Recently I held a seminar to mark the celebrations of World Philosophy Day 2008, an event that I have been organising here in Kenya on behalf of UNESCO since 2003.
Many of the participants wanted to challenge my views on what realism had to do with philosophy and why I took a secular approach to learning. These seemed to me minor questions that should not affect our plans to revive the Humanist and Ethical Union of Kenya as the most vibrant organisation for sceptics and atheists in Kenya.

It has been difficult to promote rational thought and defend Humanism here in Kenya. I had to find a specifically Africanised way of tackling those who opposed the progress of Humanism. I found myself borrowing examples from science, and this led me to put forward the concept of evolution, which I used in debating creationism.

In the broadest sense, a creationist is simply someone who believes in the existence of a creator, who brought about the existence of the world and its living inhabitants in furtherance of a purpose. Whether the process of creation took a single week or billions of years is relatively unimportant from a philosophical or theological standpoint. Creation by gradual processes over geological ages may create problems for Biblical interpretation , but it creates none for the basic principle of theistic religion. If God brought about our existence for a purpose, then the most important kind of knowledge to have is knowledge of God and what He intends for us. Is creationism in that broad sense consistent with evolution?

This question is of great importance, given that 96 percent of churches in Africa are funded by so-called mother churches in America. The systems of worship that these Africans have adopted in their churches are a reflection of what has been successfully tested and deemed workable in America. When churches in Kenya start claiming that the works of Darwin were inspired by God and that evolution is really controlled by Him, these remarks will cause confusion. We Africans must emancipate our thinking and find better ways of representing our cultures in terms of secular, and not predetermined, evolution. Was colonialism divinely created? Was Hurricane Katrina? The answers to these questions depend on the dissemination of accurate information. Many preachers in Kenya are ill-informed, they base their ideas on out-of-date ideas and superseded data. They are ignorant of modern science, and unable to justify their claims.

If we assume that random genetic mutations provided the new genetic information needed, say, to give a small mammal a start towards wings, and if we can show that each tiny step in the process of wing-building gave the animal an increased chance of survival, then natural selection ensured that the favoured creatures would thrive and reproduce. When the end product is the appearance of wings, it can look as though it happened according to the plan of a designer. But evolutionary theory does not make it inevitable that the descendents of a particular animal will develop wings. Perhaps the needed mutations don’t arrive, or "developmental constraints" close off certain possibilities, or environmental conditions favour something else.
Richard Dawkins calls the process of creation by mutation and selection "the blind watchmaker," by which label he means that a purposeless, materialistic designing force substitutes for the "watchmaker" deity of natural theology.

The Institute for African Ecology and Philosophy reported that West Africans have a greater affinity for atheism when they relate religion to subsidiarity as a concept introduced to subjugate Africans to colonial rule. They claim that missionaries often enticed the population with sweets and good clothing, thereby resorting to greater coercion in the name of religion.

Social Darwinism was a theory that competition among all individuals, groups, nations, or ideas drives social evolution in human societies. The term drew upon the common use of the obsolete term Darwinism to create a social adaptation of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The term first appeared in Europe in 1879 and was popularised in the United States in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter.

Although Darwin himself never subscribed to it, it encompassed the belief that the strongest or fittest should survive and flourish in society, while the weak and unfit should be allowed to die. It was used to justify numerous exploits, which we would classify as of dubious moral value today. Colonialism was seen as natural and inevitable, and given justification through Social Darwinian ethics - people saw natives as being weaker and more unfit to survive, and therefore felt justified in seizing land and resources. Social Darwinism applied to military action as well: the argument went that the strongest military would win, and would therefore be the most fit. Casualties on the losing side, of course, were written off as the natural result of their unfit status. Finally, it gave the ethical nod to brutal colonial governments who used oppressive tactics against their subjects.

Social Darwinism applied in a social context too, of course. It provided a justification for the more exploitative forms of capitalism in which workers were paid sometimes pennies a day for long hours of back-breaking labour. Social Darwinism also justified big business's refusal to acknowledge labour unions and similar organisations, and implied that the rich did not need to donate money to the poor or less fortunate, since such people were less fit anyway.

When growing up I was taught that Africa had all the trees needed to manufacture the best medicines in the world to respond to the catastrophic dilemmas caused by our slowness in understanding of the diseases that affected us. We keep waiting for answers from our deities, we look to medicine men to tell us what God is planning in his laboratory. Our traditional thoughts follow us to the grave. We continue to die from the same sicknesses that killed our ancestors, because of the belief that they are ordained by God.

Africans in most parts of the continent have refused to accept that their lives are improving because of science. They are enjoying the fruits of a secular leadership while leading religious lives. They inflict upon themselves illiteracy by refusing to learn from the successes of those that they claim colonised and persuaded our ancestors to become slaves. It must be noted that without science, names like Africa could never be in dictionaries, without social Darwinism we could not have roads and without evolutionary understanding of ourselves, we could never have governments. That is why the Congo crisis, the Darfur war and the Somali peace process have not ended. Africans still await signs from God to confirm whether their approach to living and conquest is holy or ethical. This is why we need Humanism and that is why I am innovatively thinking of ways to make Humanism a practice, not only of the literate, but also of those people in Africa who never made it to the classroom. There is a need for evolution towards Humanism.

The term African people can refer to people who live in Africa, or people who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa. This includes members of the "African diasporas" resulting from the Atlantic Slave Trade such as Black British, Afro-Latin Americans, African Americans, Afro-Caribbean’s, and Black Canadians. The term Black people is often used as a synonym for people of African ancestry (in particular Sub-Saharan Africa), particularly in the Americas and Europe, although the two terms are not always considered synonymous.

The African continent is today home to many different groups of people with culture and history in the land over several centuries: of diverse origins, both indigenous and foreign to the continent, displaying a wide range of phenotypes, as well as different cultural, communal and artistic traits. Distinctions within the African continent itself, such as the different climates across the continent, have nurtured diversity in lifestyles of inhabitants of deserts, jungles and modern cities.

The Way Forward

In my opinion, Africa is ready to respond to the call of Darwinian evolution. We are sick of religious interpretation of how we came to be Africans and others Asians, and of how colonialists came. These are questions that only time and history can answer. The post-election violence in Kenya was political, not religious in origin. Kenyan citizens were ready for a new paradigm, they needed to shift from the oppressing reality that resisted change, they were tired of traditions. And as the saying has come to be, “Yes we can”.
Africans are ready for logic and Africa can indeed accept evolution and we can look at the archaeological findings and ask ourselves whether religion has a place in Africa. Genetic comparisons provide evidence that all living human populations can be traced along maternal lines of descent to a woman who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. The genomes of modern humans do not explain precisely how, when, and where populations originate. But variants within a population can be studied and gene sequences determined. Thus religious creationism will have a short duration in Africa; and I hope that in Kampala 2009, during the East African Humanist Convention (EACH), thorough debate on introducing Humanism will result in partnership on this front. I am proposing a regional approach to issues and I believe that Asia -Africa relations can best be joined through the Indian Ocean Humanist Initiative.

The suggested founding members of this group: Australia, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Oman, Singapore, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, Madagascar, Srilanka, Uganda, Tanzania, Yemen, Bangladesh, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Japan, China and United Kingdom.

This year marks 150 years of evolutionary science, and, in my view, anything can evolve toward betterment. Regionalism has proven to be the best approach to many issues. Suggestions on this are welcome (baotieno@usiu.ac.ke)

[1] Opinion of Philip E. Johnson, adopted from his conference paper “What is Darwinism” delivered as a lecture to a symposium at Hillside College in 1992

[2] This is also true with African Americans who oppose religion as a manoeuvre used by the western missionaries to colonise Nigeria where the first liberal African, Kunta Kinte, was picked up as a slave. These are ideas that have promoted slavery and are creeping in to influence Humanist ethics.

Boaz Adhengo is the President for Humanist and Ethical Union of Kenya. At present he lectures at the United States International University – Africa (Nairobi) where he is pursuing a detailed degree in International Relations. He also serves as a fellow for Eco Ethics International Union.