Thursday, December 03, 2009

Why aren't Christians bothered about this?

In a somewhat surreal story today I learn that the Witchfinder-General of Nigeria, the odious head of the Liberty Gospel Church Helen Ukpabio is suing Humanist Leo Igwe for interfering with her "Christian" right to "deliver people from witchcraft" which translated means abuse the crap out of poor defenceless people (mostly children) and to fleece the gullible for as much cash as possible by flogging them your magic books, spells, charms and trinkets. The horrific details of what is happening there were exposed recently in a Channel 4 documentary called "Return to Africa's witch children" in which Christian Pastors were found to be denouncing children as witches and wizards and the children ended up being tortured and killed by their own families and communities.



Now I am no expert on the clearly complex [sic] mixed-up world of evangelical Christianity in Nigeria, far be it for a simpleton Atheist like me to comment on the deep theological underpinnings of "wizardry" but 2 questions spring into my mind about this,

1) Why does it take a humanist to stand up to these people, why isn't the money and influence of say the Roman Catholic or Anglican organisations being brought to bear down on these hucksters and murderers operating in the name of Christianity; or at least why aren't the mainstream Christian denominations moving in to stamp out harmful supernatural nonsense like this? Whilst I can see it's a bit tricky to convince someone that one kind of faith based thinking is better than another kind of faith based thinking, surely there are copyright issues at stake here at least?

2) When in the history of mankind, ever, has a supernatural con job (religiously inspired or not) like this turned out to be true? When have the swat teams ever dropped into a compound and ended up saying, actually, we did find 10 invisible golden plates instructing everyone to give all their money to a cross-dressing accountant called Dave. Why is it that supernatural events were so common in the past when people were mostly remote, uneducated, illiterate and poor and now, since the dawning of the age of recording devices like cameras, film and magnetic tape, no supernatural event has ever been shown to be anything other than a deliberate con or a mistake; and no, I'm not talking about that dream you had about your dead aunty Mildred the other night or that flutter of adrenalin you felt the last time you got a dose of confirmation bias at your local mosque.

What is it about camera shy gods, prophets, witches, angels and devils? It's almost like they don't really exist.

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