What if

It looks like President Duterte has enlivened many classrooms, with teachers taking off from his quotable quotes to discuss everything from history to linguistics, and public speaking to equivalents of good manners and right conduct.

Now who would have known he’d have something for philosophy classes as well? The latest came as he inspected a shabu manufacturing plant in Pampanga—a place so surreal and frightening, a death factory, when you think about it—and began to talk about the death penalty. He criticized “the Catholic Church and all the bleeding hearts [who] would say that only God could kill. But what if there is no God?”

He went on to refer to the terrorist Islamic State, and war-torn Syria, saying: “So where is God?  My God, where are you?

“It is not enough to say that at the end of the world, he will judge the living and the dead. What would be the purpose of all of that if the heartaches, sorrows and agony have already been inflicted in this world?”

He even referred to agnosticism and atheism: “In this age a lot are questioning [God] now.” He expressed the belief that this was why Filipinos lacked fear of and respect for law.

‘Pilosopong’ Tasyo

Mr. Duterte’s ruminations are important and, certainly, as he observed, there are many people, not just Filipinos, who do wonder: “What if…”

When I checked readers’ comments to the report on his “what if” question, there were already more than 700 posted, reflecting a cross-section of street philosophy, the proverbial Pilosopong Tasyo (from “Noli Me Tangere”) reincarnated in an electronic age.

The postings included the usual simplistic argument: There is a God, and those who dare question his existence, presumably including our President, are courting eternal damnation.

Follow God’s laws, some insisted, but then the “pro-God” readers were not quite united in their view of what God thinks of capital punishment: some imagining a God who hates sinners and would favor capital punishment, others arguing that only God can decide on whether to take a life or not.

Only a few readers took off from Mr. Duterte’s “Where is God? My God, where are you?” One reader using the name “Pango,” apparently quite active among bloggers, reminded his fellow readers that even Christ posed that question when, hanging on the cross, he cried out wondering why God had forsaken him.

Actually, that passage is also found in the Old Testament, which has many other anguished passages calling out to God, wondering if he exists, if he listens. Psalm 22:1-2 may as well have been written in the 21st century: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.”

In more recent times, from the 19th century onward, it has been the philosophers and existentialists from Nietzsche to Sartre who raised questions about God and, in the process, the meaning of life and our very existence.

The horrors of the two world wars have intensified people’s doubt and cynicism, what with the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, including the gas chambers of the Holocaust used by the Nazis to execute millions of Jews, communists, gypsies and other “undesirables.”  Where indeed is God, if there is God?

While agnosticism and atheism are common responses to the questions of evil and the existence of God, there are those who believe, too, that in an age of great evil and suffering, there is all the more reason to believe in a God. “Theodicy” is the term used to refer to the defense of the concept of a good and omnipotent God amid the existence of evil.

Pope John Paul II was a young man during World War II, and the Holocaust was to shape his papacy, with his insistence on respect for life and opposition not just to the death penalty but also to euthanasia (mercy killing), abortion, and even contraception.

Mercy

Pope Francis has taken a different track, still against the death penalty, euthanasia and abortion, but talking more often about the need for mercy and compassion and of understanding people’s lives as contexts.  He has warned, repeatedly, against being judgmental.

A close adviser to Pope Francis is Cardinal Walter Kasper, whose book “Mercy” extensively discusses the Christian theological dimensions of mercy, summarized in one sentence: Without mercy, there can be no hope.  Thus, in a world with so much injustice and oppression, the lack of mercy, of compassion, is all the more unacceptable because it extinguishes any chances of hope.

A blogger named “simondj,” reacting to the “what if” news report, comes close to this idea in more concrete terms: “Hindi puedeng walang Diyos dahil kawawa naman mga pinatay na walang hustisya” (God has to exist; otherwise, pity those who are killed without justice). Simondj goes straight to the victims, whether innocent or guilty of

crimes, as well as the “collateral damage,” those caught in the crossfire.

In the zeal to bring “justice” through executions—even “justified” by the argument that killing has to be done in case there is no God to mete out justice in the afterlife—many innocent people will die. That is what is most vexing, most difficult to resolve.

Opposition to the death penalty has also been argued through another conjecture: Even if a person were indeed guilty, was there not a possibility that, if allowed to live, the person could have reformed, become not just a good person but a person of holiness? The repentant thief nailed to a cross next to Christ’s is used to symbolize this possibility.

The debates around God’s existence can be complicated and circuitous. There are also religions, like Buddhism, that are nontheistic. Gautama Buddha was said to have left out the question of God’s existence because the concept of “God” has been so divisive.

A blogger, “League K’s.o.B,” uses wit in his/her many postings, and this one is particularly amusing and provocative: “Of course God exists. There is no need for a senate probe! Fact is: God is traveling very far, he is on tour and he will not come back! He saw the mess he did, he closed the door and threw away the key.”

Other philosophers would agree, perhaps using more lofty language. Even those who believe in a God will agree to the idea of someone who starts the process with creation, then leaves it to humans to move on, with free will.  Atheists, agnostics, nontheists or theists, we must be reflective enough to know what consequences come from our actions, and take responsibility for all we do.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph