When my uncle came home from the United State, I was surprise on his reaction when he learned that I’m an atheist. He asked me informations about biblical errancies and contradictions.
Well, typically, when a Filipino heard about atheism, the first thing that enters his mind is “that guys knows allot about biblical errors.” That how it goes here in Manila. I really can’t blame them, most so-called atheists in Rizal Park engage in Bible topics.
So what is atheism for a typical Filipino?
I have met atheists here in the Philippines, from the so-so to the real McCoy. Generally speaking, for a person to lose God, there are motives.
Most Filipino thinks that an atheist is the same to a communist. Since communism is a “god-less” ideology, therefore a god-less person is a commie! Regrettably, most Filipinos who declare to be atheists are in fact communist or a little commie oriented, thus fueling such conviction.
It is erroneous to consider atheism is equal to communism. In fact, there are atheistic ideologies that have nothing to do with communism. Take objectivism for example. Objectivism is opposed to communism but both are atheistic.
A further misunderstanding on atheism is that an atheist is just a person irate to God. On a recent debate that I engage on a Christian pastor, he told me that I become an atheist for the reason that I just didn’t get any of my wishes. Talk about Santa Clause.
Most Filipino says that an atheist is an atheist because he’s angry with God. Reason like unpleasant church experience or a dispute between a particular priest or pastors were also considered. Well that’s not atheism. That’s more about being an anti-theist. A person rejecting God because of the reason of just being angry to it is not an atheist but rather an angry theist. More advance anti-theists just leaves a particular god-concept to find better alternatives. Example; He may once been a Christian but becomes disgruntle on how the Christian God perform, so he may find superior spirituality with a new religion, like Buddhism or the New Age. Also, some so-called atheists are just annoyed at a particular religion. He may be just dissatisfied on Christianity or Roman Catholicism. Another issue to add is when a person declares himself as an atheist but in actuality only have a different god-concept. He may pronounce that the Christian God doesn’t exist, but a particular idea like power, or some unseen forces is considered to be “god”.
Let us remember, an atheist is a person who is not a theist. That means he lacks what a theist believe to exist, which is he called God. For a real atheist the word GOD is meaningless. On a discussion, an atheist will only rely on the information provided by the believer on his typical god-concept.
Now that we have talk about what atheism is not. Let us talk about atheism here in the Philippine setting.
Typical Filipino atheists are compose of several varieties, the practical atheists, the scientific atheists, and the philosophical type.
The Practical Filipino Atheist.
Most Filipino is of this variety. Since most are on poverty or are not highly educated, they mostly rely on common sense in dealing with the question of divinity. For them, such a world full of evil and sufferings is a proof that a god doesn’t exist. The perception they knew about God is base on the Christian god-concept and attributes. It may be a simple deduction of the Argument of Evil as said by Epicurus. “If an all-good God exist, why is there evil?”
Another idea on practical atheism is base on the “To see is to believe” argument. If God exist, where is he?” Sabi nga ng kaibigan ko, “Ilabas mo na ang diyos mo at nang masinelas ko ang mukha nyan! Pabaya kasi eh!” “Where was your God when a crime was committed? He’s at home, washing his tights!”
On their simple understanding, they believe that if God is there to exist, there are no more sickness, war, famine and discontentment to this world. It may be shallow, but sometimes I saw it very effective.
The Scientific Atheist.
I consider this the elite type of Filipino atheists and the favorite of Christian apologists and atheist bashers because of the issue concerning evolution. Christians accuse these guys of worshipping science and Darwin instead of God.
Scientific atheists have a considerable scientific knowledge or ideas disproving God. Using scientific method like experiment, they will insist that to prove the god-hypothesis, the theist is obligated to demonstrate its existence. Scientific atheism here in the Philippines is not as sophisticated as in other countries in Asia. Most rely on simple scientific knowledge. Those who are trained or up-dated on informations from foreign lands are much better. With the advent of the Internet, some Filipino atheists have progress regarding this field.
The Philosophical Atheist
The nemesis of the fundamentalist theist. By far this is the smallest and unrecognized group of Philippine atheists. This is the Pinoy who carefully considers the logical absurdities of the typical god-concept.
Philosophical atheists are more informed on the Achilles' heel of the theist’s god-concept and will make use of it as an advantage, barraging philosophical queries to lay to rest the theist on his own ideas.
Some of them even read and studies the theist’s own Holy Scripture, meticulously finding faults and contradictions and use it against them. (“Ngayon lang ako nakakita ng taong bumasa sa salita ng Diyos para gamitin laban sa Kanya!” – Henry Samaniego) Surprisingly, these atheists know more about the Bible than the typical Christian lay person.
Philosophical atheists use the different rules in philosophy. Sometimes they engage battle against a rival philosophy that a theist might use. They also diligently study comparative religion and religious philosophy so they can compare and evaluate a typical theist belief.
So those are the typical Pinoy atheists. There are maybe some that I might not include in this list, but I believe that for most they represent the majority.
I hope I have shed light on this matter.
