Author: Andy Uyboco

A week has passed since Yolanda’s visit, and though our country is known for its hospitality, we wish she had never dropped in at all.

In the past few days, local and international media have been bombarded by different stories, video clips and sound bites. There are heartbreaking stories of mothers or fathers having to watch their children die before their eyes; of people driven to loot and plunder out of sheer desperation; of countless bodies and debris littering the streets — streets that only days before had been full of life and energy and the hustle and bustle of ordinary life. Now there is only the haunting stench of death, sadness and despair.

It would be pretentious of me to know how these people, our countrymen, must feel. I have never personally experienced tragedy of this magnitude. Yet I do what little I can and give what I can give. We know a few people who have friends and relatives in the affected areas and we do what we can for them. I have nothing but admiration for those who are able and willing to go to the front lines, risking their lives to lend their much-needed assistance.

Some people have used the disaster as an opportunity to pontificate. Since I have a good number of contacts on both sides of the fence, I see all sorts of status updates. On the one hand, there are those who triumphantly proclaim God’s absence, or the uselessness of prayer. On the other, there are those who trumpet God’s goodness for saving this person who was their friend or relative or even their own lives, or those who point to their intact church building and proclaim it as a symbol that they are indeed the chosen ones, and being totally insensitive to those who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their dignity.

Let me make this appeal to both camps: This is not the time to pontificate, to debate or philosophize — not with the pain so close and the wounds so tender. The same appeal goes to those who constantly criticize the president or this or that official, or media outlet, or whatever. The victims don’t really care about your opinions, your anger or your criticisms. All they care about now is food, water, clothing, shelter and the long road ahead for their lives to return to some semblance of normalcy.

The less time you spend on your rants, the more time you have to think of how else you can help, because if we take the aftermath of Typhoon Pablo as an example, these people will still be needing our help many months and even years from now, when the hype has died down and the media has moved on to its next darling.

Now is the time for comfort and healing, for care and compassion. Whatever our ideological, religious, or political differences, we are one in our humanity. There will be time and opportunity enough later on to argue and philosophize, but not now.

A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to work with a friend who is part of an organization that gives a series of leadership seminars that empower people to take responsibility and ownership of their lives. I myself have attended these seminars and can attest to their effectiveness.

Recently some of the facilitators of that organization (who are also my friends) left to form their own group and give a similar set of seminars. I asked my friend how they felt about it and if there was any bad blood between the two organizations since it looked like they were set up to compete with one another.

Her reply surprised me with its sincerity and humility, and gave me a very deep perspective. She said, “You know, we don’t think about competition or bad blood. There is no place for anger and resentment. There are still millions of Filipinos who need to hear and learn these things we are teaching. There is so much work to be done. Let’s just do the work.”

Indeed, there is so much work to be done. Let’s just shut up and do the work. Volunteer. Give money or food or water. Support your charity. Suppress negativity and generate as much positive energy as possible. Our fellow humans need all the help and encouragement they can get.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Andy Uyboco is a businessman by profession and an educator by obsession. You may email him at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

Aling Conchita peers out the window of her small hut to see if the albularyo (folk medicine man) had come. Cloves of garlic hang from door and windows to keep the aswang (a type of Filipino monster) away. She walks over to her 6-year old grandson who is burning with fever. She thinks about how he had urinated on an old tree in the field without asking permission from the spirits. And now, they were angry and had struck down the boy with fever.

If I were to ask what you thought of Aling Conchita’s practice of hanging garlic, or of believing that the fever came from evil spirits, most of you might dismiss them as the products of superstitious and uneducated people.

Just a few days ago, I read about an official of the CBCP (Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines) declaring that incidents of demonic possessions were on the rise in our country (although he could not give exact figures). He attributed these to people not attending mass, idolizing or worshipping other things, disowning God and not praying. His advice? Wear sacred objects such as scapulars, rosaries or holy medals, preferably those blessed by a priest.

Now I would daresay that many who dismissed the first example would not be so quick to do the same to the second, especially my Catholic friends. My Protestant friends wouldn’t have any qualms with demonic possessions but would surely scoff at the idea of wearing various trinkets to ward off these demons. They would say you only need to command these demons to go away in Jesus’ name. My Muslim friends would probably be skeptical of both and would bring the poor sod to an imam for him to implore Allah to drive the spirit away (Oh yes, I have heard of exorcisms done in Allah’s name — and one story from an eyewitness to the procedure).

In my skeptic mind, it is simply a matter of one mythology trumping another. We have simply replaced the old superstitions with newer ones. We have thrown out the old rituals and incantations and invented new ones, but they are superstitions, nonetheless, with the latter having no more evidence than the former. We smirk at the idea of hanging garlic at our windows, yet we invite our local cleric to bless our new home by sprinkling holy water, oil, etc. We laugh at people who wear anting-antings (amulets) yet we cling to our prayer beads, holy books or statues and believe they will ward off evil beings.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why reports of demon possession usually occur in rural areas where education and information is less accessible? Have you ever heard of a demon possession occurring in Abreeza Mall or SM? Or in the posh villages of Ladislawa or Monteritz? At the very least, these demons should schedule their visit to newscasters or TV show hosts where their powers will be fully revealed on national television (and worldwide on Youtube). One would think these demons could do better than to simply prey on some unknown youngster in a far-flung town.

On another note, if idolizing or worshipping other things induce demonic possession, then shouldn’t half our congressmen and senators already be having massive fits right now? And some of you would wonder, why only half?

Have you ever heard of a scientist being possessed? If disowning God opens the door to possession, then why hasn’t any demon thought to possess Stephen Hawking? That would be a sight to see: him floating around in that wheelchair with his head spinning round and round. Why haven’t Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, James Randi or other famous atheists been possessed many times over?

Almost all the reports I’ve heard of alleged possessions occur to believers or families of believers. Now, why would that be the case, I wonder? In fact, why would a demon want to possess anybody? The logical result of demonic possession would be more faith and prayers for the family and witnesses, right? What demon with half a brain would want want that? Aren’t these creatures supposed to be highly intelligent, crafty and cunning?

I grew up believing in angels and demons — in fact I believed in them until only a few years ago, when I decided that the lack of evidence for them no longer justified such belief. I find it rather strange how long it took for that to happen. After all, I stopped believing in Santa Claus, Superman, fairies, unicorns and elves before I turned 10. Yet, we live in a culture where grown men and women believe in invisible beings playing tug-o-war with our souls (aside from giving us good parking spaces or tempting us with scantily-clad bodies).

Think about it.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao. Also appears in Filipino Freethinkers.

Andy Uyboco keeps a pet demon in his ear. If you want to know what it says about your love life, send him an email at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

By now, most of you on Facebook probably know the Giraffe joke (which isn’t really about a giraffe). For those who don’t have Facebook or rarely check their accounts, let me explain. A few days ago, a message went across the social media site saying:

Try the great giraffe challenge! The deal is I give you a riddle. You get it right, you get to keep your profile picture, get it wrong & you change your profile picture to a giraffe for the next 3 days!

Here is the riddle: It’s 3am, the doorbell rings & you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents & they’re here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread & cheese. What is the first thing you open?

If you get it right I’ll post your name here. If not, you have to change you profile pic to a giraffe!

Since it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, I decided to give it a go. When I thought I had discovered the trick, I answered, “The door.”

“You’re wrong,” replied my friend. “The correct answer is ‘eyes.’ Change your profile pic to a giraffe.”

Now many people accepted that answer and probably thought, “Yes, that’s right because, when you wake up, you open your eyes first.” They then replaced their profile pictures and for the past few days we have seen giraffes multiplying on Facebook like a zombie infestation right in time for Halloween..

But the answer did not sit well with me.

I re-read the riddle and stuck to my answer. The correct answer is “door” and I’ll show you why.

First, there is the matter of chronology – At the time the question was asked, you had already woken up and you already knew that the visitors were your parents. It would not be possible for you to know all that before you had woken up and opened your eyes. The most logical assumption is that you had asked who it was and they had answered behind the closed front door. So your eyes should have already been open at the time the question was asked.

Second is the matter of tense. The question “What is the first thing you open?” is in the present tense, implying that at this moment that you are already awake and know that it is your parents who have rung the doorbell, what is the first thing you open? Certainly not your eyes because they should be open by now (even if they are only groggily half-open).

If the question were phrased this way, “What was the first thing you opened?” then “eyes” would be an acceptable answer. But this was not the case.

That is why my conclusion is that the given answer is wrong, or that the riddle was poorly written and constructed.

Now, some people might say I’m over-reacting to this, or that I’m over-thinking this and I should just be a good sport and have fun. Well, I probably am over-thinking this, but that’s the thing. I AM having fun when I analyze and write about even senseless jokes like this, because I believe in extracting lessons from everything, even in things that do not appeal to us.

I have fun when I teach people how to think better. I have fun when I show people a different point of view — even if they don’t agree with me.

So you can have your fun and your giraffes. I’ll keep my face.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Andy Uyboco is a businessman by profession and an educator by obsession. Send comments and questions to andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me

 

I received an email in response to my article last week and since the sender seems to have used a temporary, disposable email address, I would like to respond to it here. Here is the full text of the email, unedited except for one obvious spelling error:

Please respect the way other religion way of thinking. Most free thinker I know were atheist who do not believe in god. We don’t criticized your way of thinking so you have no business with us believers with God existent ok?

Bert Viray

Thank you for your email, Mr. Viray. While it is clear that both of us hold contrary opinions, I appreciate that you took the time to air your concerns, which I shall attempt to address now. While I do not expect you to agree, I hope you think about what I say as well as I’m taking time to think about what you say.

You claim I am attacking your religion, or your religious way of thinking. You also claim that religious people do not attack those who think differently (freethinkers or atheists), so I ought to “respect” your way of thinking and just keep quiet and probably stop writing my column.

On the first claim, yes I admit that I openly question the religious way of thinking. Specifically, I question any sort of thinking that is dogmatic, authoritarian and traditional. The church has a proven history of being wrong on many counts (The Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo, the Salem Witch Trials, numerous failed predictions of the second coming, failed faith healings resulting in death, etc.) so can you blame me for being critical of whatever claims it makes? Aside from historical events, I have personal experiences and insights which cause me to question what you call “God’s Word.”

Surely, there is nothing wrong with asking questions. I do not ask you share my doubts nor to agree with everything I say. I simply share ideas. I do not threaten you with hell. Take it or leave it.

On the second claim, I beg to disagree. Religious people do attack those who think differently. For one, you believe that we are going to hell. I don’t see how that cannot be construed as an attack. You are playing on people’s emotions of fear and guilt. You talk about people being sinners, possessing fallen natures and not being able to save themselves that they have to call on imaginary beings for imaginary assistance. I happen to think that inflicting those ideas on other people is a huge disservice to society.

Lastly, you want me to respect your way of thinking by being silent but respect does not mean silence. Respect does not mean subservience. Just because I respect you as a human being with the same rights, freedoms and responsibilities as me, does not mean that I have to agree with you all the time, and I hope you agree with me on this point.

Besides, if truth is really on your side, what are you afraid of? I am one columnist in a local paper. There are many other columnists out there both in the national and local papers, writing about God and injecting God in their pieces. Do you see me writing them and asking them to shut up and respect my unbelief? No, they have a right to say their piece, just as I have a right to say mine.

When you watch TV, listen to the radio, scan your friend’s facebook walls, or even just stand on the street, you will inevitably encounter some religious message. Even in public classrooms and public offices where secularism should be enforced, we still find tendrils of religion — a bible study here, a cell group there, opening prayers before meetings, and so on. I am not saying these are bad things. I am simply saying that religion (and specifically Christianity — in whatever form) is everywhere and it permeates our society and culture.

Look at the ratio of believers to unbelievers in our country (data from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Philippines#Distribution):

Roman Catholic (80.9%)
Islam (5%)
other Christian (4.5%)
Evangelical (2.8%)
Iglesia ni Cristo (2.3%)
Aglipayan (2.0%)
Other (1.8%)
Unspecified (0.6%)
None (0.1%)

Believers (of any religion) comprise more than 99% of our population. People like me make up less than 1%. I am only a small voice going against the gigantic chorus of priests, pastors, missionaries, lay ministers, elders, bible study leaders, theologians and Sunday school teachers.

You have overwhelming numbers in your favor. You believe you have the truth and God on your side. So let me ask you again. Why do you want me to keep quiet? What are you so afraid of?

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Andy Uyboco is afraid of cockroaches. If you want to shorten your life, send me a cockroach. Send comments and questions to andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

 

A couple of headlines caught my eye as I was scanning the news page. One was about Danding Cojuangco’s statement saying, “God made it happen,” referring to De La Salle University’s recent victory in the UAAP championship. The other was about the death toll of the recent Visayas earthquake at 107, with close to 300 injured and missing (as of this writing).

Cojuangco’s statement appears quite ludicrous especially when juxtaposed with the tragedy of the earthquake — as if God were somehow sitting at courtside at the Mall of Asia Arena, enjoying the game, and with a wave of his hand, made the game-clinching shot of Almond Vosotros miraculously go in the basket. In the meantime, he was conspicuously absent for the patients trapped in the partially-collapsed Congressman Castillo Memorial Hospital in the Loon municipality. Nor was he in two stampedes that occurred in Toledo City and Pinamungajan Town which killed several people including a four-year old girl. He could not even prevent bridges and his own churches from collapsing.

But even without the earthquake, crediting God for the basketball win is a huge slap in the face for the players who endured endless hours of drills and practices to hone their skills. It is an insult to the coaching staff who spent countless hours planning, strategizing and playmaking. It even speaks against Cojuangco himself who financially and emotionally invested himself in the team by providing them with good lodging as well as dieticians, nutritionists and conditioning experts.

Even if God were actually in the arena, it would be the height of unsportsmanlike conduct for him to favor one team over the other and give it that miraculous edge– as both worked equally hard to win and deserved to fight it out in a fair match.

In this country, there is this obsession to credit God over every little good thing. A patient comes out of a successful surgery and people immediately thank God for “guiding the surgeon’s hand” — never mind that the surgeon had to spend sleepless nights in training and practice to acquire that laser-like precision. A man and a woman go on a romantic dinner and thank God for the sumptuous meal. Do they stop by the kitchen to thank the chef who prepared the meal, or the waiters for serving them, or the farmers for the raw products? Probably not.

I understand though why most people are quick to thank God, especially in public. When people heap praise on us, we deflect it towards God either because we do not want to seem too proud of ourselves, or because we want other people to think we are humble and pious. In other words, it is still a matter of pride and looking good. Now, this may not be true of everyone, but for most people, I would think so, even if we do not yet realize it ourselves because the practice has been so ingrained in our culture that we do it almost subconsciously.

My point here is not so much to remove God from the picture but to remind everyone that WE are very much in it. This is not so much a statement either for or against the existence of God but a statement for OUR existence. We matter. Whether or not God is there, we are responsible for our thoughts and actions, and these carry real rewards or consequences down the line and through the years.

Some politicians and unscrupulous businessmen chose to steal from our coffers, thus depriving our country of stronger and better infrastructure, sufficient emergency equipment, or better training and funding for rescue teams. We chose to ignore a warning as far back as 15 years ago in 1998 when Dean Jes Tirol of the University of Bohol Engineering Department delivered a paper in the Asia-Pacific Workshop in Taipei, Taiwan specifically citing the structural dangers of these ancient buildings found in 30 of 47 towns in the island province.

Just as I do not give credit to God for a basketball win, nor will I encourage people to blame him for the aftermath of a calamity. People should start recognizing that even if God were there watching us, he pretty much lets anything happen to us, regardless of what you pray or ask for. It has been that way for thousands of years, and will probably be that way for a long time still. If you choose not to believe anymore, fine. If you still choose to believe, then that belief must go deeper and more profound than the simplistic picture of a God who rewards good and punishes evil, who gives you happy meals and parking spaces while ignoring thousands dying each day of hunger, or disease, or rape, or murder.

In the midst of all these, recognize that there are always opportunists selling coincidences as miracles — like those touting the unblemished statues of the Virgin Mary amidst the church ruins as a “miracle.” Now some 600 devotees have gathered at this site, teary-eyed at this apparent “marvel.”

For me, the real miracle will occur when these devotees start asking themselves, “Why would God save these two statues and completely ignore the lives of the 107 who have already died and the many others who are still suffering?”

That is probably wishful thinking, and has as much a chance of happening as a half-court shot. But one can dream. Half-court shots DO happen, and people DO transition from superstition to reason.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao. Also appears in Filipino Freethinkers.

Andy Uyboco has never made a half-court shot. He is waiting for a miracle. Send comments and questions to andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.