Will smart people believe in God in 4018?

Because Easter Sunday was April Fools’ Day, many people put some fun about fools in the day’s goings-on.
I have a different from sheep-like interest in religion. That is, rather than a channel for my redemption, it is an area of human behaviour I enjoy as a spectator.
For instance, I am struck by the similarity between Pentecostal biblical interpretations and some of Africa’s traditional, or ‘primitive’, beliefs and forms of worship, okusamira. The somewhat misleading description commonly used is ‘witchcraft’. It is misleading, because witchcraft is only part of larger and more comprehensive faith systems. I use the term for its simplicity, in spite of its imprecision.
Uganda’s Pentecostals are intriguing because, on the face of it, they are the most vehement enemies of witchcraft, but at the same time they are the practitioners of forms of Christianity in which their beliefs and naked falsehoods most resemble those in witchcraft.
Pentecostalism tends to anchor the African in (or brainwash him back to) his pagan roots. This partly explains its attraction on the continent. Unfortunately, it also tends to draw the African away from a more rational existence.
Exploiting this condition to the full, the gifted pastor, ‘apostle’ or ‘prophet’ smiles to the bank.
But to return to last Sunday and its All fools’ Day references, the early morning talk show on Impact FM had its usual three God’s warriors. Let us call them the Master, the Big Mouth and the Innocent.
When he chooses – or doesn’t choose – the Innocent can sound frightfully dim-witted. But last Sunday, he held the attention of his two colleagues when he told of the triumph of one American judge.
Whether the story is true or apocryphal (thanks to All Fools’ Day), the judge solved the problem of an atheist who had petitioned for a special day for non-believers by reminding him that non-believers already had the April 1.
The satisfaction and laughter in the studio lifted the Innocent to a cloud. A great thinker had suddenly arisen! He had found people he, too, could call fools.
The judge – or is it the Innocent? – was of course alluding to the biblical passage which describes the non-believer as a fool. And fools can usually get away by quoting from holy books, instead of reasoning.
But the Innocent, I suppose, can benefit from a few moments of reflection.
The biblical passage was written before even Jesus was born. Scientific knowledge was very limited and superstition very strong. Astrologers, shamans and wizards were among the wise men of the time.
In the darkness of the time, embracing Abraham’s God was relatively more enlightened than worshipping the pagan gods who could be shown to be ineffective by the likes of Elijah.
There was a case for disparaging non-believers (in Abraham’s God) as fools.
It is now 2018 AD. The same Easter weekend, a church funeral service was held for one of the greatest minds of our time, Stephen Hawking. He was an atheist.
A contradiction? Not necessarily. His intellect liberated him from untenable beliefs; tradition gave him a funeral service and affirmed him a hero that belonged to Christian civilisation.
Symbolically, Hawking had physically suffered greatly but had not flinched from his convictions.
Jesus, too, had suffered physically but held to his convictions.
In Canada, some Christian church services are now conducted with a rule never to mention God.
If Innocent, Big Mouth and the Master could be here in 4018 AD, believing in God may have become something for idiots.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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