The clash between the religious folks and atheists
in Kenya is gaining momentum. Each side has done much to discredit the other,
and a little digging on the internet can give you a clear picture of who has
the numbers, and who has the truth. Yes! I'm being biased here because I belong
to one side. However, I believe that this debate is headed in the wrong
direction and that events like "Godless Parenting" recently held by
Atheists In Kenya on September 24, 2016, aren't gonna cut it, and cannot shake the strong faith that
people have in the Supreme! Amen? Amen! Religious folks are still rooted in mind and spirit, and
atheists are just barking at the wrong tree!
I'm an atheist, and I think the atheist
community led by Harrison Mumia is doing a good job. However, I question the labelling
of their recent event dubbed Godless Parenting as a success because to me it
was a misappropriation of effort. The main reason being that the entire clash
between this country's religious and atheist communities is more like a cat
fight, characterized by a lot of misdirected blows. In my opinion, the atheist
community is adopting the same conceptual framework of argument as their
religious rivals. A framework that relies on platitudes and emphasizes external
influence, negating the concept of freethinking. The use of social media is primarily responsible for the former
because when you have a max of 140 characters, the use of quotes and inanities
becomes very convenient. Quotes are a good example of the ad populum fallacy at
work. You see one and think, "That's clever, must be true" then you
scroll down to the next Tweet. Jesus can become a cool, smart and witty guy,
while the Quran becomes a tolerant and honorable book. In most of these online
debates, context doesn't matter, and each side is guilty of being fallacious. It stops being about the children and more about their parents.
While I agree that parents play a significant
role in the development of a child, they cannot be trusted. Any atheist who
comes from a religious family can attest to this. So why emphasize on the same
kind of influence? Anyone can see the insistence on Godless Parenting is basically the same concept as Parenting with God. This cannot help us grow and mature
into a Freethinking society. Once the child begins to think and ask serious
questions, a parent is obligated to guide them and not impose their conclusions,
religious or otherwise. The best way to achieve this is by educating them, but
in Kenya, this raises another problem. Ngugi wa Thion'go explored the problems
of language and the internal harmony of the African child in Chapter 1 Section.
V of his book Decolonising the Mind. He explains how being educated in a
foreign language broke "the harmony previously existing between the
African child and the three aspects of language" (Thiong'o, p. 16). Ngugi
argues that foreign languages in schools alienated children from their world,
since foreign languages were the “real language of life” of elsewhere, and
could not reflect “the real life” native communities (Thiong'o, p. 16). What is
relevant to us here is harmony.
The problem of compromised harmony created by
our education that Ngugi pointed out thirty years ago persists today. The
result of this disharmony in language saw the birth of Sheng’, a language
comprised entirely of a vocabulary of foreign (mostly English), and native (mostly Swahili)
words, used to form new words unique to the language. In linguistics, such a
mixture is awesome, but if this haphazard amalgamation and reconciliation
happened with world views, the result would be a very messed society that
doesn’t know what to make of the Universe. One problem that would face children
of godless parents is the dilemma of choosing between the philosophy of their
home and that of school. It is here that godless parents become victims of the
same misgivings as their religious counterparts, imposing undue influence on
the fragile minds of their children.
Religious Education is compulsory in all
Kenyan primary schools. Everyone who studied biology in High School knows that
“Special Creation” is taught as a valid scientific theory explaining the origin
of life. It still is, just pick up any Form Four biology book. The result is a society that cannot distinguish the
difference between facts and fiction. Education’s role as an instrument to help
us find the truth becomes problematic. Our society has no tool to
determine which interpretation of the world is right. Since we only have one
earth and only one explanation is needed, young minds find it difficult to know
the difference between Evolution and Creationism, especially if school books
tell you both are true. The result is adults who don’t know what a scientific
theory is, and any interpretation of the world that is likeable is acceptable. Now
anyone with any respect for the truth knows that “Special Creation” is
bullshit, and teaching CRE/IRE isn’t teaching but preaching. To progress as a
society, we need to restore education to its true incorruptible form, where
nothing but the truth is given precedence. The presence of religious dogma,
both Christian and Islamic, in our education system is a hindrance to our growth
into a freethinking society. Freethinkers in this country need to turn their
attention to education, which has more influence on individual and collective
thinking. Instead of tackling issues such as parenting, an act parents demand an exclusive right to, atheists in Kenya should work to
ensure that all Kenyan children receive an education that teaches them how to
think critically, and accurately interpret the world around them. Getting rid
of religious education and anything dogmatic in the curriculum is the first
step in guaranteeing that children get to grow up as smart, thoughtful,
independent thinking individuals. The future of our country and our world is
dependent on that.
Work Cited
Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. Decolonising the Mind: The
Politics of Language in African Literature. Nairobi: East African
Educational Publishers, 1986. Print.
