In light of his controversial comments, President Duterte said that if there’s “one single witness” who can prove God’s existence by, for instance, showing him a picture or a selfie together, he’d immediately resign from office.
“If there is anyone of you there, the noisy ones, who would say that you have been to heaven, talked to God, saw him personally… I will step down from the presidency tonight. I just need one witness who will say, ‘Mayor, those fools at the Church ordered me to go to heaven and talk to God. God really exists. We have a picture together and I brought a selfie’,” he said.
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Duterte sparked public outrage when he repeatedly questioned key tenets of Catholicism, including the concept of original sin, complaining that it resulted in all the faithful falling from divine grace due to Adam and Eve’s wrongdoing.
“Who is this stupid God? This son of a b*tch is then really stupid. You were not involved but now you’re stained with an original sin… What kind of religion is that? That’s what I can’t accept, very stupid proposition,” he said.
During his June 22 speech at the opening of a science and technology event in southern Davao city, he also questioned God’s logic, who banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden after they couldn’t resist the temptation to eat of the “forbidden fruit.”
“So where is the logic of God there? You created something perfect and then you think of an event that would tempt and destroy the quality of your work,” he said at the opening of a science and technology event in Davao city.
READ MORE: Philippine’s Duterte Says Catholic God is ‘Stupid,’ 76 Million Faithful Disagree
His highly criticized remarks, however, seem to contradict his earlier comments: in 2016, he revealed he had promised God to refrain from using vulgar language once he returned home from a trip to Japan.
“I heard a voice telling me to stop swearing or the plane will crash in mid-air, and so I promised to stop,” he told reporters back then.
The Philippines is considered to be the only Catholic-majority nation in Asia – over 86 percent of the population (some 76 million people) practice Roman Catholicism.