Hello Davaoeños! Let’s get together for an evening of interaction and interesting discussions with our fellow freethinkers.

Date: July 30, 2011 (Saturday)

Time: 8.00 pm

Place: Harley Blvd. Motor Cafe (the 2nd floor is reserved exclusively for us)

Address: Juan Luna St., Davao City (opposite Better Components) Tel. (082)302-8986

* Newbies are welcome.
* There is no required age, religion, philosophy, or IQ level.
* Discussions are informal yet intelligent (most of the time).
* You don’t have to talk if you don’t feel like it; you can just sit in and listen while enjoying your drink.

While Harley offers tasty burgers and other food – and drinks – the meetup is set at 8pm so you have the option of having an early dinner at home or elsewhere and you don’t have to order anything from Harley.

If you don’t know where Harley is, click on the map below to enlarge it:

You may also RSVP on our Facebook page. 

See you there!

A headline on the CBCP website reads: “CBCP apologizes over PCSO fund mess,” referring to the pastoral statement of CBCP president Nereo Odchimar, A time of pain, a time of grace. But reading the statement makes one wonder if the CBCP has indeed apologized.

Apology is defined as “an admission of error or discourtesy accompanied by an expression of regret.” Notice that the definition has two parts: 1) the admission of error, and 2) the expression regret. Let’s take a look at some key passages from the pastoral statement and see if they satisfy the definition of apology:

…we are sorry for the pain and sadness that these events have brought upon you.

We are saddened that many of you…have been confused because of the apparent inconsistency of our actions with our pastoral preaching.

We express again our deep sorrow for the pain that the recent events have brought to you our beloved people.

We can see no admission of error in those sentences (or anywhere in the entire pastoral letter), but only an expression of regret: the first sentence “apologizes” for the pain and sadness brought by the ‘events’; the second says they are saddened by the confusion over the apparent inconsistency of their actions with their preaching; the third expresses deep sorrow for the pain brought about by, again, the recent ‘events’. What’s missing is the part where they are supposed to actually say that they are sorry for the involvement of their bishops in the PCSO scandal.

The pastoral statement is actually a “non-apology apology.” The humorist Bruce McCall noted that “with sufficiently artful double talk, you can get what you want by seeming to express regret while actually accepting no blame.” The political consultant William Schneider said that nonconfessions like “mistakes were made” should be referred to as the “past exonerative,” while presidential speechwriter William Safire defined the phrase as “a passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.”

The CBCP’s “apology” is clearly a passive-evasive artful double talk in the past exonerative tense. There is no true apology here, only half-hearted excuses and weasel words. Surely the bishops can do better than that? In the words of the journalist Mignon McLaughlin, “True remorse is never just a regret over consequence; it is a regret over motive.” The CBCP statement is just a sorry excuse for an apology.

We often hear the term secularism nowadays, but it’s possible that many people take its meaning for granted and fail to appreciated the profundity of the word. The social theorist Harriet Martineau wrote, “The adoption of the term Secularism is justified by its including a large number of persons who are not Atheists, and uniting them for action which has Secularism for its object, and not Atheism. On this ground, and because, by the adoption of a new term, a vast amount of impediment from prejudice is got rid of, the use of the name Secularism is found advantageous.”

An online dictionary has the following definitions of secularism:

1. a view that religion and religious considerations should be ignored or excluded from social and political matters.

2. an ethical system asserting that moral judgments should be made without reference to religious doctrine, as reward or punishment in an afterlife.

The first definition maintains the separation of religion from State and society; the second asserts the separation of religion from morality. But as secularism aims to remove religion from our interactions with fellow human beings, it also proposes to replace it with reason and the test of human experience. The English secularist George Jacob Holyoake defined secularism as “a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life.”

On issues involving sex and relationships like the RH Bill, divorce, and same-sex marriage, secularism examines the discussions and points out that religious arguments, particularly those that are based on supposed divine revelation, are not accepted in public discourse. Secularism does not tell religion to shut up; it merely asks religion, when speaking outside the four walls of the church, to speak in a language everyone in a pluralistic society can understand. Dogmas are applicable only to the members of a particular sect since no single church holds a doctrine uncontested by other faiths. Thus, secularism asks religion to defend its moral and truth claims in public with rational explanations and testable evidence.

Secularism does not intend to wipe out religion; it merely asserts that “religion ought never to be anything but a private affair“ and not to influence public policy. Secularism envisions a society where toleration exists, meaning there is “conditional acceptance of or non-interference with beliefs, actions or practices that one considers to be wrong but still “tolerable” such that they should not be prohibited or constrained.” By toleration, secularism does not expect religion to abandon its sacred beliefs or embrace the diverging philosophies of other schools of thought; rather, it simply asks religion to acknowledge the diversity of beliefs and not necessarily to agree with the opposing beliefs themselves.

In the general concept of toleration,

“it is essential…that the tolerated beliefs or practices are considered to be objectionable and in an important sense wrong or bad. If this objection component is missing, we do not speak of “toleration” but of “indifference” or “affirmation.”“

This objection component is clearly manifested in a 1990 statement of the CBCP on the matter of family planning:

“The Church reiterates its objections to contraception and sterilization and expresses its reservations about the moral acceptability of certain aspects of the Program.  But in a pluralistic society and recognizing the freedom of those who disagree with Church principles, the Church respects the government’s toleration of other means that the conscience of others may not object to and that the law on abortion does not forbid.  Nonetheless, the Church seeks a greater emphasis on natural family planning as consistent with moral teachings and religious beliefs.”

While it is commendable that “the Church respects the government’s toleration,” technically the government is not being tolerant because in the first place it does not share the Church’s objection component, which is religious in nature, towards contraception. As such, what is expected of the government is not toleration but affirmation of modern family planning methods that are effective, safe, and legal. Moreover, secularism calls on the government to be indifferent towards the doctrines of religions especially since they are in conflict with one another. For example, in the following chart which lists the religious acceptability of certain acts ranging from 1 (condemned) to 5 (totally acceptable), only Roman Catholicism condemns birth control (7th line) while other religions accept it.

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1 = “condemned” 2 = ”morally unacceptable in most cases” 3 = ”neutral” or “no clear position” 4 = ”morally acceptable in most cases” 5 = ”blessed” or “totally acceptable” [source]

With such conflicting religious teachings, it is just appropriate that the government is mandated by no less than the Constitution to give no reverence to any single religion. And while secularism rejects religious claims of divine revelation, it “offers the guidance of observation, investigation, and experience. Instead of taking authority for truth, it takes truth for authority.”

At this point it is necessary to reiterate that secularism is not the same as atheism. While atheism rejects the idea of God and denies his existence, secularism merely points out that “no sacred scripture or ancient church can be made a basis of belief, for the obvious reason that their claims always need to be proved, and cannot without absurdity be assumed.” Moreover, Secularism goes beyond the rejection of unproven religious claims. In English Secularism, Holyoake wrote,

“The Secularist, is without presumption of an infallible creed, is without the timorous indefiniteness of a creedless believer… The Secularist has a creed as definite as science, and as flexible as progress, increasing as the horizon of truth is enlarged… All believe that God, if he exists, is the God of the honest, and that he respects conscience more than creeds, for all free thinkers have died in this faith.“

We at Filipino Freethinkers aim to promote secularism as a means of improving every Filipino’s quality of life, wishing for everyone to live lives free of ignorance and oppression – in a society where they are able to act and think for themselves, and in a country where religion and governance are clearly and permanently separated. And as we are composed of nonbelievers and progressive believers, we have no consensus on the question of the existence of God. What we do agree about, however, is that all religious authority is self-appointed because God, if he exists, never personally endorsed any religion. Thus, being freethinkers – and secularists – we rely on reason and science to chart morality and uplift humanity.

One of the issues delaying the passage of the RH Bill is the question of when life begins, or more importantly, when the protection of life begins. It’s no help that our constitution uses the imprecise term conception, allowing a lot of room for discussion as the pro-life argue that it refers to fertilization while others maintain that it means implantation, and this debate has taken long enough at the expense of the rest of the provisions of the bill which have nothing to do with the fertilized ovum, such as providing for midwives, emergency obstetric care, and maternal and newborn health care in crisis situations.

While the World Health Organization has already answered that “to date, there is no scientific evidence supporting the contention that hormonal contraceptives and IUD prevent implantation of the fertilized ovum,” the pro-life continue to claim otherwise and even assert that since the bill seeks to provide for these contraceptives, the bill is therefore unconstitutional. I have argued in a previous post that they are actually objecting to the pill, not the bill, and this is just a follow up. If we look at two sections from both Edcel Lagman’s House Bill 96 and the final consolidated RH Bill, HB 4244, we will see the important difference that renders the pro-life’s objection moot:

While HB 96 specifically identifies pills, IUDs and injectables as essentials, HB 4244 only uses the general term “modern family planning methods,” which it defines as referring to safe, effective and, most importantly, legal methods. The significance of this is that the protracted debates on the question of when the protection of life begins as well as the alleged abortifacient effects of certain contraceptives can be detached from the debate on the bill itself. If specific contraceptives are proven to be abortifacient and banned by the FDA, they obviously won’t be purchased and distributed by the government even with the passage of the RH Bill since only legal methods shall be provided for.

Fr. Joaquin Bernas, one of the members of the Constitutional Commission of 1986, says:

“There are those who argue that contraception kills life. That is true if the contraceptive means used have the effect of expelling a fertilized ovum. Those who argue that contraceptives currently in the market kill life must be able to point to the precise contraceptive devises that are abortive. A sweeping generalization is irresponsible.”

While a sweeping generalization is already irresponsible, dragging the RH Bill into the abortifacients issue and saying that it promotes abortion is downright insane, especially with the final consolidated version. That issue is separate from the RH Bill and should be discussed in another venue. I hope people will see that. Because that means one less objection, and handling objections in congress takes time, and meanwhile mothers are dying for lack of maternal care for which the RH Bill seeks to provide.

Lastly, the bill explicitly recognizes that abortion is illegal and punishable by law. What many people may not know is that about 500,000 induced abortions are happening in the Philippines each year. By providing education and information on reproductive health and access to modern family planning methods, the RH Bill aims to significantly reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and the resulting illegal abortions. So while the RH Bill will not promote the use of abortifacient drugs and devices,  it also actually seeks to prevent the need to even resort to abortion.

One of the secular arguments against the RH Bill is that it is unconstitutional based on the premise that certain oral contraceptives pills (OCPs), which the bill seeks to fund and distribute, have an abortifacient effect since they prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum in the unlikely event of breakthrough ovulation and fertilization. This allegedly violates Art. II Sec. 12 of the 1987 Constitution: The State…shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. Not surprisingly, the pro-life assert that conception means fertilization, the moment the sperm and egg cells meet, quoting Fr. Joaquin Bernas and Dr. Bernardo Villegas, both members of the Constitutional Commission of 1986:

“The intention is to protect life from its beginning, and the assumption is that human life begins at conception, that conception takes place at fertilization.” (IV RECORD of the Constitutional Commission 799,cited in Bernas, J., The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Manila: 1996 ed., p.78)

“In the Philippine Constitution of 1987, conception is defined as fertilization, the moment the egg is fertilized by the sperm. This was the majority decision (32 to 8 ) of the members of the Constitutional Commission of 1986 convoked by the late President Corazon Aquino.” (http://www.mb.com.ph/node/293259/conception-fertilization)

While the above would seem to stop the RH Bill in its tracks, a little research shows this isn’t necessarily so.

Regarding the quote from Fr. Bernas, the complete paragraph actually reads:

“The intention is to protect life from its beginning, and the assumption is that human life begins at conception, that conception takes place at fertilization. There is however no attempt to pinpoint the exact moment when conception takes place. But while the provision does not assert with certainty when precisely human life begins, it reflects the view that, in dealing with the protection of life, it is necessary to take the safer approach.” (p.78 Bernas, J., The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Manila: 1996 ed.)

The last two sentences may seem contradictory: there is no attempt to pinpoint the exact moment of conception and yet it is necessary to take the safer approach. My analysis is that the first sentence clearly expresses what the Constitutional Commission did not do, that is, define the moment of conception, while the second looks like it is meant as a guide in legislation since Article II, where the protection of the unborn clause was placed, is in fact the Declaration of State Policies – not the Bill of Rights.

Moreover, Fr. Bernas wanted to use the term “fertilized ovum” such that “protection of life should extend to the fertilized ovum,” but that was not adopted by the Commission, ending up with “the State shall protect the unborn from conception” instead:

FR. JOAQUIN BERNAS: Perhaps you should say, “protection of life should extend to the fertilized ovum. (Record of the Constitutional Commission, Vol.1, p.690)

LINO BROCKA: I do not think that it should be implemented, for the simple reason that medically, there is no clear consensus that the fertilized ovum is considered human life. (Record of the Constitutional Commission, Vol.1, p.692)

REV.RIGOS: But our religious authorities sharply differ in their opinions as to when human life can definitely be regarded to have commenced. If we constitutionalize the beginning of human life at a stage we call fertilized ovum, then we are putting a note of finality to the whole debate. (Record of the Constitutional Commission, Vol.1, p.693)

MS.AQUINO: Even this Commission cannot settle the question of whether a fertilized egg has the right to life or not. Those experts in the field of medicine and theology cannot settle this question. It is bad enough for us to preempt this controversial issue by constitutionalizing the ovum; it would be tragic for us to provide for ambiguities, which may even disturb settled jurisprudence. (Record of the Constitutional Commission, Vol.1, p.695)

As for Dr. Villegas’ claim that there was a 32-8 decision where the members of the Constitutional Commission defined conception as fertilization, there seems to be nothing online that would validate such claim, much less explain the significance or effect of the decision, especially since the Commission intended to leave to Congress the power and mandate to determine the legal definition of conception:

MR. OPLE: We say, “Protect the life of the unborn from the moment of conception.” Is there in jurisprudence anything now that will help us visualize the precise moment, the approximate moment when conception begins and, therefore, the life of this new human personality entitled to all the protection of the laws in the Constitution begins? Is there any standard legislature or jurisprudence that will support an interpretation of the moment of conception?

MR. VILLEGAS: Jurisprudence? None… We believe that the abortion debate from a scientific standpoint must proceed on the assumption that…human life begins at fertilization of the ovum.

MR. OPLE: But we would leave to Congress the power, the mandate to determine.

MR. VILLEGAS: Exactly, on the basis of facts and figures they would obtain from experts.

MR. OPLE: Yes, to legislate a kind of standard so that everyone will know what moment of conception will mean in terms of legal rights and obligations… (Records of the Constitutional Commission No. 86 09-18-1986)

As of today, Congress has yet to determine the legal definition of conception. Until then, all these claims about the abortifacient effect of certain pills as well as the debate on when life begins are irrelevant as far as constitutionality is concerned.

More importantly, the pro-life are actually objecting to the use of oral contraceptive pills and not the RH Bill per se and should therefore focus their efforts in lobbying Congress to define conception as fertilization and have these OCPs banned by the FDA instead of blocking the passage of the RH Bill. Because even without the RH Bill, these pills they deem abortifacient are already available in the market. Conversely, if Congress defines conception as fertilization, these pills will be banned even if the RH Bill gets passed.

To the pro-life, let me say it again: you’re objecting to the Pill, not the Bill, and it is fallacious to equate the two. You are barking up the wrong tree, unless of course your true opposition lies in the use of contraception in general – even if certain contraceptives like condoms do not prevent implantation – because contraception is forbidden by the Catholic Church. But you know too well that religious arguments have no place in public debates since we’re living in a pluralistic society, so you might have decided to come up with a secular rationalization. And if that is the case, I object to your lack of candor.

(Special thanks to WillyJ for the very interesting discussion on another article which helped me come up with the idea for this post.)
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Note: Someone accused me of attacking a strawman when I said that “one of the secular arguments against the RH Bill is that it is unconstitutional on the premise that certain oral contraceptives pills (OCPs), which the bill seeks to fund and distribute, have an abortifacient effect since they prevent the implantation of the fertilized ovum in the unlikely event of breakthrough ovulation and fertilization,” saying that that was never an argument made by secularists. The problem is that he defined ‘secular’ too narrowly and equated it with atheism or even objectivism so that only atheists and objectivists can make secualr arguments. That’s where he got it wrong. But if he can find the fallacy in the following argument, I’ll yield to him:

Premise 1: ‘Secular’ is defined as “not concerned with or related to religion.”

Premise 2: An argument about the RH Bill’s possible violation to the constitution is not concerned with or related to religion since it does not cite any religious doctrine. It cites only the constitution.

Conclusion: An argument about the RH Bill’s possible violation to the constitution is a secular argument.

Culion, Palawan (former leper colony)

While island hopping in Coron, Palawan, our boat passed by Culion, the former leper colony, and I felt an involuntary shiver as I contemplated on how the people who contracted leprosy in the early 1900s were forcibly taken from their homes and brought here to live in isolation for the rest of their lives and died without any hope of a cure. How they must have blamed themselves for some imagined sin that warranted God’s wrath to be afflicted with a hideous disease. “He was unfaithful to the Lord his God…leprosy broke out on his forehead…the Lord had afflicted him. King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house – leprous, and banned from the temple of the Lord.”

Leprosy was once incurable and thought to be highly contagious that in 1907 the Philippine Commission passed Act 1711, which provides:

The Director of Health and his authorized agents are hereby empowered to cause to be apprehended, and detained, isolated, segregated, or confined, all leprous persons in the Philippine Islands, and upon application of the Director of Health it shall be the duty of every Insular, provincial, or municipal official having police powers to cause to be arrested and delivered to the Director of Health, or his agents, any person alleged or believed to be a leper…

Having leprosy in the first half of the 20th century was not unlike being a common criminal to be arrested and detained – and sentenced to life imprisonment not only in a lonely island but inside a numb body covered with lesions. Then in 1952 Act 1711 was amended with Republic Act No. 753:

Section 1058. The Director of Health or his authorized representative is empowered to cause all persons with leprosy or suspects in the Philippines to be subjected to the medical inspection and diagnostic procedure necessary to determine the presence or absence of leprosy. If it be found that the suspected person is positive bacteriologically for mycobacterium leprae, the Director of Health or his authorized representative shall turn him over to the Director of Hospitals or his authorized representative for isolation and segregation; and if it be found that the suspected person does not have leprosy, the Director of Health or his authorized representative shall assist in his conveyance to the place at which he was taken, at government expense, unless other satisfactory arrangements are made.

Section 1059. If the diagnosis is questioned, no person shall be removed to place of segregation until the diagnosis of leprosy had been verified positive bacteriologically.

The main difference here is that instead of being automatically apprehended, detained, isolated, etc., people suspected of having leprosy were now subjected to a medical diagnostic procedure first to confirm if they are indeed carrying the contagious disease. However, there seemed to be no effective cure available at the time, so those positively diagnosed with leprosy were still isolated and segregated.

But with the advances in medical science, leprosy is no longer to be dreaded since it is not only treatable but curable (curable means the disease can be entirely eliminated while treatable means only the symptoms can be relieved), and the drugs are even free.

In fact, as early as 1964, Republic Act No. 753 was amended with Republic Act No. 4073, “An Act Further Liberalizing the Treatment of Leprosy by Amending and Repealing Certain Sections of the Revised Administrative Code.”

Sec. 1058. Persons afflicted with leprosy not to be segregated. — Except when certified by the Secretary of Health or his authorized representatives that the stage of the disease requires institutional treatment, no persons afflicted with leprosy shall be confined in a leprosarium: provided, that such person shall be treated in any government skin clinic, rural health unit or by a duly licensed physician.

Sec. 1059. Confinement and treatment in sanitarium when necessary. — Whenever a person afflicted with leprosy shall have developed the disease to such stage as to require institutional treatment and the leprosy officer shall so certify, the said person shall forthwith be sent to a government operated sanitarium and be treated therein until such time as the Secretary of Health or his authorized representative decides that institutional treatment is no longer necessary.

Thanks to modern medicine, we have come a long way since biblical times when lepers were pronounced unclean and separated from society, and when only a handful were healed by God/Jesus. By the year 2000, the World Health Organization and its partners in the medical community have actually eliminated leprosy as a public health problem, meaning the prevalence rate is now less than one case per 10,000 persons. Over the past 20 years, more than 14 million leprosy patients have been cured, and leprosy has been eliminated from 119 out of 122 countries. That’s quite an achievement for mere human beings with no divine powers to perform miracle cures, using science as their only tool, so lepers and non-lepers alike are indeed lucky to have lived in this century.

As for Culion, it is no longer a leper colony but a municipality, and its sanitarium has expanded into a general hospital that also provides health care services to neighboring municipalities including Coron, Busuanga, and El Nido. But being the erstwhile largest leprosarium in the world, Culion has invaluable contributions to the research and appreciation of leprosy as scientists from all over the world came here for the opportunity to study the disease in all its stages and manifestations.

As our boat sailed away from Culion, I took a moment of silence to honor the dead lepers of the island, the unsung heroes of medical progress that conquered one of the oldest maladies that plagued mankind. Thank you, guys. You did not suffer and die in vain.

Richard Dawkins was accused of cowardice when he repeatedly refused to debate the existence of God with the famous Christian apologist William Lane Craig. And while he tried to shrug off such invitations by saying he is too busy to “take on people whose only claim to fame is that they are professional debaters,” I think Dawkins has a good reason to be afraid. Craig will eat Dawkins alive - that is, if the debate has more or less the same structure as the ones in which Craig had previously engaged with other atheists.

In a timed debate where each participant is awarded a point for every argument and counter-argument, Craig will surely win because he can state several arguments for the existence of God within a relatively short time. Now whether these arguments would crumble under critical scrutiny is beside the point; there is simply not enough time for Dawkins to effectively rebut each of these arguments especially with his slow British accent.

But if Dawkins will change his mind and decide to accept Craig’s challenge, I think the debate should be focused on only one of the arguments for God’s existence, say, the cosmological argument or the teleological argument, so that Dawkins could whittle it down and expose the fallacies. More importantly, Dawkins should insist that key terms like ‘evidence’ be clearly defined before agreeing to go into such debate. This was the mistake of Lawrence Krauss in the debate Is there evidence for God? In his opening statement (which was after Craig’s), Krauss said, “Dr. Craig came here to talk about evidence, which is, I take to be, empirical and scientific.” Too late. Craig had already defined ‘evidence’ in such a way that there is evidence for hypothesis H if:

Pr (H | E & B) > Pr (H | B)

Pr = probability; H = a hypothesis; E = some specific evidence; B = our background information

Craig explained:

“At one level it seems to me indisputable that there is evidence for God. To say that there is evidence for some hypothesis is just to say that that hypothesis is more probable given certain facts than would have been without them. It is to say there is evidence to some hypothesis H if the probability of H is greater on the evidence and background information than on the background information alone.”

And Craig argued that there is evidence for God if:

Pr (G | E & B) > Pr (G | B)

Pr = probability; G = God exists; E = some specific evidence; B = our background information

Craig continued:

“It seems to me indisputable that God’s existence is more probable given certain facts like the origin of the universe, the complex order of the universe, the existence of objective moral values and so forth, than it would have been without them.”

While it is clear that Craig’s definition of ‘evidence’ is that of circumstantial evidence and not direct evidence, the debate is simply titled “Is there evidence for God?” and therefore Craig’s victory is inevitable.

Craig is a seasoned debater, and his years of experience have taught him not only to identify the red herrings in his opponents’ arguments but also to get away with a few dishonest tricks of his own. A good example is his debate with Sam Harris, Is Good from God? In his opening speech, Craig flashed a slide with his own version of the title: “Is the Foundation of our Morality Natural or Supernatural?” While he stuck to the issue up to this point, what he did next was nothing short of sleight of hand. Craig said:

“The question before us this evening, then, is, ‘what is the best foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties? What grounds them? What makes certain actions objectively good or evil, right or wrong?’ In tonight’s debate I’m going to defend two basic contentions:

1. If God exists, then we have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties.

2. If God does not exist, then we do not have a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties.

Now notice that these are conditional claims. I shall not be arguing tonight that God exists. Maybe Dr. Harris is right that atheism is true. That wouldn’t affect the truth of my two contentions. All that would follow is that objective moral values and duties would, then, contrary to Dr. Harris, not exist.”

Take note that Craig’s contentions have nothing to do with the debate’s title, Is Good from God? or even with his own subtitle, Is the Foundation of our Morality Natural or Supernatural? Both titles are questions answerable by yes or no, not with conditional claims.

Then after Harris mentioned the problem of evil and the problem of the unevangelized, Craig rebutted with:

“Both of these, as I explained in my opening, are irrelevant in tonight’s debate because I’m not arguing that God exists. Maybe he’s right; maybe these are insuperable objections to Christianity or to theism. It wouldn’t affect either of my contentions: that if God exists, then we have a sound foundation for moral values and duties; if God does not exist, then we have no foundation for objective moral values and duties. So these are red herrings.”

But while he may sound righteously indignant about Harris’ red herrings, the problem with Craig’s contentions is that they are red herrings themselves. The debate’s title question, Is Good from God? can only be answered in the affirmative if God’s existence has been proven in the first place, and yet Craig insists that God’s existence is irrelevant to the debate.

Unfortunately, Harris did not seem to notice this (or if he did he didn’t seem to care enough to point it out), and it’s only after carefully reviewing Craig’s arguments that we can see through his deception.

Now would Dawkins fare better? I doubt it. And when he said that such a debate would look good on Craig’s CV but not on his own, I don’t think it’s because Dawkins finds Craig unworthy of his attention. I think it’s because Dawkins knows he would lose.

As they closed their eyes to pray

I looked at the table and saw an array

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Of body parts of animals who not only died

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But spent their whole lives caged inside

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And we thank God for these bountiful blessings

Without much thought of what we’re transgressing.

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[Continued from Do objective moral values exist?]

The Christian apologist William Lane Craig says that certain actions like rape and torture are not just socially unacceptable behavior but moral abominations. He also argues that the Holocaust would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them. And I agree with him on both counts. However, the term “moral abomination” does not necessarily mean objectively wrong since we have no way of finding out if our list of moral abominations would still be the same had we evolved in a different way, and I would also argue that we’re only able to make such judgment on the Holocaust precisely because we haven’t been exterminated or brainwashed by the Nazis and, more importantly, because evolution has “taught” us that genocide is not a very good way of perpetuating our species. The moral values that evolution has conditioned into our minds may not be objective since they cannot exist independently of our minds, but they are definitely more than just moral fads.

Not surprisingly, Craig expresses skepticism with evolution-based morality:

…there’s no good evidence that our perception of moral and aesthetic values has been programmed by evolution. Darwinists are extremely imaginative and creative in coming up with what are called “just so” stories in order to explain things via evolution for which there is no empirical evidence. Indeed, these stories are almost endlessly adaptable, so that they become almost irrefutable and, hence, unfalsifiable.

I admit that Craig has a good point, and I admire his skepticism. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to apply the same skepticism when it comes to the existence of objective moral values:

Why should I think that objective moral values exist rather than that evolution has made me believe in the illusion that there are objective moral values? Because I clearly apprehend objective moral values and have no good reason to deny what I clearly perceive.

This is the same answer we give to the sceptic who says, “How do you know you’re not just a body lying in the Matrix and that all that you see and experience is an illusory, virtual reality?” We have no way to get outside our five senses and prove that they’re veridical. Rather I clearly apprehend a world of people and trees and houses about me, and I have no good reason to doubt what I clearly perceive. Sure, it’s possible that I’m a body in the Matrix. But possibilities come cheap. The mere possibility provides no warrant for denying what I clearly grasp.

I think the key difference between moral values and the physical world lies not in the perception but in the applicability. The physical world applies to everyone and everything regardless of their sense capabilities and even whether they are sentient or not. For example, a blind zebra and a deaf bat will both hit a tree standing in their paths, and even the unconscious wind will have to blow around that tree. Lack of perception does not exempt anyone or anything from the reality of the physical world.

Moral values, however, apply only to the acts of those who are able to perceive moral values in the first place. Non-human animals do not commit murder when they kill other sentient beings, and even young children and mentally disabled adults are often excused from certain moral duties. It is only the mentally-fit humans who perceive moral values, and it is only the mentally-fit humans to whom these values apply, making moral values doubly dependent on perception. How then, can we call such values objective with the same confidence that we say that the physical world is objective?

Now without objective moral values, what are we left with? It seems that no matter how we try to get some purchase for our morality, there is an is-ought gap we just can’t quite cross. Just what is it in life, or the flourishing of life, that makes us ought to act in certain ways?

“If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist,” says an apologist. This will soon be followed by the contention that objective moral values do exist, leading to the inevitable conclusion that, well, God exists.

From my discussions with the resident theists in the FF Forum, I have come to understand moral values as the rightness/wrongness of certain human actions, while Collins English Dictionary defines objective as ”existing independently of perception or an individual’s conceptions.”

The famous Christian apologist William Lane Craig defines it even more narrowly:

“To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them.“

I think the fallacy of Craig’s argument lies in his use of the word objective. Craig says that objective moral values exist whether anyone believes them or not, and by anyone, that should include God, otherwise it would be special pleading. However, moral values themselves do not exist inherently with human actions; moral values exist only when someone judges the actions and establishes moral values on them. If moral values are established by God, they are only objective as far as man is concerned but they are actually subjective from the point of view of God.

And that’s why I don’t think it’s right to call the moral values allegedly established by God as objective moral values since they cannot exist independently of God’s perception or judgment. They should be called divine moral values instead, but I think I know why Craig would refuse to call them as such. That’s because his moral argument would turn into something like this:

1. If God does not exist, divine moral values do not exist

2. Divine moral values exist

3. Therefore, God exists

But the problem with the new Premise 2 is that it’s easier to refute than the original “objective moral values exist” because skeptics would then demand a list of moral values unmistakably coming from God, and I’m sure the Bible would fail miserably. (As for the existence of objective moral values, however, Craig doesn’t seem to offer much support apart from saying that the Holocaust would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and that we intuitively perceive certain acts like rape and torture to be wrong, but instead challenged skeptics that they could not prove that physical reality exists either and that even as one could only rely on his own sense perception to perceive reality, no one in his right mind would deny that objective reality exists, so it should follow that no one in his right mind would also deny that objective moral values exist even if he only had his own moral perception to rely on.)

I posted this objection on the FF Forum along with the Euthyphro dilemma (does God command something because it’s good or is something good because God commands it?) and got very interesting answers from our resident theists who call themselves Miguel and XIII. What they are practically saying is that God does not command the good nor likes the good but that God is the good, and being good, he cannot command something that is not good. I took the liberty of refining their argument to make it more relevant to objective moral values (Miguel and XIII, if you think I did not give justice to your views you may rebuke me at the comments section):

1. Objective moral values are moral values that exist whether anyone – including God – perceives them or not.

2. God is inherently good, so he cannot perceive something evil as good and vice-versa.

3. So even if moral values are directly dependent on God’s perception, such perception is not subjective because it is anchored on God’s goodness, which cannot be separated from him, and therefore the moral values established by God are ultimately grounded on his objective goodness.

While the conclusion seems logical, I’m going to try to refute Premise 2, that God cannot perceive something evil as good. In the Old Testament, God established extremely negative moral values on homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, and losing one’s virginity before marriage - and positive moral values on killing homosexuals, Sabbath workers and non-virgin brides. And in both the Old and New Testaments, God/Jesus never established a negative moral value on slavery but actually condoned it. So in order to honestly say that “God is the good,” one would have to agree with the above moral values established by God.

Otherwise, the moral argument will be gored by the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma (something is good because God commands it, making the good arbitrary), refuting the premise that if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist, because objective moral values are supposed to exist even if everyone – including God – does not agree with them. And that’s why I believe that not only do objective moral values not exist but the term “objective moral values” itself is an oxymoron, because moral values will always be subjective to the mind (whether man’s or God’s) that perceives them.

[Continued on The closest thing to objective moral values]

Reading certain passages from Humanae Vitae makes one wonder why the Church allows natural methods of birth control while remaining strongly opposed to the use of contraceptives:

This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act…

…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.

Impairs the capacity to transmit life. ‘Impair’ is an active word, it is a commission and not just an omission. While abstaining from sex during the fertile period is really just an omission of a certain act in the transmission of life, it’s the counting of days since the wife’s last menstruation and the charting of her temperature to be sure she’s “safe” that constitutes the commission part. So why is natural family planning allowed? Recently released official documents of the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth-rate shed some light. The following is an excerpt from the minority report (click here for an article on the majority report) drafted by the Jesuit theologian John Ford with assistance from another Catholic theologian, Germain Grisez:

.

But is the objection really ‘nugatory’? (I had to look that up and it means “of little or no importance; trifling.”) Let us try to dissect that passage and examine it carefully:

The only difference between artificial and natural methods of birth control is the timing, that is, when the act of birth control takes place. In natural family planning the method is applied before intercourse while in contraception it is during intercourse (the pill may be taken before intercourse but its effects are present during intercourse). But the intent is the same: to isolate the unitive significance from the procreative significance of the marriage act (in non-ecclesiastical language that means to enjoy sex without getting someone pregnant). As Igme once said, “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 case the similarity is still not clear, let us use an analogy about releasing baby turtles into the sea. Let’s try to find the difference between the two:

a. Building a concrete wall along the beach to prevent the turtles from reaching the ocean

b. Releasing the turtles when the tide is out and the sun is scorching hot and the only shade under which the baby turtles can get protection from the deadly heat is from the shadows of hungry sea gulls flying overhead

In both cases the effect is the same: the baby turtles do not make it to the safety of the water, much less into adulthood. While the first is obviously a deliberately preventive act, the second, if we take a moment to think about it, turns out to be just as deliberately preventive. The concrete wall may be an artificial intervention in the life cycle of turtles, but the timing of the release during extremely unfavorable conditions is really just the same in terms of intent and effect, even if it merely takes advantage of “a faculty provided by nature.”

So why does the Church allow natural methods but not artificial ones? The only logical explanation I can think of is that the Church has a strong preference for – a complete obsession with – the adjective natural. And if this is the case, as it probably is (if you think I’m wrong there’s a comment section below), the following passage from Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene says it best:

It is a simple logical truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death-rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for ‘natural’ methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

And since starvation is natural for as long as we simply allow women to bear babies into a world where there is not enough food without actively robbing them of their food, there should be nothing intrinsically evil about it. Children dying of hunger and disease are just succumbing to a population control faculty provided by nature, and maybe that’s why the Church seems more concerned about sperm cells slamming against the wall of a condom, ending their lives in an unnatural rubbery death – while millions still wouldn’t make it to the egg, much less to the womb, even without any form of birth control.

It’s not everyday that a Catholic priest impresses me with his pragmatism and honesty when speaking about controversial issues like contraception and especially with his guts in defining the limits of the moral authority of his superiors, the bishops. I am talking about Fr. Ranhilio “Rannie” C. Aquino, who also happens to be dean of San Beda Graduate School of Law and whom I would like to call Fr. Freethinker, the secular priest.

And before anyone says, “Oxymoron!”, let’s try to put ‘secular’ into proper connotation:

sec·u·lar·ism

n.

1. Religious skepticism or indifference.

2. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.

As a Catholic priest, I firmly believe that the Church has a sacred mandate and that…it is, and should be, “an expert on humanity”. And so it is troubling that many, if not most, church documents and pronouncements today…go unnoticed… Often, churchmen have only themselves to blame… Their pronouncements exhibit predictable patterns of thought couched in ecclesiastical language that is as tedious and as boring as the National Internal Revenue Code!  This is true of the Philippine bishops’ comments on the reproductive health bill.  The bishops’ theoretical framework is just out of sync with academic thinking today.

The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess (The American Heritage® Dictionary)

.

the practice of professing standards, beliefs, etc., contrary to one’s real character or actual behaviour (Collins English Dictionary)

It is necessary that our Republic be neutral in matters of religion—and in that sense, secular.  In fact, the public sphere should be secular because religious dogmas, especially when they are exalted to the level of “mystery”, are notoriously opaque when it comes to verification and criticism.

The answer ultimately lies in what it means to be a Catholic. As a noun, Catholic is defined as “a member of the Catholic Church, especially a Roman Catholic.” And what does it mean to be a member of such church? Does it require one to acknowledge the infallibility of the Church’s teachings including Humanae Vitae, which maintains that sex must always be kept open to procreation? If so, then “pro-RH Catholic” is indeed an oxymoron because the RH Bill not only obliges all accredited health facilities to provide a full range of modern family planning methods but actually seeks government funding for the purchase of contraceptives.

But considering the more than one billion members the Catholic Church claims to have, it is more logical to presume that membership is attained simply through baptism and can possibly end only in excommunication or by actus formalis defectionis ab Ecclesia catholica (a formal act of defection from the Catholic Church). And if that is the case, as it probably is - otherwise the Church would not be boasting of so much members – then “pro-RH Catholic” is not an oxymoron.

Interestingly, catholic, if used as an adjective, means “universal, all-inclusive, broad-minded, and liberal“. Unfortunately, universal and all-inclusive pertain only to membership while broad-minded and liberal seem to have been lost when Catholic was incorporated into the name of the largest Christian church. Nevertheless, as long as one was baptized into Catholicism and hasn’t been excommunicated or formally defected, then he or she is officially a Roman Catholic regardless of personal convictions on contraception and therefore cannot be called an oxymoron for professing to be a pro-RH Catholic.

Now some may find it odd or even hypocritical for a member of Filipino Freethinkers – a group composed mostly of atheists and agnostics – to argue for the inclusion of RH Bill supporters in the membership of the Catholic Church. One would expect me instead to tell the pro-RH Catholics to have themselves excommunicated. However, secularism, which happens to be one of the major advocacies of Filipino Freethinkers, is not necessarily about religious skepticism or indifference but the exclusion of religious considerations from civil affairs and public education. We do have members who call themselves progressive or liberal Christians – and that is not an oxymoron. We respect other people’s right to their beliefs for as long as they don’t try to substitute reason and evidence with their dogmas in public discourse – especially on an issue where 11 women die daily due to childbirth complications. And while it is simplistic and rather unfair to blame these deaths solely on those who seek to prevent the passage of the RH Bill, a real oxymoron comes to mind: “PRO-LIFE/ANTI-RH”.