Faith and reason
THE perennial clash between religion (faith) and science (reason) has led to some of man’s worst atrocities to his fellowman.
In the Crusades, Muslims and Christians killed each other in defense of their beliefs. The Spanish Inquisition brutally burned 32,000 heretics on the altar-stake of orthodox belief.
At home, Catholic Spain killed thousands in their conquest of the Philippines that ostensibly was motivated by the belief that it was her divine mission to Christianize us. Jose Rizal was executed for refusing to recant the heresies of masonry and of exposing the cruelty and hypocrisy of the friars in his books, “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo.”
This is what happens when man supplants reason with faith and accepts on faith the opposite of what science proves to be a fact, or, what is even worse, when man uses faith to consolidate his power over others.
One of the above happened when a small group of Christians went to the Senate to demonstrate their opposition to the Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) equality bill. They justified their “hate” for homosexuality
as an “abomination” with their religious belief that, as in Scriptures, God created only man and woman.
But the Bible is a religious book. Its religious way of referencing man’s emergence on earth cannot supplant the scientific existential truth that in nature there’s man, woman and LGBTQ or varying degrees of manhood and womanhood in between.
Arguing ad absurdum, if God created man and woman, who created LGBTQS? The Devil? Are we saying LGBTQS are not human and have no equal rights? Take note of the atrocities perpetrated on Blacks by Whites who hold the religious belief that the former are not human beings.
There is this universal principle in philosophy that one cannot argue against a fact. Hence, we cannot argue on faith that God created only man and woman when the scientific, biological and psychological fact in nature is that LGBTQS exist.
And if they exist, physiologically, psychologically disordered or not, they are as human as the rest of us and have equal dignity and equal rights as human beings and God’s creation.
“Straight” people should not behave like superior beings as if they made themselves into unmistakable men or women. They ought to just thank God they do not have the physiological and psychological contradictions that make LGBTQS agonize with the question of who they are genderwise. They might also thank God they do not have LGBTQ sons or daughters to “hate.”
If they feel chosen that way, they should not deny the chosen-ness of others like LGBTQS. For God does not exclude anybody and blesses all his children in various hidden and mysterious ways.*