The RH bill is dead.  Many of us hope that the next year is our year.  Many of us blame the Church for killing it, and we may be partially right.  However, I that I think we have failed to acknowledge the fact that ultimately, the RH bill is about sex, and it is our attitudes about sex, particularly, the role of sex in a woman’s life, that is really what’s in the way of getting this bill passed.

How does society view women and sex?  The Philippines is one of the most progressive countries in the world when it comes to equal employment of women; however, we still view sex and women in a very limited way.  Our very traditional society treats women as innocent fragile creatures that need to be cared for and protected, or as old maternal figures that need to be respected.  This is great to some extent, because women get first dibs on MRT seats; doors get opened; also, women are generally accepted as leaders in the workplace.  However, these traditional images do not really allow for a lot of sex.  The innocent, fragile archetype is expected to pray a lot, be good, and be a virgin until marriage.  The maternal figures is, well, a mother.   Sex is viewed in the limited context of these two archetypes – a newlywed virgin making babies; a married woman wanting more babies.  Outside of these two scenarios, the imagination goes to the Katrina Halilis, Carrie Bradshaws or fun, fearless females of Cosmo – irresponsible, slutty single women who are asking for it.   There is no room in between.  Sex is only viewed as either a baby-making activity or the sinful hobby of whorish women.  I need to state the obvious, I guess – it is not.

This limited definition of sex and its role in a woman’s life is at the root of most, if not all opposition against the RH bill.  A lot of us have debated about what is or what is not an abortifacent when the true opposition is not to the tools of contraception but to the act of having baby-free sex.  It implies the absence of consequences for a perceived sin.  It is feared that if women have sex freely, immorality will destroy the very fiber of society; that somehow, if women had free rein to satisfy their libido, we will be the next Sodom and Gomorrah (I mean, who cares what men do, right?).  What Will the Whores Do? (WWWD ™)

Of course, this also relates to the new favorite anti-RH discussion about financing birth control and sex ed in this country.  It makes the opposition look like fiscal conservatives while hiding their true sexist nature.  In truth, the same people questioning funding for reproductive health services will likely not question funding for cancer research or for respiratory illnesses or for pediatrics.  Somehow, they have viewed reproductive health as frivolous, probably like cosmetic surgery.  At the root is the view that sex is a luxury; childbirth is easy.  Let’s forget the fact that babies are born every minute out of human vaginas.  It seems like we will be funding the sluts of this country, giving them the tools to be irresponsible and even healing them afterwards.  Abstinence is the answer, right?  We don’t need to fund abstinence.

This article is not just a reproach to opposition but also an invitation for everyone to examine your own views about sex in society. What do you really mean when you say you’re pro-RH? Do you think there is such a thing as sex without consequences?  What do you mean when you say you’re pro-RH but anti-abortion?  How can you be pro-RH when you’re anti-RH bill?  What do you really mean when you’re qualifying what you think should be allowed and what is not?

Lastly, I leave you with this: the birth control pill has changed society and has expanded the realm of what’s possible for women around the world.  The pill has allowed women the freedom to work and to achieve fulfillment outside the family.   It has doubled household incomes.  More women are educated now than they ever were before.  The collective contribution of the recent generations of women to the wellness and development of the world is astounding, all because they were free to have sex when they choose without having to give birth, allowing them to plan for education and jobs and eventually, families.  The true meaning of choice – having a say in your own destiny and choosing to have sex without being imprisoned by the body you live in –is overwhelming.  Just ask any of the women looking for so-called abortifacents in Quiapo.  Do you think that quibbling over the science of zygotes or the fiscal implications of this bill is worth the lives of millions of Filipino women robbed of this choice?

Okay guys, this is, among other things, a work/list in progress, so please feel free to suggest others I might have missed/forgotten. I’ve very limited time but I managed to draw these out of the top of my head. In no particular order, here they are:

“John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn’t know why at the time. It was very old – torn, faded. You were young like you are now. You seemed just a little sad. I used to always wonder what you were thinking at that moment. I memorized every line, every curve. I came across time for you Sarah. I love you; I always have”

-Kyle Reese, father of John Connor, talking to Sarah Connor in the movie Terminator (1984) while hiding form the terminator. Aaww. That is so romantic,  moving across time (and space) to be with the one you love. 

Mulder’s email to Scully:

I’ve resisted contacting you for reasons I know you continue to appreciate. But, to be honest, some unexpected dimensions of my new life are eating away at any resolve I have left. I’m lonely, Dana, uncertain of my ability to live like this. I want to come home. To you, and to William.

Scully’s reply to Mulder’s email afterwards:

I hold no hope you can respond to this. Or that it reaches you. I only hope that you are alive.

I cannot help believing that you jumped off that train because you knew what I now know – that these “super-soldiers,” if that’s what they are, can in fact be destroyed. That the key to their destruction lies in the iron compound at that quarry.

I am scared for you, Mulder. And for William. The forces against us are unrelenting. But so is my determination. To see you again. To regain the comfort and safety we shared for so brief a time.

Until then, I remain forever yours… Dana

- In ‘The X-Files’ season 9 episode, ‘Trust No 1″. Mulder is separated for a time from Scully and their son, because if he hadn’t, he would be putting Scully and their son in danger. Aaww. Sniff sniff. 

Just remember…no matter what happens…I’ll always love you. ALWAYS.

- Superman to Lois Lane, before finally dying at the hands of the monster Doomsday, in Superman #75  (1993). The line really isn’t something new, but the situation and the overall atmosphere made it really special in my opinion.

So there you go sci-fi buffs, geeks, and nerds. Happy Valentine’s day. 

I was cheated. I was cheated when I was in school, not by my classmates but by the very exams that were supposed to measure my ratings and academic performance.

Grade 1: Math Subject

We were given an exam on multiplication. Part 1 was a timed exam due within 5 minutes. We were supposed to answer a set of items such as 8 multiplied by four and 7 times 51 using mental math. No calculators were allowed.

With a snap of a finger, the teacher shouted, “Finished or not finished, pass your papers.” I was hesitant to do so. I was not finished with ten items to fill up. But, hell, I had to move on to part 2.

The second part was easy. No time pressure. You just have to solve the problems given.  For example: Your father gave you a daily allowance of 100 pesos. How much will you be able to save in a week after spending 65 pesos a day?

The teacher checked the papers and after a day we were informed of our grades. I was given a perfect score for part 2 but the results of part 1 were devastating. Bottom line, I failed the test because part 1 had more items and thus had more bearing.

I was cheated that day. I felt that part 1 should have less bearing on exam. Why? Because part 1 is not a math exam. It doesn’t measure how good you are in applying mathematical principles. It just tests how good you are in memorizing the multiplication table.

I was not just cheated in math. I was consistently cheated in my other subjects due to the traditional belief that memory retention is the ultimate measure of academic success as thus success in later endeavors.

High School: History Subject

I was given an exam. The first part was enumeration. I had to write down names of Filipino Heroes. There was a question: Who was the Filipino hero who killed Magellan? I was tempted to answer Lapu Lapu because that was written in the history book that we were asked to memorize. I didn’t answer Lapu Lapu. Why? Because I believe he was not a Filipino in the first place. There was no national identity back then, only tribal identity.

This is just my opinion and I may be wrong. What bothers me is not just that we are expected to memorize what is written in our textbooks but that we are also expected to believe what’s written as if it was the ultimate truth.

I’m sure you can relate to what I am saying: that one time or another, we are expected to memorize and believe what our teachers and textbooks say. We are taught to believe that what’s written in our textbooks are ultimate truths and that memorizing these texts will make us succeed later in life. This is misleading because wrong measures lead to wrong results.

If we make our children memorize the multiplication table instead of making them understand the application of mathematical principles, we are inhibiting their learning and analyzing skills, making them good memory chips but poor mathematicians. If we strictly enforce the ideas of our social science textbooks to our children as if these were ultimate truths, we are prohibiting them to think independently.

Yes, the educational system sucks and we are all cheated. But the fact that you are reading this article right now is a proof that you keep an open mind and that you search for learning beyond the classroom walls of traditional education. You reflect on what you do and why you do it or why you believe what you believe. Instead of asking what, when and where, you ask the more important questions of how and why. How we all wish others would ask these questions too.

We are freethinkers. We were cheated once before and we do not want to be cheated again.

This RockEd Radio episode was supposed to be Dean Jorge Bocobo’s commentary on the Black Nazarene, with me chiming in every once in a while.

Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Dean never arrived, so I had the whole show to talk not only about the Black Nazarene — which I don’t know much of anyway — but atheism and freethinking in general.

But on second thought I didn’t get the entire hour. When I was about to say something particularly blasphemous, God cut the power.

Still it’s the second longest broadcast of blasphemy in Philippine radio. (Second to John Paraiso’s old radio show, of course ) Enjoy!

(Thanks so much to Gang Badoy for allowing me to post this.)

Download mp3

This constant battle can exact a huge toll. I sometimes wonder where all these arguments came from and why I couldn’t have just avoided them.

There is a huge difference between a fundamentalist and a free thinker in this battle for ideas: the fundamentalists are trying control everyone else, the freethinkers want to be involved with the processes of making a world where they can be happier.

My claim that fundamentalists are trying to control stems from the pattern closer inspection of their behavior reveals. The pattern that emerges is mostly concerned about imposing their will on what is “theirs”. There is a gross amount of egocentric rationalization and not any allocentrism in the pattern of behavior. Strangely this control quickly extends to thoughts, words, and Ideas. It even gets more apparent when anecdotes of the extreme just confirm the overwhelming opinion.

The anecdote of the woman who complained to a school that the dictionary contained an offensive definition, the constant attacks on secularism, and the moral superiority are all patterns of control. One particular degree of control that gets really irrational is the easily offended sensibilities, when they consider themselves immune to criticism.

As much as they are free to criticize people who deviate from their arbitrary sensibilities, they don’t seem to realize this goes both ways. They don’t see that relative to other people, they are different and subject to the same criticism.

It’s funny to see someone who criticizes other people’s beliefs take offense when they are criticized. There is that very subjective and arbitrary moral point of view in action. It’s quite interesting to see someone who assumes that people who agree with him/her have a perfectly homogeneous point of view.

The delusional, those who think they are above criticism, don’t appreciate the world of the freethinker. A world where if everyone is free to criticize each other, one better have some good answers to why they do what they do. There are no cop outs and no argumentum vericundum.  The world of the Freethinker is hard; even if he/she can fire a better argument back, there is just few of him/her surrounded by multiple opposition and barriers. Even if their arguments are better crafted and honed after long experiences in the “battlefield”, they can be rendered instantly useless by those who have compartmentalized or isolated reason into one small aspect of their mind.

Living in blissful irrationality is really a choice not everyone is willing to give up. In a pragmatic view: if it’s easier, why not do it? Unfortunately, it is the irrational adherence and diligence to reason and some degree of altruism that cause free thinkers to be masochists or have a strong resistance to hyperbolic discounting.

It is easy to give up, and that option is always open; it would be so much easier than hitting one’s head against a brick wall of crazies. Unfortunately, irrationality only brings freethinkers further into the battle through escalation of commitment, which both sides suffer.

So what is a freethinker ought to do? On this, I go to Sun Tzu:

“A general does what he needs to do, regardless of what it may appear”.

It’s hard not to let the same irrationality controlling the crazies get the better of oneself. It is best to break off, even if it would make one appear weak. Then proceed to save strength, rally mental forces and proceed with a different plan of attack.

The Freethinker is powerless or less helpful when burned out. It would be ideal that he/she chooses the battles better, take into account war weariness and start having and developing an exit strategy.

Looking at constructive methodology from Qualia Soup: starting off constructive statements has a built-in exit strategy. The second the other side stops being reasonable, it’s a quick, clean and easy termination. It follows the same principle of preparation through conditioning and a well-thought approach.  Since it does take some time to dig up the empirical data, there is an implied proposition of the amount of work needed to come up with an objective conclusion: allowing people to make the practical decision if they have time to really undertake that data gathering needed.

Imagine only having to deal with constructive statements. Instead of a wide angle search, you can begin with a more narrow and easily defined search parameter. There is no “opinion” – just facts and data. It’s like looking over a math formula to check if it was done right. Wouldn’t that be so much easier than escalating into argument where emotions begin to color the exchange of information?

Rest for the Weary, comes from working smarter.

I watched a youtube video titled “Imagine If All Atheists Left America” and it served as another eye opener for me. It made me realize that atheists are the most important people in America and possibly, the world! Most Nobel Prize winners, university professors, scientists, and charity founders are ATHEISTS!!! And the video showed what would happen to an atheist-free America: it will have a poor, unhealthy, unhappy economy. Come to think of it, countries with the least atheist population are those in the third world: Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, and the Philippines. Then I did some research. All of this is true, and there is more. Countries with 50%+ atheist population are healthy, happy, and economically stable.

And those in history’s most evil were THEISTS!!! Not atheists but THEISTS – those who worship the Judea-Christian God. Stalin, another mass murderer, was an atheist, no doubt, but he didn’t kill for atheism. Hitler, on the other hand, killed Jews for his religion. It is utterly absurd and ridiculous to say that atheists are evil people. There are relatively few atheists in jail since most of the convicts are theists. Terrorist are Theists. Few atheists even killed anyone.

Most of the notable atheists are promoting peace; they are scientists, trying to improve humanity as we know it. It’s illogical, irrational, and ridiculous that I can’t express my feelings for those who say atheism kills society. Let’s say, what if the theists left society? Maybe less war, less stupidity, less genocides, less freaks, less trouble.

Atheists are good people, no doubt. It’s just a matter of time before you’ll realize this. I’m an atheist and I love humanity. I promote peace. Just because we don’t have God doesn’t mean that we also don’t have morals. Humans should help each other, not discriminate one another. And who do you think does the most discrimination? Think again.

Looking at Mr. Daniel Razon’s reasoning we can clearly see the problem: People like him have defined goodness as equal to God. There are two versions of this “argument” – One, Goodness and God are almost the same entity (based of some quotes from the Judeo-Christian holy scripture) and Two, As long as there is goodness and a person believes that goodness exists, there is a moral Lawgiver which is God.

According to the article I have read regarding Mr. Razon’s so-called refutation on the issue of being good without God, he used several Bible passages such as Mark 10:17-18 and Psalms 100:5. VIOLA! Case closed…or is it?

I don’t know…Is Mr. Razon pulling us by the leg? Anyway, based on his..er…refutation..Uh what makes God good? Is it his love, his mercy or his sense of justice?

And what is meant by “good”?

Goodness is an action that purposely benefits the human organism or society. That’s how I define it. The problem here is that people like Daniel Razon simply equate goodness to God, based on their holy scripture. Christian apologists like Giesler and Ravi Zacarias for example use this to connect God to the concept of a moral Lawgiver – So God must be good all the time. But is the goodness of God based on the Bible just a perception of the writer on how goodness should be defined? It seems like it. God is good because the author of a particular chapter in the Bible wants God to be good…based on his own definition of goodness. For example, God is good because He supposedly loves the people of Israel. That’s not a universal definition of “good”. Is it?

According to the authors of Mark and Psalms only God is good. But do these writers include…well those other books in the Bible that Daniel Razon didn’t include in his argument? Verses like: Numbers 31: 17-18, 1 Samuel 15:3 and Ezekiel 9: 4-7.

Tell me, are slaying infants, the elderly and women amount to goodness?

How about verses like Numbers 11: 1-2; 16:27-32, Lev. 10:1-2 and 2Kings 2: 23-24? Do they tell us of an onmi-benevolent deity that is full of mercy? Giving punishments that are shockingly harsh in comparison to the acts committed is not about mercy and justice.

Why do we need to kill innocent lambs, bulls and doves to appease a so-called good God? Surely an omni-benevolent deity does not need blood and death to calm his nerves.

There more of these found in the pages of the Old Testament which lead Thomas Paine to write, “Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

How about the New Testament?
Sure the New Testament contains some good moral value…but again the whole plot of the book is about blood sacrifices. Again, why is blood and death necessary to mollify the wrath of an omni-benevolent God?

Also, there are some stories and parables that were told by Jesus that betray the concept of an omni-benevolent Father in heaven like that of Luke 19:27 and Matt. 15:22-28.

It is also interesting to note that Jesus believed that love could be commanded and that those who disagreed with him would be damned. He believed in compulsion to comply with his viewpoint. He also portrayed his Father in heaven as the instigator of a morality based on “promises and threats” – too far from Daniel Razon’s “Good God”.

In the light of the following issues, it seems that Daniel Razon and others like him have failed to prove that goodness is impossible without God. In fact it seems that goodness is independent from God.

Besides, since God’s goodness is prescribed by rewards…well it really doesn’t tell us exactly what is “good”. Goodness is good because it is good – not because of benefits or by force. People who do well solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not about being “good” – it is self-interest.

There are other sources of being good…contrary to popular Christian belief. For example, there is what we call our “common moral decencies” which are deeply rooted in us for our survival as a species as Joseph Fletcher wrote based on his studies in 1979:

1.) Our highest good is survival of the human race – Our posterity has a moral claim on us for the consideration, both as to its safety and as to its biological improvement.

2.) Look at how the consequences will, on balance, effect the total human well being.

A rational person needs no God belief to understand that murder or lying is bad. It’s not because God opposes them, but because of the consequences these acts will produce in the human community. Morality as I have already said is deeply rooted in human experience for our survival.

Another piece by my high school classmate Lenore Laluna

* * * * *

I take birth control pills. So what. I could tell you it’s because it helps to regulate my often haywire menstrual cycle (one time six months without a period – it’s a good thing I’m an extremely good girl and have nothing to worry about). Or that the pills help control acne (I hate that at my age I still get besieged with pimples!). Still the incident the other week: “You’re still taking birth control pills!” my sis exclaimed as she saw the pack in my bag. I felt like I’d just been caught with my hand down the cookie jar. The above reasons I’d cited and said to her, sounded so lame to my ears (nevertheless, both are true by the way!). Because to the contrary, I certainly do not have a swinging sex life (haven’t been kissed for the longest time, let alone…). And it’s not like I jump into bed with any man I fancy (really, I’d much rather prefer to say, I stroll into bed and take my own sweet time). So why do I take these pills which I have to remember to take everyday (no mean feat for someone who’s as absent-minded as me)? I guess it’s about having control over one’s body,  having a choice in the matter.

I guess it’s a no-brainer why women feel more passionately about the reproductive health bill than men. I mean, women can get pregnant. Men can’t. And as trite as Ms. Universe Sushmita Sen’s answer, that the essence of being a woman is to love, and the role that we do as mothers”. Not that I’m supplanting Ms. Universe, but I believe the essence of being a woman also lies in her exercising that right to her own body, and having that choice to bear children or not.

See, I’ve researched the matter quite thoroughly. As compelling as the evidence is, from population experts, about the declining population of certain developed countries and how this will affect the country’s economic future later on. When it comes down to it, no woman tells herself: “I’m going to have kids because the world population is declining”. It boils down to a personal choice – am I ready to bring kids into this world – do I even have the time and patience for them – do I see myself working my ass off for an X number of years till he/she finishes college? I won’t be dissuaded from my convictions with a rational answer, when the very act of procreation entails not reason, but is ruled by one’s passions and bodily desires. So the logical stance just won’t cut it for me.

Nonsense No. 1 “It is a religion of the unbelievers of the existence of God (regardless of how they conceive God to be) that have different doctrines as to the origin of the thought that there is no God.
You are as deluded as those religious people are. “

A lot of Christians have accused atheism as a religion. I even saw a book that says atheism is a religion based on how religion is defined. However, is atheism a religion?

The Encyclopedia of Religion defines religion this way:
In summary, it may be said that almost every known culture involves the religious in the above sense of a depth dimension in cultural experiences at all levels — a push, whether ill-defined or conscious, toward some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life. When more or less distinct patterns of behavior are built around this depth dimension in a culture, this structure constitutes religion in its historically recognizable form. Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience — varied in form, completeness, and clarity in accordance with the environing culture.

Daniel Dennett defines religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. That includes Buddhism and Jainism since both religions still believe in the existence of “devas” and demi-gods. The English word religion is clearly derived from the Latin word religio, as well as its cognates in other European languages, but the derivation of the Latin noun is uncertain. It is most commonly linked to one of two Latin verbs, religare (to bind or fasten) or relegere (to collect again, to go over again [as in reading]).

Friedrich Schleiermacher defined religion as a “feeling of absolute dependence” – absolute as contrasted to other relative feelings of dependence.

Lindbeck defines religion as, “a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”

Therefore, in reading these definitions, we can say that atheism is not a religion since it’s not about anything that is ultimate regarding ultimate concerns on someone’s life. The rule is quite simple: atheism is about not believing in a supernatural being which people call god or gods.

William Alston suggested that the presence of an unspecified number of any of the following characteristics would make a set of cultural practices a religion:
(1) Belief in supernatural beings (gods).
(2) A distinction between sacred and profane objects.
(3) Ritual acts focused on sacred objects.
(4) A moral code believed to be sanctioned by the gods.
(5) Characteristically religious feelings.
(6) Prayer and other forms of communication with gods.
(7) A world view, or a general picture of the world as a whole and the place of the individual therein. . . .
(8) A more or less total organization of one’s life based on the world view.
(9) A social group bound together by the above.
(Alston 1967, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7. New York, 1967. pp. 141–142)

Now that we have some proper definition of what religion is, we can now start to determine if these Christians are right in declaring atheism as a religion.

Atheists do not believe in supernatural beings called “gods”and they do not consider any object as “sacred”. The term sacred in this paragraph means, “something declared or believed to be holy; devoted to a deity or some religious ceremony or use”.

They do not have any religious rituals. There are no consensuses in atheism regarding any moral code (some atheists believe on an objective morality while others believe in relative morality.) They do not have any religious feelings and they never do any prayers.

Atheism is not a worldview (a worldview is a comprehensive view of the world and human life). Atheists are not well organized, and lastly, they do not have any social groups that are bounded by everything that were mentioned above.

Nonsense number 2: Doctrines.
According to these Christians, atheism has different doctrines regarding the origin of the thought that there is no God. Therefore, it is considered as a religion.

Perhaps they think that the word doctrine is synonymous in being religious. Maybe it is best that we first define the meaning of the word “doctrine”.

Simply put it, a doctrine is a belief (or system of beliefs) accepted as authoritative by some group or school. Most dictionaries record two related senses of the term doctrine: according to the first, it is the affirmation of a truth; according to the second, it is a teaching. As the statement of a truth, doctrine has a philosophical cast; as a teaching, it suggests something more practical.

As a statement of truth, philosophical discourse reveals more variation: according to the context, “the doctrine of the equality of man” may be taken either as a precise axiom belonging to a political theory, or as a practical maxim designed to guide political action.

Based on the definition, a doctrine does not automatically connote on being “religious”. For example, Marxism or we can call it the doctrine of Marxism is not religious. Religious doctrines (I think that is what these Christians are talking about) tend to be characterized by their practical intent rather than philosophical discourses.

Christianity uses the terms doctrine and dogma to designate the teachings through which salvation is offered to all those who hear and respond. In case you don’t know, dogmas are truth revealed by God (directly and formally), which is presented by the church for belief, as revealed by God, either through a solemn decision of the extraordinary magisterium (pope or council) or through the ordinary and general magisterium of the church (episcopacy). It must be accepted through faith.

Christian doctrines for example teach proper action for a believer to enter heaven (salvation). O.k.…here are some examples of Christian doctrines: The person of Jesus Christ, the doctrine of the Trinity, sin and grace and the concept of Redemption.

So now, you know the difference between doctrine and religious doctrine.

Atheists use arguments in expressing their case against theism. Those are not “doctrines”. Arguments are sequence of statements such that some of them (the premises) purport to give reason to accept another of them, the conclusion. These may be certain facts or assertions offered as evidence that something is true. It is also defined as a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth or falsehood.

Nonsense Number 3: Who is the original source of the thought that there is no God?
Answer: Diagoras

Philosophers do not consider Diagoras of Melos as “Father of Atheism” (and there is no such thing as a “Father of Atheism”.)

What we have are myths regarding Diagoras’ atheism. According to stories, Diagoras was a poet and a pious man like others; but then a colleague once stole an ode from him, escaped by taking an oath that he was innocent, and afterwards made a hit with the stolen work.

So Diagoras lost his faith in the gods and wrote a treatise under the title of apopyrgizontes logoi (literally, destructive considerations) in which he attacked the belief in the gods.

If we ask, however, what is known historically about Diagoras, we are told a different tale. There existed in Athens, engraved on a bronze tablet and set up on the Acropolis, a decree of the people offering a reward of one talent to him who should kill Diagoras of Melos, and of two talents to him who should bring him alive to Athens. The reason given was that he had ridiculed the Eleusinian Mysteries.

As seen here from the eleventh-century Arab Mubashshir, from the erudite Athenian Apollodorus (ca. 180–120 BCE.):

“When he [viz., Dhiyaghuras al-mariq, or “Diagoras the heretic, or apostate”] persisted in his hypocrisy [or “dissimulation”], his unbelief and his atheism, the ruler, the wise men [or philosophers, hukama] and leaders of Attica sought to kill him. The ruler Charias the Archon [Khariyus al-Arkun (415–4)] set a price on his head [literally: “spent money,” badhal] and commanded that it should be proclaimed among the people: “He who apprehends Diagoras from Melos [Maylun] and kills him will be rewarded with a large sum [badra, traditionally a leather bag containing 1,000 or 10,000 dirhams].”

Nonsense Number 4: On the issue of sin.

Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:10
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

Atheist is just afraid to admit their sins to God.

Like anyone else, an atheist is not a perfect person. We all commit mistakes. Remember that atheism is not about refusing to acknowledge that we err.

But because atheists do not believe in any god or gods, they do not accept the concept of sin just like they do not accept the concept of karma. The concept of sin is pointless to an atheist. Sin is defined as the transgression of God’s law. Since atheists don’t believe in God, the concept of sin is without meaning.

Nonsense Number 5: On the issue of evolution: If we evolved from Apes as science suggests, why do we still have apes?

This is the most common question if the believer is too ignorant with evolutionary biology, taxonomy and genetics, and I’m sure a lot of Filipinos are.
First, humans and other apes are descended from a common ancestor whose population split to become two (and more) lineages.

Second, Christians assume that the theory of evolution presuppose some inbuilt tendency for advancement or progress. There is nothing in evolution that automatically makes a population ‘better’ or ‘more advance’. Humans and apes came from a common ancestry line but they diverged and became different. But one group is not superior to the other group. That’s why we still have apes in Africa.

In today’s basic knowledge of heredity, we now know that there is no barrier keeping evolutionary change within specific limits. With the discovery of DNA, we find that all living things – from the tiniest bacteria to the giant sequoia trees, to cats, whales, lizards, sponge, apes and humans, all share the same DNA information. With some other factors such as geographical isolation, natural selection and time, it is not impossible for modern apes to evolve into something else.

Nonsense Number 6: It’s so obvious that Atheists are people who live an awful life. And so they blame God for it and try very hard to tell people that he doesn’t exist. Well God gave you freewill so do what you want. And I feel sorry for you that you have to blame God for your terrible life.

Is atheism the effect of a bad childhood, a failed marriage, an unhappy life, failures, etc. etc…? Well if that’s true then there must be more atheists in this world than God believers.

But seriously, belief or non-belief is not a factor that will affect someone’s life. In fact, there are even some religions that capitalize on human misery and guilt.

What makes believers link God to happiness is this: Every human naturally desires the good, the object of happiness. God is believed to be the ultimate, self-sustaining good. Therefore, humans seek God.

If I don’t believe in the existence of elves, that will not make my life unhappy. That’s the same with god belief. Not believing in a God doesn’t affect my life. If I believe in evolution, that will not make my life sad and miserable.

Happiness, contentment and peace of mind are up to you and no one else can do it for you. But speaking of atheism, it is not against happiness and love; it is against the idea that happiness and love can only be achieved in the afterlife – when you’re already dead.

In atheism there is no God to think for you, to guarantee your happiness and to save you. These are all the sole responsibility of human beings. If you want knowledge, you must think for yourself. If you want success, you must work. If you want happiness, you must strive to achieve it. For those who rely on a god, this is a terrifying prospect, but for an atheist, it is an exhilarating challenge. As David Ramsey Steele have said, “Atheism is like a clean water supply: very elementary and purely negative. It doesn’t tell us how to conduct our personal lives or how to organize our social order. But then despite first impressions, neither does theism.”

So if a God believer attempts to defeat atheism by using emotionalism he accomplishes nothing aside from revealing his disdain for an atheist’s ability to think.

Nonsense Number 7: You don’t believe in God, so you believe in nothing.
Atheism is without belief in a god or gods, NOT ‘without belief’. Contrary to popular (theist) belief, an atheist can believe in almost anything. Atheists only agree with fellow atheists in the issue against theism. Other than that it’s every man for himself.

Some atheists are communists while others defend capitalism. Some are against religion while others are neutral on the issue. Some are relativists, humanists, objectivists, feminists, compatibilists…all those “ists” and “isms” on the list!

There are honest atheists, thieves, neurotic atheists philanthropists, nationalists, psychotics, rapists or “tatlo dyes” (dime a dozen) atheists.

We have some friendly atheists, grumpy old atheists who call other atheists as “morons”. We have gay atheists and atheists suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The only thing incompatible with atheism is theism.

Nonsense Number 8: Obviously, there must be a Prime Mover since something cannot start from nothing? Just like in Newton’s Law of Inertia, nothing can move unless there is an outside force that will move that thing.

Newton’s first law of motion is that property of matter which manifests itself as a resistance to any change in the motion of a body. Thus when no external force is acting, a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion continues moving in a straight line with uniform speed.

So I really don’t know why this Christian used this law as an example to illustrate the Prime Mover. There’s nothing in Newton’s first law that says a body always starts at rest. It said that if there is no external force, matter will continue moving. If the object is at rest it will stay at rest until an external force acts on it.

So how will you prove to me that everything in this universe started at rest? Atoms are always moving, aren’t they? Remember that the Newtonian laws are valid only for all mechanical problems not involving speeds comparable to the speed of light and not involving atomic or subatomic particles.

Nonsense Number 9: Something started from nothing.

Why is nothing always a default position? Nothing is nothing…if “nothing” has something on it to start with, then that is not “nothing”. What is the property of “nothing”? Is it hard to imagine that there has always been something? That we don’t have to begin with nothing? Energy for example is something that wasn’t created. Maybe everything started at that. Believers believe that something started with something and this ‘something’ is God. Then, why is there God rather than nothing?

In today’s modern cosmology and physics, something is more natural than ‘nothing’.

But suppose we accept that nothing is the natural state of affairs. Is it impossible that something came from nothing? There are a lot of examples that simple systems of particles are unstable and undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures. Since ‘nothing’ is quite simple, it is very unstable. So it is very normal for ‘nothing’ to undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something without any supernatural agent, as Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek suggested.

Nonsense number 10: Atheism is a worldview.

According to Christian apologist Razi Zacharias, atheism is a worldview (See: Can Man Live Without God p. 17). But what is a worldview anyway?

Personally speaking I think a worldview is how you see the world. It is the concoction of a person’s philosophy, ideas, ideology, knowledge, understanding and conviction in describing the universe. Others think that it’s how a person perceives reality. Whatever way a person describes it, generally speaking a worldview is how a person interprets his universe.

Sigmund Freud defines it as … an intellectual construction which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis, which, accordingly, leaves no question unanswered and in which everything that interests us finds its fixed place.

James W. Sire, defines world view as
… a set of presuppositions … which we hold … about the makeup of our world.

So to put it together, a worldview is the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that ground and influence a person’s perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. Simple isn’t it?

Worldview includes the following:
• epistemology: beliefs about the nature and sources of knowledge;
• metaphysics: beliefs about the ultimate nature of Reality;
• cosmology: beliefs about the origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially Man;
• teleology: beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants;
• theology: beliefs about the existence and nature of God;
• anthropology: beliefs about the nature and purpose of Man in general, and oneself in particular;
• axiology: beliefs about the nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.
(From Hunter Mead’s Types and Problems of Philosophy)

We already have an idea of what a worldview is; now we’re going to see if atheism fits the bill.

According to Christian philosopher Ronald Nash, a worldview consists of five major topics: God, reality, knowledge, morality and humankind. Now does atheism entails any belief about epistemology, ethics or humankind? No it doesn’t. The problem lies when a god-believer thinks that any worldview that has atheism in it is an “atheistic world view”. When a believer thinks a certain philosophy or rationalization excludes his god he automatically places the whole thing in a can and places a large label on it which spells “ATHEISM”. That’s because most religious believers err in believing that worldview and doctrine are synonymous, and they really consider atheism as Satan’s doctrine. A good example of this is the Theory of Evolution. Most believers consider evolution is atheistic because it is deemed to be a materialist’s version of how life was created without God (which is unfortunately incorrect since evolution is about the development of life, not the creation of life). Yet there are some believers who are quite comfortable with evolution (mostly the Roman Catholics).

Now let us elaborate the issues. On the issue of ethics – atheism does not logically necessitate any theory of ethics. In that department, any atheist can believe any theory of ethics he thinks is correct. As they always say, an atheist can even develop his personal moral code. He can be a nihilist, a relativist, an objectivist, or a mixture of all of those “ists” in the dictionary for all he cares, as long as such theory doesn’t conform to any theological interpretation. Also atheists vary in the belief of morality. Some non-believers like Sam Harris and Paul Kurtz believe in absolute morals while there are atheists out there who believe in relative morality.

It is also the same with the sense of meaning (teleology). I personally believe that an individual creates his own meaning in life. That is my own belief…but it doesn’t reflect my atheism. Not every atheist that I know agrees to that, and they even say that my outlook in life is more of a Satanist than an atheist. For some, the meaning of life depends on how society perceives it, yet we are atheists.

Another good example is philosophy. Majority of Filipino atheists are Marxists. They are also into dialectic materialism. But there are also atheists who are into Utilitarianism. We also have existentialists (they say majority of those into existentialism are members of UPAC – U.P. Atheist Circle) atheists and those into Wittgenstein’s “Ordinary Language Philosophy”. Shucks! I have even met a non-believer who is totally into some kind of irrational version of rationalism. Speaking of metaphysics, atheists also seem to be diverse in this concern. There are materialist atheists, spiritual atheists, ethical atheists, rationalist atheists, objectivist atheists, and so on. There are even some who declare themselves as Christian atheists! (Hmmmm…sounds like an oxy-moron? Whatever…) Personally, I am a little Hegelian when it comes to the Theory of Knowledge. But atheism has nothing to do with my epistemology. I just like how Hegel dismantles Kant’s “ding-an-sich”. When it comes to the philosophical explanation of morality, I believe it came from reason just like Immanuel Kant.

In the issue of truth, some atheists are defending the correspondence theory of truth while others are still into John Dewey’s pragmatism. Hmmmm are there agnostic atheists?

In the concept of cosmology…wow! Here a lot of atheists seem to ride on different boats! Majority believes in a scientific explanation…or should I say a more natural explanation of origins. Yet you will be surprised that there are non-believers who believe in Zacharias Sitchin’s “12 planets”. You know…that theory that say we were created by intelligent alien life forms from Planet Nebiru! Oh yeah! There are also those who believe that the universe is just a part of other universes – or should I say, multiverse.

And who says all atheists are the same in matters of theology? We say that Buddhists are atheist in some sense…just because they don’t believe in an anthropomorphic, personal god. But how about when it comes to other god-concepts? Some Filipino atheists declare themselves as pantheists or deists. Some even say they are atheists because they don’t believe in the Bible. Speaking of god and religion, atheists also differ on the issue of religion and science vs. religion. To some atheists, we must destroy religion, yet there are atheists who are passive on the subject. Some atheists believe religion and science must not mix together yet others believe in NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magistrate).

Now how can I picture this? Hmmmmmm….ok, I can exemplify worldview and atheism to a fruit salad (Yummy…since we are nearing Christmas season). Anyway, let’s say a banana is a part…an ingredient of a delicious fruit salad, yet a banana is not a fruit salad. That’s the same with atheism. Atheism is about not believing in a god or gods – right? It may be an influence to some of the subjects that complete a worldview, but that doesn’t make a whole worldview. It may be a part of an explanation of why an atheist is an objectivist, a rationalist or a relativist. But that doesn’t make atheism a complete justification why he considers that the world operates that way. A worldview must contain the whole element to make it coherent and livable.