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Why Africans are Religious – By Leo Igwe posted on May 2, 2010 - 8:34pm
A new study conducted by the Washington based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life says that Africans are among the most religious people on earth. The study titled Tension and Tolerance: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa was based on more than 25,000 interviews conducted in more than 60 languages in 19 countries. According to the study at least half of all Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa believe Jesus will return in their lifetime. One in three Muslims in the region expect to see the re-establishment of the caliphate-Islamic golden age- before they die. At least three out of 10 people across much of Africa said they have experienced divine healing, seen the devil being driven out of a person or received a direct revelation from God. About a quarter believe that sacrifices to ancestors can protect them from bad things happening. Sizeable percentages believe in charms and amulets.
My Article In The Daily Monitor Newspaper posted on May 2, 2010 - 7:03pm
I had an OP-ED piece published in the Monitor on Monday April 26th titled Religious Teachings Reinforce Belief in Witchcraft (in case the link disappears, an image file of the article can be found here). The article was based on an earlier post covering the same subject. The article prompted a lot of people to contact me via e-mail – both believers, and non believers. Some foreign journalists contacted me expressing shock that there were ‘people that thought they way I did about religion’ in this rather uber-religious country. Many of the people that contacted me have joined the Freethought Kampala Facebook group, and others came for Freethinkers’ Night – which I think is cool! My article ended with a challenge: Anyone who thinks witchcraft works should contact me and collect two million shillings upon a successful demonstration of this so called black-magic. Bring it on!
Bible Contradictions posted on April 27, 2010 - 5:15pm
Too many! Plenty more here.
Freethinkers’ Night – A Reminder!! posted on April 27, 2010 - 4:54pm
The April Freethinkers’ Night is going to take place on Thursday, 29th April 2010 at 4 Points Bar & Restaurant, Centenary Park, Kampala, starting 6PM. The topic is: ‘Is Religion Necessary for Morality?’ Discussing this topic will, among other things, provide us a good opportunity to show believers that atheists, agnostics and non-believers in general aren’t the evil people many believers imagine we are: Be there, and bring a friend!
Hilarious Interview on a Christian TV Show posted on April 27, 2010 - 4:18pm
This past Saturday afternoon I was channel surfing and stopped at LTV (Lighthouse Television – the local TBN affiliate). I don’t recall the name of the show, but it was one of those shows where there is a host who interviews a different guest for each episode of the show for them to discuss their Christian experiences. The guest that day was a guy called Godwin Bategeka who works with a ministry called Above the Waters. He was narrating an ordeal he had experienced while undergoing an operation a while back. I will paraphrase what he said from what I can recall. Basically he had been seriously ill for a while, and he had not been responding to treatment he had been undergoing. At some point an operation was required to save him. On the day of his operation, he was told by his doctors that they would be administering Ketamine to him. They made sure to inform him of what the side effects of Ketamine would be.
Critical Thinking – A Brilliant Video by Qualia Soup posted on April 24, 2010 - 10:36am
  As arguable as it might seem, a scientifically validated finding holds that the maximum brain capacity known to humans is 10%. How they arrived at this is another matter, but the undeniable beauty of science is that it’s provably reliable and logical. That said, the brain, particularly the neo-cortex is man’s real distinctive feature from other animals i.e. “Homo sapiens”, which is the scientific term for man, infers to the fact that we are “the thinking animals”. And by definition, the brain is the organ that controls the body.
When Broke, Fleece The Flock posted on April 23, 2010 - 1:05pm
Always works.
Famous Non-Believers – Carl Sagan posted on April 23, 2010 - 5:59am
Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, author, cosmologist, and highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics and other natural sciences. During his lifetime, he published more than 600 scientific papers and popular articles and was author, co-author, or editor of more than 20 books. In his works, he advocated skeptical inquiry and the scientific method. When asked about his religious beliefs: “Where’s the evidence? Now, the word God is used to cover a wide variety of very different ideas, ranging maybe from the idea of an outsized light-skinned male with a long white beard who sits in a throne in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow–for which there is no evidence, none at all–to the view of Einstein, of Spinoza, which is essentially that God is the sum total of the laws of nature. And since there are laws of nature … if that’s what you mean by God, then of course there’s a God.
Famous Non-Believers – Stephen Hawking posted on April 22, 2010 - 4:48pm
 AP Photo/Richard Lewis Stephen Hawking, (born 8th January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, whose world-renowned scientific career spans over 40 years. His books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Stephen Hawking is severely disabled by motor neuron disease also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Hawking speaking at TED2008 Transcript of part of the (above) speech he gave at TED 2008 (0.43 – 03.30): Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time. Then it was discovered that the universe was expanding. Distant galaxies were moving away from us. This meant they must have been closer together in the past.