Religion as ‘circumstantial evidence’

By Herbert Vego 

MAY I begin this column with a confession that, while I believe in God, I no longer go to church?

That frees me from swallowing religious beliefs that organized religion foists on faithful followers in the guise of “spirit of obedience” nurtured by 505 years of Spanish influence – counting from 1521 when Ferdinand Magellan planted a cross in Cebu.

Most Filipinos practice Christianity – whether Catholic, Aglipayan, Protestant or what-have-you – because of foreign influence handed down from one generation to the next.

The Jews, the Buddhists, the Muslims and the Hindus also dominate “territories” that have been receptive to their sets of beliefs. Their adherents who come to places where they are strangers tend to defend their faith.

There was a time in the 1980s when I asked a visiting American Jew why he was asking us Christians to convert to Judaism.

His blunt answer: “Why?  It’s to follow Jesus Christ, who was a Jew!”

Yes, I agreed, Christianity branched off from Judaism. Unfortunately, it has divided itself into a thousand and one sects and subsects with conflicting teachings.

Strange as it seems, on the other hand, there are only three identified synagogues or Jewish churches in the Philippines – the Beit Yaakov Synagogue and Chabad House in Makati City, and the Sha’arei Torath Moshe in Surallah, South Cotabato

Hence, the Latin maxim “Vox populi, vox Dei” could not be right. If the voice of the majority of Filipinos were the voice of God, then Roman Catholicism would be “it” in the Philippines.

However, imagine a situation where the Spanish conquistadors had not come to colonize us in the 16th century. Then this nation could have gone as Islam as Indonesia and Malaysia. In fact, most of our countrymen in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) — the provinces of Lanao del Sur, Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Maguindanao del Norte, Maguindanao del Sur, and Basilan — are Muslims.

They are as faithful to Allah as Muslims born in Saudi Arabia, where Christians face severe legal and social restrictions, including social ostracization and imprisonment.

Some Christian denominations in the Philippines could be seen as “threatening” in its doctrine that only its members would be “saved.”

There are non-priests who advertise themselves as Roman Catholic servant-leaders, thus attracting gullible Catholics to their prayer rallies. This is how they collect sacks of tax-free “love offerings” from adherents,

Methinks that while the goal of the religious follower is to gain eternal life, that of the cult leader is to gain money. While the follower waits for the fulfillment of his elusive goal, the leader has already achieved his.

One thing is therefore indisputable: The flood of money cascading from millions of followers has fueled the rise of many religious founders.  You must have read that when the Korean founder of the Unification Church (since 1954), Reverend Sun Myung Moon, died in September 2012, he had amassed billions of US dollars from five million adherents worldwide.

Locally, religious organizations also make money from politicians, mostly crooked, who generously “donate” – or “invest” — in exchange for their blocked votes.

The more I read the Bible, the more I disbelieve religious dogmas. For example, the Bible does not echo the popular notion that when a man dies, his soul zooms up to meet Saint Peter, who gives him the key to any of three destinations: heaven, purgatory or hell.

If I occasionally listen to TV or radio evangelists hitting each other, it’s often for just entertainment.

To quote the 19^th-century American philosopher Henry David Thoreau: “Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it.”