Leo Igwe sent me the link to a heartening article about the global energization of atheism.
At the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August, delegates from India,
Uganda, Nigeria, Argentina and Brazil — all countries where belief in a supreme deity or deities has a strong hold — reported mounting interest in their philosophy.Like their counterparts in Europe and North America, they argue that morality
is based in human nature and does not need a father-figure god to back it up
with punishment in an afterlife, in which they do not believe.“There are more godless groups in the world than ever before,” Sonja
Eggerickx, a Belgian schools inspector who is president of the International
Humanist and Ethical Union, told the Congress.
We can talk to each other more easily than ever before. (Of course, so can Dominionists…)
U.S. delegates, including a serving army major who has just established an
organisation for atheists in the military, spoke of a surge of rejection of
religion in all its forms among young Americans — a point some recent opinion
surveys back up.In Manchester in May, British Humanists — one of the world’s oldest
groupings — were told of a sharp rise in humanist birth, marriage and death
ceremonies, and strong growth in their association’s four-year-old student
wing.In Ireland, a country where the influence of the Catholic Church was for decades dominant in
all areas of life including politics and government decision-making, an optimistic national humanist association met in Carlingford in late August.…
In Nigeria, where the openly non-religious face Christian preacher-inspired
public opprobrium as “immoral reprobates” or “Satanists” and in the Islamic
north are treated as apostates, the humanist movement held its Congress in Abuja
in September.
Leo’s talk at that Congress is at the ur-B&W.