And I notice that he was already typing large fonts in the computer and he was already throwing scandalous words. That’s what I get for having a friendly chat with a Christian. As an atheist, it’s too often for me to have such bad conversations with believers, not only with the Christian variety. In Luneta for example, every time I was in a dialogue with somebody, these “KSP’s” (KSP means “kulang sa pansin” or those lacking attention) often come out from their hole and enter the conversation. Their objection: To impress the masses.
I have known this fellow for almost 3 years now in the Luneta debate circle. Well, to protect the not so innocent, I’ll just call him Mr. W. Mr. W claim he is an English teacher and he’s a universalist. Hmmmm…not bad. Anyway, in those years that I have known him, it seems he is irritated with atheists like me. In Luneta, before I join the group, non-believers called themselves “Freethinkers” and I think I’m the only guy who called myself an atheist. The Canadian guy I was talking about in my earlier post says that the term atheist sounded a little “nasty”. Then Mr. W showed up and told me that I should change my label from being an “atheist” to “non-theist”. What? As I still recall, atheist and non-theist is synonymous.
I never really take Mr. W in a debate seriously, even if this guy claims to be good at it. I seen him on action and frankly speaking, I’m not impress. First he claims that atheism causes a person to become cynic. Now I asked him what a cynic is. He answered me that cynics are angry people who are not about sure of anything. Well…I really don’t get it if he thinks a cynic is a skeptic waking up with a bad hair day. There goes his English professor claim. Does he know that cynic doesn’t means being angry with the world? A cynic is someone who is critical of the motives of others. That doesn’t mean he wanted to obliterate the whole world and cynics doesn’t mean atheism. In atheism, you are talking about the existence of a god, not about trusting human motives. You don’t need to be an atheist to become cynical. In today’s modern world, cynic is a virtue.
Mr. W. loves to read books about paranormal and pseudoscience teachings. Well there‘s nothing wrong with it unless you start to claim that what you read in those books are evidences of your claims. He loves to say certain quotes from those books and calls them “proofs” of his claims. He even has this habit of saying that certain scientists says “this” and says “that” therefore that is a confirmation of what he believe. But ask him who is this specific scientist or scientists and he won’t answer you.
There was this time when we have a discussion on Joshua’s story in the Bible about the Sun stop moving. Well Mr. W insisted that “all” scientists today believes the story of Joshua because they have discovered that (what he called) the “Earth Calendar” (a so-called universal calendar used by everyone in this planet…that what he said) is missing a day (Whoa! Talk about being twaddle). As the discussion goes a little further, it dawned to me that Mr. W doesn’t even know the difference between a Universalist and a Christian Universalist (Wow! Tough luck!)
So how on earth can you exchange a few words with people like Mr. W? I really don’t have any idea. On the contrary, Mr.W is just a reflection on what kind of believers we have here in the Philippines. Our news is jam-packed of stories about certain individuals who claim that God the Father, Jesus Christ, The Virgin Mother or Santo Niño have entered his/her body, and was given the power to heal. Maybe due to financial explanations, a lot of my “kababayan” will spend their time on an albulario (faith healer) that visiting a legitimate doctor. There was this news about a woman who claim to be possessed by God and gave her members a block covered by a cloth, claiming that in 3 days it will become gold in exchange for P300.00. After a week, instead of becoming gold, the block began to emit a very foul smell. After investigation, it was discovered that the block is nothing more but rotten cheese.
Now, in such situation, who will you blame? The con-artist who claim to be god or the followers who believed her? The Lord do works in mysterious ways.
That is the problem with the Luneta crowd and with other Filipino believers in general. How do you expect them to react on Mr. W’s misused of the meaning of cynic if the crowd themselves doesn’t even know what cynic means? Another example; When the guys from St. Peter’s Society of Men from Quiapo Church tried to engage me in a debate about the existence of God, I notice that the debater tried to connect Anselm’s Ontological Argument with Descartes’ rationalism. I asked him if he knows what solipsism mean and was surprised to find out that he don’t even know what is it. But do you think the crowd watching the debate understands it?
It seems that discussion about religious faith is more effective in an atmosphere full of badly informed individuals. Well… a dull crowd doesn’t ask questions and that is an advantage for the believer. A believer only needs ears so anyone can just listen to his prattle. He just needs to bark his “halleluiahs” and “Jesus is Lord” without answering queries.
So going back to the Canadian guy who thinks the word “atheism” sounds nasty. Atheism is only nasty for those people who benefits in a mob full of ignoramus.
Until next time,
Pinoy Atheist
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