Believing in non-belief

(This is a project for my advanced reporting class, submitted to professor Kim Kierans, vice president of the School of Journalism at University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.)

At a Starbucks overlooking Manila Bay one Sunday evening, 43-year-old Jenny Ortuoste remembers her journey from Christianity to atheism. She had a Catholic mother and Protestant father. She attended a Seventh-Day Adventist school. She went to Mass every Sunday. She memorized long passages from the Bible.

As a teenager, Jenny started questioning the many stories that did not make sense to her. Why would Lot's daughters get their father drunk so they could have sex with him and then bear his children? Why would hospitality dictate that daughters be offered to strangers who come knocking at the door? Who's to say which parts of the Bible should be taken literally, and which should not? Who decides that the Gospels are gospel truth?

Jenny persevered in making sense of the faiths she was born to. But she observed that what was said in church doctrine was rarely observed in real life. When you did not get what you want, you were told: "God has greater plans for you." But what plans? As a young adult, she prayed ceaselessly for her husband to stop seeing his mistress and make their family whole again. He left her and their two kids, anyway. What now?

As a single mother, she joined a protestant group – the Union Church of Manila. She ushered during services. She made her kids go to Bible studies. She tithed. But when she dared speak about domestic abuse at a sharing session, the well-heeled, bejeweled women in her group spoke as though she did not belong to their affluent, sheltered clique. After missing a few sessions to take on extra work to make ends meet at home, those so-called Christian ladies told Jenny to look for another group. The women did not even bother to ask her how she was, whether she was sick, or if they could help. "You know, what would have been the Christian thing to do?" Jenny recalls, before taking a sip of her iced coffee.

Meanwhile, 28-year-old Red Tani was a staunch Catholic in his early life. He attended high school at San Beda College Alabang and went to college at De La Salle University. He prayed a lot and was a member of the Youth for Christ Movement at DLSU.
Red, like Jenny, recalls questioning Biblical stories at a very young age. For instance, he could not quite comprehend how God, in the Old Testament, could kill Egyptian babies just to punish the Pharaoh.

If Jenny's journey was shaped by her experiences, Red's was theoretical. He started creating a "version of Christianity in my mind that was very different from the one of the Roman Catholic Church." He searched for answers, hoping to find something binding that all religions shared.

In an email, Red explains: "It was a series of events rather than a single one. I realized that Christianity, like all other religions, was made by men to express a deeper truth that is shared by all religions. I then studied many religions in the hopes of finding that universal spiritual language. In the end, I found that there was none."

The change was not earth-shaking. Red claims his conversion "has not really changed the way I deal with my problems. I just replace the prayers with goal-setting and reflection, and I handle the daily challenges just the same: with thinking and planning, hard work and persistence, and then feedback and analysis. I would say that life has become more guilt- and anxiety-free, and I have become more accepting of people with different beliefs and of people in general."


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Edilberto Jimenez has taught theology to college students at Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University for 20 years. Before this, he also taught at the University of Santo Tomas, the 400-year-old Catholic university run by the Dominicans, for two years.

He says many students go to the Ateneo because it is regarded as a good school, not because it is a Catholic school. "Here we have all kinds of students," he says. There are those who were born into Catholicism, take this fact for granted and then do nothing – he calls them the folk Catholics. There are those who are committed to their faith. And there are the atheists.

Jimenez says that the sociological basis for young people's attraction to "the denial of the existence of God" is secularization. People, especially the eduated ones, become immersed in science and technology as well as the many philosophies of the world. These claim to be able to replace religion, which many regard as "touchy-feely" – i.e., occasioning feelings of comfort, belongingness and happiness without the benefit of reason.

But among atheists he has encountered in Ateneo, Jimenez says there are two kinds. The first is the intellectual, enlightened kind. These are those who have decided to think a lot about life. They recognize some positive aspects of religion and do not deny them,. "Strangely, they are more spiritual, they appreciate the course (theology) more, and they are more respectful."

The other kind of atheists, Jimenez said, is where the "emo" ones belong. They abhor everything about religion and have "no balance" at all in their belief, or lack thereof. Closed-minded and bitter, they are those who have an axe to grind against the Church.

Is the Church at fault, then, for the emergence of atheists? Certainly, Jimenez says. There is some element of disillusion with the way Church officials and members have been conducting themselves. This also tells us that there is such a high expectation from the Church. Then again, nobody's perfect, and even the Church is a "human institution."

Jimenez says that while reason and logic serve scientists well, they do not apply to "essentials" -- meaning faith – because these clearly cannot be proven or falsified.

Jenny would not agree. She claims to get by with pure reason in everything she does, and finds that she is happier, more whole. She is a PhD candidate for communications research at the University of the Philippines. She is the chief of staff of the general manager of a government-owned corporation. She writes a weekly column on popular culture, hosts a radio show, and collects books and fountain pens. Her daughters have grown into lovely ladies and she is friends with her former husband (her marriage has been civilly anulled).

Red's day job is running a Web design company with his wife. He also occasionally accepts IT consultancy projects. He is better known, though, for the activities of Filipino Freethinkers, of which he is president. FF is a forum for the exchange of ideas in social issues such as reproductive health, divorce, and lesbian-gay, bisexual and transgendered people. It also attacks Catholic religious leaders for what is known as "theocracy" (Jenny calls it "arrogance of the faith") -- "trying to legislate the beliefs of one sect over the entire country."

FF holds meet-ups where current events are discussed. Everybody is welcome to join these gatherings – even believers. See, not all members of FF are nonbelievers. "What binds us together is not what we think -- whether we're atheists or agnostics or whatever -- but how we think -- using reason and science to reach our own conclusions," Red adds. FF also has a strong presence on the Internet, via www.filipinofreethinkers.org.

Still, FF "is more than just a forum and a website: we are advocates of reason and science, activists of secularism, and a support group for secularists of all sorts. The website, online forums, and meetups are just tools we use for these ends."

The Internet has decidedly been a major factor in emboldening young Filipinos to express their thoughts on non-belief. Blogs such as the Pinoy atheist, Radioactive atheist, Atheistang Pinoy and many others have served as a platform for such thinkers to express themselves. The Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Society, established earlier this year, is also conducting its "outing" campaigns. "Filipino atheists demand equal treatment and respect in the present world. No more hiding, no more lying, we are coming out of our closets," says Marissa Torres Langseth, PATAS founder, in the group's Web site.

Still, despite the apparent "coolness" of being an atheist – it implies, after all, that one is a thinker and an intellectual rebel – Jenny still feels that she is part of a minority, especially in the Philippines where nearly 90 percent are Christians. "It's easier to be gay than to be an atheist in this country." There are no obvious acts of persecution, of course, just knowing looks from those who don't see things as you do – and want to impose their beliefs on you.

Jimenez believes that even as Catholic institutions like the Ateneo have activities to nurture students' Catholic faith, society must simply give atheists space. He concedes that some of the more enlightened atheists he knows are "less bitter, more conscientious, more spiritual, and more capable of detaching themselves from wealth, power and success" than those who claim to be members of the Catholic flock.

Red wants atheists to be treated with respect and integrity. His group is out to convince many closet atheists out there that it is okay not to believe – although it is okay to do so, as well. Despite all the fuss, being an atheist is no big deal for him. "It does not say a lot about a person. I'd rather they learn more about the individual because there is so much more to a person than whether they believe in god(s)."