Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday, June 25, 2018, defended his statement that God was “stupid,” saying it was his right not to believe in any religion.
“Why do you have to talk about religion? If I choose not to believe in any god, what’s the fucking thing about it?” he said. “It’s the freedom to choose.”
“I believe in a universal being. There is somebody there more supreme than the rest of the gods of men,” he added. “With all the billions and trillions of stars, if no one is controlling all of that, we would have exploded.”
Duterte sparked controversy in the predominantly Catholic country on Friday, when he questioned God’s logic in the Biblical creation story of Adam and Eve.
“Adam ate (the fruit of knowledge), then malice was born. Who is this stupid God?” he said in a speech in his southern home city of Davao. “That son of a bitch is stupid if that’s the case.”
“You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work,” he added.
Duterte also questioned the rationale of original sin, noting, “That was your mother and father’s deed – you weren’t born yet, but now you have original sin. What kind of religion is that? I can’t accept it.”
Harry Roque, a presidential spokesman, urged the public to accept that Duterte tends to use strong language when he expresses his beliefs.
“That is the personal belief of the president,” he said. “We are free to believe in religion and we are also free not to believe in religion. The president has his personal spiritual beliefs.”
“We cannot fault the president if he has no sense of hypocrisy and we should accept that because even when he was just a candidate, he never hid that from us,” he added.
Duterte has in the past lambasted the Catholic Church in the Philippines, where more than 80 percent of the population practices the religion.
He has called priests out for allegations of corruption and sexual abuse, which he alleged he was a victim of when he was still a child in school in Davao City.
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