RA 10175: Barely Constitutional

In a news report released last January 29, 2013, government lawyers admitted that Section 12 of RA 10175 is "barely constitutional." The said provision reads: “law enforcement authorities, with due cause, shall be authorized to collect or record by technical or electronic means traffic data in real-time associated with specified communications transmitted by means of a computer system.”

Although the special law defines traffic data as that which “refers only to the communication’s origin, destination, route, time, date, size, duration or type of underlying service but not content nor identities.” Unfortunately, any computer literate individual will know that in the process of collecting said data as defined by RA 10175, the police or any government agency engaging in data collection, will be able to secure more than those defined by RA 10175. It will then be left to the discretion of the collecting authority how to dispose or manage those that are not supposed to be collected. The problem with such proviso is that it will inevitably and undoubtedly open the floodgates for abuse and exploitation. Can we really risk our private data to the honesty and good will, not to mention impeccable self-control and discipline, of our police officers or any government agency tasked with data collection?

RA 10175 also makes essential internet social communication functions such as "liking" or "sharing" in such tools as Facebook potential grounds for criminal conviction. This is clearly an affront to the basic right to an open and free communication channels as enshrined in the 1987 Philippine Constitution, specifically Art. III, Section 4 which states: "No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances."

It is just fitting and proper that the Supreme Court declare RA 10175 fundamentally unconstitutional and unfit for a modern, secular, and democratic state like the Philippines.

The Legacy of Religious Tyranny and Carlos Celdran

Metropolitan Trial Court Judge Juan Bermejo Jr. recently sentenced activist and Manila tour guide Carlos Celdran to a minimum of two months imprisonment and a maximum of one year for violating Art.  133 of the Revised Penal Code "Offending Religious Feelings" for the September 30, 2010 incident in which the former raised a placard with the word "DAMASO" at Manila Cathedral during a religious service. This happened at a time when fierce public debate was raging regarding the ratification of the Reproductive Health Bill then pending in both houses of Congress.

The fact that Art. 133 is still enshrined in the RPC of the Philippines is a testament to the critical need to revise many provisions of the RPC. Such provisions were promulgated at a time of religious tyranny when the Philippines was under the clerical and secular imperialism of Spain. There is a need to trash and bury such provisions in the dustbins of history. A modern, republican and supposedly democratic state like the Philippines has no room for religious bigotry in its laws. The essence indeed of democracy is the free, open and lively expression of variegated ideas and opinions - with a view of course to respectful exercise of such rights.

Although Celdran did not technically commit blasphemy, the right to express opposing views to established religion is a right and in fact, is a human right. On September 12, 2011 the United Nations' International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) promulgated General Comment (GC) No. 34, paragraph 3 of which reads: "Freedom of expression is a necessary condition for the realization of the principles of transparency and accountability that are, in turn, essential for the promotion and protection of human rights."In addition, paragraph 9 of the same adds: "All forms of opinion are protected, including opinions of a political, scientific, historic, moral or RELIGIOUS NATURE."

The Philippine 1987 Constitution, Article II, Section 2, portion of which states: "The Philippines renounces war as an instrument of national policy and adopts the generally accepted PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AS PART OF THE LAW OF THE LAND...." As such, GC No. 34, being a generally accepted principle of international law, should be considered in revising provisions of the penal code, and such provisions as Art. 133 should be immediately scraped off from our penal book.

Blasphemy is a human right and should be allowed to stand in a modern, secular, republican state. Let religious bygones be bygones.

Love Lost in the Speck of Time

Unspoken memes of aching hurts
Traversing the paths of lonely nights
Searching for a hold in the darkness
Dreaming of your hands
Hoping for your breath
Come to me and hold my heart
And let time not wash away
Quivering longing that I have
For your touch and be not alone
In that moment of emptiness
Fill my void and be my light
Embrace my trust and let not be
Love lost in the speck of time.

Science and Religion: Conflicting or Complimentary

As a philosophy student way back in the early 1990's, I wrote a paper regarding science and religion, precisely the title of this article. It was my first foray into the perpetual tangle between science and religion. This question has been asked for centuries now, and has always aroused emotions between the defenders of science and the apologists of religion.

The perpetual question that have always bedeviled me is whether science and religion can really be complimentary, or that they will always be conflicting. I will herein present the two sides of the spectrum - the cold facts of science and the revelation of religion.

The question that has always ignited the oftentimes cantankerous relationship between science and religion is the nature of the interpretation of religious texts. In this case, I will focus on the Christian Bible. The tussle between science and religion rests essentially on the insistence on the part of Christian fundamentalists that the Bible is the word of God and should be interpreted in its literal sense. They insist on its literal and unambiguous truth.

Philo of Alexandria once said that the Bible cannot be interpreted literally. It reveals a far deeper truth than the words it signifies. This video shows the historical basis of the conflict between science and religion from the perspective a Christian believer who also believes in science, particularly evolution. The video shows that historically, Christianity was always open to religion but was only hijacked by the extremist views of 19th Century Christian fundamentalists. According to Fr. Gregory Tatum of the Ecole Biblique, the church fathers did not ask if the Bible is literally true but rather what are the truths that the Bible reveals. St. Augustine even wrote an article titled "The Literal interpretation of Genesis" and warned Christians not to interpret the Bible literally as it would deprive the Christian of theological reflection.

The original poster boy for the scientific side has always been Charles Darwin, although he would never have been comfortable with such designation. Indeed, Darwin waited for at least 8 years before he published his his ideas in the new famous "The Origin of the Species." The Darwinian assertion that life evolved and developed over time and that life is a product of its adapting to the changes in the environment was anathema to Christian fundamentalists. The reformation led by Martin Luther opened the Bible to interpretation from various quarters of the Christian world. And this is what practically happened in 1650 in Ireland when Bishop James Usher computed, based on the Bible, astronomy, languages, ancient calendars and chronology that the world began on the night of 22 October 4004 B.C. This sealed the rift between Science and Religion, for now, Christian fundamentalists have a "proof" as to when the world actually began. This idea has been carried on until today, fed by Christian Evangelicals in the U.S., who vociferously assert that from Usher's computations, the world is only 6,000 years old. Such unfortunate event is what St. Augustine warned against, the literal interpretation of the Bible.

In 1859, England was at the height of the Victorian Age, when Darwin released his now famous book. This  created a firestorm. The arrival of the Industrial Revolution saw the proliferation of machines and in this zeitgeist, William Paley formulated his "Watch Theory" which asserts that since life is a complicated system, much like the machines that powered England in the Industrial Revolution, then life must have been designed by an Intelligent Creator. In the same way that a watch, with its complexity and working mechanisms cannot appear without a designer, so much so life, with its symmetry and equally complex systems.

It is interesting to note that when Darwin's book "The Origin of the Species" was released, English society was actually accepting of it. The problem rose really in the 1920's in America. In the 1920's, the Dayton, Tennessee trials of John Scopes essentially cemented the animosity between Christian fundamentalists and science which has prevailed up to now. In the end, Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in violation the Butler Act, a Tennessee law which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee.

The rise of commercialism in America in the 1960's scandalized conservative Christians, the proliferation of premarital sex, divorce, abortion among others galvanized the Christian right to move ever more deeper into conservatism, insisting that societal ills can only be cured by going back to the Bible and interpreting it in no other way but the literal one.

On the other side, science promoters like Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion" propounds on the uselessness of God in modern society. Dawkin has been at times labeled as the other extreme of the scientific side known as "ultra-Darwinism" which teaches that all life is governed by biological factors and rejects the intervention of any god in the development of life. Paley's "Watch Analogy" however was reincarnated as "Intelligent Design" by contemporary evangelical Christians. Intelligent Design is even promoted as a science. However, it is peculiar in that it defines God as an active participant in the progress of creation and life. Such insistence has however brought the idea into much trouble, for it would imply that the Christian God, if he intervenes actively in the natural order, could have prevented the evils in society such as, among others, the murder of 6 million Jews in World War II. Such failure to prevent a monstrosity has led many Christians to abandon Christianity and has been a steady ammunition for atheists that the question of god is a meaningless and utterly baseless endeavor.

Is Science and Religion therefore mutually exclusive? Does belief in evolution lead to atheism?

Science is based on the scientific method which involves the formulation of hypothesis, the conduct of experimentation, analysis of data taken and the arrival of a conclusion. It is based on experimentation and is essentially a cumulative endeavor, involving the work of scientists over time. It does not claim a permanent truth but relies on new ideas, new techniques, new processes. Science is open to any possibility, it does not judge with finality but is receptive to new knowledge.

On the other hand, religion is essentially static and revealed. It's truth is based on the assumptions of its 'sacred literature' and is not open for individual verification. In fact, most religions rely on a body of clergy that is responsible for interpreting its core beliefs and values. In essence, religion is closed to creativity and rigid with regards to its fundamental assertions.

Some would like to insist that religion and science can co-exist and that it is possible to believe in science and evolution and be a Christian. While it is tempting to say that indeed it is, at its core, belief in evolution in particular and science in general implies the acceptance of the scientific method as the basis for ascertaining truths of the world and the rejection of unverified beliefs which is essentially the nature of religion. It is no accident that we call the belief in the unverifiable as faith, for faith requires no proof.

In the same way, a true believer in religion, with its closed and rigid structure of beliefs, can never really accept science because science is based on testable, repeatable, mostly verifiable beliefs, and those that cannot be verified experimentally, are theoretically discovered through the language of mathematics and physics. Religious beliefs are mostly based on religious literature, traditions and the cultural experiences of its original adherents suffused with the cultural experiences of its various believers across the world.

In the end, one has to choose which will govern his perception of reality - the hard, cold facts of science or the mystical truths of religious experience. Science and religion therefore are like water and oil, they will never mix.

MOVIE REVIEW: Anna Karenina (2012)

Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is reincarnated in this artfully crafted and beautifully acted feature film. The Alexei Karenin of Jude Law was truly masterfully presented. Karenin exuded authority, wisdom, calm and I should say stoic strength. Keira Knightley's Anna Karenina was superb in her presentation of a love-struck aristocrat seemingly oblivious to the consequences of her actions in the strict norms of the upper crust. Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Count Vronsky was a teenage-like love smitten cavalry officer who was blinded by passion and broke societal conventions of his class. Domhall Gleeson's Konstantin Levin was a hardworking, sensible aristocrat who freely mingled and worked with his peasants. Rejected initially by Kitty, he nevertheless never lost his love for her. They were eventually married. Alicia Vikander's Kitty was a truly surprising character, initially attracted to Count Vronsky and possible life as a countess, she nevertheless showed true compassion for Levin's dying brother Nikolai, by taking care of him during his dying days, surprising even her husband Levin.

The movie presented the life of the Russian aristocracy as a shielded, choreographed routine. This was shown by the various scenes in the movie occurring in a stage. In fact, the movie open's with the characters on stage and practically ends with Karenin on stage. As with other aristocratic societies, the Russian elite lived their lives like a show, full of pomp, pageantry, drama and tragedies.

The movie captured the message of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in a modern, artistic, intellectual, non-judgmental way. Like the novel upon which it was based, it was a story of family, love, passion, pain, forgiveness, reconciliation, commitment, understanding and betrayal. The central core of the movie revolves around the interplay of societal norms, family and individual choice. As with the ordinary man, the elite too depends upon the family as a shield, an anchor and an avenue upon which a person extends himself to society. Society exerts a powerful influence on the individual's choices, the higher the social standing, the stricter the standard of conduct. Individual choices then are made in consideration of the family's needs and society's norms, breaking such can cause the individual and the family to suffer.

Tension is inevitable when the individual breaks the mores of accepted social behavior and such pressure can indeed have a radical impact on the individual. In the end, the movie's and the novel's protagonist, Anna Karenina, ends her life as the pressure of a broken marriage and the interests of a young, rich aristocratic lover slowly pinch on her expectations. The possibility of losing a love that has cost so much and has hurt so many was just too much for Anna and the frustration of it all, the perceived impending pain has lured her to the tracks of the train to end her life.

Which came first - the Chicken or the Egg?

This question has been asked to me since I was a young boy. Indeed, as a graduate of philosophy, this has become one of the most perplexing, yet seemingly simple question. I recently watched a video of such in which the question is being creatively tackled again. The author of the video asserts that it is the egg who came first. He presented the question: how do we define the egg? Is it merely one laid by a chicken or an egg which contains a chicken.

Then he presented two sides of the spectrum, the first he called the Team Chicken, from the name, we can surmise that these team proposes that the chicken came first because an essential protein for the formation of  eggs, OV-17, is only found in the ovaries of a hen. So without a chicken, the author surmises, there would, technically, be no egg, hence chicken would come first.

Then he presented the question earlier stated in the first paragraph: how will egg be defined? And then he gave an example to illustrate the trickiness involved in such question, if an elephant lays an egg which hatches into a lion, how will the egg be called? Lion egg or elephant egg.

The author then proceeds to present the side of Team Egg. This team asserts that in the production of an egg, genetic information from both parents (in this case, the hen and the rooster), would contribute one half each of their genes to the new egg, in the process of development and with the influence of evolutionary forces such as environment and diet, tweeks on the developing embryo may happen that would then produce a slightly different organism. This would then lead to the appearance of a sort of a proto-chicken. This proto-chicken would then mate with another proto-chicken from which they will produce an egg, which, affected by small mutations as it develops then produces the chicken. So in this case, the egg came first.

The author concludes that regardless of how the egg is defined, whether it is a chicken egg or a proto-chicken egg, the egg would have come first.

This is my take. First of all, the definition of chicken egg. This is a semantic play of words. When we say chicken egg, the ordinary definition should, I believe, be one which must be taken into account. An ordinary definition is one which is understood and accepted by most people of a given language to be what it symbolizes for. When we say chicken egg, the ordinary definition, as understood by people of prudence and sound mind, is one laid by a chicken, NOT AN EGG WITH A CHICKEN. Otherwise, we could call it Ostrich egg for example.

On the question therefore as to how an elephant who lays an egg which hatches into a lion be called. Elephant egg or lion egg? Of course, for arguments sake, it is Elephant egg. Why? because at least in the English language, when the subject comes first before its description, the subject owns the description. That is the ordinary definition. Hence, most English language speakers would understand an elephant egg is one laid by an elephant, regardless of what it actually hatches into. We should not create confusion when none is. The principle of parsimony applies here.

An egg is a product of something, in philosophy, it is a potentiality. A potentiality is something that is still not an actuality. In other words, it has not yet reached its biologic potential in this case. An egg will always be a product of something. In the video, the development into a chicken could have been made by proto-chicken who laid eggs that mutated and gave rise to the chicken, which then laid the egg. The author suggests that since the chicken come from a proto-chicken that mutated, the egg came first.

However, although it is true that the chicken is a product, technically, by the mutation of the egg of proto-chicken, why then should we exclusively define chicken only as the mutated one. Isn't the proto-chicken a chicken also? So the chicken would still come first. There would have been no chicken if the proto-chicken did not mate in the first place. Although such proto-chicken did not produce the usual chicken, it does not mean that they are no longer classified as chicken.

Even by any stretch of the imagination, the egg will never come first because it is not an actuality. It has yet to achieve its potentials as a thing. It is like asking which came first, the mother or the baby. Even the new chicken which rose from the proto-chicken egg will still share many characteristics of its proto-chicken forebears until eventually, by evolutionary processes, it eventually branches out to a separate taxonomic classification. Even then, it will still belong to a larger grouping with its proto-chicken origins.

From a philosophical perspective, the chicken would still come first. An egg by its very definition is a potentiality produced by an actuality. The hen is the actuality. A potentiality is one which has not yet achieved its actuality. An actuality is one which has reached its biologic potentials. So strictly speaking, the chicken would still come first. Even if the mutation occurred after the egg was laid, the mutation would not still be possible if the egg was not laid in the first place and no chicken would exist if it was not hatched. In other words, the chicken, even though it is still a proto-chicken, is still a chicken and still would have come first.

So emphatically I would say that the chicken will come first. The chicken will come first because an egg, even if mutations will take place after it is laid, would still not have been technically possible itself if the chicken did not reach its potentials first. Even if the chicken reached its biologic potential for example, if it could not find a mate, then no egg would still be produced.

The Truth of the Bible

I have become a secular humanist for about three years now. Sometime in 2012, a friend of mine converted from Catholicism to a little fringe Christian fundamentalist sect. After his conversion, gatherings with mutual friends became an exercise in emotional self-control on my part and practically a proselytizing session on his part. On my part, I was resisting the urge, which I could not for long contain, to air my doubts with regards to organized religion. That friend of mine became indoctrinated in a Christian sect that emphasizes and believes in the literal interpretation and reading of the Bible. As such, outings with friends were fraught with uneasiness, at least for the rest of us, as he no longer ate most of the food sold in stores. This was, according t him, in keeping with the teachings of the Bible.

On one incident, he commented that alcohol intake is prohibited in his faith. When I asked him why, he said that it was forbidden in the Bible. When I told him even Jesus drank wine, he responded by saying that actually they are allowed to drink alcoholic beverages, as long as the alcohol content is less than 5%. I then retorted, what is your basis? When Jesus drank wine, was the alcohol content known, and did the Bible actually specify the allowable alcohol content? He just shrugged his shoulders.

It is tragic indeed that fundamentalist Christians spend their lives chained to the literal interpretation of the Bible, and such belief has actually made them ever more arrogant, judgmental and hubristic. I can actually see the difference, or the change in my friends outlook in life - for me, it was a change for the worse as he became, as I said earlier, arrogant, judgmental and hubristic.

Nevertheless, being friends, I still tried to communicate with him as any normal friend would, with calm and reason. In a gathering after work, which we usually did during weekends, we came to talking about the author of the Genesis, the first book of the Bible. According to my friend, let us just call him A, Moses is the author of Genesis, and the other first four books of the Bible. I pressed him on this, and according to him, that is what his religion teaches. I demonstrated to him evidences that will show that Genesis could not have been written by one person. Take for example the first chapter of Genesis, it talks about the creation of the world. In chapter one, god created the universe and separated light and day on the first day, on the second day god separated the sky from the water, third day: land appeared and plants grew, fourth day: light was made to appear to separate day from night (I thought god already did this on the first day?), creating the sun to provide light for the day and the moon to provide light for the night (mmmm, isn't the sun the source of light in the first place?) , fifth day: animals were created, sixth day: god created human beings (it's not specified if they were male and female), only that humans were created (this of course tells us that males and females were created at the same time); seventh and last day: god made the seventh day a special day and he rested.

In chapter two of Genesis, this is the order of creation: man (as in the XY gene), followed by plants, then animals, then woman. It is safe to say that in chapter two creation story version, man was created ahead of plans and animals, yet in chapter one, plants and animals were created ahead of man. If the Genesis was written by one person, then how could that same person say two inconsistent versions of the same story in two consecutive chapters? Wouldn't he have noticed that he just wrote a version different from the one he earlier wrote? Researchers have concluded that this is one indication that the Genesis story was not written by one person.

I told my friend that another evidence that Genesis could not have been written by Moses can be found in the last book of the Deuterocanonicals, Deuteronomy Chapter 34. Chapter 34 talks about the death of Moses in a third person voice. If Moses wrote it, then he could not have died before it was written, especially since the tone of the chapter is from someone who actually witnessed the death of someone. Chapter four essentially describes the incidents occurring before Moses' supposed death. If Moses wrote it, it would lead to an absurdity since it would imply that he was actually present when he died! Verse one of the chapter: "Moses went up from the plains of the Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Mount Pisgah east of Jericho, and there the Lord showed him the whole land: the territory of Gilead as far north as the town of Dan:"

The Bible is considered by fundamentalist Christians as true literally and historically in its totality. Although it can be proven by archeology that there are certain things in the Bible that can be confirmed independently, at least with regards to the names of the places during Jesus' time, there are many things that are just not historically accurate, or  real for that matter. The wandering for example of the Jews in the desert for forty years is not supported by facts on the ground. The desert being referred to here is most likely the Sinai Desert, as this story happened after the Jews escaped from enslavement in Egypt on its way to the promised land. Archeologists have never found any traces of civilization in the Sinai. If the Jews were really wandering in that area for forty years, it would be impossible for them not to have left anything.

Eventually, my friend and I, together with our circle of friends, eventually drifted apart, but not only because his interests have already differed, but because we were no longer working in the same company, having been retrenched from work the previous semester.

It would be safe to assume that I lost a friend to fundamentalism. I think religion is more often a bane to man than a boon as it deprives man of his rationality and sense of humanism. And to be sucked into a life of religious fundamentalism is doubly more tragic, as one is straitjacketed into a set of beliefs that are at most irrational and baseless, even cruel and inhuman. It is tragic that one of the most self-disciplined and fun persons I have ever met, not to mention intelligent and logical, was brainwashed into a life of complete rational darkness and blind belief. But then again, he moved into that way of life after we were unceremoniously retrenched from work, and deep in my mind, I have always believed that it was probably his way of coping with losing a job he so dearly, we so dearly valued and loved. And that is something that I cannot condemn him for - man has always sought avenues for coping with the harsh realities of life. And for my friend A, it was into the arms of a religion that answered everything in black and white, were thinking no longer is needed as answers were ready and packaged to be given.

There will always linger in me what ifs. What if we were not retrenched? Would he still have drifted to fundamentalism? Bertrand Russel once said that "religion is a defensive reaction against the destructive forces of nature." And I think he is right.