I BELIEVE in God for I had been raised God-fearing in a Catholic family. From generations then, Catholicism has run in the veins of my Kin. And this may well explain why since Kindergarten to elementary, high school toward college and graduate school, I had been in a sectarian Jesuit academic institution. With both forces at play -- family and school -- no doubt the Catholic faith has been reinforced to me like the Pavlovian conditioning or Skinners rewards and punishments.

As such, no doubt, I have known of prayers and doctrines that are of Catholic. I have memorized the different books of the bible, as well as the saints. I conform to Catholic traditions. I attend masses during Christmases, New Years, Holy Week and all other special masses aside from my birthday.

I have always been a conformist to the rituals of my Faith. And beyond dramaturgy or staged social interaction, I have always found the gospel and the bible insightful. I have always gleamed clarity to the lengthy homilies and litanies of the priest. I have always been moved by how their brief anecdotes capture the realities of daily living in the parallel world of good and evil.

But thats just it.

As I was growing up, I have seen the other side of the coin -- the abuses of some Catholic priests centuries ago with some of its remnants surviving the post-modern days. No one will argue in history classes that Spanish colonizers then "forced" their Western culture to our primitive ancestors under the banner of religion. If one closely examines history, was it not a social mechanism of control to use "garote" on Filipino heretics, who refuse to accept the Catholic faith. Most of the victims must have been our Muslim ancestors, thus, the division between some of the Catholics and Islam in the current era.

Likewise, if one examines the legitimacy then of kings, emperors and all the other monarchs, was it not a belief drenched and soaked in the fluidity of the notion that they were anointed by God and must be given the highest regard for they have been appointed to gain dominion over a certain land. Furthermore, who crowns these extensions of the divine? Was it not the popes from Rome?

One cannot help but think that to prevent questioning their legitimacy, religion is invoked to explain and justify.

As my mind sharpened, I began to be empiricist with my faith.

Am I to be blamed? I was trained to think scientifically and to be logical by the same Jesuit institution which conferred me my degree in nursing, although, they never made implicit to question Faith as it was beyond the realm of positivism.

Still, my destination toward agnosticism was furthered, as I entered the graduate school of the same Jesuit institution for the degree master of arts in sociology. This time, I have seen the fullest view of religion in the sociological and anthropologic context. Surrounded by the professors, whom I assumed shared the same thoughts with me on religion sociologists and anthropologists as they are; I have been condition to view religion as opium of the oppressed that functions to reduce anxiety.

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Agnostic Catholic