How high can we regard religion?

There is a difference between religious faith and scientific knowledge: Knowledge can be proven, faith cannot. This is what even metropolitan Filaret of Moscow wrote in his catechism of the Russian-Orthodox Church: “Knowledge has for its object things visible and comprehensible; faith, things which are invisible, and even incomprehensible.”¹ This creates a dualism of idealism and materialism: Idealism for the religion, materialism for the secular world. It reminds a bit of this quote from the Gospel of John: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”² This is dividing the world in a disjointed way into a materialist and an idealist part.

I am conscious that in Uganda religion is taken in high regard by the people. But as the Bible itself says, the crowd is not always correct³. On its stride to national modernization Uganda has to demystify religious dogmas just like getting rid of the fraud by witch doctors based in rural superstition.

Atatürk said in his long speech “Nutuk”: “So long as the sentiments and knowledge of mankind with regard to religious questions are not yet freed from myths and purified in the light of true science, we shall find historians everywhere who play a religious comedy.”⁴ As it is well known, Atatürk secularized Turkey and pushed back Islam into being a private matter. Also Uganda would do well with putting less stress on religion and more stress on scientific education.

The Bible contains certain views that keep people away from learning about science. The New Testament is very hostile towards philosophy for example. Paul writes:

“Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.”⁵

This hatred towards philosophy is obviously rooted in the historical conditions the epistles of the New Testament were written: In the Hellenistic (Greek) world of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The Greeks were known for their interest in early scientific research. The Western tradition of science has its roots in Greek philosophy. Paul hated the Greeks for this. Therefore he wrote:

“For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom.”⁶

And by that Paul stands in a clear contradiction not only to scientific knowledge but also to the Old Testament. The Old Testament saw wisdom positively:

“Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”⁷

“How much better to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.”⁸

Paul is contradicting the Old Testament and a speedbump to develop a critical, scientific world outlook. This had consequences for centuries in combination with certain stories in the Bible.

According to the Book Joshua, God commanded the sun and moon to stand still⁹. This is obviously nonsense from a scientific point of view, just like the claim in the Quran that the “moon split in two”¹⁰. The biblical view was taken as a dogma of the Catholic Church, so that the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei was repressed in the 17th century; in Islam it is up until today dogma that the “moon split in two”. Upholding such views is wrong and prevents mankind from progressing. Galileo Galilei wrote in a letter: “I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”¹¹ This is what we should say into the faces of those religious dogmatists who refuse to accept scientific truth. When God gave us humans senses, then he can only have given them to us to recognize the world instead of denying it.

Paul asked: “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?”¹² In reality only Paul made a fool of himself in the bright light of a scientific world outlook. Nobody could seriously say today that the sun would turn around the world, like the Book of Joshua is indicating.

Islam offers more anti-scientific views, especially regarding medicine. Camel urine is seen as a “medicine”¹³, though being obviously unhygienic and therefore unhealthy for humans. Illnesses are not seen as the result of bacteria, viruses or parasites, but instead of metaphysical causes. Fever is claimed to be “from the heat of hell”¹⁴. From a scientific perspective these “wisdoms” of Islam can only be laughed at. They are not better than the traditional African superstition upheld by witch doctors.

Islam is worse than Christianity keeping scientific development behind because in a Hadith it is said: “Controverting about the Quran is disbelief.”¹⁵ Criticizing errors in faith is equated to disbelief. And what happens to disbelievers in Islam? They are ordered to be killed! “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.”¹⁶ – That is said in a Hadith. Islam is like the mafia – you cannot leave it alive. Is this what people in a democratic society should believe in? Certainly not! Silencing justified criticism is never a suitable mean.

Religion plays an important role in shaping culture and is helping to unify the mindset of the broad masses of people. The benefit of Christianity is to unite people over the limited borders of tribalism and narrow religious egoism like in Islam. Still, no religion can be proven in the first place. It is therefore unreliable. The First Epistle of John: “No one has seen God at any time.”¹⁷ The Quran says the same¹⁸. Nobody is able to get into contact with Allah directly according to the Quran:

“It is not possible for a human being to have Allah communicate with them, except through inspiration, or from behind a veil, or by sending a messenger-angel to reveal whatever He wills by His permission.”¹⁹

Even in the Gospel of John Jesus says:

“No one comes to the Father except through Me.”²⁰

So direct contact to God is impossible. It is the common excuse, why it is impossible to interview God. How could Christianity and Islam therefore be ever proven from a scientific point of view? They have their excuses to keep God “behind a veil”. “No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.”²¹ This answer is pretty dissatisfying.

The Epistle to the Hebrews says: “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”²² So a believer has to believe that God exists and gets during his lifetime no assurance. This is a bet into the future, a future beyond the future as a human being. It also shows that good people, who are not believing in God, are excluded. Jesus spoke about the Good Samaritan, who loved his neighbor, despite being seen as an “infidel” by the Jews²³. By the logic of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Good Samaritan would be unable to please God despite doing what he commanded. Contradicting to it the First Epistle of John says: “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”²⁴ So there is the question if doing the will of God, though not being a believer, is good enough or not. The issue is similar inside the Christian faith. Paul says: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”²⁵ But James says: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”²⁶ These contradictions create a basis for the denominational divisions among Christians and nobody can claim to have the “divine truth” because the Bible, that claims to manifest it, is filled with such contradictions.

What should we therefore do in regard to religion? We should respect to a certain degree that religious ideas exist among the masses, but at the same time we should spread scientific knowledge and debunk religious myths wherever they harm the progress of society and science. We should therefore also spread knowledge about the history of the religions in Uganda, be it Christianity (and especially its denominations Catholicism and Anglicanism!), Islam or traditional faiths. They must be viewed in their historical context to be thoroughly understood and therefore to undermine their not real existing “holiness”.

Religious people should not be excluded from the communist party. Lenin stated: “Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.”²⁷ But he also said: “Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication of the appropriate scientific literature.”²⁸ The communist party is a secular party. Secularism means to not recognize the validity of religion, though not banning it. From a scientific point of view religions are just based on human-made ideas; indifferent which it might be, they are all unproven. If a religion could be proven, it would cease to be faith and start to be knowledge.

Our goal should therefore be to keep the cultural aspects of religions while secularizing them, to decrease their negative sides and boost a scientific world outlook among the people based on knowledge about natural sciences and the Marxist-Leninist ideological outlook to guide our society!