A COLOURFUL parade up Edinburgh’s Royal Mile is to be held to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of one of Scotland’s greatest thinkers.

Hundreds of people are expected to take part in The March to Enlightenment, from the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood to the striking statue of David Hume opposite St Giles’ Cathedral.

It is the first major public event to be announced in recognition of the tercentenary of Hume’s birth and his legacy as a groundbreaking philosopher, famous for questioning everything and seeking to explain the world without a God.

Organisers hoped it will raise awareness of the man reputed to be Edinburgh’s “founding father of the Enlightenment” – and a hugely influential thinker in politics, history, religion and literary and aesthetic theory.

…

The event on Saturday, 23 April, three days before Hume’s birthday, is being organised by the Humanist Society of Scotland, which led the campaign to have the Hume statue, created by sculptor Sandy Stoddart on the Royal Mile, outside the High Court, in 1997. The university is organising a number of Hume tercentenary events, including lectures, a conference and a party on his actual birthday.

Full article: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/David-Hume-Striding-out-for.6683643.jp

• More on David Hume at Humanist Heritage
• Humanist Society of Scotland

The Economist reviews A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment, by Philipp Blom.

ATHEISM is a hot topic. In recent years writers from Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett to Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris have penned popular tracts advancing the cause of godlessness. But, as the Bible reminds us, there is nothing new under the sun. Philipp Blom’s latest book tells the story of a set of remarkable individuals on the radical fringes of the 18th-century European Enlightenment, whose determinedly atheistic and materialist philosophies denied the existence of God or the soul. Echoing ancient thinkers such as Democritus and Lucretius, they held ideas that were to prove too revolutionary even for a revolutionary age.

It is the story of the scandalous Paris salon run by Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach, a philosophical playground for many of the greatest thinkers of the age. Its members included Denis Diderot (most famous as the editor of the original encyclopedia, but, Mr Blom argues, an important thinker in his own right), Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the father of romanticism, and the baron himself; even David Hume, a famous Scottish empiricist, paid the occasional visit.

A philosophy grew up around the baron’s generously stocked table that denied religious revelation and shunned Christian morality, embracing instead the primal passions (the fundamental motives, said the philosophes, for human behaviour) and cool reason (which could direct the passions, but never stand against them). They dreamt of a Utopia built on pleasure-seeking, rationality and empathy. Their ideal nation would leave no room for what they saw as the twisted ethical code of Christianity, which they argued prized suffering and destructive self-repression.

Continues: http://www.economist.com/node/17358838

Sir David Blatherwick OBE discusses the poetic good life espoused by Titus Lucretius Carus.

Lucretius

The Roman poet Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) was a Roman contemporary of Julius Caesar who wrote a long poem which he called De Rerum Natura (“On the Nature of Things”). Little is known of him apart from his name and his poem, which nevertheless reveals much about his beliefs and his character.

His poem expounds the atomic theory of Democritus and the moral philosophy of Epicurus – the latter a rather stern code which involves not the pursuit of pleasure (a modern corruption of Epicurus’ meaning) but what we would call living a good secular life. His purpose is a moral one: to demonstrate that religion, superstition and other irrational beliefs have no place in a scientifically explicable universe; and in this universe gods (if they exist – and we have no way of knowing whether they do) have no part in human affairs. He argues that the soul does not exist and that there can be no life after death. Fears of an afterlife or divine displeasure are, he maintains, illusory and to live in dread of them is unnecessary and harmful. In the original Latin hexameter, ”Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” (“So potent was religion in impelling to evil”).

Given such a theme, one might expect his poem to be dry and joyless. But it is not. He puts the case for a humane rationalism, and against religious or ideological dogma, with immense logical skill and passion. His poem displays a love of life, knowledge of the natural world and an awareness of man’s place in the universe as a whole. The world about us, whether it be the stars or the animals in the fields, is to him the real miracle.

In many ways Lucretius is one of the very first Enlightenment Men. He would have loathed Christian bigotry, al-Qaida or any other contemporary religious nut, but would have advocated arguing with them rather than shooting them. We need more like him today.

This post is part of a series written by members, friends and Distinguished Supporters of the British Humanist Association about their own “humanist heroes”.

You can find out more at www.humanism.org.uk/humanism/humanist-tradition/heroes

The diplomat Sir David Blatherwick OBE was ambassador to the United Nations (1986-9), Ireland (1991-5) and Egypt (1995-9). He was the joint-Chair of Anglo-Irish Encounter from 1992-8, and has been Chair of the Egyptian British Chamber of Commerce since 1999 and a trustee of the British University in Egypt since 2005. He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association.

The RSA [Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce] has a new strapline: “21st century enlightenment”.  This acknowledges our origins in the coffeehouses of 18th century London and the pioneering spirit of our founders, who were convinced of humanity’s capacity for principled progress.

The RSA’s challenge now is to revive and reimagine the sprit of the enlightenment for our 21st century context. But can we even agree on the core values of the original enlightenment?

There may be general consensus around ideas such as reason, progress, and liberty, which many would agree have shaped the world we live in today – and indeed our very sense of what it means to be human.  But the very phrase “enlightenment values” still has the potential to open up a firestorm of political and social debate.

The RSA brings together a panel of philosophical thinkers and writers to debate the importance of enlightenment values today. Which ideas should be salvaged, and championed anew? And which should be rejected or reimagined in the light of the challenges and opportunities of today’s globally interconnected world?

Speakers to include: Nigel Warburton, writer and philosopher; Robert Rowland Smith, lecturer, writer and philosopher; John Keane, professor of politics, University of Sydney.

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA.

http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/do-we-still-need-enlightenment-values

You can listen to the event live from 12.50pm at http://www.thersa.org/events/listen-live

Nigel Warburton will also be appearing at the British Humanist Association  summer day conference on Humanism, Philosophy and the Arts on the 26th June.

The Enlightenment, or at least a certain version of it, has enjoyed something of a revival in recent years, as irate newspaper columnists seek to cast themselves as modern-day Voltaires, defending the values of a secular west besieged by forces of irrationality and fundamentalism. In this short book, Tzvetan Todorov, the prolific Franco-Bulgarian humanist philosopher, seeks to complicate this picture by demonstrating that “the Enlightenment”, both then and now, is far from a straightforward set of ideas that, for example, characterise the superior achievements of Europe, as some would have it. At the same, time, though, he is keen to protect this complex legacy in the name of an “interminable” project that will seek to define and defend various dimensions of an Enlightenment approach to the whole: autonomy, secularism, truth, humanity and universality.

It is Todorov’s moral and intellectual concern with “humanity” above all that shapes his retelling of the narrative of the Enlightenment project. The Enlightenment was, he writes, the point at which “for the first time in history, human beings decided to take their destiny into their own hands, and to set the welfare of humanity as the ultimate goal of their acts.” Todorov’s “defence” is therefore conducted in the name of a holism that would see any attempts at a one-sided Enlightenment as a perversion of its well-rounded principles. He has far more liking for Rousseau in all his complexity than for the rather more aggressively atheistic, urbane philosophes who would rush to condemn those deemed to be “irrational”. Where certain elements of the Enlightenment have been taken up and defended with a fanaticism that the project as a whole was supposed to undermine, Todorov quite rightly sees only perversion and danger. He has particularly harsh words to say about scientism, holding the desire to attempt to master the laws of the world to be impossible, due, in part, to the human drive to resist being determined by any such totalising system.

http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=1264

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

Andrew West discovers that the history of discovery is more complicated than you think.

I spent the first few months of 2009 travelling around humanist groups and asking their members one question: ‘what are you happy about?’. I was collecting answers for a book, and I quickly hit a snag: people kept giving the same response. It seems that many, many humanists are happy about the joys of the world, the thrill of experience and the fact of their very existence – in short, the wonder of life. Which is a lovely thing. Somewhat problematic for me, but buoying nonetheless.

The sentiment was so prevalent that it’s tempting to wonder whether it’s a rare (unique?) point of agreement among self-described humanists. I started asking for more details, and found a surprising level of agreement on the inspiration for said wonder. Biology was a common source of delight, as were cosmology and quantum physics. Others waxed lyrical on the power of the arts, or the pure elegance of mathematics. But science was by far the most popular.

It’s clear that many humanists see science and wonder as two sides of the same coin, but the concepts have a fractious relationship. During the 19th century the Romantic movement declared that rational thought in fact stifles wonder and dulls the artistic spirit. A deeper understanding of the world, they said, could only be found through feeling and emotion: insight comes from wonder, never the reverse. Such ideas continue to this day. How often do we hear cultural commentators – and religious apologists – decrying science for destroying mystery? It’s reductionist, we’re told, mechanistic and soul-destroying. Wonder, it seems, lies in the nebulous unknown, and the truth is grey in comparison.

Of course, scientists did, and do, object. Richards Feynman and Dawkins have produced whole books countering this anti-science sentiment, and Carl Sagan was a walking counter-example who devoted his life to spreading the pro-science-and-wonder  message. But the old clichés still have traction, and so once more unto the breach steps Richard Holmes’ The Age of Wonder, a hugely ambitious book that argues for scientific/Romantic union by detailing what the author calls ‘the second Enlightenment’, during which science and wonder were as one.

For a brief period – the author says about 60 years over the turn of the 19th century – the wonder so craved by later Romantics was supplied in spades by scientific investigation, and everybody knew it. The poets of the age revelled in the advances coming out of the Royal Society. Nature was still a goddess, and every new discovery of her intricacies provided yet more evidence of her beauty and power. Before the Romantics appropriated and redefined nature as a virginal, innocent female, regularly abused and violated by science (terms of sexual violence are often used, which is vile), a vanguard of intellectual pioneers brought about a flourishing of scientific excitement in a society eager for discovery. The Age of Wonder charts this period, starting in about 1770 with Captain Cook’s first round-the-world expedition, which took a young Joseph Banks to Tahiti.

The future head of the Royal Society had all manner of grand and lascivious adventures in the Pacific – including plenty of time spent negotiating the release of the hostages that  Captain Cook was prone to taking at the slightest provocation (this turned out not to be the best strategy, long-term). Banks then  returned to London to settle  down to a life as the lynchpin for the rest of the book. As various scientists, explorers and adventurers attract Joseph Banks’ interest, so too do we hear their life stories. They are fascinating characters, quickly dispelling any stereotypes of post-Enlightenment scientists all being a bit like Newton – i.e. grumpy, stuffy and old – and it’s through their stories that the strengths of the book shine through, as the lives of these 18th century tinkerers provide myriad insights into the nature of philosophical and scientific progress.

Astronomer William Herschel, for example, shows how even careful note-keeping and objective analysis is vulnerable to the social pressures of the scientific community. His discovery of Uranus was a combination of luck (he happened to look, possibly randomly, in the right place) and his ability to sight-read the sky and immediately recognise that something was different. This excitement at something new (probably a comet, but you never know) became more intense over a few days as he watched the object’s progress and could see no sign of a comet-like tail. We see this long process in his notes, but then find that over the years he crystallised the tale in the telling, down to one grand moment of realisation, probably because the ‘eureka’ trope was a scientific merit badge at the time. This doesn’t diminish the achievement, but it demonstrates how the pressure to conform to a narrative can subtly undermine the realities of the scientific reportage.

And that’s maybe three pages of the book. And it’s a big book.

It’s full of insights, many of which are the result of Richard Holmes’ digging into the personal lives of his subjects. As interesting as Herschel’s discoveries is his relationship with his brilliant sister Caroline – my personal hero of the book. Her astronomical note-keeping, intellectual prowess and tireless devotion allowed her brother to work on the exciting stuff, while she watched and learned, eventually becoming quite the comet-hunter. Her quiet ascendancy reveals much about the sexism of the age, which turns out to be more complex than commonly portrayed: some scientists fought hard for the rights of women, sometimes in public, sometimes behind closed doors.

In fact, a major underlying theme of the book is ‘I think you’ll find it’s a little more complicated than that’. All good histories complicate, and here we get a frank and honest look at the characters as people, rather than just names associated with their most famous achievement. William Herschel’s discoveries are a matter of record – Uranus, comets, the size of the universe – but here we’re also told of his colossal mistakes (life on the moon, for example). Joseph Banks had a surprisingly liberal approach to other cultures, treating the Taihitians with dignity and respect; except – just occasionally – he didn’t. Humphrey Davy was a genius of his time, and knew it, but always had one eye on his legacy – as a result some people liked him, while others really didn’t. In theory none of this should come as any great surprise, but it’s refreshing to see a scientific history with this kind of anti-conclusive analysis. Was Humphrey Davy somebody you’d want to have a drink with? It’s just a little more complicated than that.

Similarly complex is the overall theme of the interplay between science and wonder. Richard Holmes leads us into this topic by examining his subjects’ artistic sides: many of the book’s stars were poets as well as scientists, and their verses are frequently analysed and compared to the writings of well-known non-scientist poets. They turn out to be remarkably similar, with scientific discovery clearly informing the poetry of the era. But over time we see cracks appearing, and view hints of the impending Romantic secession. But – as you’d expect by now – this process was more muddled than the usual reports suggest, and there’s actually an unexpected defence of the Romantic poets. Keats, Wordsworth etc. do at times display an ironic lack of imagination regarding the nature of discovery, but there are other occasions when the reverse is true. Keats says Newton has ‘removed all the poetry from the rainbow, by reducing it to a prism’, but also writes beautifully of William Hershel’s joy at discovering a new planet. It’s a curious contradiction, and one the book has difficulty resolving.

Indeed, you can sometimes sense Richard Holmes’ frustration at the artistic naysayers, and this is deliberate – he’s trying to investigate and understand, not just present objective facts. At one point he speculates on the reasons Keats can’t admit that Newton ‘increased the potential “poetry of the rainbow”, by showing it was not merely some supernatural skywriting’, and it’s hard not to sympathise with the italics. The writing style throughout is this kind of open, direct communication with the reader, and the book is very much the author telling a story – he’s always popping up in footnotes and asides, acting as the infectiously enthusiastic tour guide. He’s rigorous, too: if he makes an original claim, he tells you its basis; if something is interesting but probably hearsay, it’s clearly marked. He’s not afraid to drop into ‘I went to…’ to provide context, nor to hide his interest in particular topics. It feels like a friend leading you through their favourite tales, and the threads that spin away from them, and as a result the book has a very pleasant atmosphere, without agenda or affectation.

The amount of research is staggering. As mentioned, it’s a large book, but there’s no filler. At times you can feel the pressure of relevant background detail trying to impinge upon the story, as tangents spin off into entire pages, but it’s all coherent enough that the main threads are never diluted – until the end. As the book acknowledges in its epilogue, any wide assessment of scientific history faces the problem of ending. Every discovery, theory and technology feeds into everything else, and so there are no obvious jumping-off points. As a result the book tries to wind down, but can’t help leaving various unanswered topics. This is a fitting metaphor for its subject matter – science is always messy, unfinished and awaiting the results of grand experiments just around the corner. It has to be.

The Age of Wonder covers a lot of ground, and succeeds in demonstrating that the intertwining of science and a sense of wonder is inherent, and undeniably positive. The scientists of the age were agog at the universe, and this fed directly into their work. Wonder engenders exploration, creativity, personal happiness and even positive social change. The period covered by the book saw science come into its own as a vital endeavour outside of intellectual circles: when Humphrey Davy developed the first safe miner’s lamp, saving thousands over the coming decades, it was one of the first, demonstrable applications of scientific thought to the improvement of people’s lives. What had previously been interesting but abstract – Newton separating light, for example – became useful and spectacularly beneficial. This was due in no small part to the frisson of excitement that Davy felt with every experiment. That the Romantics, and their modern-day equivalents, would fail to see the grandeur of such an enterprise is, by the end of the book, baffling. And more than a little sad.

Richard Holmes’ book comes during a renaissance in scientific writing. Popular Science books have exploded in recent years, and the shelves are full of clear, fun, fascinating books on all manner of previously inaccessible topics. The Age of Wonder is a great example of applying the same approach to history, and it would be lovely to see it kickstart a genre. It’s crammed with philosophy, adventure, science, politics, plus some genuinely exciting scenes (the chapter on the first balloonists is properly page-turning), and while it doesn’t come to any solid conclusions on the hostility of the Romantic movement, it forms a compelling argument that the split is nonsensical. It is an ode to a sublime endeavour, and I highly recommended it to every humanist I know.

Andrew West is a part-time photography student and official photographer of the British Humanist Association.

The New Humanist magazine website features a full transcript of a discussion between Anthony Grayling and Tzvetan Todorov in London, December 2009 on the Enlightenment.

When we heard that Tzvetan Todorov, author of In Defence of the Enlightenment, was coming to London we couldn’t resist getting him together with our very own contemporary philosophe, AC Grayling, to discuss the new book and the legacy of the great 18th-century republic of letters. An edited version of the interview appears in the January/February 2010 issue of New Humanist, but here we publish the full, unedited conversation between two of Europe’s leading philosophers.

http://newhumanist.org.uk/2206/how-to-defend-the-enlightenment

Leo Igwe speaking on Nigerian caste discrimination at the IHEU "Untouchability" conference, Conway Hall, June 2009

As executive director of the Nigerian Humanist Movement, representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) in West Africa and director of Centre for Inquiry Nigeria, Leo Igwe has often suffered for his tireless, humanist commitment to justice and the value of human life.

In 2009 he was assaulted by witch-hunters at an anti-witchcraft conference he organised, and then sued by the very church behind the attacks. (See a video of the “protest” against the conference. Note that most of the delegates remain calm and seated for some time while the church members riot through the building.)

Today, allegedly due to his calls for justice in the case of a man accused of raping a 10-year-old girl, Leo and his father have been arrested, purportedly in connection with a murder. According to a friendly local source:

Leo Igwe and his family have known no peace as several pettitions have been witten against them to intimidate them to submission and to abandon the struggle for justice. This latest one, they have been accused them of mudering an idividual who doctors provided a death certificate saying the man died of HIV and AIDS complication.

When the Calabar anti-witchcraft conference was invaded by members of Helen Ukpabio’s Liberty Foundation Gospel church in July last year, Josh Kutchinsky, a Trustee of the British Humanist Association, said, “Leo is a dear friend. He is knowledgeable, wise and courageous. … His intervention in individual cases of injustice, no doubt involve some personal risk.” Now, Leo’s friends and family locally fear that he and his father risk being tortured or murdered in police custody for their role in seeking for justice for the alleged rape victim, Ms Daberechi Anongam.

As well as organising and speaking at conferences on issues like witchcraft, Sharia and women’s rights, Leo has also worked with Amnesty International and Stepping Stones Nigeria. He writes and publishes on issues which, in the context of an often corrupt legal system and a culture saturated by ‘traditional’ values, are deemed controversial to the point of heresy. But he does not court danger for the sake of it. Here we collect some extracts from the writing of Leo Igwe which express principled stances on a number of issues. Even those who are conservative or ‘traditional’ enough to disagree with any of his sentiments must surely see that Leo’s position comes from a place of passionate concern for the well-being and flourishing of human life.

From Traditional African Practices and Islam:

Like the traditional African value system, most traditional African practices are fundamentally biased against women and gender-insensitive. Little wonder, then, it is upheld as a traditional practice in many parts of Africa for girls as young as seven to be married to men old enough to be their fathers, and in some cases, grandfathers.

…

The practice of female genital mutilation (fgm)-otherwise known as female circumcision-prevails as a tradition in Africa. This process entails the partial or total cutting away of the external female genitalia. Traditional healers, birth attendants, or elderly women usually carry out the practice. The procedure is often carried out in a septic environment with crude instruments such as knives, razor blades, and broken glasses, without anesthetics, or, at best, herbal medication to check bleeding and lessen pain. This crude and hazardous procedure is grounded in and surrounded by various myths, misconceptions, and superstitious nonsense. For instance, the ritual is performed as a rite of passage, for preparing young girls for womanhood and marriage. Many also believe that it prevents a woman from giving birth to a stillborn child. In some parts of western Nigeria, it is regarded as a taboo for the head of the child to touch the mother’s clitoris during delivery.

…

As a religious norm, Muslim women and girls are subjected to various forms of victimization and discrimination. They are not allowed to move about unveiled, nor are they allowed to vote, hold public office, or have social, political, or economic power. They are not given the freedom to choose their marriage partners. Their parents betroth them to the Mallams and the Alhajis in order to cultivate friendship, and to extend and cement bonds between families. For instance, in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria, child marriages and arranged marriages are still commonplace. Consequently, the dreadful disease called vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) is widespread and endemic.

…

One of the most interesting and challenging experiences I have had as a humanist in the past couple of years has been trying to persuade my people to abandon these horrible and primitive customs. I have tried to persuade them to see the need for progress and improvement in our attitudes, value and society. We must openly examine the traditions we have held and accepted as sacrosanct. Many of these traditions are founded on traditional dogma, ignorance, and superstition.

From Towards a New Enlightenment:

So, for Europe, the 18th Century “Age of Light” was a true Enlightenment. But for Africa, it was not. Because, while Europe was glowing with the light of reason and science, Africa was groaning under the burden of European slavery, tyranny and imperialism. It could be rightly said that the European Enlightenment caused darkness in Africa. It dislodged Christian theocracy and expelled to the black continent the forces of unreason and superstition.

European Christian Missionaries invaded Africa in search of “believers” in what they self-styled a civilising mission “La mission civilatrice”. And European merchants thronged the continent in search of raw material to feed the industrial revolution. In actual fact, what Europe rejected and abandoned to get ‘enlightened’ was forced and foisted on Africans as a civilising or enlightening matrix.

As if that was not enough, as Christian crusaders were ravaging the continent, Arab jihadists were fighting, raiding, enslaving and killing their way to enlighten Africans on the basis of Islam and the Arab culture.

…

The real tragedy is not that Europeans and Arabs infiltrated and darkened the continent with their cultural myths and superstitions. After all, Africa has its own traditional myths and taboos, which have also undermined the process of African enlightenment and emancipation. But that Africans have at the end of the day – blindly embraced these alien dogmas and misconceptions at the expense of social peace, intellectual growth, moral progress, truth and originality.

…

In Nigeria, thousands of people have lost their lives to religious riots, and clashes since independence. Muslim fundamentalists have foisted Sharia law on the Islamic majority states in the North. Throughout the continent, religious fanatics are prosecuting an inquisition. They oppose the legalisaion of abortion and gay marriage, the abolition of the death penalty, female genital mutilation, child marriage and homophobia.

On The Osu Caste System:

Traditionally, there are two classes of people in Igboland – the Nwadiala and the Osu. The Nwadiala literally meaning ‘sons of the soil’ are the freeborn. They are the masters. While the Osu are the slaves, the strangers, the outcasts and the untouchables. Chinua Achebe in his well-known book, No Longer At Ease asks: What is this thing called Osu? He answers: “Our fathers in their darkness and ignorance called an innocent man Osu, a thing given to the idols, and thereafter he became an outcast, and his children, and his children’s children forever” The Osu are treated as inferior human beings in a state of permanent and irreversible disability. They are subjected to various forms of abuse and discrimination. The Osu are made to live separately from the freeborn. In most cases they reside very close to shrines and marketplaces. The Osu are not allowed to dance, drink, hold hands, associate or have sexual relations with Nwadiala. They are not allowed to break kola nuts at meetings. No Osu can pour libation or pray to God on behalf of a freeborn at any community gathering. It is believed that such prayers will bring calamity and misfortune.

On Sharia and Human Rights in Nigeria:

Indeed, the blood of “unbelievers”, the oppression of the poor, the exploitation of the weak and ignorant, the discrimination against women, the persecution of sexual minorities and the abuse of children have watered the tree of Islam in Northern Nigeria. And today, Sharia has become a potent tool in the hands of Islamic Jihadists for human rights violation, oppression and exploitation in the name of Allah.Sharia has become a weapon for islamic inquisition in Nigeria. There are no women among the Sharia court judges. Sharia does not recognize the rights of all individuals to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. It has no place for equal rights of all human beings regardless of religion or belief. Sharia accords second-class status to non-Muslims. Some Sharia States in Nigeria have carried out amputations, and have flogged convicted offenders including Christians. Some years ago, international outcry saved the lives of Safiatu Hussein and Amina Lawal who were sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. Many people convicted under Sharia law- to be stoned or amputated – are languishing in jails across Northern Nigeria.

On “witchcraft” and Child Rights in Nigeria:

Child witchcraft is the superstitious belief that children can be witches and wizards or that infants can or do magically turn themselves into birds or insects to suck blood or mysteriously inflict harm. It is the belief that children have evil powers which they use or can use to destroy people, particularly their family or neighbours.

The effects of accusations of witchcraft on children take three forms: accusation, confession and persecution.

Children are accused of being witches and wizards. They are blamed for whatever goes wrong in their families. This could be death, disease, business failure, accidents or childbirth difficulties. Children are accused of witchcraft at home by parents and family members; in churches by ignorant and unscrupulous pastors; at shrines by primitive-minded traditional medicine men or witch doctors; or on the streets by mobs and gangs.

Children are forced to confess to being witches and wizards or to have taken part in witchcraft activities by family members or by mobs, in most cases through physical and mental torture.

Children alleged to be witches and wizards are persecuted through torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, which sometimes leads to their death. Such children are starved, chained, beaten, matcheted or even lynched. At the churches, pastors subject children alleged to be witches and wizards to torture in the name of exorcism. Witchdoctors force such children to drink potions (poison) or concoctions which can kill them or damage their health.

In Akwa Ibom State, superstition about child witchcraft is common and widespread. Most people in this state, as in other parts of Nigeria, believe that children can indeed be witches and wizards or that children can take part in witchcraft activities.

On The Need for Skepticism in Nigeria:

Nigeria is a very religious country with most of its population mired in superstition. This is not limited to the illiterate rural folks but is also applicable to the urban elite and literati. In Nigeria there is a strong and widespread belief in juju and charms, witchcraft, ghosts, astrology, divination, reincarnation, miracles, private revelation, fortunetelling, etc. These beliefs are fostered and reinforced by the many prophets and prophetesses, gurus, miracle workers, faith healers, and soothsayers that lurk in every nook and cranny of our cities and countryside.

These charlatans claim to have divine powers-the power to bilocate and predict the future, the ability to heal all diseases-even AIDS-and the power to make people rich or live longer.

All of this happens despite the fact that these beliefs and claims have not stood the test of time, science, and reason, and that contradictory evidence emerges every day. We have yet to see an organized and coordinated attempt to challenge and unmask these scientific pretensions and irrationalisms.

Instead, our schools, colleges, and universities as well as the local newspapers and film industry have continued to misinform the public by distorting science and packaging and presenting pseudoscientific beliefs as genuine science. In fact, some of our scholars have gone to the extent of defending these paranormal claims as “African Science,” taunting skeptics as Western apologists.

…

There is an urgent need to raise the level of critical thinking, scientific literacy, and understanding. African skeptics must see this as their primary responsibility. African skeptics must rise up to this great challenge now because all that is needed for superstition to thrive and triumph is for skeptics to do nothing.

Leo discusses the conference attack:

They then said the camera had broken and all of them pounced on me and started hitting me on the head and back. They snatched my bag containing my digital camera, conference papers and some cash. They smashed my glasses and made away with my mobile phone. Some friends who tried to rescue me from the mob were also beaten. The mob left with some of our conference banners and some anti-witchcraft T-shirts and caps, which we gave to participants.

For more on the work of Leo and the Nigerian Humanist Movement see IHEU’s articles on Nigeria.

You can also listen to Leo on the BBC World Service last year talking about the way that ‘tradition’ holds back the development of Africa.

Recently on his blog at culturekitchen.com, Leo speaks in broad terms about the many ways Africans are dying.

Africans are dying because most people in Africa are living false lives. People are afraid of being themselves, of living their own lives, and of asserting their own uniqueness and originality. Many people are living under illusions and deceptions. The real tragedy is that over the years, these lies and illusions have been institionalized and normalized to the extent that no one dares change them or challenge them. They have become a way of life.

When Leo spoke to the Central London Humanist Group in the summer, he seemed oddly cheerful, until Josh Kutchinsky, a long-time friend of Leo’s and chairing the discussion that evening, pointed out that Leo laughs in inverse proportion to the seriousness of what he is talking about. It’s not a cruel laugh, or a carefree laugh, of course. It’s like a bubble – his sense of the ridiculousness of it all – escaping from the boiling pot of his rational distaste for ignorance and injustice. Leo acknowledged the idiosyncrasy of his laughing in all the wrong places, and from that point on his delivery became more understandable, as well as more tragic. Because Leo laughs a lot when discussing the abuses and betrayals of Africans by Africans.

It’s the only defence mechanism of a man challenging all the “lies and illusions” in a country blood-drenched in prejudice and superstition.

Bob Churchill is Head of Membership and Promotion at the British Humanist Association