Roxas vs Duterte: Petty Semantic Argument

I'm neither a Roxas nor a Duterte supporter, but I believe in elevating people's intellect as an end in itself.


For people's information, it's called undergraduate school because the students there haven't graduated from the tertiary level. They are called undergraduates while they are still pursuing their bachelor's degrees. However, once you finished your bachelor's degree, then you are called a graduate. Regardless of whether you decide to pursue further studies in graduate school, where students are graduates from undergraduate school, to earn your master's degree.


So, it's either Duterte was baiting Roxas, or Duterte doesn't understand the definition of the term (which most people unfamiliar with academia are). Either way, I'm not impressed with both of their intellect, their level of discourse is embarrasing. They are running for the highest public office in the country. How can you have confidence in someone to lead a nation when something as simple as the definition of "graduate" eludes him? A leader is someone who is more intelligent than the people he/she is leading. Otherwise, what is the point of electing him/her?


The Filipino people deserve better than this shallow and petty word war Roxas and Duterte are engaged in. This is just one of the many reasons why I will vote for Miriam Defensor Santiago in the coming elections. We deserve an intelligent leader, #MDS2016


Just look at how Miriam Defensor Santiago destroy people misusing words in the Mamasapano Incident hearing.  This is a leader you want, someone who has complete apprehension of the words she and anyone else is saying.  Understanding means clarity.  You will not get anything pass her.  I want a leader who brings clarity into the muddled worlds of politics

P.S. I want to share this meme as I think it is the appropriate reaction to this stupid argument both camps' supporters are engaged in. #LOL

Is God Good? The Epicurean Perspective

God is Good? Thank God for saving this woman from cancer?

To believe that an all-powerful God who could have stop this woman from getting cancer in the first place, waited for her to get cancer first and lose her right breast instead, before "saving" her. Then to thank and praise God because of it, causes COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.

To reiterate the Riddle of Epicurus:

God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak - and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful - which is equally foreign to god's nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?

Why don't people ever mention the researchers and the doctors, who spend the majority of their short lives in this world, to finding a cure and performing life saving surgeries?

Is it because people don't realize that "God" is a metaphor they use for all the good things that happen to them, and not the supernatural being created by illiterate bronze age tribesmen more than 5,000 years ago, passed down through generations as religion?

Respect Religion?

I recently came across a blog calling for the ban of Benetton products because of their UNHATE ad. This was shared on Facebook by a Catholic (a very conservative one, as I would later realize) colleague of mine. The Benetton ad features a half-dozen purported political nemeses in lip-locked embraces, and one of them is an image of Pope Benedict XVI kissing Ahmed Tayeb, leader of Al Azhar in Cairo. (see below)



After reading the posted/shared blog, I made a comment on my colleagues's post, that goes something like this:

Why don't we see the Americans and Chinese calling for the ban on Benetton? (one of the other images of the ad features the US President Barack Obama kissing China's Hu Jintao)

Ban Benetton? Ban the Pope, who as recently as December 2010 made a claim that paedophilia was not considered an absolute evil as recently as the 1970s.

To which my colleague replied with a flurry of ad hominems, and his main issue is that my comment did not reflect what the Pope actually said, verbatim, therefore I was out of context. For impartiality's sake, I will put down the Pope's words verbatim here.

"In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.

(Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/popersquos-child-porn-normal-claim-sparks-outrage-among-victims-15035449.html#ixzz192TzON8n)

Have I taken out of context what the Pope said on paedophilia? Are my criticisms unwarranted? When you acknowledge a wrongdoing in front of a victim and then cite a rationalization for that act, aren't you spitting on the face of the victim?

And to think, they are the self-proclaimed gatekeepers of morality. If they themselves do not and cannot determine what absolute good and evil are, then to quote Stephen Fry's response to the same on the Intelligence Squared debate, "THEN WHAT ARE YOU FOR!?"

How would you feel if your child/parent/lover in a duel was shot and killed by someone he had a conflict with, then later apologizes for killing your loved one, then adds: "Well, people used to have duels all the time."

I've also brought forth into the argument that this Ban Benetton campaign is just like the overreaction of the Muslims on the Danish cartoon incident, where something meant to be humorous was met with maniacal calls for retribution. To which my colleague acknowledged that yes, the Ban Benetton campaign was an overreaction. However, he follows, I should learn to respect other people's religion. He makes the high and mighty claim that I don't know what respect is, and that arguments on religion have always existed and that the lack of respect for religion has caused the numerous religious wars in human history.

I have 3 things to say about my colleague's call for respect towards religion.

First, is the 1st ammendment of the US constitution, which our own Philippine constitution is based upon, which states in part the following: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

Secondly, in April 2011 in the UN, an anti-blasphemy bill being pushed by mostly Islamic countries was finally crushed. (Read more: http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2011/04/01/good-news-un-anti-blasphemy-measure-laid-to-rest-a-battle-for-freedom-won-nina-shea/)

Lastly, the distinction that religious wars were not caused by people's lack of respect for other people's religion, but by the religious demanding other people to respect their religion. Ergo, here we have a colleague of mine demanding that I respect his religion. Should I? Should respect be demanded and not earned?

These three points I have mentioned tell us this:

In the realm of ideas, nothing is sacred!

If it were not, then we would still believe that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth, or that slavery is not immoral. The whole point of higher learning (i.e. the university) is that you have a marketplace of idea where one competes with others, even to the point of ridiculing your opponent's idea, without fear that you might be offending the other person.

Any real idea has these properties inherent to it.
1. It is acknowledged as true by all, regardless of sex, age, race, or religion.
2. It is beyond ridicule, and those that try to ridicule a true idea come out as being ridiculous.

Now, I would give in that to a religious person, someone making fun of their beliefs is being stupid and ignorant, but that point of view is limited only to the religious. I dare anyone of them to try and stand-up in front of a heterogenous religious crowd and make fun of Evolution, and compare that to someone making fun of a belief in a talking serpent (which a number of famous comedians already have.)

I respect my colleague as a person, but his religion does not have the same privilege. This is not intolerance as all ideas must be subject to criticism and do not deserve any special protection from it. To end, I would like to quote Richard Dawkins:

"It would be intolerant if I advocated the banning of religion, but of course I never have. I merely give robust expression to views about the cosmos and morality with which you happen to disagree. You interpret that as 'intolerance' because of the weirdly privileged status of religion, which expects to get a free ride and not have to defend itself. If I wrote a book called The Socialist Delusion or The Monetarist Delusion, you would never use a word like intolerance. But The God Delusion sounds automatically intolerant. Why? What’s the difference? I have a (you might say fanatical) desire for people to use their own minds and make their own choices, based upon publicly available evidence. Religious fanatics want people to switch off their own minds, ignore the evidence, and blindly follow a holy book based upon private 'revelation'. There is a huge difference."

Discussions with Mr. JP Pena

A recent upload of pictures in my Facebook account attracted the attention of an old college friend, and elicited some comments from him. Mr. Juan Paolo Pena (more affectionately known as JP) is a devout Christian ever since I met him in college, and once gave copies to our class of the book "A Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren", that became popular among the Christians in the early part of the decade of 2000s.

The pictures in question is from a series titled "Famous Quotes from Famous Freethinkers" from the website Truth-Saves.com. It features a number of well-known celebrities and intellectuals with their thoughts on religion. Here are a few of them:







(Please visit Truth-Saves.com for the complete series)

From these pictures, my friend JP asked me these questions to answer:

"So what about stuff that science can't explain or prove?"

"So this life is it? There's nothing afterwards? We live 60 maybe 80 years then that's it?"

The first thing I noticed about his line of questioning is how he tried to put "science" and its shortcomings on trial, when the celebrities and intellectuals were not even unanimously advocating science as an alternative to religion. This is typical of devout Christians when they see an attack on their faith, they will try to exploit the fact that science does not hold the answer to everything (yet). As if that will in some way add validity to the truth value of their religion.

To diffuse this line of questioning, I explained to him that science answers with: "I don't know, and I don't pretend to know." Science admits to its limits while continuing to observe, research, study those questions left unanswered!

As to the question of "life," well that all that depends on how you define "life!" One perspective is that as sexually reproducing biological entities such as ourselves, life continues through the cellular process of meiosis. when your parents die, they still live on through their children! This makes life more meaningful, and we cherish life because it is so brief, and our time with our love ones are so limited!

While, another perspective is the short sighted view that life is limited to an individual's consciousness, and that they "hope" that once their temporal bodies have expired, that somehow their consciousness lives on in a magical place where all their fondest wishes comes true! Which is kind of greedy for my taste!

And I posed him this question:
What is the point of an "eternal" life? Why not die now, when all the best thing comes after death?
To which I got no reply!

I followed up with the following statements:

"Personally I am grateful that out of the billions and billions of sperms and egg cells throughout the history of time, that through a series of chances and combinations, it produced a line that eventually lead to me, and that for a brief period of time, I get to live and experience all the wonders the universe has to offer, even if it is only 60 - 80 years!"

and quoted Richard Dawkins from Unweaving the Rainbow:

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die, because they are never born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientist greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In teeth of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."

JP then followed up with what I can only assume to be directed on the concept of evolution, and the typical misunderstanding (to be painful honest, it is more like failure to understand) by Christians as being a process of chance. He asks:

"Do you believe that you came into existence because of chance and circumstance and not for a reason or purpose?"

To which I gave him two perspectives to consider. First,

"From a biological standpoint, most definitely yes! Do you understand how sexual reproduction works? How the fact that the nano-second of your father's ejaculation determines which sperm cells get the chance to be inseminated into your mother's womb?

Besides, I am not that egotistic to believe that the whole universe contrived just to create me; or that it deviced specifically for my father to meet my mother; or made them have sex at the exact moment so that the particular sperm cell that leads to me being born is the one that fertilizes my mother's egg cell; or that it safeguard them from all the possible viruses, diseases, accidents. Nor did the universe specifically safeguard my grandparents from World War II, the Japanese occupation, the rise of the Communist in China. Nor did it safeguard their parents before them, and their parents before them, and so on and so forth."

Secondly,

As for reason and purpose, we are not machines or robots built with predetermined uses or functions, like a vaccuum machine or a floor polisher.

From a biological standpoint, living life for the sake of living is reason enough!

As for an individual perspective, I chose my purpose in life, the same way as atheists like:

Warren Buffet (3rd richest man in the world) chose to pledge 99% of his wealth to charity or,

Bill Gates (once the richest man in the world) chose to give away over $26 Billion to charity (effectively losing the title of richest man) or,

Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie chose to work with charities and even adopt children from the most poor countries and share with them their love and wealth.

And just like all of these atheists, I chose my reason and purpose, to be good and contribute to humanity, not for some fantastic reward of an afterlife, but merely for the sake of good itself alone!

Then I returned the question to him: "How about you, are you only a good person, for the sake of a reward in the afterlife? do you think that type of goodness is sincere? just like when parents promise their children some kind of reward for behaving or doing good in school."

Again, no reply! So I enlightened him on some famous atheists, with their reason and purpose, have greatly affected our lives.

"As a sidenote, let's be thankful for the reason and purpose of atheists like:

Ely Buendia, for creating the best of OPM that we grew up with;

Steve Jobs, for releasing, even while fighting cancer, the iPad 2; and

Mark Zuckerberg, for creating Facebook and letting us have this conversation!"

To which he ends our discussion, and takes his leave by saying that he will need time to read everything that I have written.

I hope he does!

Banning the Burqa and Niqab, is it necessary?

Recently, the French government enacted a law banning the wearing of the burqa and the niqab in public. The burqa is a loose garment (usually with veiled holes for the eyes) worn by Muslim women especially in India and Pakistan, while the niqab is a face veil covering the lower part of the face (up to the eyes) worn by observant Muslim women. Some people have deemed this law as infringing on the civil liberties of the minority of Muslim women practicing the use of the burqa and niqab.

But is it? Isn't this law a much needed legislation considering the socio-religious climate the world is currently in? Where religious extremist would hijack passenger planes and crash them into skyscrapers.

Arguments regarding how the burqa/niqab serve to demean women have been made throughout this issue. However, I am more concerned on how this issue impacts me more directly. How you might ask does it affect me (and you)? Here's how...


SECURITY ISSUE
Isn't a face veil a security issue? Imagine what the terrorists can do with it! I believe it has the same effect as someone wearing a ski mask going into a bank, or riding a subway train!

Some have claimed that, the wearing of burqa/niqab is protected by the law on freedom of religion. Although, I agree with that claim, we have to consider the impact it has on the general public and why not all religious customs are allowed by the government, especially when such customs affects the welfare of the general public.



WHY NOT BAN GUNS?
Another argument I have encountered is on the legal sale of weapons. Why are weapons not banned, while burqas/niqabs are? Why are burqas/niqabs a special case?

What these people fail to consider is that the legal sale of weapons, has the feature of being monitored through registration. Unlike the burqa/niqab, there is no way to monitor its use to prevent harm to the general public. That's a special case, isn't it? The fact that possession of legal weapons being monitored by the government acts as a deterrent to use it to harm others!


WHY NOT BAN SKI MASKS OR PAPER BAGS
This is one of the more obviously ridiculous arguments I have encountered. Why is it not illegal to wear a ski mask or a paper bag over the face, while the burqa/niqab is?

Wearing a paper bag or a ski mask is not illegal, only because people don't do it when they go banking, or take the subway! So legislation isn't necessary!

Unlike the burqa/niqab wearers, regardless whether it is for religious/cultural reasons that they wear it, voluntarily or not, in the current socio-religious climate the world is in, wearing it poses a real threat!

How would you feel if you go to your bank, with someone wearing a ski mask or a paperbag? Don't you feel that the bank/security has a responsibility to prohibit such a thing, for your own safety? In the same sense, the government has the responsibility to ensure the safety of their citizens, and to ban the practice of wearing the burqa and niqab in public places, because it poses a threat to the safety of the public.



WHY BAN IT NOW?
Here's another analogy I would like people to consider. Take the Internet for instance. In the beginning, there weren't any laws regarding the internet, and when some people started using it to commit acts harmful to others, it became necessary for government to legislate such acts and make them illegal, ergo Cyber Laws were created.

In the same sense, covering up faces weren't illegal, but as I have mentioned, in the current socio-religious climate the world is in, where religious extremist will do anything, banning the burqa/niqab is appropriate and timely legislation.


INFRINGING CIVIL LIBERTIES
Does the ban infringe on civil liberties? I believe so, but If I have to choose between my safety, and the right of another to wear a face veil in public for their religion or culture, I would choose my safety first, even if it infringes on their civil liberties.

Sacrificing one civil liberty for another is how the system works. We have to weigh the costs and benefits against each other. This is a sacrifice worth making, since the burqa/niqab is not essential to the physical welfare of the individual, and a minority group at that.

Think about it this way, what about the civil liberties of being protected from religious extremist. Does their right to wear a burqa/niqab, weigh more than the safety of the general public?


ANALOGY WITH THE AMISH
Consider that the same argument is used with regards to the Amish withholding education to their children for religious reasons. Should government protect the Amish's religious right of not providing an education to their children regardless of how it affects the children? Should government protect the Muslim's religious right of wearing face veils regardless of the risks to the general population?

To this analogy, the counter-argument has been made that the government has a legal responsibility to make sure children are educated. But they fail to consider that the government have a legal responsibility to ensure our safety as well.

Another argument is that there is a big difference in the potential amount of good from educating children and from banning the burqa. Again, they fail to consider that public safety is a potential amount of good, more than them wearing their burqa/niqab.


RESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT
According to the the origins of government, one of the reasons that groups of people came together and form a government, is to protect themselves from others.

The argument has been made that the government is not responsible for our safety, because the police is not held liable for crimes committed. Well of course, the police are not liable, only because it is impossible for the police to provide everyone and every inch of a city, with 24/7 protection. Also, liability means that the person or entity had a hand in the commission of the crime, how can you hold the police force liable for criminals committing a crime? However, the government does have the responsibility, to provide a police force to protect its citizens, and serves as a deterrent for the commission of crimes. Crimes will never totally be gone, but the presence of a police force manages to limit crime.

In the same sense, the government has the responsibility to do everything within its power to limit the opportunities available to terrorists. Weighing the cost versus the benefits of the ban. The mysogynistic religious right of wearing a burqa/niqab versus protecting the lives of the population against possible heinous acts of criminals. A piece of clothing versus a life, can anything be more simple?



LOW RISK OF BURQAS/NIQABS
The argument is made that the the risk of burqa/niqab to the safety of the general public is low. To that I ask, as opposed to a ski mask or paper bag? I think it is higher! Because, unlike the ski mask or paper bag worn over the face, the burqa/niqab is given legitimacy by religion/culture. Whereas, a ski mask/paper bag would make a person put his guard up, a burqa/niqab would make a person put his guard down. Which would make a person the target of a crime, or whose job it is is to provide protection (security, police, etc.) less vigilant (maybe out of fear of being accused of bigotry and prejudice?)


EXCESSIVE?
I don't think the ban is excessive, and I don't think I am exaggerating the concern for public safety, and I especially don't think that the risk should be downplayed either! In the mind of a criminal, why wouldn't he use a burqa/niqab to help him succeed in the commission of his crime? Whether it be suicide bombing, bank robbery, murder, etc...

I've seen a news report a while back, where even women are being used as suicide bombers somewhere in the middle east.

Among the arguments for the banning of burqas/niqabs, such as the concern for the women who are forced to wear them, I beleive that the risk to the general public is the strongest reasons for this ban. Those who choose to continue to practice this archaic tradition, have the freedom to move to another country where they can freely wear their burqas/niqabs. If this practice is so essential to their well-being, then the sacrifice of moving to another state would be one valid option for them.

On Altruism

Is there such a thing as doing good because it is good, absent of any reward (conscious/unconscious)?

For example, I don't commit murder, the general public does not commit murder, by doing so, there is an unspoken understanding (reward) that others do not murder me, and the general public does not murder each other. Which is the general basis of our laws!

If altruism is the unselfish concern for the welfare of others, and leads you to happiness, but "rewards" you with threefolds of your investment and "rewards" you by ensuring your credibility among people, then that (rewards) will be the basis for your doing good instead of bad? Then it is not really altruism!

If altruism rewards you with other people's love, then it's not really unselfish, because your brain is conditioned to expect love from others by such "altruism," and you unconsciously expect the "reward." Such as a trained dog expects unconsciously a reward for doing some mundane trick!

Altruism, is a poorly-conceived concept, that is subject to abuse, in the same manner as the concept of god!

The Common Mistake

The mistake that people often make is thinking that opinions are facts, and that believing in a proposition makes it a fact!

The theist's opinions are claimed to be facts only in the context of their religion (ergo, not facts)

The atheist's opinions are facts, regardless of atheism, or the context of atheism! The atheist's opinions are based on science and logic.

Atheism is dependent on science and logic!

Religions, disregards science and logic!

Science and logic are independent of atheism or religion!

Science and logic is the basis of everything in our life, from Agriculture (food), Engineering (shelter), Law (social relationships), Medicine (health)

Do you now understand the difference?