No one is entitled to be ignorant

By Alex P. Vidal

“Living is easy with eyes closed.” – John Lennon

WAS it a coincidence?

Shortly after news spread like a prairie fire that the United States government has formally requested the extradition of doomsday soothsayer Apollo Quiboloy, a series of natural calamities unraveled in the Philippines?

Tropical depressions Maymay, Luis, and Habagat, and a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck off the western Philippines, in Oriental Mindoro, and tremors could be felt in Manila, along with volcanic eruptions. Coincidence, huh?

Of course, only fools will believe Quiboloy’s extradition to the United States will unleash a series of morbid disasters “as a retaliatory punishment from heaven.” It’s like believing hook, line, and sinker every weird idea that comes out of the mouth of Robin Padilla in the impeachment trial.

On the other hand, if we revisit the views of some ancient thinkers such as Plutarch and the Stoics who defended divination and traditional religious practices, we might be misled to believe Quiboloy’s “divine powers.”

Even the famed Seneca the Younger pragmatically argued for using superstitious awe to inspire moral behavior, while most major Western philosophers opposed superstition.

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This Greek Platonist philosopher Plutarch (c.46 – c.120 CE) mistrusted pure human reason alone and believed that God gave direct revelations to humans. Like Quiboloy, Plutarch defended popular oracles, prophecy, and traditional religious myths as containers of hidden truth.

Also, the Stoics of Ancient Greece and Rome like Chrysippus argued that divination, omens, and astrology were real. They believed the universe is completely connected, meaning signs of the future can logically exist, a view many critics later dismissed as mere superstition.

Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BCE – 65 CE) knew that ordinary people struggled to follow pure reason to find happiness. To fight human greed and cruelty, he suggested binding people with a “superstitious reverence for virtue” so they would love and protect the good even without deep logical proof.

Seventy-six-year-old Quiboloy once said he stopped the earthquake in Mindanao.

“I said, ‘Earthquake, stop!’ And it did,” the Appointed Son of God boasted. “You have me to thank for because if I didn’t command the earthquake to stop, many of your homes would have been destroyed and you would have died.”

Esquire Magazine reported that stopping earthquakes is not the only miraculous feat Quiboloy claims to have done in the past. He has even defeated Satan.

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“Lucifer is your father,” says Quiboloy in a televised segment of his show. “I defeated him here. You couldn’t defeat him because he is your father and he holds you by the neck.”

The Owner of the Universe was responding to a comment from a member of another sect, challenging him to a religious debate.

“Why should I debate with you? I am the Way. You will never go to heaven if you don’t go through me. How could I debate with you when I own your souls?”

“The official coming of the Son of God was on April 13, 2005,” proclaimed Quiboloy to his sea of followers. It was the date when God appointed him “Christ on Earth.”

Being the second coming of Christ on Earth seems to have a lot of perks, too. Quiboloy lives in a holy site he calls Prayer Mountain, a sprawling estate with a five-bedroom mansion, carefully manicured lawns, and super-tight security.

Although people may visit the complex, you have to secure an appointment from Jose Maria College (a school Quiboloy owns) and then pay a maintenance fee of P100.

Martin Luther King Jr once warned: “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Harlan Ellison added: “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

From Bram Stoker, Dracula: “Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one’s belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor-in-chief of two leading daily newspapers in Iloilo, Philippines.—Ed)