benign0's blog

In my own personal experience, I have for often observed and compared households and families, mainly around relative degrees of religiosity between husband and wife. Based on my small sample size and my armchair evaluation, I find that in instances where, between husband and wife in a household, it is the man who is more religious, the family as a whole tends to be more stressed or suffer from strained relationships amongst its family members than in households where the husband is less religious compared to the wife.

Now is a great time to start a business! As evident in the raft of information "products" being churned out by that well of reliable factoids, Philippine Mainstream Media, doom and gloom sells like lechon manok in an ignorant medieval society such as the Philippines. The earthquakes that recently struck Japan and New Zealand, the prospect of a "big one" striking the Philippines itself, the spectre of radioactive clouds descending upon most of East Asia , civil war in the Arab world displacing thousands of henceforth unemployable Filipino Overseas Foreign Workers (OFWs), "super moons" unleashing super storms and even more natural disasters over the face of the planet, even alien species threatening to overrun the archipelago -- the possibilities and opportunities are infinite!

I keep reading about people encouraging one another to "pray" for Japan in this time of great tragedy after a massive earthquake and accompanying tsunami devastated its coastline and killed hundreds of her people. I'm not quite sure Japan needs our prayers. Japan is regarded as the country in the highest state of constant preparedness for earthquakes. As such, the disastrous earthquake that struck Japan is a tragedy, but one that is not tragic in the sense of it being a preventable loss of life.

While people seek comfort in religion for assurance that they simply wouldn't blink out when they finally croak, religion for its part has dismally failed to deliver on its end of the deal and provide a convincing concept of eternal existence that the modern human mind could at least explore in the way that it does best. Instead of a coherent framework to simplify the unknown, we get an appeal to the mysteriousness of the unknown. Not satisfying to say the least. This appeal quite simply no longer cuts it in a modern society (which last I heard, Filipinos aspire to becoming).

How I choose to exercise my spirituality is a personal matter. However, what can be readily observed from the ideas I make public in what I write and what I say to family in friends makes evident my lack of respect for the Roman Catholic Church. I do not differentiate between individual officers within this institution. If a person sees himself or herself as an officer of this institution (a priest, a brother, a nun, or whatever title that implies position within its hierarchy), it pre-supposes his or her adherence to its dogma . So to the argument "not all priests think like that" whenever another instance of moronic ideas propagated by the Church makes headline news, I say I don't think so .

The Catholic Church has been progressively taking its gloves off in recent weeks as it steps up its Inquisition against the "evils" of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill being pushed by law makers and activists alike. In a recent development marking the Church's steepest descent yet into its old Medieval habits, a local parish issued a statement where it said that it will refuse communion to people who support the RH Bill. Short of implying that people who support the RH Bill are evil, the Parish Pastoral Council of Santuario de San Jose in Mandaluyong City encouraged those who favoured the passing of the RH Bill to cleanse their soul through the Sacrament of Reconciliation .

The forces of modernism are in the midst of a fight for the progression of the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. That powerful bastion of Filipino-style primitivism, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), has in recent months brought to bear its vast fear mongering communication channel -- the "Holy" Catholic Mass -- to disseminate its threats of fire and brimstone to those in its flock who dare harbour impure thoughts on contraception. Among those who had so far succumbed to this might is no less than Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III who earlier withdrew from a commitment to prioritise reproductive health in his list of legislation to push.

We, mere observers , who do not know former defense secretary and chief of staff retired General Angelo Reyes at a personal level only have the Law to frame our regard for him. Granted, Reyes was a primary suspect in the on-going probe of massive corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). But in the eyes of the Law, he remains innocent for now as the Law presumes a person innocent until proven guilty.

Shocking revelation : In the United States, only 28 percent of teachers taught evolution "effectively", and that 13 percent of them advocated creationism . Unfortunate, considering that a US court had already previously held that the concept of "intelligent design" is not a science . In the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover case, eleven parents sued a public school board in Pennsylvania for a policy that legitimised intelligent design and creationism. The outcome of the case was a triumph for science and a " defeat[...] of creationism in the courtroom "...

If you think drive through lanes for McDonalds was a bright idea, consider then what Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares might be on to. Colmenares is filing House Bill 3952 which seeks to make marriage "annulment" in the Philippines easier. The Philippines has always pretended to be a society that takes marriage seriously. As such, the Law (perhaps one that exists under the watchful eye of the local Catholic Taliban) would rather see an untenable marriage "treated as if it never existed" rather than recognise the truth about its existence and untenability and simply terminated .

Ain't it quaint how 1.7 million people would troop to Manila for a chance to catch a glimpse and possibly -- hoping against hope -- touch the "revered" Black Nazarene figurine. I don't get it. How is this crowding around a relic different, say, from the 30,000 Filipinos who trooped to the ULTRA stadium to see an episode of Wowowee live and, later, stampeded all over one another and literally trampled the shit out of 78 such hopefuls ?

I noticed a few things in the latest "report" Philippine President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III issued to the Filipino public. " Gains are now being felt " was his "report" to reporters given after officiating Rizal Day rites in Manila. And what are these "gains"? He counts (1) a "budget surplus" registered now after a forecast of a P6 billion "deficit" when he first took office and (2) an "improved employment picture" mostly propped up by the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. From all that he was supposedly given a thumbs up by certain interesting sectors of Philippine society which I will go into in the third point I make.

Bombing a place of worship is just so unoriginal, and that also goes for the statements of "outrage" flying back and forth. For me, the heart of the matter lies in the more fundamental conjecture: if there was no organised religion, people wouldn't be sitting ducks in any church to begin with, whether it is a church in Jolo , a mosque, a synagogue or whatever the hell else people go to to "worship" and, as such, become targets for the zealous violence delivered by believers of other competing religions in the names of their respective gods.

Ana Santos shared on ProPinoy.net a letter from Pro-Life head honcho Eric Manalang. The letter was a response for a request from Ms Santos for an interview for IRIN News , the media arm of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Aside from the really appalling English grammar used in the letter there was one key point I noted and is contained in the following excerpt...

The holiday season is made out to be a time of reflective re-visiting of our personal bonds with family and friends. However, reading all these reports about the The Rush -- and the congestion it causes -- from both the Media and friends, it seems to me, that the very perspective that is encouraged in the greetings and messages we exchange is the biggest casualty of the Silly Season.

War, famine, pestilence, poverty, and child-molesting priests. There are millions of things that the men-in-robes of the Philippine Catholic Church could be raising a stink about. Instead they focus today on Dolphy's comedy film Father Jejemon , where certain scenes allegedly "disrespect" certain holy rituals of the Catholic faith. King of comedy told to respect King of Kings reports the Inquirer.net , perhaps inadvertently highlighting how our esteemed clerics forget that their "King" is not necessarily all Filipinos' king.

According to retired bishop Teodoro Bacani, Santa Claus is stealing the true spirit of Christmas and as such we are seeing this supposedly blessed holiday of Christendom "deteriorating into a shopping frenzy". Okay, padre , why don't we go back a bit and investigate what "Christmas" really is, shall we? Ask most people what they think Christmas is, and they will answer that it is the day commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ. But was Christ really born on the 25th of December? For that matter, is Christmas as we know it celebrated on that date, really a holiday introduced by the Christian faith?

How is the UP Law faculty's behaviour in the case of this so-called "plagiarism" row with the Philippine Supreme Court different from the way the Catholic Church is behaving with regard to reproductive health? Answer: Not too different. In both cases these are institutions tasked with guiding their flock -- the UP Law trains future lawyers, and the Catholic Church (RCC) for its part indoctrinates its Roman Catholic souls.

These are five otherwise beautiful words that have been imprisoned within the clutches of belief systems that presume to prescribe narrow definitions around how these words may be applied to one's daily life. It's high time that we use the better part of our minds to gain perspective of the sort that will finally set free these great words from the cage they've been kept within by the robes-clad officers of organised religion.

The successful rescue of the 33 miners after being trapped for 69 days in a Chile mine was indeed a moving and inspiring story. But I'd stop short of going as far as gushing about how "God's graces" were at play in this brilliant display of human achievement at one of its best. Whenever I see a grandstanding of "evidence" of "divine intervention" coming from an after-the-fact reflection upon a story with a happy ending I too reflect. And this reflection on my part is around this simple question. How does "God" decide which people are to be showered with his "graces" and which people are to be left to perish in the hands of the "evils" of nature and men?