I have been married to a Filipina for 20 years and, during these years, I have had the chance to talk to all kinds of Filipinos, from parents to religious ministers, teachers, scientists, business people, bloggers...all categories of people.
One of the things that stands out when talking with them about any topic is how Filipinos get easily triggered when I challenge their beliefs, and it doesn't really matter what the content of their beliefs is.
I have spoken to religious people, from Iglesia ni Kristo to Born Again, I have had conversations with Filipinos who are into politics and support this or that party and I have even spoken to Filipinos who are atheistic and believe in evolution.
As I expected, most Filipino religious fanatics I have spoken to, are very close-minded and set in their beliefs and ways, but, much to my surprise, I have seen exactly the same attitude in people whom I thought were a little bit more open-minded.
For example I once had a discussion with an atheistic minded Filipino who got extremely angry and triggered because I simply showed him a quote from a biologist who doesn't believe in evolution and I said to him that a cousin of mine is a biologist and a researcher and she too doesn't believe in evolution. And the guy got extremely furious and called me all kinds of names.
As a result of these conversations the conclusion I have arrived at is that dogma does not pertain to religious fanaticism or any other kind of "content" of one's beliefs but rather it pertains to the clinging to the content. When someone gets easily triggered and defensive about his/her beliefs it doesn't really matter whether this person is religious or atheistic, when someone links his sense of identity to a particular belief and feels that he/she needs to defend it, and becomes very heated in defending it, the particular content of his/her belief flies out of the window.
There is a very interesting paper that a Philosopher by the name of Willard Van Horman Quine wrote (and here I must give credit to the website http://www.actualized.org) which is entiled "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism", where he basically argues that, because our worldview (scientific, political, economical, religious or of any other kind) is the result of layers upon layers of beliefs that justify one another, what we usually do when a raw fact that contradicts a particular belief that we hold, and which is part of our house of cards, is presented to us is that, rather than allowing that raw fact to percolate through our layers of beliefs, we simply rearrange our web of beliefs to explain away that fact...and yet we've got a raw fact.
That is why, for example, it would be extremely challenging for someone who, let's say, has been a Catholic for decades and perhaps has even made some major decision based on his web of beliefs, like becoming a monk, to accept the raw fact that Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th or getting anyone else at all, be he or she religious or not, to accept to even consider analyzing and studying anything at all that would entail allowing that piece of information to ripple through his/her layers of beliefs and, if necessary, modify his/her entire web of beliefs and everything connected with those beliefs.
So, yes, dogma is everywhere, it is not just an attitude that some entrenched religious people have but rather it is something that anyone at all displays whenever, instead of being open to considering a piece of external information that contradicts his/her worldview he/she gets angry and defensive.
This kind of highly dogmatic attitude is very pronounced in the Philippines but, in reality, it is present everywhere and it is a "structural" part of the human psyche, not something related to a particular content.
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