Whenever I visit the CBCP website I often find inspiration that would stimulate me to write an article for Filipino Freethinkers. Their infallible wisdom on matters of which they supposedly have no experience (e.g., sex, marriage, contraceptives, pregnancy and childbirth) never ceases to amaze me. This time, however, I wasn’t only inspired but also rather intrigued when I saw an old news article discussing the views of theology professor Robert John Russell on evolution in relation to atheism, and I couldn’t believe they actually posted it on their site.

Here are some excerpts:

He said if people want to “attack evolution they should do it in an intelligent way, not in an embarrassing way” by putting forth arguments that the scientific community addressed years ago.

Intelligent design, which accepts that life has evolved over eons but asserts that it is so complex that its development must have been guided by a supreme being or intelligent agent, or any other kind of interventionist theology “is really unethical” from a pastoral point of view, he said.

Proponents of intelligent design and creationism offer “a kind of fool’s gold” claiming they are the only ones who can keep God’s role in explaining the origins of life since “those nasty atheists have co-opted it” with the theory of evolution, he said.

While the Catholic Church claims that evolution doesn’t contradict the Bible, a quick look at the details of such claim exposes that what they are referring to may actually be intelligent design:

Citing various addresses from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before and after his election as Pope, the Austrian cardinal explained that “there are many proofs in favor of evolution.”

Nevertheless, he stressed, “though this theory enriches our knowledge of life, it doesn’t respond to the great philosophical question: Where does everything come from and how did this everything take a path until coming to be man?”

Therefore, Cardinal Schönborn contended, the key is discovering “that a preceding idea exists, that man is not the fruit of chaos, but that he ‘has been thought of,’ ‘wanted’ and ‘loved’” by the Creator.

Going back to the CBCP news article on Russell, we see how he effectively criticizes intelligent design:

Unfortunately, he said, intelligent design and creationist proponents are not addressing the real problem evolution poses, which is how to explain the existence of suffering, disease, death and extinction before the historical event of the creation and fall of man.

The fall represents the first act of disobedience of Adam and Eve whereby humankind lost its primal innocence and happiness and entered into its present condition of sin and suffering.

But evolution demonstrates that suffering and death are not the consequence of the fall, but were part of life “far before humanity came onto the scene and is in fact a part of how we got here,” he said.

How to account for the problem of why God would allow all his creatures to suffer is “the really hard challenge of evolution,” he said.

That seems to be a very solid argument against the existence of a loving creator put forth in a very clear and concise manner, and the fact that it can be found in the CBCP website makes it all the more interesting. Russell continues:

One response is that pain and suffering are a consequence of freedom, he said.

But while the father of a child lets her be free to run, fall and scrape her knee, if she were to pick up a gun and start playing with it, “I’d take that gun away,” he said.

How then does the heavenly Father allow the extent and horrendousness of suffering seen throughout the world and in history? he asked.

At this point one would expect Russell to say that the concept of a heavenly Father is simply irreconcilable with evolution, but then he surprises us:

The brutality Darwin witnesses in his studies of nature along with the tragic death of his 11-year-old daughter were two major circumstances that drove the Anglican scientist to abandon his faith in God, Russell said.

“But this doesn’t mean that his theories are atheistic,” he emphasized.

Almost everyone sees the same cruel world Darwin saw, but he “was tempted and his faith was challenged like mine is and yours is” in the face of seemingly inexplicable evil, he said.

“But we all have the same choice: to see (life) as meaningful or meaningless,” said Russell.

How could Russell, who was able to eloquently frame the problem of evil and suffering by posing implicative questions, propose that it still all boils down to our ‘choice’? Well it may be because he is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and the founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences that he cannot state outright his position, much less his apparent skepticism, on the Christian teaching of an all-powerful and loving god. More importantly, Russell only said that we have the choice “to see life as meaningful or meaningless”; he didn’t really indicate that such meaning was dependent on the existence of God.

Even back when I was still a very spiritual person I already had some reservations regarding prayer. Well I did sometimes pray to ask God for things, but deep inside I somehow figured that if God is good and he already knows what’s good – what’s best - for me, I’d rather tell him, “Your will be done” and use prayer as an expression of my overflowing gratitude for all the blessings.

I remember this episode in House, MD where Dr. Cameron was explaining to Dr. House the purpose of prayer:

Cameron: “Do you know why people pray to God?”
House: “I thought you didn’t believe in God.”
Cameron: “I don’t.”
House: “Well, then you better be making a very good point.”
Cameron: “Do you think they pray to Him and praise Him because they want Him to know how great He is? God already knows that.”
House: “Are you comparing me to God? I mean, that’s great, but just so you know, I’ve never made a tree.”
Cameron: “I thank you because it means something to me. To be grateful for what I receive.”
House: “You are the most naive atheist I’ve ever met…. People pray so that God won’t crush them like bugs. I’m not gonna crush you.”

Much as I am generally able to relate more with House’s cynicism than Cameron’s naiveté, as far as prayer goes I’m with Cameron. I guess gratitude comes naturally to some people, and the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti even remarked that “the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank”. It just doesn’t seem very satisfying to thank Blind Luck or Pure Chance for a desirable turn of events; people need to thank someone who willed these events into happening.

This sense of prayerful gratitude is often harmless and nothing more than foolish at worst, but the problem is that the same people who have a strong desire to give thanks to a sentient Being also tend to believe that they can actually influence the will of this Being. And this attitude reeks of arrogance, as explained by fellow freethinker Garrick Bercero in his comments on another post:

I do not deny that most Christians believe that they are being humble in passively accepting the will of a higher power…What I am talking about is that the belief that some people have access to this will is arrogant.

Prayer is inherently arrogant because this is what it says: God built every single galaxy among trillions in the universe… and Christians have a hotline to this God and he cares about what they think and he wants to know their thoughts on what else he can do for them.

Now this arrogance is sometimes compounded with self-absorption when one is being showered with trivial “blessings” while conveniently turning a blind eye to the great miseries existing elsewhere. But what is even more arrogant is the propensity of these grateful believers to assert that all these sufferings are just part of God’s grand design. And if they are divinely justified, that leaves less reason for humans to be dissatisfied with the undesirable states of affairs happening all around the world and somehow eases the pressure to try do something about them.

On a personal level, one of the salient differences between those who believe in an intervening god and those who don’t has something to do with purpose. For the believer, everything that happens – including the unpleasant things – has a purpose set by God. This brings about a cozy sense of security because our lives are in God’s hands and in the end everything will fall into its rightful place. But for the nonbeliever, purpose comes after the fact; we make a purpose for whatever happens to us so that whenever we lose, we do not lose the lesson. More importantly, we take it as our responsibility to fulfill that purpose.

I remember Poch Suzara’s rants about how the Philippines, being the only Christian nation in Asia, has become the Sick Man of Asia because its people, instead of taking responsibility for the betterment of their lives, keep waiting for a Sky Daddy to do it for them. And I couldn’t agree more. According to Gallup, “a population’s religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living”. Let us take a look at the list of the most religious and least religious countries in the world:

The poll indicates that “8 of the 11 countries in which almost all residents (at least 98%) say religion is important in their daily lives are poorer nations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

“On the opposite end of the spectrum, the 10 least religious countries studied include several with the world’s highest living standards, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, and Japan. (Several other countries on this list are former Soviet republics, places where the state suppressed religious expression for decades.)”

In fairness, religion never really promised earthly wealth (or did it?); it assures one, rather, of an afterlife where everything will be all right – forever. Such concept of eternity easily renders insignificant a couple of decades of life on earth. And for such, many people live on prayer, expecting everything to happen according to God’s plan.

I admire the theists who live by the words “Nasa tao ang gawa, nasa Diyos ang awa” (roughly “God is merciful but man has to do his job”). At least they do not look onto God as a sky daddy or fairy godmother. Up to this point they are no different from the nonbelievers. However, they still expect God to be a protector. And this often leads to a certain level of carelessness because one may get overconfident in the “knowledge” that God will always protect him.

When driving, for instance, a devout Catholic may tend to focus more on the prayer he is reciting for protection while his right hand releases the wheel and reaches out to touch the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror and his eyes leaves the road for a few seconds to glance reverently at the crucifix. But the most convenient part of this “divine protection” is the insurance that if he gets into an accident and dies, it is still part of God’s plan, and he will go to heaven.

Now compare that to the nonbeliever who takes his safety as his own responsibility and keeps both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel and sets precautions for mechanical failure and reckless drivers. When one lives on the assumption that this life is all there is, he tends to take a little more care of it. After all, it seems the sensible thing to do when one doesn’t have much of a prayer to protect him.

Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae "On the Regulation of Birth" in 1968

A few days ago the CBCP issued a statement exhorting the proposed bills on sex education and reproductive health, saying that “the foundation of the moral society is a central religious truth” and that “to disregard moral and religious truths…is to be defenseless to the onslaught of corruption.”

At first I thought about refuting those claims by challenging the following:

1. the credibility of the CBCP as guardian of morality considering the scandals within the clergy’s own ranks
2. the unspoken assumption that the pope from whom the church gets its dogma is a true recipient and infallible interpreter of divine revelation
3. the unspoken assumption that their particular brand of deity/Lawgiver exists

But then I realized that others have already done that so I moved on to another part of the CBCP statement and found the following assertions:

a. The failures (sic) rates of contraceptives against sexually transmitted diseases are high.

b. Oral contraceptive pills are classified as Group I carcinogenic, i.e., “there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity.”

c. With its very liberal sex education programs and its aggressive attitude in pushing contraceptives and condoms for safe sex, the United States still has the highest teen birth rate, 93.0 per 1000, and one of the highest rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) among teens in the industrialized world.

Again I considered countering these assertions or at least putting them into proper perspective but I figured that my fellow freethinkers could do a better job and so I started a thread in the FF forum and I am very greatful for their insights.

The debate on contraception has become convoluted with all these talks of morality, STDs, and poverty that we’ve digressed from the real issue: More than 40 years ago a pope wrote in an encyclical deemed infallible that ‎”an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life. Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will.”

Now unless someone comes up with a sophisticated interpretation, I guess the bottom line here is that sex must be kept open for procreation. Lest we muddle the issue with arguments on contraceptive pills that have an abortifacient effect no matter how improbable, let us narrow it down by using condoms as a concrete example, particularly the use of condoms between married couples versus natural family planning. Since the CBCP condemns the former but approves the latter, one is compelled to ask if it isn’t against Humanae Vitae to have sex during the wife’s infertile period considering they are using this “divine gift while depriving it…of its meaning and purpose”. I couldn’t have said it better than fellow freethinker Igme:

What is the difference between ejaculating sperm in latex and ejaculating it in a uterus in its monthly off switch? The intent is the same!

In both cases, the intent is to enjoy the divine gift of sex while depriving it of its procreational purpose. Again, it would be interesting to hear those elaborate arguments that would tell me I’m interpreting Humanae Vitae literally (and incorrectly), because it seems that those statements about condoms being ineffective in preventing the spread of STDs and contraceptives promoting immorality are all just rationalizations to protect the claim that a pope is infallible once he speaks ex-cathedra, which was the case when he wrote the encyclical.

Once we strip off these rationalizations, the real issue becomes clear. Condoms vs. rhythm. Both make sex possible while denying God’s procreational design. So why ban the former but not the latter? I think the answer on condoms is simple: it’s forbidden in Humanae Vitae. However, I’m not so sure why the Church allows rhythm, but I hope my assumption is wrong that they’re simply concerned they might start losing followers once they took away too much of a married couple’s carnal pleasures.

I mentioned in one of my comments that a “Christian freethinker” is an oxymoron, or loosely a “contradiction in terms”. I realize I should not have made such sweeping statement that might antagonize some liberal or progressive Christians. I am sorry.

Wikipedia defines freethought as “a philosophical viewpoint that holds that opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, and should not be influenced by authority, tradition, or any dogma.” A freethinker is therefore someone who practices freethought.

On the other hand, a Christian, in the broadest sense, is one who professes belief in the teachings of Jesus Christ. By this definition, Christianity seems to be incompatible with freethought because the former relies on the “divinely-inspired” authority of religious doctrines to learn about the supposed teachings of Jesus while the latter repudiates such doctrines due to hearsay and circular reasoning, hence my use of the term ‘oxymoron’ to describe “Christian freethinker”.

But upon deeper reflection, I am beginning to believe that there are actually many Christian freethinkers (note the lack of quotes this time) out there. In fact, I used to be one. But it has a lot to do with the timing. Freethought holds that beliefs should be based on reason instead of authority, but most Christians had already acquired their sacred beliefs long before they were capable of rational thought, and so while they would now think critically when presented with new issues or claims, I guess they simply didn’t get the chance to evaluate the quality of the cognitive process by which they originally formed their religious beliefs way back in childhood.

In my personal experience, it was relatively late in life when I encountered cogent arguments against the tenets of my faith. For a long time I merely skirted the Problem of Evil, taking comfort in the belief that God has a purpose for everything, a grand plan that is just beyond our human understanding. My faith was even strengthened after reading Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time because it somehow seemed to imply a necessity of a Creator, offering “scientific support” for my belief. (I felt uneasy at the part where Hawking suggested how the four-dimensional space-time could be finite but with no boundaries – like the two-dimensional surface of the earth – so the universe could have no beginning nor end but simply be, negating the need for a creator. I was later relieved when he said that such wave-function scenario could only happen in imaginary time, and in real time in which we exist, there will always be boundaries.)

At this point, was I what you would call a freethinker? A lot of people would probably say no because I wasn’t a critical thinker. According to The Critical Thinking Community, critical thinking is “the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.” And based on that definition, I surely was not a critical thinker.

But critical thinking is not the same as freethinking. While freethought values science, reason and logic, critical thinking is more concerned with how scientific is the evidence, how rational is the argument, and how logical is the conclusion:

It is believed by some philosophers (notably A.C. Grayling) that a good rationale must be independent of emotions, personal feelings or any kind of instincts. Any process of evaluation or analysis, that may be called rational, is expected to be highly objective, logical and “mechanical”. If these minimum requirements are not satisfied i.e. if a person has been, even slightly, influenced by personal emotions, feelings, instincts or culturally specific, moral codes and norms, then the analysis may be termed irrational, due to the injection of subjective bias.

It is quite evident from modern cognitive science and neuroscience, studying the role of emotion in mental function (including topics ranging from flashes of scientific insight to making future plans), that no human has ever satisfied this criterion, except perhaps a person with no effective feelings, for example an individual with a massively damaged Amygdala.

Freethought is the general process; critical thinking is the quality control. As such, I personally believe that it is actually possible for a Christian to be a freethinker as long as he honestly tries to be rational, regardless of the quality of his rationality.

But once he is presented with a compelling argument against the basis of his faith, he will have to choose between Christianity and freethought. He will either have to remain blind and stubborn – or start reexamining his beliefs. And in my case, it was this image that changed everything:

Once I realized that this “Word of God” is actually just hearsay and might as well be stories concocted by fallible humans with their own personal interests in mind, it was almost immediately that I stopped considering myself a Christian.

To the Christian freethinkers (again, note the lack of quotes), I know it isn’t easy to question one’s faith especially if one believes that questioning will jeopardize one’s immortal soul. But ask yourselves, who are you questioning -God, or just the self-proclaimed human messengers? Once you realize it’s the latter, I bet you wouldn’t think twice about applying critical thinking to every belief you hold sacred. And then you could honestly say that you are, as you always have been, a freethinker, regardless of your beliefs.

Dear CB,

I regret not being able to see you when you last came home to visit. It’s been almost a decade since you left the country and we had somehow lost touch, and surely I could have spared a few minutes – a few hours, even – to meet with an old friend.

But the reason I didn’t see you had nothing to do with time. I did not come to see you because I figured the topic of Faith would most likely be brought about in our conversation, and I didn’t want to lie to you even as I didn’t want to tell you that I no longer have it.

I remember several years ago there was this Q & A being circulated via email. One of the questions was, “What is most important to you?” As I had expected, you answered “Jesus”. Back then I still considered myself a very spiritual albeit not a very religious person, but I wrote down “Truth”.

I realize I’ve been a truth seeker ever since my childhood days. I remember feeling uncomfortable in Sunday school when the teacher told us that Jesus chose the dumb people for his disciples because the bright ones had too many questions. Whether that was biblically accurate or not is beside the point; she was implying that one should simply follow and not think. But I realized that no matter how I tried, I simply could not not think. And there I was struck by the irony of why our God-given intelligence would be the very thing to hinder us from getting closer to Him. I could not understand why the same God who gave us reason would prohibit us from using it.

Still, I managed to stay on the path and maintain a personal relationship with the Lord throughout my adolescence and early adulthood. You might have noticed, however, that I was the liberal type of Christian who always tried to find a rationale for our beliefs instead of just taking them by blind faith.

One of the things I tried to ponder was the presence of evil and pain in a world supposedly created and cared for by the loving and powerful God. I even opened that up to you and you were able to conveniently answer it with the explanation that we are not omniscient, hence, we cannot fathom God’s purpose in His infinite wisdom.

That explanation kept me going for a few more years, but the Problem of Evil had been an eternal bug up my theist ass. I lived with cognitive dissonance as I struggled to rationalize gratuitous – unnecessary, unwarranted, and unjustified – suffering as part of God’s divine plan. And I do not mean only human suffering; even before our species walked the earth (and long before Adam and Eve supposedly committed Original Sin), countless animals had already suffered and died, some more excruciatingly than the others, like the caterpillar whose body was being leisurely eaten alive from the inside by a growing wasp larva that would soon emerge from the caterpillar’s empty shell as an adult wasp ready to mate and lay an egg on another unlucky caterpillar, and the cycle continues as the egg hatches into a larva that digs into the caterpillar’s flesh. Now unless there is a Caterpillar Heaven where all their sufferings will be recompensed, it just didn’t make sense to me to suppose that there was actually a loving Creator.

We were both lucky to be born to middle-class families in a civilized society, so gratitude comes naturally to us for all of “God’s blessings, goodness, and mercy”. But we had no idea what it would be like to live in Afghanistan, North Korea, or Africa. Gratuitous suffering exists elsewhere, and we were not constantly aware of them as we focused on our “blessings” like passing an exam when there were children who never had a decent meal or access to medical care. Our pastors have come up with sophisticated theodicies like man’s “free will” and divine punishment, but when I reminded myself that this was supposed to be a loving and all-powerful God we were talking about, I realized that the apologists were running out of excuses for God’s indifference and/or incompetence.

And so I clung back to the assurance that God has a “grand design” which is just beyond our finite minds’ ken. But then I wondered, how do we know that God indeed has a beautiful plan for His most beloved creation? Unfortunately, I only had the Bible to tell me so, the Holy Book we revered as the true Word of God. However, the Bible contains many major contradictions and divinely-commissioned atrocities that I either had to skip those verses or suspend my reason in order to continue believing its divine origin. But my biggest problem with the Bible was its lack of authenticity considering its stories were accounts of humans passed from generation to generation without the use of a printing press, and that it was only the Bible that proclaimed itself as the “Word of God”.

When I realized this, every belief I held sacred suddenly became fair game – including my belief in the divinity of Jesus. It also dawned on me how absurd is the notion of God’s ultimate “sacrifice” for the salvation of mankind: God created man imperfectly so God now plans to punish man severely and eternally because of the fatal imperfection that God caused in the first place, but because of God’s “love” for man, God bore an only Son, who was actually God Himself, to be offered as a sacrifice – to Himself – in order to satisfy God’s craving for blood and so that man does not have to suffer God’s eternal wrath as long as he believes in the Son. And even the “sacrifice” is not a sacrifice at all considering it was only about thirty years as a man and less than three days as a “dead” man that an eternal Being had to endure. That’s not even a cent to the world’s richest man, and yet Christians consider it to be the greatest gift.

Now you might shudder at my utter blasphemy and invoke Pascal’s Wager to make me reconsider believing, but all I can say is that the teachings of Christianity contradict those of the two other major religions, Judaism and Islam, and if either of them turns out to be the “true religion” then all Christians will burn in hell for believing and blasphemously proclaiming that Jesus was not just a prophet but God Himself.

And what does it mean to “believe” anyway? Is it something one can force upon himself even if every part of his rational mind screams incredulity? I don’t think so. Belief is not a personal choice; rather, it is the product of knowledge and understanding, both of which are not personal choices either.

And then I was left with the ultimate question: Where did everything come from? For quite some time after I left Christianity I considered myself a deist, believing in a Creator who simply caused the cosmos into existence but never intervened afterwards, allowing the universe to evolve according to the natural laws embodied in it. While I still do not discount the possibility of such Creator to exist or have existed, I am now equally open to possibilities that the universe – or at least the pre-Big Bang singularity from which it expanded – has either existed eternally in some form or another or came from nothing as an accident in nature via quantum fluctuations, negating the need for a creator. But more importantly, I highly doubt that a Being powerful enough to be able to create an entire universe would be that petty or insecure to give a damn if I believed in Him/Her/It.

While I consider myself a skeptic, I do not wish to be called an atheist mainly because of the stigma and misconceptions associated with the word, but for all practical purposes I might as well be an atheist because I no longer believe in an intervening god – loving or otherwise. While it cannot be proven without a doubt that such god does not exist, reason dictates that the Abrahamic God’s existence is very highly unlikely, and so I live my life on the assumption that this life is all there is and that the future of our world and the welfare as well as the suffering of our fellow humans – and of the ‘lower’ animals, or at least the ones we domesticate – rest mostly in our hands.

And so, CB, while you might be aghast with my revelation, I simply cannot bear to live in pretense just to avoid disappointing you. I can no longer force myself to suspend reason for the sake of my faith. As Daniel Dennet said, ‎”There is no future in a sacred myth. Why not? Because of our curiosity. Whatever we hold precious, we cannot protect it from our curiosity, because being who we are, one of the things we deem precious is the truth.”

But if you really believe that God is the Truth, please pray that He will reveal Himself to me in an unmistakable manner and prove me wrong before it’s too late. With all His power and mercy, surely He will make a way.

It is an unwritten rule in Filipino Freethinkers that those who participate in the discussions must use reason and avoid citing dogma. And except for the occasional troll, I think this rule has been quite effective. While non sequitur arguments are still employed from time to time, I believe what matters is the attempt at using reason especially for those who, until just recently, have for so long taken for granted the factuality of certain traditional beliefs.

Proud as I am of our small but growing online community, I must emphasize that while we freethinkers practically revere Reason, sometimes what we are actually doing is rationalizing, so I guess it is important to define terms lest we confuse similar but non-synonymous words with one another:

Reason involves conscious explanation.

Reasoning as a process takes proposed explanations, considers them, contrasting them, or fitting them together in order to determine which beliefs or actions or attitudes are best.

Here the definition seems to cover both reason and rationalization, with the latter being defined as:

In psychology and logic, rationalization (or making excuses) is the process of constructing a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process.

But if we look at the word rationality, we find something specific and determinate:

In philosophy, rationality and reason are the key methods used to analyze the data gathered through systematically gathered observations.

And here the difference between rationality and rationalization becomes clear. In rationalization, the belief which was “originally arrived at through a different mental process” comes first and then rational arguments are later formed to support this belief. But as for rationality, the data comes first and analysis comes second before reaching a conclusion – if it even comes to that. And here I am reminded of a brief introduction to skepticism:

Skepticism is a method, not a position.

Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, that involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement. But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions. Some claims, such as water dowsing, ESP, and creationism, have been tested (and failed the tests) often enough that we can ‘provisionally’ conclude that they are not valid. Other claims, such as hypnosis or the origins of language, have been tested but results are inconclusive so we must continue formulating and testing hypotheses and theories until we can reach a provisional conclusion.

I think most members will agree that freethought is more related to skepticism than atheism or agnosticism. Along with skepticism, freethought is a method, a way of thinking and forming beliefs; atheism and agnosticism, on the other hand, are more like the “positions” at which the freethinker or skeptic arrives.

But to people whose present beliefs are still those formed long before they were capable of rational thought, it is amazing to see how they try to rationalize now in the absence of solid evidence. They start off with a position based on religious doctrine and try to use rational arguments to back up such position. This is very hard to do considering they are performing the scientific method backwards, and I cannot help but admire the ingenuity of those who were able to keep their claims from being falsified outright. Of course, they could not prove their claims, but for one who has no real evidence, a technical stalemate is already a great achievement.

We freethinkers do not claim to be highly intelligent especially in philosophical discourse; we just learned to set aside our biases and let the observable facts speak for themselves. It takes a lot of brainpower to effectively rationalize something as confounding as the presence of gratuitous evil in the same universe where a loving and all-powerful deity supposedly exists; it only takes intellectual honesty and the continuous attempt towards unbiased rationality to become skeptical about such contradictory co-existence which can certainly cause cognitive dissonance in stubborn minds.

The endless meddling of the CBCP in the affairs of the supposedly secular State from one presidency to the next drives people to angrily invoke Article II Section 6 of the 1987 Phlippine Constitution: The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable. But as tempers cool down and rationality takes over, one begins to wonder if the CBCP is indeed violating this rule.

I am reminded of an article written by one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution, Dean Emiritus of Ateneo Law School and amicus curiae Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J., where he says:

It is sometimes thought by some that separation of church and state means that church people should not get involved in the hurly-burly of public and political life. In other words, they should confine themselves to the sacristy. But to understand the subject properly one must begin with what the Constitution says. The constitutional command says: “No law shall be passed respecting an establishment of religion …” Immediately it can be seen that the command is addressed not to the church but to the state. It is the state, after all, which passes laws.

And on other parts of the article he wrote:

That is the “separation part” of the constitutional command. The other part is the “free exercise clause.” Both are embodied in one sentence which says: “No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

…the negative command of the Constitution is addressed not to bishops or priests but to the state and those who exercise state authority. As to bishops and priests, the pertinent part of the constitutional command is the guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

It does make sense, at least to me. The command was for the State, not the Church, and it is the former that seems to be violating this command by giving weight to what the latter dictates, as can be seen from the following statement of Fr. Bernas:

The fundamental meaning of the clause is the prohibition imposed on the state not to establish any religion as the official state religion.

Of course, the state hasn’t really declared Roman Catholicism as the official state religion – just the official consultant on issues and policies that affect all Filipinos, Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Fr. Bernas explains:

The constitutional command, however, is more than just the prohibition of a state religion. That is the minimal meaning. Jurisprudence has expanded it to mean that the state may not pass “laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

So it seems that we freethinkers have been barking up the wrong tree all along. While we’ve been making noise about the Church’s meddling, it is actually the State we should be blaming. (Besides, it is the Church’s moral obligation to meddle and try to impose its dogma.)

But the State is highly influenced by the Church, and we can’t touch the Church since it is merely exercising freedom of religion. The picture says it all. While there seems to be a wall of separation between Church and State, God is straddling that wall. This ought to be tolerable, but the problem is that this isn’t just the generic God as the creator of the universe; it has to be a particular brand of God even more specific than the Judeo-Christian God. It is, of course, the Roman Catholic God who says that contraception is evil because the main (sole?) purpose of sex is procreation between married couples and that overpopulation and poverty and the spread of STDs are all caused by immorality and can only be solved if people turn from their evil ways.

So what do we do now? Aside from taking the necessary legal steps to make sure the State observes the separation, I guess we could go for the source of the Church’s power. And I don’t mean God. I’m talking about the followers, who happen to make up the majority of the electorate and whose votes the state politicians are desperate to get. If we could open the eyes of enough people, we will be able to reach critical mass. It may be a long, uphill battle where we gain and lose ground one step at a time, but once we begin to weaken the Church’s influence, I imagine it will be all downhill from there.

Morality is often equated with an absolute standard – religion and/or God – so atheists, agnostics, and other non-theists are sometimes viewed as people who lack moral standards. And why not? In a nation where a lot of people actually believe that our laws are based on the Ten Commandments – “Thou shall not kill…steal” – how indeed can someone who doesn’t believe in God be expected to tell right from wrong – or choose right over wrong? Someone who doesn’t believe in an absolute justice that metes out eternal punishment might be able to do evil things because they believe they can get away without any consequences.

But there are consequences, although they are not very obvious and immediate and one has to look far enough to understand. Even if a person thinks only of himself and what could be ultimately good for his own welfare, as long as he is rational enough he will apply the Golden Rule – which happens to be a very selfish rule by the way – and choose to do what is desirable rather than detestable according to one’s own standards.

For example, if a nonbeliever decides not to steal even when there is very little possibility of getting caught, it’s because he had somehow figured out a long time ago that stealing is such a lousy thing to do, and it’s not because of what he was taught in Sunday school or religion class. Stealing is wrong because it causes loss of property to others, and even if such loss doesn’t happen back to the thief or his loved ones, the highly evolved person will see that it will still bring more harm than good. He may not get caught now, but a lifelong habit of stealing will surely put him at risk of being distrusted by the people around.

But more importantly, he cannot bear to insult himself and his own self-esteem with the idea that he has to resort to stealing for his survival and prosperity. Freethinkers are often proud people; when one chooses for himself what he considers right and wrong instead of having some authority dictate it to him, he takes responsibility for his actions even in the absence of laws.

I believe that morality should be based on how certain actions benefit or harm individuals and society and not on the ‘revealed’ commandments of a deity whose existence still remains to be proved and whose ‘revelations’ are all hearsay. This comment on another article says it best:

The atheist’s morality of “do no harm” is actually much more complex than the theist’s “10 commandments” when actually put into practice. By no means, however, does this make the atheist’s morality inferior. Our morality is more nuanced, which many theists interpret as lacking principles, because they are unable to understand what isn’t spelled out exactly for them in a simple list.

The rational person knows that it is advantageous to himself to do things that benefit instead of harm others because while the temptation of undue personal gain at the expense of others may at first look attractive, in the long run he will have to pay the price. And if such inequity happens in a community often enough it will trigger even more injustice as people become desensitized to supposedly repugnant behavior.

Life is not a zero-sum game where each person’s gain necessitates an equal amount of loss to another; in nature and in society teamwork and cooperation have proven that it is actually possible for everyone to win, and that every now and then small civilized gestures go a long way and eventually trickle down to the pool of moral standards, gradually raising its level. And it only takes rationality – not religion – to realize that.

Some people have the assumption that the Filipino Freethinkers (FF) are a bunch of atheists who bonded together for the purpose of converting others towards atheism. This assumption is wrong on two counts: first, we are not all atheists; second, we do not preach atheism.

A quick visit to our info page yields the following:

Freethought is not the same as atheism. Freethinking is a way of thinking that can lead to different conclusions. Although most freethinkers are nontheistic — atheists, agnostics, deists — many freethinkers still reach religious conclusions. However, theistic freethinkers do tend to have more liberal or progressive religious views than other believers.

Whenever you try to use reason and science to reach your own conclusions, you are freethinking. Freethinking is a process of thinking free from dogma, authority, and tradition. Although these things may influence a freethinker’s conclusions, freethinkers make up their own minds.

To a freethinker, no idea is sacred; the worth of all truth claims is best determined by skepticism, rational inquiry, and scientific testing.

While we publish quite a few essays that argue for the non-existence of God, these articles merely reflect the views of the individual atheist authors and do not necessarily represent the collective position of the Filipino Freethinkers. What these atheistic articles do represent about the FF, however, is the way arguments are built around science and reason and presented in a non-dogmatic, non-adversarial way.

What the FF is basically promoting is reason; we are trying to open the eyes of Filipinos living in this predominantly religious and superstitious country. Why? Because religion has always been a powerful and oppressive force that has crossed the line to supposedly secular politics and medicine and stunted our progress over the centuries by refusing to implement practical solutions to real issues. (As I have said before, religion, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, shares a large part of the blame for overpopulation, poverty, and the spread of STDs because of its stand on contraceptives. And this stand is based on an encyclical called Humanae Vitae on the Regulation of Birth written more than 40 years ago by a pope who is now long dead. Of course the Catholic church has the right – the duty - to preach its doctrine to its members. That’s called freedom of religion. The problem starts when the church meddles with issues affecting the whole country as if all Filipinos were Catholics.)

Another reason why the Filipino Freethinkers are quite active in advocating freethought is that we want to live in a society where we will not be discrimated or prejudiced for our lack of faith in religious dogma, where in a job interview we can honestly say that we’re atheists or agnostics without fear of being passed over in favor of a more religious candidate, and where our lack of religion will not be taken as a lack of moral standards.

Some may think that ‘atheists’ who congregate are weak, in need of a support group because they cannot fend for themselves in a religious world. Well, let them think what they want, but don’t people congregate for many other reasons and interests? Why can’t they congregate for the love of stimulating discussions that do not always have to be about religion?

Freethought is a journey; atheism, agnosticism, deism, and even philosophical theism are just some of the destinations, and none of them has to be final. Won’t the journey be a lot more fun having fellow truth seekers along the way?

During the first half of the 19th century most Americans probably considered themselves highly civilized and morally upright compared to the native tribes – the “savages” – and yet they practiced slavery. After the emancipation they probably thought they had now become a more humane society – but their racial discrimination would still be considered barbaric by today’s standards. Today we may consider ourselves ethical, but there is a real possibility that in the future we shall also be called barbaric because of how we treat animals.

Morality has always something to do with how we relate to our fellow human beings (unless you consider masturbation a moral issue), and we are only as moral as how we treat others in relation to our society’s standards.

In chess, players are rated for their relative skills – meaning how good they are in comparison to the entire world pool of active competitors – using the Elo rating system. There is no absolute value for each four-digit rating; the figures merely show how good a player is compared to present competition.

For example, Mikhail Tal was World Champion in 1960–1961 but he got his peak Elo rating of 2705 in January 1980, which means his rating was even higher in 1980 but in spite of that he was no longer world champion. Today, an Elo rating of 2705 would only put Tal in 33rd place.

It has been argued that “due to increased knowledge of the game including the use of computers in preparation, the top players of today are simply better than the best players of ten, twenty or fifty years ago.” As levels of competition increase and game standards improve, the actual ratings decrease in relative value. What may be considered a high rating at a certain period may be called average a few decades later.

Going back to morality, I guess we can say that due to economic and intellectual progress the top moral societies of today are simply better than the top moral societies of ten, twenty or fifty years ago. And just as competitive standards in the world chess community would go down if a software virus or some electromagnetic pulse somehow destroyed all the chess programs and databases leaving chess players with nothing but talent and skill, moral standards are expected to deteriorate when a country is stricken with famine or natural calamity, and crimes such as stealing may not even be condemned as much especially if it was done to feed one’s starving children.

And this reminds me of Season 3 Episode 11 of Boston Legal where Alan Shore defends a New Orleans doctor who euthanized five patients because Hurricane Katrina flooded the hospital – cutting off power, drinking water, and medical supplies – and no help was coming. The following are the closing arguments of the assistant district attorney and Alan Shore:

Assistant District Attorney: This isn’t a complicated case. The defendant lethally injected five people, causing their deaths. Might they have died anyway? Maybe. So what? That doesn’t give this doctor the right to take the law and, more importantly, their lives into her hands. Physician-assisted suicide isn’t even lawful in this state. To kill a patient without his consent—do I really need to stand here and argue the illegality of that? And even should you be inclined to engage in the moral debate defense counsel would like you to, you have to apply the law as it stands today. And, as it stands today, when you knowingly, intentionally cause the death of another human being—that’s murder. No matter how bad things get, this is still the United States of America, not some third world nation, and we don’t permit people to kill other people. If we forgive that kind of lawlessness, if we tolerate that kind of anarchy, we cease being the United States of America.

…

It is a common warning that when drinking, one should avoid any talk on religion or politics because that’s a recipe for disaster. These topics are very personal to some people, and if someone criticizes their deity or candidate – add to that the effects of alcohol to everyone - it is often just a matter of time before a drunken remark is taken the wrong way by the drunk listener, leading to more hostile exchanges that won’t be limited to words.

Interestingly, religion, politics, and alcohol have one thing in common: they get people drunk. The religious followers get drunk on the promise of salvation and wellbeing amid all their problems – while the religious leaders get drunk with power. The political followers get drunk on the promise of an end to corruption and poverty – while the political leaders get drunk with power.

And of course, if there’s the intoxication, sometimes there’s also the hangover. This may exclude the deeply religious who never ’sobered up’ until they died, but oftentimes the faithful are sooner or later confronted with the problem of evil and gratuitous pain, and many suffer from cognitive dissonance trying to reconcile this with the existence of a loving and powerful deity. On the other hand, when politicians fail to deliver their promises, their supporters wake up with a splitting headache to an ugly reality.

On May 10 many will get drunk with hope - hope for a better government and a better life. A lot is at stake here and there are forces trying to jeopardize this hope, so people get emotional and wary at the same time. And this is where the liquor ban makes sense because you wouldn’t want to add any more intoxication to all the excitement.

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DISCLAIMER: Views expressed in this article represent the views of the author ‘innerminds‘ and do not necessarily represent the editorial position of www.filipinofreethinkers.org.