#whc2014

Leo Igwe is a prominent Nigerian human rights advocate who has played important roles in the Nigerian Humanist Movement, Atheist Alliance International, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and Center for Inquiry—Nigeria.

With only 27 days until the World Humanist Congress, we asked Stephen Fry why he supported its theme of freedom of thought and free expression. And here's the full quote from Stephen: 

'For years mankind has been told what to think and what to believe by shamans, priests and ideologues. There is an alternative: free thought, trusting our ability to find out, investigate, question, and test according to repeatable, reliable evidence. This is sometimes called empiricism, a mode of enquiry that flourished especially in Britain from the 17th century onwards, giving rise to the Industrial Revolution, but also to the fundamental breakthroughs in physics made by such as Faraday, Thompson and Maxwell which in turn directly inspired Einstein.

Who would have thought that this free thinking element of empiricism might be under threat now? It is sneered at (ignorantly) as ‘relativism’, and it is suggested that in order to behave properly you need a divine being to instruct you through dictated texts or omnipresent snooping. They also suggest that whether empirical or purely rational, scientific and moral free thinking take the wonder of the universe. How wrong they are!