Filipino Freethinkers

By Jong Atmosfera

Every conscious thing we do or choice we make is somehow motivated by the pursuit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. The only variables are the kinds of things that bring varying degrees of pleasure and pain to each individual, the premises on which expectations of pleasure or pain are based, and the ability to delay gratification.

For example, many nature lovers go to work instead of spending the entire week at the beach because the former guarantees some future comfort that outweighs the immediate fun the latter brings. Some smokers quit because they’ve decided that the pleasure they get from cigarettes cannot compensate for the pain of a present or potential respiratory illness. Most people do not normally steal because the initial gain will be quickly neutralized if they get caught (or their conscience takes the fun out of taking things that don’t belong to them). And if they believe in an afterlife, getting away won’t even matter.

Which brings us to a common theistic argument against naturalism-based morality: If there is no eternal punishment, there is no ultimate justice and evil people like Hitler and Stalin can get away with atrocities. But there are many answers to this…

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

In the last few years, the Filipino Freethinkers have encountered a number of big bigots in the local scene whose words and actions truly show an unwillingness to embrace fact instead of fiction, and equal human rights instead of being selfish and dictatorial. From Senator Tito Sotto’s literal laughter in the face of maternal deaths, to Eric Manalang’s plea that our mothers should have aborted us, we’ve gotten to know quite a few bad eggs.

For the 3rd Filipino Freethinkers Forum this coming April 1, we will be handing out the 2012 Biggest Bigot Award to the person YOU think has worked hardest at being a close-minded douchebag. As our prize, the winner gets to have money donated in their name to the cause they are directly opposed to! Isn’t that nice? Everybody wins!

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

themisseducated:

In Russia, if you want to tell someone that s/he sucks at something, you ask, “Did you learn -blank- at Sunday school?” Kind of like, “Did you learn about gender rights and reproductive health at Sunday school?” I’m sure that’s the case in the Philippines.

By George Seven

Red Tani’s guesting on Bottomline with Boy Abunda was the first time in my memory that atheism was covered in the Philippine mainstream media. Atheists in the Philippines are considered a minority, and although there are no surveys conducted as to how many atheists there are in the Philippines, we surely are growing. There are presently around 5000 atheists scattered across various groups on social media. The actual number could be higher as most of them in social media are from the younger generations.

Numbers aside, Filipino atheists, being a minority, are still a misunderstood group of people. We usually suffer discrimination and prejudice, assumed to be anti-Christ, immoral, or worse. But atheists as a demographic are also like any group where there is diversity. We also have different mindsets and ways of thinking. There are even positive and negative atheists. On issues like euthanasia or divorce, we also have differing ideas.

Being an atheist is a choice; unlike religion, you are not recruited into atheism. You can’t become an atheist by being baptized or converted. Being an ex-Christian, I discovered atheism by myself; I did not even know that the word “atheist” existed to convey my nonbelief until later…

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

By Andy Uyboco

I grew up in a Christian environment where doubt was hardly encouraged. Faith was a virtue. Doubt was not. The foremost illustration of this is the biblical story of Jesus’ disciple Thomas who claimed not to believe in his resurrection unless he saw his risen body and touched his wounds. When Jesus did appear to him and erase his doubts, Jesus said, “Blessed are you because you see and believe, but more blessed are those who do not see and yet believe.” And from those words sprung up an entire culture of faith, of not seeing yet fervently believing.

The first thirty something years of my life were spent aiming for this kind of faith. The urge to doubt would always be attributed to my human weakness or even to the wiles of the devil. But the deeper I went inside Christianity, the more discordant I would feel. Yes, there was always the heat of the moment in worship, and there were days when I felt that I was indeed in god’s loving arms. But these we’re also peppered by moments of doubt. I would always wonder if answered prayers weren’t just coincidences; if the faith I felt wasn’t just leveled up wishful thinking; or if the feelings I had for god’s presence weren’t just that — feelings.

Then a thought came to me: if I believe that god created me, then he must also be responsible for creating this machinery in me that makes me doubt and think and reason. And since this is so, why should I not then trust this thinking and reasoning of mine? What if all I ever believed in was just other people’s beliefs imposed upon society for generations? What if my doubts were the way to truth even if a lot of people (at least in my circles) didn’t seem to share them? Didn’t Jesus say that the gate was narrow and only a few people ever find it?

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Pecier Decierdo

DepEd, Y U No Teach Science to Kids?

The news that our Department of Education decided to remove the ‘Science’ subject in the first and second grades released a flurry of criticism and commentary in the past two months. Since science education is one of the main advocacies of the Filipino Freethinkers, the issue was tackled in a couple of articles on this site. To read the articles, go here or here.

Now, if there’s one thing worse than DepEd’s dropping ‘Science’ in the first and second grades, then it is their reason for doing it. In the words of Education Secretary Br. Armin Luistro, they decided to jettison science in order to “decongest the Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) and to make learning more enjoyable to young learners.” In other words, they believe that in postponing the teaching of science, they are doing the students an act of kindness.

Science, the School Bully

That many people believe science is not “child friendly” is sad on so many levels. The other levels have already been excellently discussed in the other articles on this site. I want to concentrate on this one level in particular: DepEd and the Philippine public as a whole view science as a congestion because they do not understand the first thing about it.

Given how they view the subject, I am in fact happy that DepEd dropped ‘Science’ in Grades 1 and 2. I don’t want an institution that views science as a congestion to teach it to the future generation because if they do, they will only end up alienating the kids to science.

In fact, we are better off with a public ignorant of science than a public alienated to science. Scientific ignorance can be remedied by a few years of quality education and public information. I know this because I am the product of our public elementary school system, and when I entered high school I was almost a science ignoramus. A few years of good education cancelled all my years of bad education. 

Bad science teaching causes alienation toward science.

Before we move on, let me illustrate how bad my elementary education was. I had one science teacher who taught us that a monkey-eating eagle was a monkey. I also had one science teacher who was a creationist, and another who was a moon hoaxer. I also remember being scolded by another teacher for bringing encyclopedias to school and allowing my classmates to revel in them. The encyclopedias were “too advanced” for us, that teacher said. To be fair, I had good elementary teachers too. Sadly, the effect of one bad teacher requires the correction of five good ones.

Now let us proceed to the main point. There is a fundamental difference between being simply ignorant of science and being alienated to it. Good education can only be effective in minds that are not yet alienated to science. For my part, I am very thankful for my few good science teachers – who are, by the way, glowing embers in the dark world of our public education system – for keeping my sense of wonder alive throughout all those years of horrible science teaching. I believe I wouldn’t be writing this essay right now if it were not for the fact that my sense of curiousity survived all those years in a public elementary school.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

March is International Women’s Month! If you have a story to share about fantastic females, send them to us! Commemorate your mother’s strength, narrate your best friend’s journey, or divulge your very own struggles. Or if you have in-depth commentary on the fight for women’s rights, we would love to hear it, too.

Simply email your tales and essays to margie@filipinofreethinkers.org with the subject “Women’s Month Submission.”

(From the Filipino Freethinkers website.)

by Garrick Bercero

Whenever faced with the challenge that science is incompatible with faith, theists often point to their faith’s own cadre of accomplished scientists to refute this frequent atheistic claim. And they would not want of examples. Just grabbing from the Roman Catholic Church’s litany of scientists will give you many luminaries of the sciences, many with the honor of being called “father of” such and such science or their name being used as units of measurement.

• Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was an Augustinian friar.
• Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, named oxygen and hydrogen.
• Alessandro Volta was a physicist who invented the battery and is the namesake of the measurement for electric potential.
• Louis Pasteur was a chemist and microbiologist who is often regarded as one of the fathers of the germ theory of disease.
• André-Marie Ampère was a physicist and mathematician who helped discover the link between electricity and magnetism and is the namesake of the measurement for current.
• William of Ockham, the namesake of Occam’s razor, was a Franciscan Friar.
• René Descartes, most famous for cogito ergo sum, was a mathematician as well as a philosopher.
• Blaise Pascal, the originator of the Pascal’s Wager, was a mathematician and physicist, who is the namesake of the measurement of pressure, stress, and tensile strength.
• Georges Lemaître was the first person to propose that the universe was expanding, but he is more famous for proposing what we call the “Big Bang” theory of the origin of the universe.

This is but a smattering of all the Catholic scientists who have contributed greatly to the progress of science. Some of them had overtly pious intentions for their work—in order to more perfectly understand their Creator’s work. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church has been one of the biggest patrons of the sciences dating back to the Middle Ages with precisely this purpose of appreciating the design of the Intelligent Designer. With such intellectual giants who profess faith in Catholic dogma and such explicitly religious motives, how then can the atheist even suggest that faith is in conflict with science?

Is pseudoscience compatible with science?

The existence of religious scientists only proves, as Sam Harris observes, that good ideas can live with bad ideas in the same head. The proponents of the compatibility of faith-based religion with science seem to miss the fact that the acceptance of scientific discoveries of religious scientists is because these findings have survived the rigorous testing of the scientific method. Lemaître’s Big Bang theory is accepted by scientists not due to any purported theological consistency but because it is the best explanation for our observations. That he was religious was purely incidental to the value of his scientific insight.

It is also important to point out that many scientists are religious simply because most people are religious. Centuries ago, only those with the power and wealth of their Churches behind them had the luxury of spending their time reading and experimenting. Not to mention, atheists (often lumped by those in power with the worship of foreign gods) have been persecuted since the name was coined.

When the German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé said that the cyclic structure of benzene came to him in a dream involving a snake biting its own tail, his idea wasn’t accepted for its esoteric merits, it was accepted on the strength of the scientific evidence he presented after this strange epiphany.

One of humanity’s greatest minds, Isaac Newton, was quite the dedicated alchemist. He wroteover a million words on the topic. His work on alchemy was even integral to his work on optics. But, none of this suggests that the pseudoscience of alchemy has no conflict with science.

We find that to the extent that religious scientists are not dogmatic and employ reason and evidence, they are good scientists. That is, we expect religious scientists to cut away all semblance of religiosity from their output before we deem them credible. This does not speak well for the argument that science and faith are compatible.

A brief digression on Galileo

No essay on the conflict between science and faith would be complete without a mention of Galileo Galilei. Apologists dismiss the Galileo affair as a trial of his arrogance rather than of his ideas, which they found erroneous not just based on scripture, but also based on empirical facts.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

By Pepe Bawagan

A few weeks ago, Kevin, an agnostic atheist member of the Filipino Freethinkers, posted on his blog about his frustrating experience with a substitute teacher in his Values Education class. He wrote:

Our regular professor was out so we had a substitute. The lesson for that day was about different personalities. He showed us a diagram:

1. Wise - someone who is god-fearing and is able to recognize mistakes.
2. Foolish - someone who doesn’t love god or someone who denies him and his orders.
3. Mocker - someone who rebels against god and mocks him.

Being a secularist, this set off alarms in Kevin’s head, and after raising his complaints and delivering an extensive explanation of his objections to his teacher…

He then went on saying, “Yes, okay. We understand that. But you still have to participate in this class. You have to understand that Values came from ‘God’. He is the root of it all. And we are defining personalities according to biblical terms and definitions.”

Read the whole article here

It’s bad enough that this happened in a school that was purportedly non-sectarian, but perhaps it was just a fluke. Maybe it was just this one teacher who was, after all, just a substitute. Surely their regular Values Ed teacher would be much more aware and sensitive of religious diversity and secular morality, right?

Wrong: How You’re Doing Education

Even with their regular teacher, the same thing happened again, only this time it was much worse. Aside from forcing everyone in the class to write “the goal of my life is to make God smile”, she reacted mockingly and condescendingly towards Kevin’s explanation of his stance, spouting the usual nonsense, such as “atheists are just rebelling against God for their hardships and pain in their sad life”. I find it quite appalling that this kind of force-feeding, where dissent and diversity are brushed aside or unthinkingly dismissed, currently masquerades as education. And all this, after a lecture that was supposed to enlighten the students about differences of belief. 

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Red Tani

Imagine that by some miracle, the prosecution managed to provide overwhelming evidence that could convict Corona. But for some reason, the senator-judges arrive at a surprising verdict: not guilty.

When Senator-Judge Enrile (still our hypothetical presiding officer) is asked about it, he explains that like the other Senators, he, too, was convinced that Corona should be convicted. However, Enrile explains, conviction was impossible.

Why? Because if Corona is guilty, it would mean that Ex-President Arroyo made a mistake in appointing him Chief Justice. And if Arroyo made a mistake, it means that presidents aren’t perfect. And if presidents aren’t perfect, then democracy is doomed. Therefore, Corona is not guilty.

Unless you are a Corona cultist, you’d think that such a verdict is insane. Corona himself would admit guilt instead of letting such a mockery of the legal system stand. (OK, maybe not.) In any case, you’ll surely admit that no one would find such insanity reasonable.

Yet many find insanity reasonable when done in the name of religion. This is what happened when Pope Paul VI confirmed that contraceptives were evil.

In the early 60s, many Catholics started suspecting the innocence of an old teaching: the evil of contraception. They expressed dissent so strongly that Pope John XXIII (and later Pope Paul VI) formed a commission to investigate the original teaching’s innocence, so to speak.

After 6 years on trial, the commission reached their verdict:

• 9 of 12 bishops found the original teaching wrong
• 15 of 19 theologians found the original teaching wrong
• 30 of 35 lay members found the original teaching wrong

The commission had found evidence — from Scripture and Tradition to Science and Experience — to conclude that the original teaching on contraception was wrong; contraception was not always evil.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

The official website of the Filipino Freethinkers (FF) has evolved as rapidly and dynamically as the organization itself. It started out as more of a free-form community blog, where non-believers and progressive believers could rant, rave, and ruminate about faith, freethought, and all else in between. And while the current site continues to serve as a venue for this kind of free, fearless speech, it has also become much more than that, the same way FF has become much more than a casual gathering of folks who liked to share stories about their doubts and observations.

Now, the website also serves as one of the main vehicles through which FF — which, in three colorful years, has become a more polished and structured organization — advocates reason, science, and secularism. In fact, due greatly to the site’s opinion pieces, as well as its use of multimedia to inform and expose the public to the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, the government, and their various cohorts, FF has even bagged “The One,” the premier prize in 2011′s Globe T@tt Awards, which championed groups and individuals who’ve put social media to great use.

Several of the site’s pieces have even earned viral status, “liked” and dispersed through social media, amassing hundreds — and in one particular case, thousands — of comments, and even cited by print journalists.

Here are our top 10 articles thus far, roughly arranged by subject matter:

1. Anti-RH Bill Catholics Harrass RH Bill Supporters and What Actually Happened at the Manila Cathedral: Revealing the Lies and Bigotry of Eric Manalang and Pro-Life Philippines  

These back-to-back pieces were what first fired up the site’s readership, and Eric Manalang’s ire. Our mothers should’ve aborted us? But we’re just getting started!

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Pecier Decierdo

Can Everyone Be A Texan?

Many opponents of the RH Bill and of population management in general deny that the world is overpopulated. To support their denial of overpopulation, conservatives usually claim that everyone alive today can fit inside the state of Texas, leaving the rest of the planet blissfully empty of humans. A moment’s thought is enough to come up with definitive arguments against this everyone-can-be-a-Texan scenario. Unfortunately, the said scenario keeps on getting parroted, and by no less than our own anti-RH senators like Tito Sotto.

So how do we elegantly debunk the we-can-all-fit-in-Texas scenario and other similar baloney “arguments” commonly used by RH Bill opponents? The answer comes from the environmental sciences.

My Very Own Patch of Earth

How does your lifestyle affect the environment? To answer this question, environmental scientists William Reese and Mathis Wackernal invented the simple but powerful concept of ecological footprint. Your ecological footprint is the total area of bioproductive land and sea needed to sustain your lifestyle. The name ecological footprint is therefore well chosen because it essentially measures how heavily you tread on planet Earth.

The Energy Library gives the following definition of a bioproductive patch of Earth:

 1. able to produce and sustain living organisms

2. specifically, describing land area that is capable of providing natural substances that support human activities; e.g., land used for growing food crops

In other words, a bioproductive patch of Earth is an area that produces goods and performs services that have economic value to humans.

Now, let us get back to ecological footprint. I wanted to know what my ecological footprint was, so I went here to take a test that gives me a rough estimate of its value. After taking the test (I tried my best to give the most accurate and honest answers possible) I found out that my ecological footprint is around 1.8 hectares. That’s 18,000 square meters of the Earth’s sea and land that’s dedicated to support my lifestyle. (I tried other tests, and they gave me answers ranging from 0.90 hectares to 5.5 hectares. I think 1.8 hectares is the most accurate. I encourage the reader to take other tests, for example this or this.)

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Marguerite de Leon

This is the group shot from the meetup last February 5:

There were over 80 attendees that afternoon, and our usual haunt at Starbucks Ansons Ortigas was barely able handle all of that sexiness. So, we felt it was high-time to try out a non-commercial venue the next time around, and what better place could there be to house a bunch of heathens for some sweet, sweet sacrilege than this –

For the following Sunday meetup, the Freethinkers went to church. But it was a very special one — the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Makati, which is the home church of FF’s Reproductive Health Advocacy Director Kenneth Keng and his family.  The Episcopalians — basically the Anglican Church when set outside of England — are a more liberal bunch compared to Catholics. They have female and homosexual members in their clergy, and generally have a more progressive stance on social issues.

It’s very refreshing to see a church with a sense of humor.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Marguerite de Leon

Dear Butthurt Filipinos,

It has come to my attention that the executive branch of our government has recently asked for an apology from a Hollywood actor, as said actor has made quite public his disappointment with our country’s Customs officials, not knowing that the actual venue of his mishaps was our neighbor, Indonesia.

Now, the fact that said actor was referring to Indonesia is actually not that important. Because something tells me that even if the actor really did have an unsavory experience here in the Philippines, Malacanang and like-minded citizens would still hold out the dark, shredded ribbons of their heart to the rest of the world and demand repentance. They did it with Claire Danes, who is actually an excellent actor, and now they have done so with Taylor Kitsch, who is actually not.

Oh, Butthurt Filipinos, when will you quit being so butthurt about everything? I understand that all of us have the right to be offended, as all of us have the right to take certain ideas and principles with utmost seriousness and passion, but there are far more compelling things for us to be concerned with.

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

by Red Tani

“The Devil lives in the Vatican. He has won over the confidences of people but naturally its difficult to find proof but the consequences are visible.”

– Father Gabriel Amorth, Chief Exorcist of Pope Benedict XVI

If Satan possessed the Pope, and his horde of demons took over every priest, bishop, and archbishop in the Vatican, would Catholics find out? What kind of evidence would be necessary to prove such a claim? And would any Catholic investigate or even suspect that such Satanic control is the case? What if this has been the case for hundreds or even thousands of years?

This is not a conspiracy theory. As a naturalist, I don’t believe in demons or Satan or any of the creatures and characters in Catholic mythology. What I do believe is that regardless of your religious beliefs, skepticism and doubt is necessary, especially when it comes to claims made by religion. I hope to convince you with the following intellectual exercise that even if you believed in God, you’d be better off believing as a freethinker.

If you’re a nonbeliever like I am, please humor me by playing along. If you’re a believer, however, I hope you’ll agree that the question is of utmost importance.

What if the deity you’re praying to is the Devil? What if the tenets you’ve been told to believe and the orders you’ve been told to obey have been devised to sound convincing but calculated to result in more evil than good? If faith can be used to justify belief in Satan in the same way it’s used to justify belief in God, can you possibly tell the difference?

Satan?

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” This line from The Usual Suspects is a rephrasing of a line from a prose poem by Charles Baudelaire titled “The Generous Gambler.” In the story, the Devil says that the only time he feared for his power was when a preacher exposed his best trick: convincing others of his nonexistence.

But I think Baudelaire doesn’t give the Devil enough credit. What would suit the Devil more is if he managed to convince the world that he and his minions were God’s representatives, and that God’s true representatives were sinners and demons.

If Satan existed, this would be his most effective tactic to win the War on Heaven. And he’d be doing it in a way that would insult God the most: What could be more blasphemous than glorifying Satan and demonizing God?

Read the full article on the Filipino Freethinkers website.

Spend April Fools’ Day wisely! Attend the third Filipino Freethinkers forum!

• What: FF Forum 3: Reason, Science, and Secularism
• When: April 1, 2012 (a Sunday), from 1:30 – 6:30pm
• Where: Conference rooms A & B of UP-AyalaLand TechnoHub in Commonwealth Avenue

Join us as we celebrate our journey with the following activities:

Through talks and discussions, videos and presentations, we share the story of FF’s first three years, remembering how we fought for the causes we believe in:

• RH Bill
• LGBT Rights
• Freedom of Speech
• Freedom of Religion
• Secularism

We tell you what we think of the current state of reason, science, and secularism in our country, and invite people — through official membership and recruitment — to join us in our cause.

We give out the first annual Freethought Awards to those individuals and groups in the Philippines who champion the ideals of freethought (and those who don’t):

• Reason Award
• Science Award
• Secularism Award
• Bigotry Award

More information about the event will be posted in the coming days. The venue can hold 200, but only fifty slots are left, so if you wish to reserve one, please do so soon using the form below. Be sure to answer the question at the end of the form to let us know that you’re a freethinker who’s serious about attending the event.

Reserve a slot here.