May 29 FF Meetup

RSVP on Facebook

Date: Saturday, June 12, 2010
Time: 1:00pm – 4:00pm
Location: Starbucks (near cinemas) at Shangrila Mall
Agenda:

* Is nationalism a good thing?
* The ethics of having sex with friends
* Starting steps for virgin vegans
* Should atheists preach?
* Atheist Solidarity Day brainstorming
* Lesson 1 of short story writing workshop

Dave O'Brien and Hemant Mehta

Dave O'Brien and Maggie Ardiente

This morning, our friend and supporter, American atheist Dave O’Brien, sent us some good news:

This weekend I attended the American Humanist Association annual conference in San Jose –quite close to my home. Great conference with good speakers and about 300+ attendees.

Maggie Ardiente is the development director of AHA and her parents are Filipino but she was born in USA (San Diego) and never visited the Philippines. We had been in contact for a while and she is thinking of writing an article on Freethought in the Philippines so I gave her an update and a FF Tee shirt .

I met Hemant Mehta at the conference and gave him an update and Tee shirt and also got Hemant to sign a copy of his book and dedicate it to FF.

Last week Ayaan Hirsi Ali was in Palo Alto giving a talk and I got her to sign a copy of her new book (Nomad) to “filipino freethinker women.” She was quite interested in the concept of women being active in the movement over there.

Dave is sending us these two books (Hemant’s I Sold My Soul on Ebay and Ayaan’s Nomad — signed!) as well as other literature soon, and it’ll be here in a couple of months.

Maggie, Hemant, Ayaan, and of course, Dave — thanks for all your support!

The practice of genital mutilation is still evident in various African cultures. The clitoris is removed and with that comes the possibility of ever experiencing sex in its fullest glory. The clitoris is packed with nerve endings and one could just imagine how painful it would be for a little girl to have this cut off. Female genital mutilation is considered barbaric in inhumane by almost all countries who subscribe to the idea of human rights.

Ironically, the male version of this procedure is not nearly as controversial. Male circumcision is done to babies as young as a few days old in hospitals despite the obvious lack of consent of the people involved. Much of the reasons set forth for circumcision are religious in nature. Later on though, there seemingly was an apparent increase in medical evidence to prove that circumcision had some benefits to it. Societies that mostly had circumcised males also tend to force uncircumcised males to make choices regarding their bodily integrity under duress.

While there are studies that prove that one’s likelihood of getting HIV and penile cancer are reduced; circumcision is still not the biggest factor in the likelihood of getting these devastating illnesses. It still lies in the person’s sexual practices and his ability to observe safe sex and/or abstinence and self-control. Circumcision is for the most part (pardon the pun), circumstantial as a factor. Hygiene could also be a factor, but with proper education and sufficient attention to detail; that problem could also be circumvented – no need for some radical surgery that would modify a child’s body forever before he even realizes what he lost!

Almost all Filipino men are circumcised. A handful probably had their foreskins removed as infants while a few had surgery when they were approaching puberty. Most boys probably got it over with to prove a point or be at the same state as their other circumcised friends are. To a certain extent, being circumcised or “tuli” makes one more of a man than an uncircumcised chap or “supot”.

The bottom line is everyone should have the ability to be in control of their body’s. Removing a body part – even just an inconsequential fold of skin (that by the way, is packed with nerve endings that could be great for sex) – should be a decision of the person and nobody else’s. Making the choice due to social pressures, fear of ridicule and other circumstances that could put one under duress is a blow to the autonomy of a person that should have when it comes to dealing with issues of body integrity.

Sex education will be pilot-tested by the Department of Education (DepEd) in several schools starting June. This news should have been great. But thanks to CBCP Meddling™, it’s merely good.

The long overdue sex education desired by most Filipinos will reach relatively few — only 80 of the almost 38,000 elementary schools and 79 of the almost 6,000 high schools. That’s a tiny drop in the ocean of students expected this schoolyear — 13.1 million in elementary, 5.6 million in high school. (source)

But if it were up to the CBCP, not a single student would get sex education at all. And we barely avoided this fate — Malacanang recently ordered DepEd to consult the CBCP on sex education. (Yes, seriously.)

But despite the disagreement of the newly appointed sex education consultants, Education Secretary Mona Valisno said the project would push through. She added that “consultations are now set to immediately start after the opening of classes.”

So they’ve so far ignored the CBCP’s protests. But what happens when our education department finally takes the CBCP’s expert advice? Will DepEd suddenly suspend sex education? Will they ensure that all scientific evidence and ethical advice passes the Roman Catholic Church’s standards? Will they encourage natural family planning or abstinence-only sex education?

Whatever happens, I don’t see any good coming out of consulting the CBCP. For starters, a lot of Filipinos are not Catholic. Even those who are don’t necessarily agree with the CBCP’s views on reproductive health — surveys have shown that most Filipinos want sex education in public schools.

And not only is this consultation a violation of our secular constitution, it’s just plain wrong. What kind of educational advice can you expect from an institution that doesn’t want sex education in the first place? Simply this: that sex is only moral when it allows the possibility of procreation by a husband and wife ; and that contraceptives do not work in preventing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of sexually transmitted infections.

This is most (if not al) of the advice the DepEd will get from the CBCP. Call it unscientific, simplistic — even stupid. But if sex education is to happen at all — if the CBCP is to allow it — this is necessary. One of the main reasons the CBCP politically campaigns against sex education is their assertion that the responsibility belongs not to the schools but to the parents.

But think about it. Where do most Filipino parents get their sex education? Which institution outside of schools obsessively teaches about sexual matters, wielding absolute ethical and scientific (they have studies) authority? The Roman Catholic Church. So the bishops are OK with parents doing the teaching because they’re teaching the parents anyway.

But what if these parents were to teach their children something unCatholic (read: secular and scientific)? What if children were taught at home that homosexual sex and contraceptives are not evil? Would the CBCP still think sex education should be left to the parents then? Of course not.

When the CBCP says it’s against sex ed in schools, what it’s actually saying is this: no one has the right to give sex education — except us. And with their recent appointment as DepEd consultants, they just got their chance. So finally — reluctantly — they will allow it.

Yet whatever the CBCP has done or will do to castrate sex education, our country has taken a step in the right (read: secular and scientific) direction. Whatever happens this year in DepEd’s pilot testing, things can only get better.

So I take it back. This is great news. Still, a part of me is reluctant. The sexual well-being of almost 20 million children and adolescents are being entrusted to an insular institution of bishops and priests. Why does this bother me?

The use of animals in our society is so normal that my choice to be vegan is often questioned and misunderstood. The idea of being vegan is just too radical for some. Their reactions are not exactly unfounded. Animal use is everywhere- the milk in your coffee, the pet hamster on the TV show you just watched, the leather in your watch strap, the gelatin in your halo-halo. So why be vegan? I throw the question back at you. Why not? Veganism is not just a diet, although going vegan can do wonders for your health. Veganism is not necessarily a religion-based code of ethics, although the ancient religion Jainism does prescribe Ahimsa or a path of non-violence towards all living beings. Even among vegans, we disagree about what the term vegan must mean, and we each project our own ideals onto the label. Must it be limited to the ethical motivation to be compassionate? Must it be inclusive of respect to your own health? What is not up to debate is that vegans abstain from any use of animals, animal products, animal byproducts, and animal excrements for food, clothing, medical research, entertainment etc in as much as it is practical and avoidable. The underlying principle is that we oppose murder and rape and other forms of violence and we see our use and abuse of animals as just that. These pre-meditated crimes are not acceptable just because they are committed against beings other than humans. Violence is violence. Rape is rape. Murder is murder. Suffering is suffering. Veganism is a way of life that acknowledges that version of our reality.

The core of veganism is the reduction of suffering and violence. It is crucial to emphasize that the violence against animals is not limited to the obvious aspect of slaughter.  It also includes the way in which they have been born and raised- or to be more accurate, the way in which they have been manufactured and stored. Standard practices in the industry include cutting off the beaks of chicks without anesthesia, castration without anesthesia, slamming down baby pigs who do not meet weight requirements on the floor, branding cattle with hot iron without anesthesia, killing and skinning animals when they are still conscious, not to mention the atrocities of their living conditions that basically confine them to a single area equal to their body size for all their short miserable lives. Through our use and confinement of them, they have become artificially disabled. They cannot flap their wings, milk their young, or run freely as they would in their natural environments. Even their physiological form has been manipulated so consumers can have more meat and become more obese and business owners can have more cash in the bank. Animals are forced to be cannibals as the industry commonly feeds cows other cows, pigs other pigs, and chickens other chickens. Whatever the animal industry and whatever their use, the bottomline is the same. They suffer. Needlessly.

Factory farming aside, what is so wrong with eating animals or wearing a leather jacket or going to a zoo or dissecting frogs in Biology class? Doing any of those things presupposes that human beings own animals, that we can do with them as we please, regardless of their sentience or capacity to feel pain. The common argument I hear is that we are the more intelligent species. I find this illogical for a number of reasons. Why should intelligence be an excuse for abuse and savagery? If we were to accept that the more intelligent can do whatever they want with the less intelligent, does it mean we can kill infants with mental disabilities and make sausages out of them? And supposing that another species would emerge that appears to be more intelligent than us, are we ready and willing to be skinned alive to serve as materials for someone else’s jacket? Another similar argument for animal use is that humans are on top of the food chain. The food chain again presupposes that there is an order in nature, but there is nothing natural about the way food is produced and transported and consumed today. Other animals do not factory-farm other animals. It is only us humans who do.

An ethical aspect that people often overlook is human welfare. We are creating jobs that force people to kill, where desensitization is a near certainty and injuries are habitual. In slaughterhouses, many workers urinate and defecate in the assembly lines in order to keep up with the production speed requirements. They are also injured by the struggling half-alive half-dead animals who either still summon up enough will to fight back or are so delirious with pain they can only react in violent convulsions. In leather factories, workers are immersed knee-deep in toxic dye substances. In zoos and aquariums, trainers are given commands to treat the animals like things, to use electrocution freely, to stop themselves from making any emotional or empathic connection with the animals. We are building a world where the demand for assassins is growing, where we hire them to do our dirty work all the while absolving our own accountability. And for what good reason? Because they taste good to our chemically-drowned palates or because we need a new variation of shampoo to treat our colored hair. The world we inherited has brainwashed us into thinking this is the way the world works –that this is who we are.

Veganism is about awakening our senses, learning the truth, sometimes having to dig through it, and ultimately facing it. It is connecting the dots. It is knowing that if I eat animals, I am directly responsible for both the screams and screeches of the animal and the unabashed violence of the slaughterhouse worker in and outside his workplace. Veganism is about examining my values, weighing the importance of my personal trivial interest of swimming with the dolphins in an aquarium against the importance of letting the dolphins live their natural lives in a vast ocean. Veganism is listening to my true nature as a human being, that even if I did not have the literacy to express the wrongness of killing, I would already know it. Veganism is looking at cruelty and seeing it for what it is and saying “No, I simply cannot be a part of this.”

The First Filipino Freethinkers Film Fest at Cine Adarna in UP Diliman (Photo by Beatriz Torre, FFUPD Member)

If you’re a University of the Philippines Diliman student looking for fellowship with other atheists, agnostics, deists, skeptics, and freethinkers in general, you are not alone!

The first Filipino Freethinkers campus chapter is setting up in UPD and we are looking for members.

Prospective founding members need to provide the following:

• scanned UP ID
• UP Webmail address (e.g. student@up.edu.ph)
• Personal Email address (e.g. student@yahoo.com)

Send these to ffupdiliman@gmail.com by 11:59 PM on Friday, June 11, 2010.

We need to give these to the UP Diliman Office of Student Affairs so we can get officially registered as a university organization, which makes conducting activities much easier.

If you are unable to provide a scanned UP ID via email, you may leave a hard copy at the security guard’s desk of the National Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (Albert Hall) near the College of Fine Arts.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask us at ffupdiliman@gmail.com.

You can keep updated with our activities and future meetups at our Facebook group where you can also find out more about the organization.

You can help our org get going by sharing t-shirt design ideas related to freethinking, fundraising activity ideas, ACLE ideas, ideas for guest speakers to invite, ideas for movies to screen at the 2nd Annual Filipino Freethinkers Film Festival, ideas for meet-up (General Assembly) discussion topics, and more ideas!

Help make UP Diliman a nicer place for freethinkers!

Suffice to say that the recent Saturday meet was a success. While a couple of the regular guys didn’t make it, it was overwhelming to see so many new faces. Our small community is definitely growing, and if you happen to be reading this news update as a newcomer to the Filipino Freethinkers blog, welcome aboard!

This time around, I’ll be toning down the usual politics and religion news for some other truly bizarre, and utterly nerdgastic tidbits. For one, there’s an article on a War Machine cosplayer whose costume is actually made of stainless steel components, features a fully functional (BB) minigun, and a motorized visor and working LEDs. There’s also the working hover board replica for the Back to the Future fans (that includes me), but why spoil the fun – you can visit the links for the full details.

In more serious news, you’ve all probably heard of the giant sinkhole that has appeared in Guatemala City as a result of the tropical storms that have drenched the region:

For all the destruction that nature can rend to cities, it’s amazing how we can find beauty in the most unlikely of places. In this case, the birds-eye view of this sinkhole is leaves me in awe. And a bit worried mind you, because as any Marvel fan will tell you, stuff like this only happens when some really crazy stuff is about to happen, of the world-destroying sort.

In any case, enjoy this week’s updates, and be sure to post any new stuff you encounter over at the News Thread!

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Giant sinkhole appears in Guatemala City – Silver Surfer unavailable for comment (via New York Times) Link

Maldives citizen may be sentenced to death for leaving Islam (via Minivan News) Link

Vatican invites atheists to open dialogue…unless their name happens to be Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens (via The Independent) Link

CBCP vs, Sex education, round two (via Philippine Star) Link

Fordham University: Another reason to think Jesuits are awesome (via Fordham Observer) Link

Living in denial: Why sensible people reject the truth (via New Scientist) Link

Anti-vaccine doctor struck off UK medical register (via BBC) Link

He may be a cosplaying geek, but he’s a cosplaying geek…with a minigun (via Popular Science) Link

Not what you think it means: Hippo licking the crocodile (via Nat Geo Kids) Link

And you thought the wakeboard was and accident waiting to happen (via Popular Science) Link