Philippine Atheists

Today the 12th of February marks the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. Darwin is arguably the most important naturalist who has ever lived. He has shown us that we are products of a natural process and not by some magical power of god. This is why unlike the other giants of science like Einstein and Galileo, Darwin continues to be demonized by religious fanatics. Darwin’s ideas are the most powerful there is in exposing the lies and myths that religions seek to perpetuate. In the book What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr, he enumerated five theories of evolution that Darwin postulated:

1) The nonconstancy of species (the basic theory of evolution)
2) The descent of all organisms from common ancestors (branching evolution)
3) The gradualness of evolution (no saltations, no discontinuities)
4) The multiplication of species (the origin of diversity)
5) Natural selection

Although new ideas and new facts have been discovered in the last century and a half since Darwin published his most important work, Origin Of Species, the above five theories have withstood the assault of scientific thinking but instead reinforced by new discoveries. We owe it to this great man the answer to one of man’s most important question: Where did we come from? We are not specially created by some cosmic being somewhere. The human species is, like any other extant species, but a leaf in the great Tree Of Life.

The following is an exceprt from my reply in a public forum when somebody asked me what do I think about bible quotes directed towards me.

The bible is full of interesting things. It has many good things and a lot of bad things. In it the merciful god of the OT waged genocide and murder, at one point drowning the whole of creation except for one family and select pairs of species. My position is that the bible, specially the OT, is a work of bad fiction. The NT is a lot better specially the four gospels. If we ignore the fantastic and the fabulous stories and sub-stories in it, I can agree that Jesus Christ is one of the most noblest characters ever (invented by man). The morality that he teaches is one of humility and love and caring for our neighbors. Obviously, and as is shown by participants in this forum including myself, he is a hard act to follow so to speak. There are great stories in the bible and my favorite is the story of Joseph who was sold by his brothers as a slave to the Egyptians and soon became the second most powerful person in all of Egypt. Then there is Moses. Together with his commander-in-chief god were vicious and wicked characters. Upon instruction from god, Moses committed acts that pales the achievements of a modern day war criminal (see Numbers). My point is, I cannot believe that a merciful and benevolent god inspired the Old Testament so either god was malevolent or the bible was the product of a barbaric time. For me, there can only be one conclusion. If there indeed is a benevolent and merciful god, then this book cannot be his inspiration. If you quote the bible to me, it has the effect of quoting, for example The Outsider of Albert Camus. It’s a work of fiction so it must be taken with a pinch of salt. Sure it can send me thinking but not at all seriously. There may be some truths in it, and there are lots of good things in it as well specially when it doesn’t talk about miracles or angels or heaven or hell, and this is what makes it worth more than another work of fiction is. In short, it doesn’t have the intended effect on me. (No offense to Mang Renato) I take what I think is good on its own merit alone (like “the truth will set you free”) and ignore those that don’t make sense or make only nonsense.

They said the most effective weapon against the bible is the bible itself. Read the bible and see for yourself what it really is. It’s not fit for reading by impressionable children and should be rated PG13.

Here is a good start: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/index.htm

The Qu’ran is not any better.

Please click on the link to see the special Christmas video.

Update (1/30/2008): I found a WordPress plug-in that allows me to embed YouTube videos very easily. So here is the updated version of that video with small edits. See if you can spot the difference.

I have two books to recommend to make good reading during the year-end break. The first book, What Evolution Is by one of the greatest evolutionary biologist of our time, Ernst Mayr, is an exceptional book in terms of conciseness and clarity. Pages after pages facts are brought upfront without much fluffing around, evolution concepts and ideas are explained with great clarity and parsimony, occassionally contrasting them with what Creationism could offer. I have yet to finish the book myself having read only halfway through but I feel happy that I already got my money’s worth just the same. This is one book I will be keeping in my library to serve as a handy reference whenever I need to check my facts or give me a hint on how to proceed when questions about evolutionary theory crops up for clarification, or if I simply have to drill down to the details of the updated theory. The book disagrees with Richard Dawkins‘ gene-centric approach to evolution.

The other book is Free To Choose by Nobel Prize in Economics winner Milton Friedman. It’s co-written by his wife, Rose Friedman. This book picks in the latter half of the 20th century where other libertarians left off earlier. Written in the same spirit as On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, this book will not fail to provoke your thoughts, on the ideal relationship of the individual and the state, with emphasis on personal freedom and conscience. The same spirit that I suppose was the intention by the framers of the Philippine constitution, and which remains an ideal rather than a reality.

Enjoy reading!

There is another hot item raging over the internet. This time, it’s a punchline in the highly popular TV series, Desperate Housewives. There is even an online petition demanding that ABC issue an apology and edit the show to remove the punchline in question. Demanding an apology is one but demanding that the supposedly offensive portion be removed is another. As of now, there are close to 100,000 signatures gathered already but this should give us pause. As somebody commented in Lester Cavestany’s blog about the same incident, that Pinoys are overly-reacting to this episode but not in our own home-grown racism by giving as an example a very popular comedian’s take on Indian music but nobody seems to be demanding an apology from our fellow Pinoys. At some point or another and in some context, we are all guilty of the same offense, it’s time that we look within ourselves and grow up.

My email is subscribed to Manila Standard columnist Tony Abaya’s mailing list so I receive copies of his articles for his column On The Other Hand as well as reactions to his articles from his readers. Recently, he wrote about former president Erap Estrada who disgraced himself by becoming the first ever Philippine ex-president to have been convicted of corruption. Not that he is the only corrupt president we ever had but he’s got the distinction of having his successor whose conspiratorial rise to power had to pursue the corruption case to help her in her own issue of legitimacy. Perhaps if GMA have not been facing serious legitimacy issues since her questionable assumption to power, she may not have pursued the case more vigrously but instead let the case fall between the cracks, forgotten, as any other corruption issue that has ever plagued our country. This is why I viewed the conviction as in a good part, politically motivated, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The will to prosecute Erap was sustained by GMA’s political survival considerations. Not too soon after Erap’s conviction, talk of presidential pardon was already filling the political forums - shamelessly. Maybe this is a part of a greater plan by the GMA, regardless of the fact any idiot prosecutor should be able to win the case against the bungling Erap if one only followed the nauseating telenovela of his impeachment. About this presidential pardon, Mr. Abaya wrote that Erap should not be given pardon, to which I absolutely agree. Mr. Abaya’s article elicited a reaction from a letter-writer thus,

“The conviction of Estrada is a first in our history. Even if Estrada is never sent to a real prison, it is a good sign that some form of justice is still alive in our country. We are a forgiving people — that is our weakness and that is also our strength. We believe in divine mercy and divine justice.“

What caught my attention was the letter-writer’s reference to a supposed divine mercy, which is pure wishful thinking and I assert, part of the very issue at hand, the same corrupted system that produced Erap - the corrupted moral ethics of our people as supported by Catholic hogwash. Believing in a just merciful god and imagined divine mercy skews our sense of justice and contributes dearly to why corruption in our country is practically a way of life - it sends out the message that corruption pays since they can always ask for forgiveness and be forgiven. Just look at Imelda. Our people already forgave her even as she still flouts her wealth acquired systematically through two decades of the same thing Erap has been convicted of. This questionable moral system is perpetuated mainly by the Catholics such that our people’s sense of justice is based more on forgiveness and wishful thinking than deterring kleptocrats from plundering the public coffers. Because of this belief of eternal justice and divine mercy, our people are a lot more willing to forgive, forget what happened, and move on since their imaginary god is supposed to mete out whatever is the most just punishment in the after-life. In this sense I agree with the letter-writer that our people’s forgiving nature make our nation weak. That the letter-writer also said that it’s also our strength is debatable. This Christian teaching of mercy and justice, if we are to really get serious about it, should impel us to repeal the laws and abolish the law-enforcement agencies altogether since god will punish offenders, yes? Or better, they can wake up from their daydreaming and embrace real social justice by going after the rest of the looting gang and putting them behind bars.

You see, God is a great marketing strategist. Of course, because He is God. Since he created everything your eyes could see, everything your nose can smell, everything your ears could hear, everything your skin could feel and everything your hands would touch. To make it short, damn everything! And because he is such an omni-everything, thinking of a good marketing plan is as easy as kicking a lifeless stone lying around your path. And so he thought of a good plan to promote himself and he gave us this thing called “freedom.” (I would like to emphasize the word “FREE.”) This “freedom” gives us the ability to choose. We can choose weather to believe in Him or not. (I would like to point out that not believing doesn’t mean denying.) But of course, like any other product promotion, it has a catch.

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That is the question. And from now on, even spambots should give the answer. The (inactive) forum has been modified to find out if they believe in “god” or not? Even agnostic spambots are given the chance to join. That is, if they also speak Tagalog, the lingua franca of the Pinoys. (Profuse apologies to the non-Tagalogs and non-Tagalog speakers!)

Before I turned atheist, I tried to bury religion and pass it off as a non-issue. As long as it was not affecting my life too much, I could very much try to live my life as if religion didn’t exist or matter. I call this phase of my belief-to-nonbelief journey as my post-religion phase. I had to search the net for the definition of post-religion but could not find any that is short and simple so I’ll make one. On a personal level, post-religion is a state of not caring about religion. A post-religionist thinks that religion should not be given too much time, attention, and thought. On a cultural level, post-religion is what characterizes a society where religion is no longer a considerable influence in the day-to-day events of the society taken as a whole; when religion is a spent force in matters of public policy, and where religion sales force, the priests and bishops and imams and mullahs are no longer considered authorities on truth, morality, and origins. GMA’s recent SONA clearly reminded us that the Philippines is not yet showing signs of transitioning from a religion-based society into a post-religion society. A post-religion society is brought about with considerable push from secularist ideas such as humanism, agnosticism, and atheism.

Going back to my personal experience, and in my post-religion phase, I held the idea that religion is plain absurdity, and as such, I would not have cared much except on certain occasions when it reared its ugly head and coerced me to act in accordance to what is normally expected of every Pinoy given the irrational idea of the majority that to be Pinoy is necessarily to be Catholic (at least in most parts of the country). I always resented it but I chose not to speak up so as not to disturb the peace. This caused an unnecessary amount of internal conflict. Each time, I wished for the day when to the majority Filipinos religion shall have been relegated to where it rightfully belongs: in the fringes of society, a spent force in public policy, and just an after-thought in the personal lives of the average Pinoys. Personally, I don’t believe that atheism is the (sole) answer to bring post-religion about. Atheism, by itself, doesn’t have anything to offer in terms of morality or happiness or apparent meaningfulness of life - three of the most abused arguments supporting the practicality of having a religion. Atheism is simply about the truthfulness of the existence of a being that many religionists worship one way or another. Atheism will not matter much in a post-religion society but rather, atheism (or new atheism) is a reaction to the fantastic, to the outrageous, to the fabulous claims of religion. In a post-religion society where there are less people with religion, there will be more atheists who are also post-atheists.