Godlessness Prejudice In The Philippines: New Atheism Movement
Introduction
Religion has been playing a substantial role in the lives and structure of various countries (Schulzke, 2013). This does not only serve as a basis for morality, values, and constructs that holds the conceptual representation of a society but it was also used by colonizers as a means of justifying their colonization of an emerging country. The Philippines was regarded as one of the territories of Spain during the 16th Century since it became an instrument in which Spain achieved its three primary objectives: God, Gold, and Glory (Magante, 2015). Hence, controversies regarding abortion, and rights of the gay people who are deemed of not following the said social construct of gender roles are prevalent in catholic countries such as to what was previously mentioned. These debatable concepts and ideologies are often framed as disputes between sets of opposing religious beliefs and/or between religion and secularism (Schulzke, 2013).
Furthermore, as stated by 2014 statistics of Index Mundi, the majority of the Filipinos are Catholic (82. 9%), some are Muslim (5%) and few are part of the religious affiliation of Iglesia ni Kristo (2. 3%). This study indicates that Filipinos are truly religious nature. However, aside from conflicts regarding the separation of the state and the church, more often than not, there are characteristics of religion that aggravate disputes with individuals that are not part of a particular affiliation, which leads to the contribution of regional brutality, and implicit prejudices or bigotry against non-believers, such as those who identified themselves as atheists (Edgell, Gerteis & Hartmann, 2006).
Atheism refers to the metaphysical claim that there is no god (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017). Other than the given denotation, an atheist is an individual who finds the concept of god meaningless or unintelligible (Baggini, 2003). Moreover, new atheism specifically argues that religion contributes to harmful effects on social and political aspects (Schulzke, 2013). This organized social movement has an objective in the reduction of religion’s influence and increases the tolerance (and eventually acceptance) of atheists, especially in non-secular countries such as the Philippines. Furthermore, new atheists may not have a specific liberal philosophy but they defend a form of political liberalism which is united with the core liberal doctrines; thus, indicating that new atheism gives primary focus on protecting fundamental liberal values, such as freedom of expression, and the separation of state and secular (Schulzke, 2013).
New atheism also dissuades reasoned arguments by excusing dogmatism and violence (Schulzke, 2013). Despite the preconceived judgments, the movement of new atheists is far less hostile and militant since this community is committed to having peaceful assemblies concerning their opposition to religion, and in demonstrating their keenness to deliberate their views with prominent religious leaders (Baggini, 2003). However, due to the rooted moral suspicion of these non-believer individuals, this community still experiences the preconceived judgments from the society despite the fact that these views give heavy importance to human values (Gervais et al. . 2017).
Historically, prejudice or the preconceived notion of a group against a distinct community has been distinguished and investigated as the generalized dislike or feeling of unpleasantness towards outgroups and their members (Gervais & Shariff, 2011). Consequently, these investigations regarding prejudice had led to essential interventions and discoveries (Gervais & Shariff, 2011). However, in previous decades, studies have increasingly brought into attention various approaches regarding multidimensional forms of prejudice (Cuddy, Fiske & Glick, 2007; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu, 2002). On example of the said approaches is the sociofunctional perspective. This sociofunctional approach studies the trend that indicates an address to prejudice leading to uncertain reactions, and this can be used in setting apart the aforementioned fixed preconceived judgments (Schaller & Neuberg, 2008).
Due to the distinction of various outgroups, these communities are often perceived to be threats to distinct groups and individuals in different manners; hence, various threats require different reciprocation that evoke contrasting reactions (Gervais & Shariff, 2011). One example of this perspective is the study of Cottrell and Neuberg (2005) which shows that African Americans pose physical threats to White Americans undergraduates which is why these White Americans react with marked fear. On the other topic that the same study encompassed, the participants deemed gay men as risks to health which leads to the reaction of disgust. Hence, this perspective explains the working origins and consequences of different prejudices (Park, Schaller, & Crandall, 2007).
As stated in previous researches, it was suggested that the anti-atheist prejudice came from the intuitions about religions intercorrelation to morality (Gervais et al. , 2017). However, this ideology of the intuitive manifestation of immorality with atheism remains unclear due to the lack of cross-cultural prevalence and magnitude studies (Gervais et al. , 2017). Thus, this system of non-believers is often viewed with suspicion that even some historic dictionaries would even go as far as to define atheists with derogatory adjectives such as “sinful,” and “wicked” (Magante, 2015). The widespread anti-atheist prejudice was further strengthened and proven by the recent survey from the University of Minnesota that indicated that atheism is one of the communities in which Americans find troublesome in both private and public aspects. This aforementioned survey was done by obtaining their respondents’ opinions that are not reflected by their actual experiences with atheism (that even most of these respondents claimed to not know any) but were rather based on the stereotypical construction that immorality is intercorrelated with godlessness living (Anthony, 2007).
Moving to the status of atheism in the Philippines, there is a difficulty in quantifying the non-believers because they are not officially counted in the census; however, as gathered by the 2010 survey of National Statistics Office (NSO), there are 73,248 Filipinos that deemed themselves as atheist or agnostic (which refers to the people that claimed it is impossible for human beings to know the existence of divine beings; thus, they do not believe nor disbelieve in a god or religious doctrine). Hence, these systems of non-believers are considered as minorities; but despite this, there is still a prevalence of discrimination and communication barrier between atheists and other religious Filipinos (Magante, 2015). The antipathy experienced by atheists is striking since this group is not known for being a noticeable or potential social community (Dawkins, 2006). Even though prejudice continues to be the primary topic being investigated in relation to social psychology for former and novel researches, most of these encompassed on racial, ethnic and gender ideologies. With this, regardless of the ubiquity and peculiarity of the emerging atheism, few are known in regard to the social psychology of anti-atheist prejudice (Gervais & Shariff, 2011). With that being so, this study aims to determine the Filipino perspective regarding the prevalence of new atheism. Specifically, this research article offers a structured and standardized analysis of the social psychological methodology encompassing the prejudice experienced by individuals that are part of the new atheist community in order to contribute to the scientific understanding not only of psychological view of prejudice but also of cultural development of religion.
Body
In this article, the investigation of anti-atheist prejudice was based on the two recent theoretical perspectives. The first theoretical perspective that this study will encompass is the sociofunctional approach to prejudice as done by Cottrell & Neuberg (2005) and Schalter & Neuberg (2008), in which the perspective takes into consideration that various prejudices came from the clearly defined functional threats that contrasting communities are discerned to pose. As claimed by Cottrell & Neuberg (2005), the sociofunctional approach requires the proponents of an investigation to initially understand a particular functional threat that a community presented so that comprehension of the given prejudice of a community can be done. Moreover, the sociofunctional perspective recommends an evaluated approach in conducting the investigation regarding the causes and consequences of prejudice to a specific outgroup. Hence, this approach provides a theoretical framework that exposes the bases of various prejudices.
The second theoretical approach that will be used in the study is the cultural evolutionary method of religious prosociality, which was done by diverse researches particularly the investigations of Johnson & Krueger (2004), Norenzayan & Shariff (2008), and Roes & Raymond (2003). According to this approach, it had been proposed that religion has been an influential source of social unity and cooperation. Hence, this theoretical perspective leads to the rejection and acceptance of the hypothesis regarding the essential question of why are non-believers, specifically new atheists, deemed as threatening. With the aforementioned theoretical approaches, these perspectives might indicate that distrust is a prominent and leading reason for the anti-atheist prejudice movement.
Conclusion
Although there is a rise and great influence of religious nature in various countries, the numbers of non-believers are still increasing gradually, resulting in polarization of cultural aspects. Moreover, the concept of atheism has broken into the masses which leads to religious disputes questioning the morality with godlessness until this day. Despite the fact that new atheists are opposed to religious beliefs, particularly the metaphysical claim in a personal god, these people devote their attention in writing and speech in order to criticize consequences and effects of religious beliefs to social and political aspects of the society, such as the use of religious rhetoric in political discourse and how faith aids in the exclusion of specific claims from debates. New atheism argues how these religious beliefs greatly affect the interests of the state; hence, further aggravating the disputes regarding the state and the non-secular.
In addition, the new atheism perspective asserts that because of the aforementioned problem religious leaders are allowed to construct claims that are not subjected to debate, and to demand that these beliefs can influence the formation of policies. Moreover, more often than not, religious beliefs have been used in justifying restrictions on fundamental rights. Despite the few theories and investigations regarding the formulation of the new atheist movement, new atheists raise essential concerns about the religion’s social and political outcomes that need to be recognized. Hence, this study uncovers the basis of new atheism and understand the central reason of animosity to non-believers in order to remove society’s critique on the role of new atheism movement in public life that has been thought to be as intolerant or threatening. Due to the prejudice experienced by this outgroup, concerns raised by the new atheism regarding the influence of religion on politics and social aspects of the society are marginalized. Thus, studies and investigations regarding the potential of new atheism are being overshadowed resulting in less coverage of scientific studies about the variety of prejudice, and the sociofunctional, psychological, and cultural foundation of religion.
