Sunday, June 24, 2007

I am not an atheist!

Last Friday, I attended an overnight team building cum workshop and was dead tired when I got home afternoon of the following day. As usual, the first thing I did as soon as I have thrown my dirty clothes away was to turn on the computer and open my email. I was surprised to receive a comment waiting for my approval from an unknown source, probably from a foreigner as he/she spelled Filipinos as Philipinos. The comment was on my post Free Will and Spinoza.

As much as I would like to thank the commenter for putting in a comment, I am sorry but I cannot publish it for it will eat too much space. The comment was two kilometers long and honestly, I could not make heads or tails about it. If you are reading this, can you please collapse your comments into one single thesis? And in something that I can understand. I am sorry to say that I have a very short attention span that if you do not get me hooked on the first sentence, you will completely lose me. Hence, babbling about whatever was your point is totally wasted on me. What are you anyway? An atheist, a prophet of doom? A Christian fundamentalist? An anti-Christ? A war-monger? What? I really don't know.

What I do know however, which everyone should have gotten by now, is that I am not an atheist. I may have a few disagreements with some of the practices of the Catholic church (but I will have to add that that is probably my fault); I may not hear mass regularly like a true Catholic should; and I may not have gone to confession for a very long time, but in spite of all these, never have I wavered on my belief that there is a God. I have been educated in a Catholic school, been bred by nuns, and now teach in a Catholic school that it is impossible for my faith to be shaken by whatever fad or philosophical dogma there is. Sure, I post something about philosophy and in the process may hint at theology from time to time, but that is because I want to know if my understanding is correct based on the commnents I get. I study philosophy in the hope that I can understand it and find ways to increase my faith not decrease it. Never mind what the skeptics might say. Never mind what incongruence intelligent people find. Never mind about being impractical and unfeasible the Bible is to them. What I have is a strong faith and this is something they cannot get out from me.

20 comments:

cbs said...

yay! you go, tito rolls.

tintin said...

I got that comment too. I didn't bother reading past the first paragraph and marked it as spam. :)

ipanema said...

I subscribe to that belief as well. It's not how many times I go to church that makes me a Christian anyway. For as long as we held the belief that there is a God who is above all the rest of us.

cathy said...

titorolly, mga spammer yan. yong iba kinokopya lang sa mga forum nila. I have deleted several if not toss them
as spam.

batjay said...

huwag mo na lang patulan bossing. yung mga sarado ang paniniwala minsan ang pinagsisimulan ng mga giyera at pag-away.

rolly said...

cbs yeah, going home. hahaha

tintin I, too, stopped reading after the first few sentences. Spam nga to siguro.

ipanema I've always been this way noon pa. I know there is a God, a peaceful, loving and understanding God.

cathy I guess it is. Langya, ang haba haba ng comment, and I still don't get what he wanted to say.

batjay If there's any argument I will not get into, it will be about religion. Basta ako, I know what I believe in, tapos!

{illyria} said...

good man! in a few words you made me feel you. that's true effective communication.

rolly said...

illyria I am a man of few words. :-) Thanks

ipanema said...

Sana next time may option sa comment box: pictorial or text. Para sa commenter mong mahabang litanya, pictorial presentation na lang kaya. :)

Hey, I thought I told you of your award in my blog. There's one waiting for you. Congratulations! :)

Dr. Emer said...

Guess what, Tito Rolly?

It looks like kakilala natin (must be a loyal reader of our blogs) ang taong yun --- I also got the same comment on my driving-in-the-philippines post last weekend.

Like you, I did not bother to approve it. I know what you are talking about because of the word he used, "Philipinos," and yes, the kilometric length of his comment.

What can I say? Thank God for comment moderation.

Comments like those have one destination --- the trash bin!

Anonymous said...

Spam yun, Tito Rolly. I got that even in entries that didn't mention God. Pati sa Pinoy Cook, meron. hehehe

Anonymous said...

Sounds like malicious spam to me, with the intention to jam up your bandwidth.

As Dr Emer said, thank God for comment moderation.

rolly said...

Connie I know its a spam but just the same, I saw an opportunity to attest my faith.

rolly said...

Ipanema No, I didn't know about the award until you told me. Unfortunately, the post was one of those I missed as I was busy at the time it was posted.

Thank you very much. I feel honored that you would award that to me.

Doc Emer Tumpak!!!

Anonymous said...

wordpress automatically segregates those kind of comments especially if it has many links. pero may nakakalusot din minsan. it must be a vicious spam.

i strongly believe that it is faith that matters, and it is faith in God that will keep you safe.

Unknown said...

well said, sir. faith isn't about congruence and feasibility. it's not as if we're making a research paper when we go to mass or pray or contemplate God's love. besides, people believe what they want to believe, so arguments about religion are pretty much a waste of time.

about the tom clay song... they play it often in RJFM (100.3). if you haven't heard of the station, you might want to try it out. it's my parents' favorite, so it's always playing when we're in the car. hehe. and i don't blog in blogger.com po kasi, i log in using my google account. :) if you'd like to visit my little corner of the web, it's here: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/mixlits.

balita? well, most of my classmates are in their senior year of college na, so they're about to graduate. rika now lives in the states, together with oh, so many others. i'm in my 2nd year of medicine in UP so i won't be graduating until 2011. haha. hala, nag-share na. :D

i'll try to visit as often as i can. i always learn a thing or two from your entries. i never did forget that poem you read us once in art class... something about a prostitute/dancer in a club. i don't remember the words, of course, but the memory of you reading it sticks because one, i was surprised that you would read something so mature in an elementary class, and two, i didn't expect my art teacher to be such a good writer. hahaha.

Rey A said...

Amen to that...I hope i didn't lose your attention span :)

rolly said...

Rey A Your comment can even be longer and you won't lose my attention. :-)

rolly said...

bingskee I believe so, too.

miki Sorry but I couldn't access your site with the link you gave me. You might want to send it to me again.

I'm sure you and your friends will go places. You are all young and you have the power to conquer the world.

As for the poem, I don't think I recall that one. You see, I choose which students are ready for what. I'm sure I've seen in your class that you are prepared for something like that. You see, that is a risk I have to take. It is very seldom that I share poetry with my students much more matrue stuff like that.

I am not a good writer yet. Wait till my retirement. hehe practice ko pa lang to. :-)

Unknown said...

hm, i don't know why the link doesn't work, but you can try this one: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-F5dGVPM8cr5McZLnNv0B

by the way, if you want to share music, you can create an account at multiply.com. you can upload an unlimited number of music files (among other things) po kasi doon. kaya lang if people want to download, they have to be members din. most of the people i know are members, though - hindi ko lang po alam sa generation niyo. hahaha.

(you don't have to post this, i just didn't have any other way of contacting you. hehe.).