The Alternative Worldview – An interview by a Christian Cleric

Transcribed below, is an interview conducted on the night of 4th April, over Skype, by Reverend Raymond Bukenya as a clerical-academy (Theology School) assignment. 

Reverend Bukenya is a Christian minister with the (Anglican) Church of Uganda, and an Apologist with the renowned Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). 
He is based in Moroto, North-East Uganda – where he bides with his young family.

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Interview Subject: Surumani Manzi.

So tell me about yourself. Family, growing up:

I am twenty five years old, and an only son of my mother’s. 

I am of mixed-ethnic parentage – though both parents hail from communities native to the geographical West of Uganda. 

Rural-urban migration inevitably brought them to Buganda’s much-famed Kampala – and because ours is and always has been a one-city economy, Ma and Pa couldn’t help but stay longer than their initial visit. The best schools in the country are here, the best hospitals, the most well-paid of jobs, the most ‘modern’ neighborhoods, the most well-read and ‘civilized’ neighbors. All these things, my parents – being no different from Africa’s numerous post-colonial elite – left their own nations and homes in search of. Some they have somehow picked up along the way, but many and more still prove elusive.

So, because I have lived the bulk of my years in Kampala, in the central province of the country, I have ergo assimilated a lot of Ganda culture. 
I strongly reckon I would pass for a naturalized Muganda – as we are wont to call the subjects of Buganda’s Kabaka in our young state.

Growing up, my family was very religious, particularly Christian – my mother still is a devout Pentecostal Christian. 
As a youngster, I received first the Anglican sacrament of Baptism, then later was confirmed in Henry VIII’s (that English monarch of legend) infamous nuptial legacy. 

However, something strange happened to East Africa’s Anglican community in the late 60s and early 70s – a new fire-breathing movement naming itself Mungu Mwema (radical Pentecostalism) sprung almost out of nowhere. 
Suddenly, thousands of Anglicans began flocking en masse from their colonial cathedrals to this reborn Pentecostalism’s makeshift papyrus warehouses and their fire-spouting proprietors that had, overnight, become Jehovah’s preferable ‘‘Tabernacles’’. 
My own parents, being the conscientious votaries they were and still are, weren’t spared the bandwagon. 

In either congregation, I attended Sunday-school rather often and even sang in the church choir. I went to a single boys’ school for all my Secondary School training, and finally to Makerere University.

Professionally, I am a Construction Manager, with practicing specializations in Quantity Surveying & Project Management.
Outside professional endeavors, I write and perform poetry with the Kampala-based Lantern Meet of Poets. I’m also working on select projects of short and mid-length fiction.

I consider myself Atheist – but more specifically Anti-Theistic.
I find that the latter label, anti-theism, is less passive and involves more agency than atheism – which is often used as a mere label of disassociation ascribed to any non-believer by any parochial sect of believers.
This is because ‘theism’ – unlike deism for instance – postulates a belief in a specific god, rather than a generic, ecumenical or nondenominational one.

Ideally, non-believers should have no need to self-identify as ‘‘atheists’’. To a believing Muslim, a Christian is just as atheistic as an ‘atheist’ proper; and according to Islam, both the ‘atheist’ and the Christian are equally damned because they are equally infidels.

Allah’s hell won’t segregate in severity of temperature between Hindu and Christian, Buddist and Mormorn, ‘atheist’ and Sikh. Replace Islam in this analogy with any of its counter-faiths – and you have precisely the same result.

Atheism therefore – is as hollow and imprecise a label as they come. It is the name fearful theists and religious-people ascribe to people they can’t quite box-up in the other religious categories they are engaged in petty metaphysical squabbles with, and people who also refuse to box themselves up in perhaps the worst of the expected and commonplace parochialisms of human society, inter alia – faith, race, ethnicity, class.

In my view, anti-theist is more congruent with and closer in implication to adeist (which label I’d less squeamishly go-by) – given that both appellatives mount a radical challenge to faith in a specific, denominational intervening god.

How did you come to your convictions as an Anti-Theist?

It was a gradual, incremental shift from my childhood Christian indoctrination.

While still a practicing Christian, I actually went as far as offering myself as Godfather to some young Christians, having been Baptized and Confirmed in the Anglican faith.

I am unsure if I can still offer my godsons the expected religious oversight – though I will endeavor to be a moral exemplar.

At University, I was in the Church choir of St. Francis Chapel, an Anglican congregation.

Due to what I may term an ‘early life crisis’ however, I began to notice things I hadn’t noticed before in life – generally speaking.

This is probably on account of my emergence, as a young man, into the independence afforded by adulthood.

Life was suddenly filled with a mixture of adventure, economic freedom, and the leeway to question hitherto ‘sacred ideas’ – religious and otherwise – without direct parental censorship.

During this ‘transition’ period, as my mind came to uncover alternative truths apart from those of my Christian upbringing – I spoke to several friends, church leaders, Bible Study heads etc – but the answers that they offered were not really as helpful as I would have expected.

So naturally, I decided to search elsewhere.

In a little while, I began to get information from acquaintances and circles outside of the Church community.

Gradually, I got exposed to literature that challenged my erstwhile ‘rock-solid’ Christian convictions.

Very imperceptibly – I began to drift (philosophically at first) away from the church, as strong doubts regarding my beliefs emerged in my forming mind.

Some of this early literature included: The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), Letter to a Christian Nation (Sam Harris), The Portable Atheist (Christopher Hitchens) – among a few others. 

Also, I chanced upon a few novels which to me successfully explored strong religious themes – like The Sea Wolf (Jack London) and Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck).

To understand the viewpoint of Christian defense, I tried reading up on C.S. Lewis.

Unfortunately, as I discovered, Lewis seemed to limit my options when he argued for an either/or proposition regarding Jesus’ earthly record – “We are left with a frightening alternative. Either Jesus was (and is) exactly what he said, or else he was insane, or something worse: However strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was, and is truly God.”

I must confess, and regrettably, that I haven’t interacted with as much other written literature as I would wish, in the defense of the Christian faith, or any other faith for that matter.

But I have viewed countless video debates between atheists and Christian apologists.

Dinesh D’Souza and William Lane Craig – are particular favorites of mine.

I have found (and continue to find) their arguments in defense of their faith rather compelling, except that their atheist opponents (I say this as humbly as possible) usually succeed at convincingly responding to their arguments.

Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have been exceptional at that.

But despite all that, I actually feel that I am still culturally Christian.

I have lots of Christian friends, and my entire family practice the faith.

Most of my understanding of morality is still derived from what I learnt as a young Christian.

Interestingly, I haven’t found that this affects my present secular convictions, or contradicts them in any way.

Indeed – it might be argued that had I been a Muslim formerly, I’d probably have the same moral paradigm today, as my being an ex-Christian accords – given that most faiths share their basic principals of moral outlook. I’m not in any way convinced that I have any better or worse of a moral code than young Iraqi men who were raised Muslim, or young Thais who were raised Buddhist.

I recall with fondness how – when I was part of the St. Franciscan community at Makerere and used to sing in the Choir – I was exceedingly well-treated by my fellow choristers and the Church leadership, headed at the time by a genial and very personable gentleman called Canon Ebong Johnson.

But alas – I’ve received treatment just as kind and humane at the hands of my Muslim friends and associates. At a Hindu temple I used to visit along Dewinton road in upper Kampala many years past – when I still was feeding my infantile curiosity for spirituality – the first thing we used to get handed was a steaming plate of aromatic rice the moment we entered.

Evidently, morality and ‘‘goodness’’ aren’t the preserve of any one faith. Indeed – practice shows that they are the preserve of none. Reasonably therefore, one must concluded that they’re anchored elsewhere – and are merely appropriated selectively by each faith group when they serve the latter’s parochial and self-serving interests, to be displayed like market-goods in moments of expansive sanctimony..

Human morality is a universal entity expressing itself variably in local contexts, but retaining its core essentials across geography and time.

This point however, should serve to show that since religions as we know them are theologically incompatible – then logically, the source of their shared yet exclusively claimed morality must indeed be independent and apart from them.

This is where atheism – as a third proposition which roots morality outside any of the competing superstitions, begins to make sense. 

I ought to add, however, that Christianity, compared to other foreign faiths, has been more successful in blending with our African culture, and that must be commended.

For instance – A Christian Muganda would not have to make as much adjustment to the expectations of Christian life and culture; as a fellow tribesman converting to Islam or Hinduism would be required to make.

African Christians needn’t live like the Hebrews in order to be accepted as proper Christians, while Arab tribal culture is almost inseparable from Islam, no matter your native culture.

With the benefit of hindsight – I suspect the transition from belief to non-belief would have been more socially complex and censorious for me had I subscribed to a more conservative and ritualistic faith like Roman Catholicism or Islam.

The communities of these faiths seem to police each other more, and are less tolerant of dissent, unlike Protestant Christianity.

My family would have probably stigmatized and shunned me for my atheistic position, or even worse – out rightly disowned me – had I belonged to these ultra-conservative faiths.

Another point I’d like to make here is on the intersection of economics and religious commitment: 

Denominations aside, it isn’t too difficult to imagine how impossibly hard it would be for me to abandon any given faith – if say, my father happened to be a leader or minister in any of them. 

Walking away from faith in such circumstances – conservatism or liberalism notwithstanding – would imply much more than taking my mind in my hands. It would imply the rejection and jeopardizing of nothing less than my own family’s livelihood.

I put it to you that such a decision is just as demanding and repulsive to make for a sorcerer’s son as it is for a Pastor’s son, or a Mullah’s daughter. And this happens to be the case with so many religious people – who in some way or other happen to benefit economically from their membership of a given faith – through educational opportunity, charitable receipts, a job connection, a monthly stipend etc.

Money and food are acutely urgent and necessary to all our lives, irrespective of whether they’re made from lying to ourselves and others about our knowledge of reality, or not.

All religion, regrettably, finds itself ensnared in this deceptive conundrum where its adherents delude themselves of its truth in order to defend and otherwise rationalize their economic benefit from it.

What were some of the questions you asked your Church leaders when you begun doubting?

The basic philosophical questions, mostly:

What is the meaning of life?

Why is there so much suffering in the world?

Is the Bible really God’s word?

What does God look like?

Have you ever seen him?

Why does God let babies die?

Why does so much God-decreed evil exist in the Bible?

I eventually discovered that almost none of my questions were responded to without reference to Biblical text, whose very authority I found questionable to begin with.

Dinesh D’Souza, that brilliant Christian Apologist, has attempted to explain this away as some form of wounded theism.

This explanation, however, only makes sense in the contextualization of selfishness  – when a man disavows God for injury to him and his, and not in the face of injustice to others, whom the man can understandably get-on comfortably with his life without showing concern for. 


What do you believe to be true about Life, God and Reality?

How would you say Life began?

I am still forming my Philosophy.

To do so, I am of course feeding on reality and interacting with others of the same, comparable and even diametrically opposed worldviews.

The convictions I had as a Christian were not my own personal choice. I was taken to Sunday school, instructed to attend Church, told to read the Bible daily etc – so I ended up soaking it all up, and falsely believing it was my spontaneous choice.

But now I, after two years ‘outside’ mainstream faith, feel that I'm beginning to make my own rational decisions regarding faith and reality.

All our initial religious impulses are propagated and imparted in us more by biology (parentage), and less choice (rational thought) – Christian parents send their children to Sunday school, not to the Madrasa.

Now – I have no qualms with the concept of a Deistic God, purely as the prime mover, or the creative force.

It is the interventionist deity of theism with whom I take exception. He seems to claim so much power when healing petty, individual illnesses; and yet his conspicuous inability to permanently end humanity’s biggest problems like war or hunger, stands unquestioned.

Like any evidence-led scientific mind, I subscribe to the Big Bang theory as the best explanation of the universe’s origins.

Though – like other reasonable Atheists would acknowledge, science is not resolved yet on the actual cause (the so-called Banger) of the Big Bang.

Saying that God is the cause of all things, the ‘Banger’, and claiming to be scientific by it – since Christian scientists hypothesize that God torched off the Big Bang – is to be intellectually dishonest.

This philosophy holds that science is compatible with religious-faith, and that Biblical-Creation is neither in conflict with the Big Bang nor Darwinian Evolution.

But this thinking quickly runs into murky waters, especially if one can’t explain the origins of the ‘banger’, and maintains that God has no beginning, but rather is the Alpha and Omega.

To even merely attempt to question God’s origin is almost considered anathema, or abomination, in mainstream Christian conversation.

I therefore find Scientific Christianity a philosophy that puts scientific facts at the service of an unscientific hypothesis. 


Things that made me believe, and made me Question too…..

Life is tough – surviving on our troubled planet is hard work. Man’s needs are so many and seem to press one in from every direction.

Leadership systems, traditional and modern, have obviously failed humanity.

Therefore looking outside of humanity, often to God, for an institution and entity to act as consoler, provider, protector, father to the fatherless, husband to the widows, etc – seems the only solace the majority of the earth’s dispossessed have.

I suspect this is how, after our primate ancestors developed brains large enough to contemplate their suffering; we began to look beyond ourselves and our fellow men for ‘salvation’.

It thus becomes easy for suffering, miserable man to look up to the divine as the only reliable source of justice in a world that is devoid of all these things that we (understandably) yearn for and long after.

I thought, like most believers I know do, that by being a good Christian, by doing all the good things I was taught in Sunday School – then God would come in and grant me the things that I desired.

He would do this because he was pleased with me, and only by his grace.

I honestly believed that accomplishment in life wouldn’t be the product of my parents’ diligence, or my own hard work, or the levelheaded & prudent leadership of my country – at least all these things, singly or in combination, would ultimately come to naught without the ‘blessing’ of that Almighty Hebrew deity I extolled as Yahweh.

My entire fate, both on earth and after, I began to see, seemed to be based on God and his grace, rendering any human efforts null.

I eventually began to raise questions on how fair that was: 

What about the people who didn’t necessarily succeed at pleasing God – a feat made all the more daunting by that leviathan’s megalomania and whimsical predispositions?

Didn’t such people deserve to be happy?

Did the good things I had – a loving family, a good education, adequate food on the family table – imply that I was more righteous than those who lacked them?

For example, in the Ugandan case – many young Christians believe getting a Government Scholarship to study at Makerere University is a reward from God because of their being good and faithful to him (as you know that’s what goes on in Christian conversations. For everything desirable, we give thanks to God. Anything unappealing, we find someone to blame – often the devil, or our own disobedience, again, to God).

But what about the thousands of other young and poor Ugandans who never get these scholarships, which are by the way often earned by those who don’t deserve them, on account of the viciousness of our country’s (and world’s) accursed cycle of ‘elite’ privilege?

What of all the people in this country who have it much worse than me, and never get to enjoy the privileges that I have?

What about the other realities of the type of family I was born into?

Is it by God’s ‘design’ that I was born into the ‘right’ family – with the right pedigree and from the right part of the country?

Is it the fault of many of my suffering country men who are the victims of ethnic and tribal marginalization that they were born into the wrong clan? – I’m sure, Reverend, that you appreciate how such rank inequality isn’t unique to Uganda, or even (black) Africa – the mulattoes and mestizos of South America, the Dalits of India, the Maori of New-Zealand, Aborigines of Australia etc, all serve to prove this truth of universal and systemic human oppression.

What of the fate of ‘Muslim citizens’ in a ‘Christian-majority’ country like mine? Is it their fault that their opportunities in life will be fewer & slimmer than your average Christian’s on account of their parents’ and families’ faith? – which, by the way, they’d be severely punished for attempting to leave.

Since God claims to be omniscient – did he do this by design?

Who is he trying to ‘test’ here, by allowing such gross and dehumanizing inequalities in the world?

What of political & military leaders around the globe? – men, like the President of my own republic, who are deliberately and literally responsible for the agonizing lives and excruciating deaths of countless innocents? – why does God, being so mighty and just, not up and strike them dead with lightening forks, and in a (literal) flash, make the earthly existence he so loves to interfere with better for so many?

My conclusion was that – as Sam Harris brilliantly puts it – either God is impotent, or He is evil. 

This means God is either, in all his might & majesty, blissfully spectating over our sorrow and pain – or he is altogether too feeble to do anything about it, which would imply that he is a much smaller and less ‘godly’ God than we tout him to be. 

He either sees mankind suffering panning out yet remains indifferent about the evil, OR he is not as omnipotent as he is claimed to be, to be able to to intervene promptly, fairly and decisively.

Man-made institutions may have failed us in so many ways, but turning our sights to illusion and clamoring after divine intervention in our bungled affairs; is rather akin to a man who – having had only abortive attempts at kindling romantic relationships hitherto, decides out of desperate frustration, to become a lifelong and incurable pessimist, or much worse, a cynic. 

Religion is the most acute form of denialist cynicism ever devised by our species – our childlike response to inundation by an unfamiliar and unfavorable reality. 


How would you describe your journey with Religion, especially Christianity?

What would you say is your strongest objection to Christianity?

I’ll try to answer this, not head-on, but somewhat elliptically:

During my transition from a Christian worldview to my secularism now; I subscribed for a while to “Black Theology” – a Pan African advocacy of Christianity, articulated by South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero, Steve Biko.

Black Theology is not unlike Rastafarianism as practiced today – trying to Africanize God and Christ. 

 Now – I believe strongly in the concept of circles of identity in every human being’s life.

I’m male, black, human, Ugandan, East African etc.

Each of these is relevant in its own way – but without doubt, some are more relevant than others.

For instance, before I can consider myself human, I regard myself to be Negroid or African.

My race identifies me more than my species – because of the hugely discriminatory civilization our species has built.

I realized a while back that I was African first (a black one, moreover) before I was ever Christian.

My African identify was a concrete category that placed certain limits and constraints on my life and well-being, but my so-called Christian identity was nothing more than a conjured-up phantasm of a constructed self.  

I know that the average annual income of an African is a miserly 700 dollars, and that this isn’t a hypothetical person, but a real black man somewhere on the continent we are talking about.

This African could be me, or in all probability, my yet unborn son or daughter. 

But then – what is the average income of a Christian?  

That must a sound a ridiculous question – and yet, its absurdity pales when juxtaposed against any answer it might elicit.

Christianity has never been a concrete, meaningful polity; and is often nothing more than a diaphanous identity-marker worn around the necks of people’s egos to signal membership to some vacuous, supercilious family with paradisaical delusions.

A Christian citizenship  makes no sense whatsoever when it comes to meeting the crucial demands of our world.

And yet, one finds all these African Christians today calling themselves children of some dead 1st-Century Hebrew called Yeshua, and considering themselves part of the color-blind, non-racial collective that is Christianity – while European’ Christians’ lead a standard of life multiple times their own.

Actually, I am black before I can even be an atheist.

I know full well that not all atheists are equal – white atheists like Dawkins (Richard) who was born to white settler parents in Kenya, may still be able to look down on me, despite being a fellow atheist, for being a black man.

This racial inequality is essentially no different from the inequality which black Christians know exists between them and white Christians. 

Deep down, in their heart of hearts, both groups of Christians know this entrenched disparity exists. 

To further illustrate how racial distaste easily penetrates the dyke of religious conviction, another occurrence of common occasion is the internal discrimination within Islam of black people, be they Muslim or not. 

It happens all the time – when young semi-skilled Sub-Saharan Africans go to the Middle East and countries of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula to do odd jobs.

On arrival, these clueless menial-hands often find themselves on the receiving end of the most vicious acts of racism by their Arab (and Muslim) employers. 

This is despite the fact that Arabs themselves are a constant target of racial attack and discrimination from the quarter of white supremacy. 

Even in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, where he chronicles the series of events leading up to the great depression – God is discussed only to the extent that he was unjust and improvident to the white farmers of the American Midwest during the takeover of their smallholder crofts by bankrolled (bank financed) and often bank-owned industrial scale plantations, but nothing is ever said concerning the lot of the black slaves who must’ve undoubtedly had it worse than the landless, disenfranchised families of poor white farmers. 

Interestingly, Steinbeck keeps referring to how the ancestors of the poor white farmers being displaced from their farms had to kill the Amerindians to get it in the first place. (God was, of course – on the side of the European settlers and against the primitive Indians, wasn’t he?)

Evidently – even suffering has social classifications, and is often graduated. 

I understand of course, also, that modern racism is an impersonal system – and the perpetrators of the system often do it subconsciously, and are just as much victims of it as those on the receiving end – like myself.

Modern Christianity is essentially Eurocentric – and like all Eurocentric exports (more specifically Anglo-American ones) – it glorifies the Caucasoid culture.

But at least with atheism – this inequality is understood in purely existential and biological terms, unlike the racial inequality of religion which, by necessity, has to be countenanced by God, given he allows it to reproduce itself into a multitude of other inequalities in the respective lives of both race groups.

Without sounding bigoted – I can comfortably say that according to the historical record, white societies (I hesitate to call them civilizations: is it civilized to be brutal?) have principally flourished through systematic and often brutal oppression and exploitation of non-white civilizations.

Historically – Christianity has been part of the cultural toolbox used by the Global North to mete untold suffering on the Global South.

It is quite honest to say that Christianity, as apart from Judaism, was teetering on the brink of extinction at the start of the 4^th Century.

Most of the apostles had been killed, and their small congregations persecuted until they became scattered fringe minorities under Roman rule.

If it wasn’t for the 4^th Century Roman Emperor Constantine – who literally salvaged Christianity, converted to it, declared it a State religion, then went ahead to deploy it as a tool of Roman Imperial Conquest.

This is how Christianity was eventually spread to England – by crusading Roman imperialism – then to my own country Uganda, later-on – by crusading (and very cruel) British imperialism.

It could actually be convincingly argued that the savior of Christianity was Constantine of Rome, and not Jesus of Nazareth.

Christianity wasn’t – as we’re often told, merely disseminated by simple, smiling leathern-pouch carrying missionaries and innocuous fatherly evangelists – but actively lent itself to the nefarious devices and stratagems of white imperialism. 

In imperialist hands – Christianity propagated, and still propagates white superiority and black (or generally non-white) inferiority, and has thrived on the implied racial dichotomy for many centuries.

Did God, who is omniscient, know that this would happen?

Why then did he sit back and let it happen, despite his claimed omnipotence?

Was he trying to teach the non-white races of the world some kind of ‘lesson’?

Was white colonialism and slavery an agent of the Christian God’s divine will?

Think about the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and its cardinal role in justifying and sanctifying Apartheid.

Consider the record of Christianity in the American South and how for, for four hundred years, black Christians were told that it was God’s will for them to be owned and brutalized by white Christians.

Why did God – who very often comes down ‘heal’ the cancers of white Christian women – do absolutely nothing to aid those black slaves?

To be honest, Christianity cannot escape from its history.

And the injunctions for slavery aren’t limited to the ‘obsolete’ Old Testament: Paul himself, the superstar of modern Christian Evangelicals, enjoins that slaves should obey their masters.

One can confidently say that God, if he exists, used Colonialism and Slavery to evangelize the world, in order to make us Christians.

These Europeans, whose grandfathers were the Christian missionaries who introduced God to us, are stealing our minerals and fueling civil wars left, right and center – while the God their progenitors force-fed ours allows this social rape to proceed unabated.

Is the good Lord partial to neo-imperialism – or doth he simply not give two hoots about so ‘paltry’ a problem?

The only intervention he seems interested in is to anoint our young men with pastoral callings so that they can set up churches and import electronics, guitars and expensive sound equipment from Buddhist manufacturers in Asian countries to worship a European-introduced creator, while worsening our countries’ Balance of Payment positions in the process. 

Notice also, that Jesus is always represented as a white Jew.

Even as practiced in America today, Christianity is also obviously extremely racial: simply observe the televangelist black and white churches.

John Hagee’s congregations are almost entirely white; Creflo Dollar’s are almost entirely Negro. T.D Jakes and Rod Parsley are no different.

Even the great Billy Graham, in his older footage, preached to mostly white audiences.

Science confirms today – through Mendelian genetics, that genetically speaking – Black people are the oldest human beings on the planet, and that Caucasian people are essentially mutants; albinos with a stabilized albino gene.

How then – could Adam and Eve have been anything but black?

There is no way the Caucasians can become black, whatever mutations occur.

Only the Negroid can evolve to white, by developing a melanin deficiency – evolutionarily speaking.

Modern-day Hebrew people, being non-Negroid, were not and cannot have been the first people on Earth.

This means that the literary wealth of the Hebrew Scriptures (whose current ‘owners’ claim Adam & Eve) must have been inherited from a more ancient civilization. 

And genetically speaking, this older people can only have been a black people.

A simple logical progression reveals this subtle but fiercely suppressed truth to us. 


On Morality

What’s your take on the concept of sin, justice and forgiveness?

Sin is a fear-mongering tactic, again sold by western civilization, in the modern sense, to justify the gross injustices in the world.

Most of what is considered sin in Christianity is simply Dialectical Materialism at work.

People steal because they are hungry.

Slaves sought to kill their slave masters in the American South, because they desired freedom – but churches condemned this desire as sinful. 

‘Sin’ is nothing more than a normal human being’s response to unmet need.

To consider – a society that has a higher social inequality will almost automatically also have more ‘sinners’, that is; thieves, cheats, prostitutes, drunkards and murderers, among others – because people are just trying to get by.

Africa’s social inequalities, by the way, are not brought about by an invisible devil – but by the actions and omissions of a selfish, capitalist, political and economic elite – who are essentially a creation of our colonial history.

On the other hand, in societies where there is general equality and egalitarianism – take a look at post-Christian, post-modern Europe for instance – though largely irreligious, will have the lowest crime rates, lowest corruption, and consequently fewer exhibitions of ‘sin’.

Equality, I am now convinced – is brought about by fellow people, and not by God, or his nemesis and antithesis, Satan.

Telling people that coming to Jesus to be their Lord and savior, so that he can change their lives and situations, without Jesus changing the hearts of the selfish few – or indeed exterminating them fully – would not take away the inequalities, and what you call sin remains.

Sin, I must say again, is nothing more than the natural product of unmet need.

People’s needs ought to be taken seriously and met, not dismissed out of hand as mere ‘destructive impulses’ .

Now, since my transition, I have often found myself in sound agreement with persons (mostly Christians) who say that it’s a greater miracle for one to not believe in God, than to believe in him. 

We think the same thing, but for differing reasons of course. 

While theirs often revolve around the grandeur of the cosmos and its intrinsic suggestion of an intelligent designer, my reasons are more modest: 

Now with the benefit of hindsight, I realize how easy it can be for one to believe in a God – especially one that presents himself as an omnipotent superintendent. 

All you have to do is think about yourself – my tuition, my degree, my job, my supper, my spouse, my children, my house, mine ,mine and mine. 

When you focus so much on all the possessions you do have – it’s very easy to assume that someone had to have given them to you. 

And since we naturally assume fellow humans to be selfish, predisposed to take from us, and not to give to us, it only takes a small mental leap to ascribe the source of one’s possessions to a higher, superhuman entity. 

However – if we focus on the things the majority of human beings don’t have, which we may happen to have – then it’s easy to see how our awe at the providential nature of this superhuman philanthropist quickly withers. 

We look at the millions of neglected orphans in the world – and should then realize how our having parents is a privilege. 

We look at the abject poverty of our neighbors – and should then become aware how our jobs and bank accounts are an immoral privilege. 

We see the dreadful conflicts, famine and drought across the planet – and ought to question our exceptional right to sleep soundly in the night, and on full stomachs moreover. 

If we look at these things selfishly – it is still possible to praise Jesus and Jehovah for their ‘mercies that are new every morning’ which allows us to justify our exceptionalism. 

If we look at them altruistically however – it won’t be long before we begin to despise this narcissist and praise-drunk God for his conspicuous draconianism and pathetic feebleness. 

Dismissing other people’s grief as a function of their shortage of righteousness or divine grace is an easy thing, and only requires selfishness, a naturally abundant quality – on the part of the believer. 

The more demanding position is to accept others’ grief as potentially your own, and part of the universal tale of human misery.  

It is only such an acceptance that can engender genuine and motive-free attempts to end such suffering.


What about Forgiveness?

The ultimate scenario within which forgiveness is manifested is self-defense.

Why would I be expected to forgive someone who is threatening to take my life, or my daughter’s life?

Personal forgiveness only makes sense when social justice is functional – by helping to curtail revenge.

Giving up my right to kill someone who is threatening my life, in only worth it because I trust in a legal and justice system and social contract we have set up – which will eventually penalize the offender.

Otherwise, every man should have the right to take a life in defense of his own.

Allowing yourself to be killed, when you might have prevented it by killing your assailant – is intrinsically immoral – and to hope that you’ll get justice for this in heaven is quite unreliable, if not delusive. 


And justice…

There is no ultimate justice, because there is no verifiable immortality or eternity.

All we have is here and now.

If someone evades the justice systems we have set in place, they are gone and beyond punishment.

So we must do whatever it takes to bring all evil doers to the justice we all believe in.

But we can also hope that they will naturally face the kind of justice that characters like Hitler and Stalin face. They died young, and their legacies remain unpopular because they served injustice to their fellows.

We can only punish such people by memory.

I hope, as Africans today, we can begin to treat our former colonial powers with the same sort of memory justice.

Are you fully convinced that there is no meaning and purpose to life?

To the best of my considered opinion, there is no such a thing as an ultimate meaning to life – and the only meaning that there is to life, is the meaning that we give to it.

I can determine my personal purpose for existence in the short life I have here on earth, but I cannot be sure of my fate after death, and anyone who suggests otherwise is either sadly deluded or being deliberately dishonest.

But of course, personal meanings are only temporary meanings – implying that all there is to life is temporary sense.

Until our knowledge of the afterlife is more empirical (which it is unlikely to ever be), we can only keep guessing and conjecturing at ultimate meanings – which are in and of themselves not essential to living a complete and full life for the few years we have on earth, however transient our time. 


On Destiny

Our fate after death is not known, and perhaps can never be known.

To claim the ability to know it on account of book(s) written by men and evidently edited several times – and to, by consequence, seek to control the lives of fellow humans, is in my view to be dictatorial and unfair.

Extraordinary claims, like knowledge of the afterlife, require extraordinary evidence: and the Christian Bible, with its hundreds of internal contradictions and translations, certainly comes nowhere close to extraordinary.

(I personally find this sort of position is totally Agnostic, since it exhibits a lack of eschatological certainty, and seemingly no care to explore its possibility. Or should we call it a matter of ignorance, or intellectual dishonesty.) — these are Reverend Bukenya’s post-interview notes, or marginalia.


Would you recommend your world view to anyone else? Why?

Surprisingly – no.

I genuinely find the non-delusion of atheism too shocking for most people, especially adults who’ve erected their lives around religious illusion.

Asking such folk to abandon the very root of their psychology, and in most cases the ‘reason’ for their existence is to be too harsh.

Many of our people, especially in the global South, are too miserable and neglected that they need some form of consolation to cling to life.

Take that away, and we’re likely to have mass suicides sweeping across the continent.

But then – atheism isn’t essentially tailored toward recruitment. And I suppose this is what makes this worldview unique. One doesn’t have to believe in any one particular entity or thing to ‘qualify’ to be an atheist.

All that is required of them is to unsubscribe from any kind of indoctrination, even when – as is often the case – that indoctrination comes veiled in the cloak of scientific progress.

I think I would encourage people, especially younger people, to seek truth and arrive at it for themselves – as opposed to waiting for any authority-figure, including myself, to tell them what to think.

Young people should seek a personal understanding, an own comprehension of reality.

They ought to be exposed to all available objective knowledge, and permitted to arrive at their own conclusions.

To this end, the American philosopher Daniel Dennett recommends the teaching of comparative religion in schools – the essence of which is to let children make informed decisions. This can never be achieved by attempting to raise them as ‘good’ Christians or ‘decent’ Muslims – simply because that’s how you and I (their parents) were (attemptedly) raised.  

We must decline to be the bridge by which our parents’ biases and narrow worldviews are conducted to our children. 


Any final and general thoughts on these issues? 

I’d like to say that it’s tragic that the reality of our people is a harsh one – perhaps the harshest of all human societies alive today.

This reality is saddled with low life expectancies, broken and estranged families, illiteracy and joblessness, cruel governments and low household incomes, cold neighbors and a growing social inequality.

In a nutshell, our people are powerless – and this powerlessness makes them utterly helpless and emotionally vulnerable. The only conceivable way to live through such a daily existence is to be perpetually at war with oneself and society – which probably accounts for why our communities are overran with criminals and rebels, not to mention the hordes of toothless and apathetic anarchists.

The other option – and indeed the one much favored (for obvious reasons) by our political establishment –is the committing of oneself to an illusion, the devotion of their citizens to some placating unreality to take the place of a bitterly scourging reality. This unreality is played very well by alcoholism and gambling, whoring and narcotics, consumerism and self-absorbed elitism. But perhaps better than these all – it is played by religion, which has the greatest capacity to lie to us about the source of our problems, and then having secured this first definitional victory – proceed to lie to us about their solutions as well.

It really should be simple and obvious from the statistics as well. Religion is essentially about two purely existential things – the need to make a living, and the need to be consoled in the face of enormous difficulty. 

Religious institutions today are full-blown socio-economic systems from which many derive sustenance and ‘‘senses of identity/belonging’’.

Leaving aside even the clergy themselves – who live ON religion – armies of ushers, accountants, builders, teachers etc owe their employment very directly to churches and mosques or to projects undertaken for religious purposes. 

Add to that list, throngs of singers (choristers & gospel recording artistes) and legions of religious authors with lucrative book deals, etc – and you’ve set the stage for assured safeguarding of self-interest. (I’m yet to see one Christian author or gospel musician who gives their music or books away for free, as a “sacrifice” to the Lord.) 

Such beneficiaries therefore, unconsciously or otherwise, develop a vested interest in the continuity of their given faith, even when the theology preached means not a whiff or twopence to them – because through the faiths’ practice, they can and do manage to make ends meet. 

All institutions perpetuate themselves through the creation of economic necessity, and religions are no different. Once you make it possible for a man to earn his meat through the defense and propagation of a particular idea or program, then that man is very likely to promote that idea as if his very life depended on it – for very often, it does.

The need becomes infinitely more critical in economies where few other opportunities exist for sustenance, and people need to secure some kind of “hustle” to keep alive – in this context, religious leadership becomes a hustle of sorts.

One statement from popular culture comes to mind at this point – in Sergio Leone’s 1996 adventure film The Good, The Bad & The Ugly; a mischievous, thieving character named Tuco confronted his self-righteous & condemnatory priest of a brother with the clincher, “Look brother, stop telling me about how evil I am. Where we came from, a man had only two ways to escape the biting poverty of our ancestors – he either became a priest, or a thief. You chose your way and I, mine. Mine (thieving) was harder.”

 

This is no different from government employees who, fully aware of the uselessness of government programs and interventions, still support and champion them – because, otherwise without these vacuous projects, the employees in question wouldn’t be able to earn a living for themselves and those who rely on them. 

Isn’t this why, by extension, nearly all pastors and priests and Imams are men? 

Because, being the traditional family heads and thus ‘bread winners’, these religious leaders each need to make a living in some way for their wives and little children back home, and if lying or thieving or murdering is the way to do so, then so be it. And I must emphasize that Judeo-Christian and Islamic theology have naught to do with this arrangement, because patriarchy and male-helmsmanship were universal and present across many pre-Christian and pre-Muhammedan societies. 

Secondly – statistics reveal that the oppressed are more likely to be committed to religion than anyone else, for the purpose of illusory consolation as argued before. This is why disproportionately more women, white or black, are present in religion than men. And similarly, taking males alone – more non-white men are to be found present and active in religion than white men, in general.

What would it take for you to reconsider the Christian Worldview?

For starters, and without meaning to be racialist – white Europe (the modern-day vanguard of Christianity) should humble itself and accept that, to begin with, it has sold so many cultural lies to the world, the foremost and most pernicious of which perhaps, is whitewashed Christianity.

The concept that God’s chosen nation – was a white nation, has been so successful in entrenching white supremacy over the earth.

In consequence of course, when God decided to send mankind a messiah – this messiah had to be necessarily white, since he was obviously descended from white ancestors.

Since Christianity further teaches that man is created in God’s image – it’s not hard to see how God himself becomes, in the mind of the sincere black Christian, a white man with a long white beard and hair that grows straight instead of curly.

The psychological ascendancy this gives to white people cannot even begin to be appropriately emphasized – while simultaneously sapping the confidence and racial dignity of non-white peoples.

Logic and genetic research dictate that that first human couple could only have been black – yet Christians seem tacitly agreed that Adam and Eve were white people.

I don’t think white Europe can ever beat a retreat from this position, because it would signify the beginning of the end for white supremacy in all other segments of global engagement – politics, economy, culture. 

My asseveration isn’t that there’s a total conspiracy among all white people to dominate the world, but that the political systems and persons who stage-manage European politics are very deliberate about entrenching white supremacy.

Your random, run-of-the-mill American student on internship in an African NGO, while not a mastermind of such background political scheming, will eventually, albeit cluelessly, benefit from the supremacy. 

Some of these blatant untruths have to be revisited – then we can probably start to have a conversation about the best way to make sense of these short, intermittent lives we have here on earth – and which, chances are, the only ones we’ll ever have.

***

I’d like to say that in my final assessment – religion is essentially a moral language. 

It is nothing more than a system of social linguistics we have devised to regulate our interpersonal (or inter-primate) dealings and transactions.

  

But as our social and historical record clearly reveals, this language has failed us abysmally. 

It’s high time we began to have not just a different moral conversation, but also strive to develop a new language altogether in which to have this social and cultural exchange that is the bedrock of human progress.

4th/April/2017

END