Head on collision with Alan Tacca’s mockery of God

I always enjoy Alan Tacca’s sharp opinions that appear in his column in the Sunday Monitor. Unfortunately, those published on April 23 and 30 provoked and annoyed many Christians, including me.
It is obvious that Tacca is embarrassingly ignorant and naïve about the reasons why people believe in God. However, it is worth educating him before he sinks into oblivion. In religion, spiritualism and convictions, there are no rational, scientific or celestial explanations. Any attempt to give any is bound to fail miserably.
My former golfing partner, Rev Fr Peter Sutton, once enlightened fellow golfers with his wisdom that “where one believes, no explanation is necessary but where one does not believe, no explanation is possible.”

I suppose when Tacca started growing up, relatives identified some man and told him that the man was his father. It is possible that intellectual Tacca even today, still believes that, the man is his father.
Experts and other knowledgeable people can factually and scientifically prove that the man Tacca calls his father has no biological connection with Tacca. I am sure that Tacca’s cockiness and belief in his ancestral roots will be totally shattered but alas, he will continue to believe that the bloke is his father.
Let us start by telling Tacca a simple story. Old Kapere loved and lived with his wife for many years. Finally, he realised that he was being recalled by the great Maker, or to use Tacca’s own non-believer’s fallacy, by an accident of nature.

On the edge of extinction, Kapere summoned his wife to his death bed. On arrival, he addressed her thus: “Darling, as you see I am on my way out. You know I have always loved you and will always do so even hereafter, but please do not be offended. Satisfy me on one thing that has troubled me for a long time. Peter, our last born, is he my son?”
“You recall when I returned from a Nairobi trip, you told me that you were expecting him. How could you have conceived him when I was away? I know that my other son Moses and two daughters are truly my fresh and blood. I have never had any doubt about them. People even remark admiringly that Moses is the spitting image of me. But is Peter really my son?”

Very reassuringly, the wife said: “Darling, I want to confirm in the name of God that you are the biological father of Peter. I will remind you of what we did two days before you left for Nairobi. We had four jolly romps and the results became Peter.”
Kapere sighed with great relief and said: “I now die a happy man knowing that all the four children are my flesh and blood.” He then breathed his last.
The wife left the bedroom and found her sister waiting for her. The sister asked, “What was all that about? Why did he ask to see you alone?”
The widow told her the reason. Then the sister said, “He must have died in a happy mood.”
The wife remarked, “Yes, but thank God he did not ask me about the other three.”

The sister responded, “Why?”
The widow said, “Because none of the other three of our children are his. He only fathered Peter.”
I hope the above story will be an enlightening lesson to Tacca and those who think like him. There are subjects in human life which are best left alone. One other is belief in God. There is wisdom in refraining from adverse comments or ridiculing those who believe and trust in the Deity.
Religion, beliefs and spiritualism should be no-go areas for politicians and nonbelievers whether they consider themselves rational, intellectual or geniuses. That subject stands high on Holy ground and fools should not attempt to step upon it lest they perish.

One of the greatest and leading seismologists in the world, Prof John Shaw, was a committed Christian and believer in the existence and miracles of God, the Almighty. He and I were colleagues at Cardiff University and worshipped in the same Church, St Dyfrigs of Llanrumney.
He once said the more he studies science and nature, the more his belief in God becomes firm and unshaken that the universe and galaxies ably described by Tacca, did not appear accidentally but were created by the Almighty God or by whatever name He is called in other nations and religions of the world, universe and galaxies enumerated by Tacca.

In fact, Tacca’s facts and evidence he uses to mock His existence, God and those who believe in Him, are the very concrete reasons and evidence that prove that conclusively it must be God who created and sustains the phenomena Tacca dares to deny.
To accept Tacca’s verbiage as remotely persuasive is to accept that his usual contributions to the Sunday Monitor have had one of their tiny letters or comma in them, mocking those contributions and their maker Tacca, as silly and a myth.
On a happy note, Tacca is most fortunate that he lives in a tolerant Uganda because he knows fully well that in other countries where religion is taken for what it is, he would face a fate worse than the mild rebuke of this columnist and fellow believers in God and religion.

Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge. [email protected]