PARADOXICAL

Shaky Month

Early October has become such a shaky month. My usual droll, even facetious, self, would have said the Philippines is like Shakey's pizza and we are back to the late '80s dancing to "Shake, Body Dancer," but no, earthquakes are no laughing matter. 

While areas of Luzon were reeling from massive flood from the quick succession of typhoons (Mirasol, Nando, Opong) together with the usual habagat (monsoon rains) that makes everything sopping-wet, a 6.9 earthquake shook up parts of Cebu Is. and another, far weaker one in the Taal Volcano area. The ancient church of Daanbantayan was in ruins, and the McDonald's Bogo City branch ended up like a crushed tomato. Almost 70 people died including athletes practicing inside a gym or dome of sorts with one man pinned down, meeting misfortune in the twinkling of an eye.

The quake was reportedly caused by a previously unidentified fault offshore, which was ultimately connected to the Philippine trench.

The morning a day before that, our roosters at home crowed one after another nonstop for about four hours straight. It was unprecedented, something that struck me as abnormal or unusual (can't decide which word is better). What a curious coincidence, together with the sudden appearance of earthworms and centipedes here and there in our yard. Other residents echoed the same experience with their dogs, cats, cattle...

The next few days would prove the roosters and other creatures right, because an intensity 4.8 earthquake shook Baguio City and La Union and the next day an intensity 7.4 temblor shook the shore off Davao Oriental, then another one with an intensity of 6.7 or something struck exactly the same area. (I learned that earthquake intensities can be downgraded afterwards upon review.) These earthquakes, of course, caused widespread anxiety, panic attacks, and trauma. (Being a constant sufferer of these maladies, even for a laughable intensity 1, mainly due to the ensuing reaction from panicky people, I feel that I am not alone.) ...Not to mention the appalling destruction of public infrastructure and private properties, especially those charming homes built out of decades of sacrifice of Filipino overseas workers -- all erased, or in journalese, "gone in a jiffy."

Life is indeed such a fragile thing: here today, gone tomorrow. Through these shaky shockers, may we all find some meaning, something profound, from these puzzling tragedies deep within us.

And may everyone and everything that fell down get up and rise up quickly or soon in every possible way.

A number of netizens posted photos of people in their old or present version draping their arm on their child version, like a mother-and-daughter or father-and-son pose. The picture is odd but lovely to look at. There must be an app being used for it. I am reminded of the healing the inner child retreat I have attended which I found extremely helpful to my mental health. I highly recommend it to everyone who had to deal with multiple traumas growing up. I define trauma as any un-grieved grief, unprocessed psychological material, and unresolved issues that a person is unaware of but manifests in irrational behaviors or neuroses.

On October 2, a massive fire engulfed a district in Davao City and another fire broke out in CDO. Then I saw someone's post showing three lines of photos showing massive flooding in Luzon on top, earthquake destruction in the Visayas in the middle, and large-scale conflagration in Mindanao.

Primatologist Jane Goodall passed on to eternal Eden. Naturally, I remember her for the movie "Gorillas in the Mist" starring Sigourney Weaver.

Actress Rosa Rosal was falsely announced to be dead. What a shame or embarrassment. It must be distressing for her family to see all those premature announcements in the news. Turns out some naughty creature who peddled the fake news pretended to be Rosal's daughter, the former TV host Toni Rose Gayda. The normally mild-mannered Toni Rose was, of course, livid.

A bridge in Alcala, Cagayan collapsed. Since the bridge, called Piggatan Br., looked a lot like the Romulo Br. in our town, the news was a deja vu moment for me! I can't forget that day when media people from local, regional, and national entities were calling me up nonstop all day long to inquire about a bridge I knew nothing about that I had to do a quick research on it, only to find nothing except oral evidence or eyewitness accounts. They were barking up the wrong tree. The bridge is under DPWH jurisdiction, and it was built, it turned out, in the early 1980s, not in the 1950s as reported.

Fox News: Israelis take to the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to celebrate the end of the war in Gaza after Hamas accepts President Trump’s historic peace plan to free all hostages.

Other Oddities

Unthinkable shameless act: A man urinated at the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in front of hundreds of horrified pilgrims and tourists.

A Virgin Mary statue somewhere blazed for some reason.

Two female climate change activists, it was reported, threw blobs of red paint on a painting of Christopher Columbus in a museum in Spain.

A brief drone footage gave us a glimpse of the utter destruction of Gaza City after President Trump offered a peace plan that Hamas found palatable. Let's not forget how divisive this issue is: As many people who view Israel's action as an act of aggression and therefore applaud this latest development, other people view Hamas' provocation as coming from a desire to erase Israel from the map. If you are a neutral observer, what would be your thoughts on the matter?

Cong. Barzaga staged a rally in front of Forbes Park, and observers said that the stunt quickly turned into a dud or a mere meowing of a cat trying to be a tiger.

The slender-billed curlew was officially declared as extinct even if it was acknowledged that its distribution and ecology remain a mystery.

Mayor Vico Sotto inquires on FB how to make use of various font faces on FB, and it went viral.

Hollywood actress Diane Keaton died of pneumonia at age 79. I liked her as that spider-phobic woman opposite Woody Allen in that cerebral movie of his.

The American late-night comic Conan O'Brien was in Manila! But why?!

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:16 PM 0 Comments

Volatile, Violent Times

The times they are a-confusin', to paraphrase an old song, especially if you're on social media. While we are whiling away the time creating 3D simulacrum of ourselves with one click using Google Gemini, imbibing collagen drink, and dancing to the tune of the latest bubblegum K-pop, "Soda Pop," so many earth-shaking things are going on. The assassination of someone named Charlie Kirk is among them, on top of the wars in various parts of the world. I can't blame people who prefer to tune out or totally unplug from it all.

That's mostly because overnight regime change is once again en vogue around the world, it seems. Nepal, Indonesia, Japan, France... who's next? I have a few countries on my wish list, those with truly unimaginably brutal leaders and unspeakably barbaric regimes -- and yes, your guess is as good as mine which those are.

The incendiary images coming out of Nepal are especially chilling, which are said to have been provoked by a government ban on social media use. A finance minister was ganged up on, then hit with a thick club or something, then pushed down into a riverbank like some slaughtered pig that didn't pass the standards. It's an image that is sure to make all people in high positions quake in their boots. (It brings to mind the swift, no-fuss execution of Romania's despots, the Ceaușescu couple at the height of the post-communist revolt in that former 'satellite state' under the former and unlamented USSR.)

On another day, I woke up to a picture of the Nepalese parliament building in flames, then a Hilton Hotel too, then another. It makes you wonder whether the protesters made the right decision of burning down government property, which is technically their own property built using their taxes. I understand all that anger, but as a government employee, I couldn't help but see it as an act of vandalism and, worse, as some kind of burning one's own house, self-immolation, and self-sabotage.

Next came the image of a bloodied prime minister, I think, being escorted by soldiers away from vindictive hands, mostly young protesters. He was luckier, for he was afforded the luxury of official protection, though I heard that he and other officials were eventually airlifted to somewhere, like the Marcoses before, there to await certain prosecution or, worse, execution.

I winced at the sight of it all -- certainly not enjoyable to look at, not at all relishing on repeat mode.

Apparently, the Indonesians also have reached the tipping point, with a critical mass doing the job of protesting, rioting, ransacking (of the plush residences of the rich and influential), torching and incinerating, turning the place, it seems, into a powder keg. This time, the murder of a lowly delivery rider was the catalyst.

Whatever happened to law and order? to due process? Again, I can't help but ask. Apparently, these basic considerations are no longer tenable under conditions that a mass of people consider to be non-negotiable, like large-scale embezzling of public funds while the rest barely get by from day to day. In Tagalog, puno na ang salop.

To those who have a rebellious streak or revolutionary bent back home, these developments must be a moment of inspiration, I imagine. In the light of the current legislative inquiries revolving around one contractor named Sarah Discaya, exposés on anomalous flood control projects, and the sudden outcry against 'nepo babies,' formerly adored and admired as social media influencers and now despised like common criminals, this must be the time they have been waiting for, and in fact a final reckoning that has been quite a long time coming.

...While to the current dispensation, it is understandably a tight, worrisome situation.

At the rate things are going, it's anybody's guess what will happen next. From the looks of it, based on observations of those on the ground, the protesters in Metro Manila at least are of four kinds: 'woke' youth, leftists, 'DDS' (loyal Duterte supporters), and church types (both Catholic and evangelical/Protestant).

This caustic mix makes the situation quite unpredictable. What are the possible scenarios given these strange bedfellows rallying together? Let me count the ways.

1. Leftist victory: It's no secret what the extreme left wants. To this day, despite world developments, I suppose they still harbor this dream of having a communist state where private property is abolished, among other basic human rights, to once and for all erase the divide between rich and poor and bring about their version of utopia. This would easily translate to summary executions, massive spilling of blood on the streets, mass incarceration on mere suspicion, rampant confiscation of property, the apparatchik seizing all manner of private acquisitions and tools of economic activity, and the like. The question is whether they still have the numbers, or still have enough clout or sympathizers.

2. Socialist victory: Socialists would probably want a tamer, maybe less violent takeover to enforce their version of social equality, using the current government structure, but with major adjustments.

3. Christian social democrat victory: Soc-dems would most likely proffer a far more palatable but still revolutionary formula.

4. Woke-ist victory: The 'woke' youth, i.e., people who regard themselves as "aware of issues concerning social and racial justice" but, I'm afraid, with limited knowledge of the past and zero first-hand experience of what went before, would surely demand something significant or drastic, even violent, such as changes to the Constitution and form of government and mode of governance -- for sure to accommodate their own understanding of equality, equity, and social justice. A widespread repudiation of traditional mores will likely ensue, in the manner of the preachings of liberal American universities.

5. The rise of the political opposition. A great chunk of the 'woke' are mostly 'Leni-nists' too, the ones often derided as 'Kakampinks' or 'Pinklawans.' This sector most likely will push for reforms that will probably be more conventional, as members take their cue from opposition figurehead, former Vice-President Leni Robredo, and company.

6. A Duterte comeback. The DDS mind is a lot easier to read and predict, of course: They obviously wish to unseat the current president, install the Veep as President, and bring her father, the former president, back home, and restore a strongman style of rule.

7. The incumbent weathering the storm despite everything, especially the bizarre ironies. I am not sure where the Marcos loyalists belong, but of course, keeping PBBM as president until his term expires would be foremost on their agenda. An extreme scenario is that PBBM, if properly provoked, might repeat history by declaring martial law.

8. Church and civil society gaining the upper hand. Predictably, as well, church people would rather preach temperance, sobriety, nonviolence, and the primacy of the rule of law, not to mention call for prayers, repentance, and reflection, but at the same time assert and press for accountability and justice, reparation and restitution.

9. Military adventurism. A dangerous but very possible scenario is the military taking things in its own hands out of fear of a communist takeover or that of anyone they don't favor. We've seen too many coup d'etats before, and they weren't reassuring times.

One thing is sure, though: All of these factions want change, fast. Except for those with hidden agenda or selfish ulterior motive, the message is loud and clear: No more business as usual, which is to say foul play or monkey business with our hard-earned funds, the people's money. Away with the status quo (of guiltless wholesale theft just because that's how the cookie is supposed to crumble, with the perpetrators becoming unjustifiably rich and admired for it). In short: "Clean up the mess, or else..."

As the Latin phrase-lovers would put it, Quo vadis, Philippines? Which way to go?

As we reach the bottom of the barrel, where else to go, if not up? But that's only if there is clarity, and if only the best of scenarios prevails in the end.

Speaking of clarity, what really is the roadmap that we want to follow? I, for one, wish for urgent remedial measures so the situation wouldn't degenerate into civil war, the infiltration of undesirable factions and forces, and unnecessary loss of lives and destruction of precious few properties. I hope for our democratic processes to be upheld and for law and order to be observed. Let us pray that these indeed would be the ones that will come to pass in the next few days.

Personally, how I wish I could just dwell on more trivial pursuits like listing down and defending the top 100 dance tracks of all time or tracing the history of poetry or music in general or other more significant matters such as publishing a cache of booklets on Pangasinan language and culture. But these things are a luxury at the moment, as I like everyone else have to constantly keep tabs of what's happening.

Meanwhile, like suitors would say, may the best idea win.

posted by Resty Odon  # 10:54 PM 0 Comments

What an Explosive Month!
(Quick Recap for September 2025)

Outrageously Bad News

People in Indonesia rioted across what is routinely called "the world's largest archipelago" apparently over corruption scandals, but reportedly triggered by the police's killing of a delivery rider and a fat housing allowance that legislators awarded to themselves in the face of widespread hardship among common folk.

Over 2,000 people died in a magnitude 6 earthquake in Afghanistan, with the Taliban's no-skin contact rule for women a big obstacle in rescue operations.

A funicular in Portugal crashed, killing scores of passengers.

Unprecedented rampaging floodwaters and storms seemed to be everywhere, making you wonder whether it was once again the end of the world: Taiwan (where a large bridge was swept away!), Macau, Hong Kong, China... even in places where there are presumably no corruption-infested ghost projects and substandard flood control infrastructure. After all, it's typhoon and flood season, and who knows, maybe the unusual volume and speed of precipitation itself is the biggest factor. Researchers need to take a look at this because the falling of rain this month seemed extra-heavy: by the drums instead of by the droplet, dipper, or pail.

A high-rise in Gaza City was bombed by Israel's military -- yet again. Reading the comments, I get the sense of most people saying, "Don't throw stones if your house is made of glass" and "Don't awaken a sleeping lion" and other equivalent expressions, meaning they are tracing the conflict to the day Israel was infiltrated and attacked by Hamas without any provocation, something that I noticed liberal mainstream media avoid mentioning. I am not saying this is the best viewpoint on the conflict, let me be clear.

‎A man named Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at an event in a US university. Never heard of this man despite myself and the circles I frequent online. (Wait, what circles?) He turns out to be "an American right-wing political activist, author, and media personality."

The murder case sharply divided people, based on the comments, with young people who proudly consider themselves "woke"...not exactly celebrating the death but refusing to lament it like Kirk's fellow conservatives do for the reason that Kirk's views oppose their own take on various matters of great concern. (Not knowing him at all, I can't tell whether I agree with the things he said that so offended his assailant and his ensuing social media critics and haters.)

The cold blood murder also has a chilling effect: it sends the message that you could get killed by someone if you hold an opinion different from anyone who is murderous. (Someone pointed out correctly that silencing someone, instead of giving a rational retort, means you have lost the argument.) Now, Kirk, who is unknown outside the US, is now world-famous and an instant Christian martyr worldwide, definitely no thanks to his murderer, a young fellow white man named Tyler Robinson!

Gen-Z protesters set the Nepalese Parliament on fire due to a number of reasons: a ban on social media and allegations of corruption among them.

Then regime changed happened overnight not just in Indonesia and Nepal, but also in Japan, France. Who's next?

(I wrote about this and the ensuing "Trillion Peso March" in two separate posts. To sum up: Filipinos are rightly scandalized at the extent of allegedly stolen public funds and are truly fed up this time, and there's no telling what will happen next. But the centrist forces avoid calling for the current president to resign for fear of a Duterte comeback.)

The North Korean leader executed (as in killed as punishment!) 30 officials in a purge over flood response, a report said. In contrast...

Israel attacked residential buildings in Qatar. I failed to follow up on the reason why.

No thanks to super-typhoon 'Lando,' there was a scary landslide along Marcos Hi-way squashing several SUVs! It was equally sad seeing videos and photos of landslides in such famous scenic spots as Batanes, Sagada, and Malico, San Nicolas, Pangasinan.

'Lando' and another super-typhoon with another country bumpkin-sounding name, Opong, brought so much destruction in Calayan Is., Batanes, Cagayan, Masbate, and so on.

A busy Bangkok street with a big hospital right beside it collapsed into a massive sinkhole! A leaking pipe or a subway construction was blamed.

***

Word Watch

There are quite a number of new words that cropped up this month.

I often encountered this strange word among young Filipino men: paldo, paldong-paldo. It is supposed to originally mean "bale" or "a large bundle," but in slang means "a huge amount of money." Example: Paldong-paldo ka sa OT pay ha! So I guess it is synonymous to tiba-tiba.

"Nepo baby," from "nepotism," of course, was as ubiquitous as the common cold virus. Used derisively (or with contempt), it refers to the excessively and unjustifiably rich kids of political dynasties.

Unfortunately, other everyday terms that got regarded as evil overnight include: contractor, engineer, politician, and DPWH.

The anime "One Piece" and its character, Luffy, were mentioned a worrying number of times, prompting a quick online search about who the devil this character is. As a viral post by Ian R. Casocot pointed out, you don't underestimate the soft power of culture and arts, particularly pop culture icons or popular art. They have a way of sneaking in until they grab you in the face if you are not watching out.

***

Neutral News

Japan’s Prince Hisahito became the first male member of the imperial family to come of age in four decades—and might also be the last. (But I was like, who still cares about royalties in this day and age? If you view God as the only one true king of the universe, then we are all of equal stature, all "royal blooded" children of His, yes or no?)

***

Sad News

Shocking: Gawad Kalinga founder Tony Meloto was accused of scandalous deeds. But in an interview with Ces Drilon, he denied everything.

Acting legend Robert Redford passed on at age 89. Of course, I automatically had a mental retrospective of movies I had watched with him in it, but I can only remember two, both excellent: "The Way We Were," "a romantic drama featuring Barbra Streisand, exploring love and political differences," and "All the President's Men," "a political thriller where he portrays journalist Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal." Redford also turns out to be the director of a movie on the complex dynamics of family relationships that I, of course, found very instructive and touching, "Ordinary People."

Nearly 40% of Filipino adults were classified as obese, driven by a combination of genetic, environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic factors, according to health experts citing recent findings. I blame the obvious: high-sugar, high-vegetable oil diet called fast-food.

Gregorio Brillantes, a great Filipino writer, passed on. I remember him the most for the short story, "The Flood in Tarlac," "a gripping narrative that explores the tragic events surrounding a middle-class family during a devastating flood, culminating in a violent confrontation that reflects deeper social issues." What a prescient story, considering today's headlines about flood unwittingly exposing corruption at high places vis-a-vis yawning social disparity! Considered the father of Filipino speculative fiction, Brillantes has that rare gift of literary prestidigitation.

***

Funny News

A lot of netizens hopped on to the Google Gemini trend of generating a computer-generated simulacrum of themselves as a 3D statue of sorts.

Senator Joel Villanueva's over-the-top speech in the Senate trended because, as someone said, it resembled a workshop at the Ogie Diaz School of Acting, complete with blocking and 'garalgal' (raspy) vocals and all.

For some reason Tagalogs (or is that Ilocanos) and Visayans are warring online. I am not sure if this latest inanity is worth digging into.

The Trillion Peso March generated a lot of hilarious protest placards and memes too many to mention.

A young legislator named Kiko Barzaga (Cavite) made headlines by meow-meowing his way through something. Funny, but also a strange and undignified stunt.

At the height of legislative inquiries, Senator Rodante Marcoleta was called names and became the subject of funny memes.

***

Good News

Carlos Acutis was canonized, making him the first millennial saint. Another Italian youth, Pier Giorgio Frassati, was also canonized. Acutis was fond of computer games, while Frassati, I must point out, smoked. What is remarkable about this canonization is it happened at all, at a time when it is almost impossible for the young to be Christian, much less a saint, with all the digital doodads as distractions and occasions for sin readily waiting at one's fingertips, and we all know what we are talking about.

The Wondiwoi tree kangaroo, a tree kangaroo species last seen in 1928, thought lost for about 50 years was rediscovered in New Guinea. I hope all the other species we have officially declared as extinct turn out to be secretly thriving somewhere, starting with the dodo. (By the way, I have personally seen around three kangaroo tree species in their natural habitat (trees) without flying to Australia or New Guinea, when I visited Avilon Zoo somewhere in Rizal. I wonder if they are still alive, but seeing them in the flesh was a most surreal experience because I didn't even know back then that tree kangaroos exist (no, they are not that usual kangaroo we know). (By the way, Manila Zoo used to have kangaroos, and a black bear, different types of monkeys including an entire family of pink monkeys (maybe albinos), and dozens and dozens of other exotic species that are no longer there today. Yeah, I was a lot luckier as a kid.)

Two young teenage boys were swept away by rampaging floodwaters in a dam in Sitio Pangulo, Carangian, Tarlac City, but were found in a cave alive after more than a day of intensive search operations. A miracle!

Owen Cooper, 15, won best actor at Emmy Awards, making history as the youngest winner ever in that category.

Meanwhile, people were dancing to this bubblegum K-pop hit, "Soda Pop" by I don't care to name which autotune-heavy group.

I'm sure these are three great news to fellow Filipinos all over the world, not minor footnotes: Jessica Sanchez emerged as "America's Got Talent" season 20's grand champion and the first Filipino-descent winner of the competition. (Yours truly be like: Meh, shouldn't she have won the first time around? That effortless rendition of hers of Whitney Houston-style "I Will Always Love You" is simply unforgettable.) Another man named Kirk -- a proud Igorot model named Kirk Bondad -- won as Mister International 2025. Third: Veejay Floresca (da who?) won Project Runway's season 21, "a show in which clothing designers worldwide are invited to compete for the top prize." (Who knew there's even such a thing?)

To end, another "wow factor" this month is an injectable drug called benralizumab, "the first new asthma attack treatment" in half a century, targeting "an overactive part of the immune system that drives severe flare-ups of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)." Sounds a lot like a great discovery against an appalling disease that upsets something so basic in life: breathing.

An international men's volleyball tournament was held in Manila.

Pole vaulter EJ Obiena won an event held at an unlikely venue: along Ayala Ave., Makati.

posted by Resty Odon  # 1:45 AM 0 Comments

 "The Bomber Mafia" (Malcolm Gladwell): A Challenging Meditation on the Moral Dilemma of Staging Wars

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:55 PM 0 Comments

TIMELINE: Man's Conception of God

According to Reza Aslan, the origin of the religious impulse is “the result of something [very] primal and difficult to explain: our ingrained intuitive, and wholly experiential belief that we are... embodied souls.” Aslan thus rejects the idea by philosophers and psychologists (Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Müller, Émile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and Carl G. Jung) that religion is a product of evolution or, say, natural selection due to its inherent benefits (in fact, religion is a constant source of division and war, he points out), and the idea (propounded by Justin Barrett) that religion is merely a "neurological phenomenon" -- a result of the kind of nervous system we have developed. 

To sum up in broad strokes, these are what Aslan observes to be the major developments in the history of how we humans perceive God:

- Belief in the soul

- Worship of ancestors

- Creation of spirits

- Formation of gods and pantheons

- Construction of temples and shrines

- Establishment of myths and rituals

- Monotheism (the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and most especially, Islam)

- Ditheism

- Trinitarianism (Christianity and Catholicism)

- Pantheism

Let me summarize one reviewer's (Randy Rosenthal) attempt at summarizing these developments in some detail:

- 176 thousand years ago - Neanderthal caves with circular stone altars 

- Around 40 thousand years ago - mythogramic caves in which our earliest ancestors made paintings that can be considered scripture. They initially painted mysterious dots, followed by palm prints, animals, 

- Around 18000 BCE - the first depiction of a god — The Lord of Beasts

- At the end of the last Ice Age, between 14 thousand and 12 thousand years ago  - “the Temple of Eden,” Göbekli Tepe was built, a temple complex on a hilltop near Urfa, in modern Turkey (at least six thousand years before Stonehenge, and seven thousand before the first Egyptian pyramid)

- Devotional sites such as the Göbekli Tepe predate the development of agriculture and the birth of civilization, indicating that the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era was due to the birth of organized religion instead of being due to agriculture.

- Around 8000 BCE - emergence of manism, the ancestor worship  

- Birth of polytheism in Mesopotamian Sumer. 

- Around 4500 BCE - The invention of writing seems to have occurred in Sumerian city of Uruk , and by 2600 BCE humans could write down what gods were like for the first time; the gods (ilu) the Sumerians described were quite human-like

- The Mesopotamians eventually worshipped a pantheon of more than three thousand deities, with idols for each. 

- Similar developments occurred in Egypt, India, and Greece, where gods were always described in human terms. They fought over petty jealousies, had family problems, displayed good and bad moods, and “could be all-knowing or just plain stupid.”

- Some of these religious systems can be described as monolatry, the worship of one god with acknowledgment that many other gods exist. 

- Yet the dominant form of spiritual expression under ancient monarchies was henotheism, the belief that “one all-powerful, all-encompassing ‘High God’ who acted as the chief deity over a pantheon of lower gods who were equally worthy of worship.” 

- Around 1353 BCE - Monotheism, “the sole worship of one god and the negation of all other gods,” for the first time occurred Egypt, when Akhenaten raised the sun god Aten to the status of sole god. To enforce his monotheistic religion, Akhenaten released “nothing short of a pogrom against the gods of Egypt,” with armies marching from city to city, smashing the idols of other gods, and even erasing their names from documents. Yet when Akhenaten died, his monotheistic movement died with him. 

- Sometime between 1500 and 500 BCE (Aslan settles on 1100 BCE) - an Iranian priest named Zarathustra Spitama became the world’s first prophet when he received revelations from Ahura Mazda, a term that means “the Wise Lord,” but refers to a god with no name, since he was the sole god of the universe. Zarathustra was the first to promote a dualistic, heaven-and-hell theology, and to reduce other divinities to “angels” and “demons.” Yet the monotheism of Zoroastrianism was short lived. It was revived in the sixth century BCE, but... 

- 6th century BCE - the magi of Cyrus the Great transformed the one god into two — one good and one evil.

- around 1200 BCE - The Israelites had arrived on the scene, and the early Hebrews incorrigibly worshipped other gods, such as Baal and the goddesses Asherah, Anat, and Astarte. These are clan members of El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, who “was often depicted as a bull or calf.” 

- The Bible uses several names to refer to God, the main two being Elohim, which, despite being a plural form, is usually translated simply as “God,” and YHWH, which is traditionally read as Adonai and translated as “LORD.” In Genesis 4:1, Eve says she has “gained a male child with the help of YHWH,” [1] implying that the name was known from the beginning. But officially, Yahweh first revealed his name to Moses in Exodus 3:15, claiming he was the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom he was known as El Shadday. Most believers understand these different names refer to the same god. There are two possible places in the Bible, however, where it appears Yahweh is not only distinct from Elohim, but also inferior to him: Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32:7-9. 

- Biblical patriarchs [Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] did not worship a Midianite desert deity called Yahweh. They worshipped an altogether different god — a Canaanite deity they knew as El.”  (plural: Elohim)

- The story of how monotheism — after centuries of failure and rejection — finally and permanently took root in human spirituality begins when the god of Abraham, El, and the god of Moses, Yahweh, gradually merged to become the sole, singular deity that we now know as God.

- True monotheism (monotheism as we know it) only solidified during the Babylonian Exile. Perhaps surprisingly, the first expression of unambiguous monotheism in the Bible occurs in Isaiah 44:6, from the second part of the Book of Isaiah, otherwise known as Deutero-Isaiah, which was composed after the fall of Jerusalem, in 587 BCE. Here Yahweh declares, “I am the first and the last; besides me there are no gods.” It’s not that he is greatest among gods, but there are no other gods. Finally, after thousands of years and two misfires, we have true monotheism. 

- But about five hundred years later, this extraordinary development in the history of religion was “overturned […] by an upstart sect of apocalyptic Jews calling themselves Christians.” 

- With the idea of Jesus being God made flesh, early Christians had to account for some pretty tricky theology. How can God be both Jesus and God? Moreover, how can Yahweh — the jealous deity who gleefully calls for the slaughter of anyone who fails to worship him — be the same God of love and forgiveness who Jesus calls Father? 

- Around the time the Gospel of John was being written, 100 CE, Marcion proposed a two-god theory known as ditheism. There must be two gods: the cruel creator God of the Hebrew Bible known as Yahweh, and the loving, merciful God who has always existed but revealed himself to the world for the first time in the form of Jesus the Christ. 

- Ditheism was eventually rejected in favor of Trinitarianism, and God became Three. Tertullian coined the word Trinity, and the Fathers of the Church clarified the matter: God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of which existed at the beginning of time and share the same measure of divinity. 

- In seventh century Arabia, a 40-year-old shepherd turned merchant turned prophet named Muhammad received revelations from a god he called Allah, the only ancient Arabian god who seems to have never been represented by an idol. Muhammad identified this god with Yahweh and Elohim, saying it was really Allah all along. He devoted the rest of his life to replacing Zoroastrian dualism and Christian trinitarianism with the “Jewish view of God as One,” thereby making Islam the culmination of monotheism. 

- The rise of the Sufis and their pantheistic conception of God: interpenetrating the universe, God is all, and all is God. 

- Conclusion: since we project our humanity onto God, we are God. Each one of us.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:48 PM 0 Comments

Reviewing God

Is the God you believe in really God, or just the kind of God you want, just the image of your own mind's creation -- in psychological terms, just your pathetic projection of your own weaknesses?

The nerve of this guy to ask, but what a wonderful question.

Unfortunately for the author, US academic and writer Reza Aslan, I have encountered such effrontery before. In a retreat talk or something of that sort, I think, by then Fr. Chito Tagle or some other noted cleric, I learned that it is a question originally posed by one daring philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach. It was he who first needled believers by claiming that the God they worshipped was just a projection of their inmost longings (as for power, praise, etc.). Good thing Aslan noted it at the outset, getting it out of the way.

But it is in supporting his claim using world history that Aslan's book is highly engaging as to be unputdownable.

The first time I've read a survey of the world's faiths or religions, it was then Pope John Paul II's interview transcript-turned-book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." But Aslan's book is the first of its kind I have encountered in which the history of man's predisposition to believe in a soul, spiritual word, a god, or an afterlife is traced. Even for a Harvard professor, Aslan's scholarly scope is simply breathtaking: from pre-Homo sapiens stage to the various stages in which humans attempted for the first time to do paintings, perform rituals, worship idols, and build temples until these beliefs and practices evolved into a belief in one God and the practices of various religions today.

Weaving together threads from archeology, history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, neurology, and the arts, it is a fascinating discussion, to say the least. It is so absorbing that I had to pore through even the endnotes in reduced font size until I got dizzy and had a mild headache.

To sum up in broad strokes, these are what Aslan observes to be the major developments in the history of how we humans perceive God:

- Belief in the soul
- Worship of ancestors
- Creation of spirits
- Formation of gods and pantheons
- Construction of temples and shrines
- Establishment of myths and rituals
- Monotheism (the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and most especially, Islam)
- Ditheism
- Trinitarianism (Christianity and Catholicism)
- Pantheism

Aslan ends his discussion by concluding that his exercise in tracing such a history of the world's religions paralleled his own spiritual journey, and that is why he ends up discussing pantheism as the belief he most subscribes to now, the belief that God is in everything (which is, incidentally, something I have heard before). From being a Christian, then Muslim, he discussed how he ended up choosing to believe in pantheism (the belief that God is in everything) instead, because, if I am reading him right, it is the one belief that does not envision God as something man-made but philosophically speaking, a God that is not formed in the image and likeness of man but the reverse: God as He is, whatever it is He wills to be.

Of course, this reader does not share such a controversial conclusion ("Everything is God." "You and I are God." Me: Of course not!). In fact, as a believer of Christianity as a religion that is a divine revelation of truth, not at all a human creation (but one that requires the agency of human cooperation), I find it laughable though not surprising because it follows a logical train of thought.

In my own observation, a lot of religions claim to have come from divine revelation via a chosen messenger: we may refer to how the Muslims, Mormons, and Iglesia ni Kristo, for example, recall their origin story. Can you argue with people's version of such accounts? You can't. I won't even try. To the uninitiated, it's probably a matter of choosing which messenger to believe.

In any case, whatever your religious inclination is, reading Aslan's academic take on the matter is a highly rewarding experience and even helpful in your own spiritual journey. Personally, in the final analysis, the book strikes me as a scientific and historical account of how man has searched for God and developed its primitive conceptions of god (or more accurately, assorted idols, from Ashtoreth to Zeus) through a length of time that seems to be an entire geological age in scope ("hundreds of thousands of years"), until the one true God with a capital G finally said enough, entered history through Jesus Christ, and revealed his true nature as a triune God.

(Grateful acknowledgment: Joey Ferrer)

posted by Resty Odon  # 2:51 AM 0 Comments