AbstractA shared interest of law and religion is the advancement of human flourishing, yet there is no common understanding of what it means for humans to flourish and the means by which to attain a flourishing life.

AbstractThe cultural and intellectual history of Africa rarely mentions atheism as being and living in Africa. Frequently, what is emphasized is the notoriety and inevitability of belief and its diverse performances in the form of rituals and deities and practices related to human attempts at appeasing and manipulating their assumed powers (Parrinder 1954; Mbiti 2015). However, atheism and its culturally informed performances are diffused in (southern) Africa. This is a core claim of Okot p’Bitek in his disagreement with Mbiti’s thesis on the notoriety of African religiosity: Africans make fun or jokes about the gods; sometimes what may seem a religious performance is in reality a religious ridicule of the deities. In fact, some performances – such as oracle consultation and divination, the choice of a new king, or the cause of death or disease in a community – that are considered acts of God are human acts disguised as God’s.

AbstractAfrican Atheism is rising. We explore the roots and underlying worldview of Atheism - plus what makes it so attractive to Africans today #AfricanApologetics

AbstractKevin Muriithi unpacks the atheistic worldview and gives Christians 4 practical tools for engaging with those who identify as atheists. #AfricanApologetics

AbstractIn this project, I clarify and expand on G.E.M. Anscombe's claim that it's logically incoherence for philosophers to employ the concept of obligation in their moral theories without acknowledging the existence of a lawgiving God. I refer to this critique of contemporary moral philosophy as "Anscombe's Challenge", designating it as "AC" for short. I argue that for AC to be successful, it needs to be shown both that a lawgiving agent is necessary to make sense of the concept of obligation and that human beings, individually or collectively, do not fully suffice as the appropriate lawgiving agents. In the bulk of the project, I examine three responses to AC. The first is the Divine Command Theory (DCT) which endorses AC and argues that AC is not a problem to philosophy since moral obligations are really God's commands, whether or not human beings recognize them as such. The second is the Social Command Theory (SCT) which acknowledges that moral obligation is agent-relative but argues that no supernatural agent is needed to account for it since obligations arise from within human societies. The final one is a form of naturalism that casts obligation in an agent-neutral way: moral obligations exist necessarily and they therefore don't need an agent to account for them. I argue that SCT must deny the objectivity of moral obligation, thus making obligations relative to society. By denying that moral obligation is agent-relative, naturalists concede Anscombe's point that obligation should not be understood in terms of the commanded. DCT defenders argue that, by giving up on objectivity (SCT) and the agency behind obligation (naturalists), both SCT and naturalism fail to account adequately for the law-like force of obligation and for the intrinsic worth of humanity. DCT claims to be able to account for both features of morality since God is seen as the source of the commands behind human obligations who also maintains a unique relationship with human beings as their Creator, thus conferring them intrinsic worth. I conclude each section with an examination of what I take to be the best arguments against each view

AbstractThis study aims to offer an account of the emergence of the phenomenon of atheism in South Africa and in so doing present a case for its admittance as a new and exciting field of research within the academy in the country. The pervasive assumptions of religious normativity on the continent and in South Africa may serve to conceal a rich and vibrant worldview of atheism which, as this study proposes, can in its own right, also attempt meaningful responses to life’s deepest and most complex questions, without the need to declare an affiliation to any religious authority or sect. It is in the lived realities of atheists and in the makings of their social contexts, inclusive of its political history, its media and its laws, that this study finds its mooring and academic purpose. Given the embryonic nature of this project within a field of study which is under-researched in the country, the research design adopted includes a set of empirical components, by way of direct interviews with a set of self-pronounced South African atheists, an analysis of the phenomenon in relation to the country’s legal framework and jurisprudence, and a survey of the online digital media contexts in which atheism also finds representation. This multi-disciplinary approach sought to broadly trace through factors historic and current, as well as issues foreign and domestic, which have either advanced or suppressed the emergence of atheism in South Africa. Locating this study within the historical development of the worldview of atheism from as far back as Greek antiquity up to advances made in recent years in shaping this field of formal academic research, was considered imperative as a potential gateway for new rounds of future research on atheism itself, or other related sub-categories within the broader field of non-religion. Constructs which are distinctly different but which have grown in alliance with atheism in recent years, such as secularity and humanism have also become essential to the construction of atheist self-identities and the emergence of atheism as a social phenomenon in South Africa. The dialogue developed within this study between related literature resources and the responses of interviewees pointed to a new range of perspectives on atheism which were greater than the sum of these parts, in that South African atheists had demonstrably moved beyond the confines of having their lives defined by the absence of a religious belief system or by something that they are not.