On the Future of Religion

ni kapurit na laman

Thursday, 26 June 2008

Professor Rivas begin his grounds on the creatio ex nihilo facet, whereas he gives stress on the importance of the privation principle, everything is created out of nothing. As man’s necessity would pressure him, he created his society out of nothing, and same goes to religion as he established it. Then, the da-sein enters the limelight as he soon opens the curtain for it.

Dasein, a Heideggerian term for man, as a being thrown into this world. And no doubt, the first question would arise is how can we make this thrownness meaningful? On the first place both philosophy and religion enhances our forgetfulness, our obliviousness towards our self. It has obscured the greater emphasis for man. Individuals, ergo, forgot that they created their destiny and man has always used his religion as a scapegoat for his misdemeanors. As we put it in Heidegger’s parlance, “the history of man is the history of forgetfulness. But where we should rely our own destiny? Is it on our individual personal God or in our selves?

Putting it in our own social conditions today, we cannot have a fix ground to tell that we have our own choice, because we still rely on our religious leaders on what would be our action. CBCP is divided as Professor Luciano said it. We have CB on the right and CP on the left, just to add hilarity over the matter which is very satiric if the bishops would hear it. We lack on initiative. Maybe we are dense already on the things we usually encounter. Not another EDSA as many commented. Facetious, but we have Liwasang Bonifacio, Mendiola, and the next EDSA, Ayala cor. Paseo de Roxas in Makati City, the shelter of the people on the opposition, a powerhouse of Binay and his people. The seminar of Professor Rivas answers the problem. The DEATH OF GOD is the answer. But how does a layman would perceive this?

Without much ado, the death of God and Philosophy is the celebration of the Social Sciences as Rorty paves the way towards a new Ontology. Stop embracing the absolute Being and begin to embrace a much more favorable weak ontology, a weak thought for Vattimo. To commence this principle, we should not consider death to be literal because it would just let itself die its own matter.

The absolute, the search for truth, and the God of philosophy are our desire to grasp the absolute truth, the purgation of the highest abstraction. We created this because we lack such. We are conditional; we lack perfection, truth, and purity. There is religion if you attached yourself to something (religare, to bind in) which you can only be attained thru power, force, and violence. And thru history, God is power. Many died because of their strong belief. Crusade, Jihad, Inquisition, the Martyrs to name few which claim the life of many believing that there is a reward waiting them after life, a place or manna from heaven. The beatitude best describes the most powerful religion in the world portrayed in its weakest.

Look at the Christians, we definitely would not like to see ourselves delving out our face from criticisms yet Christians stands it all. Notwithstanding these, we all live on a superfluous lie of the Church. I may be tagged as heretic but this is the biting truth.

In Asia, we are the only Christian Nation, yet we are the worse, the most corrupt, and have the evil president as Neri names her. We cannot escape and deny the fact but admit that we are all in these. We are all voicing out our concern for accountability, truth, and reform, but we do not consider our own faces, which is a known character of Filipinos. Blame is just for you and ass if it is mine. That attitude brings us to abyss deep problems which we cannot find to delve ourselves anymore at the end of the day.

With the death of God, it is therefore that history is in the hands of every individual. There is no fate but from their self individual action towards their wants. In a country like ours, we could opt to oust the president due to her political negligence and we can opt not to by just trying to convince ourselves that there is nothing but another plot of destabilization, a use of power, a use of violence, a problem of religion which cannot be detach itself from religion, since binding to something can only be achieve through power.

The President is the symbol of power of a republican state like ours. Being a President can only be achieve through power, a power through suffrage, a suffrage which is undermined by political power of those people who want to bind their selves on a office where they are not really capable.

The President is vested by an Executive power, same with our congress which had been vested by a legislative power, and out Judiciary with a Judicial Power. Any abuse of the power of these three inherent powers of the state means the death of society.

Respecting these powers is recognition of your weakness, a recognition that means your own destruction, and that other people can destroy you through these powers under the premise that our respect of the other is recognition of other to destroy you as you recognize your power to destroy others.

With this kind of society under a tough ontology we cannot imagine to survive with a society like present which is near dying. An anthology of events like of EDSA will just be as useless as a person who is denying participation on a mass action. Whereas, we can find then a new avenue towards a new methodology which would save the future of religion as individuals in the society.

What is the future of religion?

With the kind of attitude that we have, sooner or later, we will find ourselves dying from the predicaments that we have. We can no longer be named as man. An eternal forgetfulness will obscure our essence. We should note that humans must take into action as we consider the death of God in the picture of society.

We have options to choose from. First, we have the will to power, where we can choose the power but the religion will die soon. And second, we should celebrate the weaker ontology which offers solidarity, friendship, charity, and respect. With the death of God we are given the opportunity to choose where we are no longer rooting for the absolutes. Hence, in this matrix, the latter option would be the suitable.

If we would choose the weaker ontology where the social science will take over the scenario, a person inside a society asking for the ouster of their president would have the opportunity to play as a devil’s advocate, choosing the stay of PGMA until 2010. But the conflict would soon arise from this. What would be the essence of choosing then, if we would not consider the choice of the majority? Would it be then necessary to drop off your choice that will neglect the advocacy of a softer ontology?

Putting the soft ontology in our social matrices, the enterprise of corruption would be more rampant compared to present. There would be more evil. More PGMA, more Gonzales, more FG, more Favila, and the list go on. But at the time that we reach that point, would we have more Lozada who has the conviction to stand before threats of what we know a killing power? (Candidly, I still doubt the reason of Lozada's stand).