for your patience, sir.
Dear Phillip:
You said
To you, and to Fat Boy, I hope we can all agree, then, that child sacrifice (at the altars of convenience and luxury) is bigger than anything Nigeria could cook up.
Let’s Unite Against Abortion.
May no more children be sacrificed, ever!
Do I have agreement on this, James and Phillip? Abortion is as foul as any form of child sacrifice. Do I have agreement on this, my dear friends?
March 22, 2010 at 9:50 pm
James Onen
@ Comrade
This is the problem with abusing philosophy, and why some people consider it a waste of time.
We can talk all we want about abstract things and all kinds of logical possibilities but in the end we live in a reality where we must try our best and work out the closest approximation to the truth as possible.
I, and neither can any scientist, ABSOLUTELY prove that boiling water kills the germs that cause cholera. Theoretically, one would have to have tested every Cholera causing germ in existence to provide absolute proof of this, which is impossible. Does this mean we shouldn’t boil our drinking water? Of course not. Anyone who suggested that water should not be boiled would be called a fool. In the same way, of course I cannot provide absolute proof that a man can’t turn into a goat with witchcraft – but I can argue that there are no good reasons to think so.
Imagine if you told your housemate ‘there is drinking water in the fridge’ and your housemate asked ‘how do you know? Can you provide absolute proof, etc..’ . Of course you can’t provide ABSOLUTE PROOF that there is drinking water in the fridge. After all, you’d need to prove that your eyesight was functional. You’d need to prove that what you’ve looked into is actually a refrigerator, you’d need to prove you know what drinking water actually is etc.. Are you therefore going to answer ‘I have a strong vested interest in proving that there is drinking water in the fridge. But I have failed to arrive at that conclusion.’ it’s all very silly, Comrade.
Many of your comments are in this vein, and that is why I really have no interest addressing them. They are frankly a waste of my time, sir.
About abortion, I’ll let you go after it. I also do not support abortion, by the way. You might be interested to know that your god ordered massacres of thousands of innocent children, not to mention those he drowned in the flood (for those who believe that silly little story). Go read your bible. I guess you’ll be right there with me advocating for Yahweh to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity? 😀
Now you stop ducking around and show me amputees and acid attack victims whose bodies have been restored by your god.
March 22, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Ritah
This is so terrible!
I think itz just as bogus as any supernatural/ paranormal/ superstitious claims. Because I’ve never seen any evidence for it, plain and simple. I put it in the same boat as Christianity. Witchcraft falls into the category of supernatural. In general, if one were to think about it logically, there is no more evidence that witchcraft exists than there is that god(s) exist…so, why the accusations?!
whether you are praying to God, performing a ritual, casting a spell, or putting pins in a voodoo doll…yo all in the same boat!
But, I must say, those people need help.
Shame
March 22, 2010 at 7:21 pm
James Onen
What should concern us is that the lives of these children are at risk because certain pastors in those countries are labeling them as witches. I think it would be wise to preempt the possibility that such trends might reach Uganda as well, and think of ways to avert it.
March 23, 2010 at 10:08 am
phillip
If you read any antiscience screeds, at some point or another most will claim that science is based on faith just as much as religion is. For example, the horrific Answers in Genesis website has this to say about science:
Much of the problem stems from the different starting points of our divergence with Darwinists. Everyone, scientist or not, must start their quests for knowledge with some unprovable axiom—some a priori belief on which they sort through experience and deduce other truths. This starting point, whatever it is, can only be accepted by faith; eventually, in each belief system, there must be some unprovable, presupposed foundation for reasoning (since an infinite regression is impossible).
This is completely wrong. It shows (unsurprisingly) an utter misunderstanding of how science works. Science is not faith-based, and here’s why.
The scientific method makes one assumption, and one assumption only: the Universe obeys a set of rules. That’s it. There is one corollary, and that is that if the Universe follows these rules, then those rules can be deduced by observing the way Universe behaves. This follows naturally; if it obeys the rules, then the rules must be revealed by that behavior.
A simple example: we see objects going around the Sun. The motion appears to follow some rules: the orbits are conic sections (ellipses, circles, parabolas, hyperbolas), the objects move faster when they are closer to the Sun, if they move too quickly they can escape forever, and so on.
From these observations we can apply mathematical equations to describe those motions, and then use that math to predict where a given object will be at some future date. Guess what? It works. It works so well that we can shoot probes at objects billions of kilometers away and still nail the target to phenomenal accuracy. This supports our conclusion that the math is correct. This in turn strongly implies that the Universe is following its own rules, and that we can figure them out.
Now, of course that is a very simple example, and is not meant to be complete, but it gives you an idea of how this works. Now think on this: the computer you are reading this on is entirely due to science. The circuits are the end result of decades, centuries of exploration in how electricity works and how quantum particles behave. The monitor is a triumph of scientific engineering, whether it’s a CRT or an LCD flat panel. The mouse might use an LED, or a simple ball-and-wheel. The keyboard uses springs, the wireless uses radio technology, the speakers use electromagnetism.*
Look around. Cars, airplanes, buildings. iPods, books, clothing. Agriculture, plumbing, waste disposal. Light bulbs, vacuum cleaners, ovens. These are all the products of scientific research. If your TV breaks, you can pray that it’ll spontaneously start working again, but my money would be on someone who has learned how to actually fix it based on scientific and engineering principles.
All the knowledge we have accumulated over the millennia comes together in a harmonious symphony of science. We’re not guessing here: this stuff was designed using previous knowledge developed in a scientific manner over centuries. And it works. All of this goes to support our underlying assumption that the Universe obeys rules that we can deduce.
Are there holes in this knowledge? Of course. Science doesn’t have all the answers. But science has a tool, a power that its detractors never seem to understand.
Science is not simply a database of knowledge. It’s a method, a way of finding this knowledge. Observe, hypothesize, predict, observe, revise. Science is provisional; it’s always open to improvement. Science is even subject to itself. If the method itself didn’t work, we’d see it. Our computers wouldn’t work (OK, bad example), our space probes wouldn’t get off the ground, our electronics wouldn’t work, our medicine wouldn’t work. Yet, all these things do in fact function, spectacularly well. Science is a check on itself, which is why it is such an astonishingly powerful way of understanding reality.
And that right there is where science and religion part ways. Science is not based on faith. Science is based on evidence. We have evidence it works, vast amounts of it, billions of individual pieces that fit together into a tapestry of reality. That is the critical difference. Faith, as it is interpreted by most religions, is not evidence-based, and is generally held tightly even despite evidence against it. In many cases, faith is even reinforced when evidence is found contrary to it.
To say that we have to take science on faith is such a gross misunderstanding of how science works that it can only be uttered by someone who is wholly ignorant of how reality works.
March 23, 2010 at 12:29 pm
The 27th Comrade
Yes, I’m glad you see it now. And to terminate that, I have faith at the other end. Faith that my eyesight works well, for example. From here, I can subject water to tests of my senses and so on, chemical and otherwise, and determine that it is water. We do this every time we drink water.
But at the root of all this empiricism, faith sits. This is my point.
Now, scientism denies faith, and pulls the rug out of science (such as the uncelebrated science we use to determine that water is water before we drink it every time we drink).
So, you see (good student!) an infinite regress or a circularity is stopped precisely by believing in something(s) not proven. That is, by faith. And with faith we start to prove. Blog posts coming up, stay tuned. 😀
The reason that was the case for the witch doctors was because they made claims that, unless falsified, could not ease their grip. Problem is, they were metaphysical claims. And so I found that what I thought would be easy to dismiss with a cursory check of their shrines was firmly rooted in things that could not be reached by physical inspection. The only way out was nihilistic rejection of all that was not physical, but that was not tenable for one like myself who holds that there are more than just the material and efficient causes to things in the universe. Like I’ve said before, it is the axioms. 😀
Now, with the water thing, if we share axioms with you. Good. I’m about to prove that it is water. *sniff sniff* Hmm. *taste taste* Hmm. *peer into bottle, see no colour* It is water.
If you say that it is “holy water”, and that holy water cannot be told apart from usual water, then, again, I have hit a wall, and, though I have a vested interest in showing that it is not holy water, I cannot.
You have no interest in answering my questions because they display that we need faith at the root of everything?
How about you just deal with it?
People don’t take philosophy seriously because of attitudes like yours. Faith begins everything, from faith in faith, to faith in logic, science, reason, and so on.
Deal with it. These are not my arguments. Reason says so. And you guys wonder why we prefer the atheists of back then? Hmph.
I am glad that you do not support abortion. There is nothing as bad under the sun. Child sacrifice, in any form, is foul.
The massacres of the little children are bad because abortion is bad. It is almost as though God ordered abortions. I’ve replied to you in another recent post: God is vicious. It’s why I think these people, with their sadistic description of hell, are serious. God has proven Himself to be extremely vicious in judging. As the guy who wrote Hebrews (chapter 10 is vert on-point here) said: “Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? […] It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Thankfully, God also did a worst thing: made an innocent man die in our place. And this Jesus is what hides the judgement side of God. If you think babies being killed is bad, think of what happens when we reject God’s exit route from His judgement, which we both know to be absurdly horrid.
Yes. Now, to arrest Him! That’s the trick. (If I could arrest Him, we would not be here debating this stuff. I’d have hanged Him – or dashed Him to pieces – many, many years ago. But He is not susceptible to arrest, it seems.)
I don’t know any. And if shown one, I, more than you, will be the first to investigate for a lie. 😀 But if I find that it is true, I go where the evidence leads. I just haven’t found that God is a deterministic algorithm that will serve me breakfast if only I pray. God has free-will. Thy will be done on Earth is part of what Our Lord taught us to pray. In praying this, and like Our Lord, Thy will be done, not as I will, but as You will, we declare that He can just as nicely choose to spare us whatever trial – being burnt for the faith, or carrying around amputations – as He can let us go through it, even to the bitter end.
@Phillip:
I’m not anti-science. I am anti-scientism.
Check out scientism at Wikipedia.
The rest of your long comment is off-mark. Since Fat Boy has understood what I’m saying, he can help you see it. You can conclude like him that you are not interested, but I’ll be happy enough if you understand it.
And also to confirm our suspicion that there is no law-giver for the universe!
Ah, so you created this amazing science from this amazing science? I mean, how else would we arrive at truths as sublime as science, if not through science?
March 23, 2010 at 10:27 am
phillip
science is not based on faith…
Science is a faith is a statement that reflects a straw man argument propagated by apologists to attempt to discredit “belief” in science as being no more logically sound than believing in a religion. However, this represents a categorical misunderstanding of science,… which is explicitly based on logic, with ideas developed through demonstrable, repeatable experiments or studies. Religion, on the other hand, is based solely on, as inherent to the argument, faith.
Development of Scientific “Beliefs”
Most respected scientific papers, a key step for introducing new concepts into widespread belief, are peer-reviewed, in that other scientists in the relevant field are able to judge the experiment or study detailed in the paper for soundness of both experimental design and conclusions reached. Additionally, the process described should, when replicated, produce results that support the same conclusion — scientists continually replicate and often refine experiments in order to test the validity of claims and refine theories.
Claims that scientists make, therefore, are supported by developed systems of logic and reason. Anyone with the resources to replicate an experiment or the intellectual capacity to criticize conclusions is free to do so, leading to a continual development of more complex scientific concepts through more nuanced understanding of our world.
In fact, the reliable functionality of so many of our modern technological conveniences rely heavily on the replicability of science. For example, modern telecommunications technology, which use the exchange of “packets” of encoded information over a myriad of mediums, from wireless technology to fiber optics, is able to, with incredible accuracy, relay complex information in a way that can be decoded by the recipient.
While there is always the possibility of error due to unforeseen or unaccountable occurrences, the integrity of the data is far more often than not preserved and not due to “faith” in the functioning of the electronics, but rather to the collaboration and continued efforts of not only scientists, but also business men and maintenance workers, who all work together to maintain to the standards of the technological model.
Religious Beliefs
Religious beliefs, however, are supported most often solely by faith alone. The Christian evangelical who promises the potential convert a paradise after death has no means to demonstrate their claims any more than the mere existence of God. Relying on outdated “sacred” texts and dogma, their beliefs have no basis for logical understanding and rely simply on accepting these works as factual, without any logically sound basis for this belief.
March 26, 2010 at 11:18 pm
Sleek
This is clearly one of those ‘different sides of the river and no one’s going to cross’ thing. In such cases, arguments,however based in fact, won’t achieve anything but self-gratification
March 28, 2010 at 10:32 am
Brentaka
My mother works in Nigeria and trust me its true about the child murder and exorcisms on grounds that poor little innocent kids are witches. They do it if the child is deformed, autistic, has a “scary” birthmark… basically for no reason at all. That said, I cannot believe I missed the meet AGAIN.
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