Let’s talk about Jose Rizal’s idea of God and religion. This Fb surely doesn’t have the slightest idea about Rizal and his ideas towards religion and God. That is why he taught that he can use Rizal to…well aggravate a Filipino atheist.
Let me start with paragraph 1. According to his post Rizal (base on the quote) thinks that religion is a very sacred thing. That’s correct, Rizal is a deeply religious person, but there’s more.
Rizal believes in what he called “Natural Religion.” In his notes to Morga, he claimed that primitive religion of the Filipinos was more in conformity with Christ’s religion that the religion brought by the Spanish friars. Well we know that the Spaniards brought Christianity to the Philippine shores in 1565. Now, base n most of his correspondence with Fr. Pablo Pastell on the time he was in Dapitan, Rizal seems to imply that he defines religion base on the romantic claim of deism natural religion. As Rizal wrote,on his third letter to Fr. Pastell, “Through reasoning and by necessity, rather than through faith, do I firmly believe in the existence of a creative Being. Who is he? I do not know. What human sounds, what accents are we to use in pronouncing the name of this Being whose works overwhelm the imagination? Can anyone give him an adequate name, when a small creature on this earth with power so fleeting carries two or three names, three or four surnames, and many more titles and designations? We call him Dios but this only comes from the Latin dues and ultimately from the Greek Zeus. What kind of being is he? I would attribute to him, to an infinite degree, all the beautiful and holy qualities my mind can think of, but the fear of my ignorance constrains me. Someone has said that everyone conjures up his own God in his own image and likeness. And if my memory serves me right, it was Anacreon who said that if a bull could form an image of God, it would imagine with horns and mooing in a superlative degree. Even so I venture to think of him as infinitely wise, mighty, good (my idea of the infinite is imperfect and confused), when I behold the wonders of his works, the order that reigns over the universe, the magnificence and expanse of creation, and the goodness that shines in all.”
And what about Rizal’s idea of God? Rizal’s belief in a Deity was based on reasonable reflection of nature as well as from conscience and not on faith or divine revelation. On the same letter, Rizal expressed his disbelief on the teachings of ancient sacred books. He writes:
“The various religions claim to have God’s will condensed and written in books and dogmas; but apart from the many contradictions, conflicting interpretations of words, and many obscure and untenable points I find in them, my conscience, my reason cannot admit that he who like a wise father had provided his creatures with everything necessary for this life, proceeded to bury what was necessary for eternal life in the obscurities of a language unknown to the rest of the world and hide it behind metaphors and deeds that go against the very laws of nature. Is it possible that he who makes the sun rise for all and the air to blow everywhere to give life, he who has endowed everyone with intelligence and reason for life here on earth, has also hidden from us what is most necessary for our eternal life? What shall we say of a father who heaps candies and toys on his children, but gives food only to one of them, educates and rears him alone? And what if it so happens that this chosen one refuses to eat while the others die looking for food?”
2. This reflects the Fb guy’s ignorance in evolution. Humans didn’t descend from monkeys and humans will not evolved into gorillas. Humans are more closely related to modern apes than to monkeys, but we didn't evolve from apes, either. Humans share a common ancestor with modern African apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees. Scientists believe this common ancestor existed 5 to 8 million years ago. Shortly thereafter, the species diverged into two separate lineages. One of these lineages ultimately evolved into gorillas and chimps, and the other evolved into early human ancestors called hominids.
3. Albert Einstein is a scientific pantheists.
When Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue ask Dr. Einstein if he believes in God, he answered, “I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” Also, in a letter March 24, 1954, Einstein wrote, “It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
