On Saturday 6th October 2012, I participated in an informal debate with Pastor Martin Ssempa on the subject of atheism. The debate took place at Makerere University in front of an audience of 2000 students. The actual venue (the swimming pool grounds) is home to Martin Ssempa’s weekly campus fellowship meet-up called Prime Time, and the debate was part the evening programme for that day’s meet-up – with me as the featured guest.
You can download the mp3 of the debate here.
Martin Ssempa, meanwhile, is well known around the word as a staunchly anti-gay pastor:
I have previously discussed my disagreements with his arguments and approach here. It would have been great if we’d had the time for me to challenge his views on homosexuality during Saturday’s debate. If we ever meet for another debate I will suggest that we make that the topic.
Freethought Kampala 
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December 23, 2012 at 5:36 pm
Lucie Rwom
I found this very interesting! It highlighted for me how religious fanaticism seems to be driven by people like him taking ideas and simplifying them to the point that they don’t make any sense to a relatively intelligent person! It is as if he deliberately refused to engage with you on an intellectual level and yet he obviously has the capacity to.
However on an entirely different note, I’d love to hear the two of you debate the rights of women, gender equality, feminism, whatever you may call it. That would soooooo totally make my day!
May 8, 2013 at 5:03 pm
martin
Hi,
James, i loved the way you have westernized your approach to life matters, its enormous. Your mind have caught a lot of philosophical realization of reasoning , with used of complicated words, of which even your mouth utters in an ambiguous way. I mean i cannot collect very fast your views, channel to my conscious and develop reaction towards it, i think if it happen to others like me, then you have been dominating a lot of debates with that kind of approach.
On the issues of Religion, God, Spirituality etc, i would have loved to join and we discuss more about it, but a lot of pessimism about you have overwhelmed me, because of your self-styled objective thoughts which is only subjected to Religion. Don’t you think the superstitions which you said has sabotaged the condition of humanity in Africa, is not only a product of Religion, we all know Religion renders one in some kind of superstition, but superstition works well for others, just like you have explained, or your idol Parrish
Who do you think, the likes of Eminem, Jamie Fox, Lil Wayne etc keeps referring as Rain man, if it is not the superstition of what they base their reasoning on. they follow hip-hop, of which refer to us a workshop of free-thoughts, yet these free thoughts to you is only what can save humanity, what has hip-hop in any way if not just immoralities of all walks of life (from nudity to drug addiction) of which ethically, you and agree its wrong
And by the way, why i say you are too westernized, is because your logical and scientific explanation of life matters is in a very well researched and known-how-to-use western language (English) How then can you be an African champion of advocating for free thought to a rural folk in Amuru, whose Acholi Language have not had chance of participating in developing philosophy? how would you harmonize words like Rationality, mysticism, logic, superstition etc? Would you not end up teaching these ideologies of where you manufactured the civilization in you from, to a few of us who can communicate in this language.
On the issue of science, first of all, it is in rare occasions to find a linguist like you and I having a better scientific explanation than scientist. Yet some scientist contradict each other and do not have a totality of what they talk about just like Religion. if science cannot explain, how the sole/spirit come to be, cannot create life, science is then ignorant, and that way you are ignorant too, because you believe in science, just like you say, religion has made its followers ignorant
As for me, i criticize not, whatever side (neither science nor religion) because they contain both follies and rationalities. I would rather have loved to see you advocating for how we can integrate this two phenomena(they are phenomena to me) such that they work together
If you want to know me well, I am Martin Okwir, a student at Makerere , doing Foreign Language (French). I engaged you in a discussion after the BBC program at Makerere, about Religion and Science Mix.