Talk:bathala

Biased Christian propaganda

Quit spreading false information!! This site is supposed to be secular i dont know why youre pushing this pro Christian agenda and slandering a native deity by labelling it a "false god", we live in a secular society dont be biased Damnbrozzer (talk) 06:53, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

You're deleting a sense just because you don't agree with it. This is not how this site works. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:13, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

@Damnbrozzer: yes, some people in the pre-colonial Philippines worshiped a Supreme Being named Bathala (note the capitalization), but the situation was very complex, with various native deities competing with Islam and various deities of Indian religion in different places and different times. And animistic beliefs don't necessarily involve what you or I would describe as deities.

More importantly, the people who speak the modern languages of the Philippines are mostly Christians and Muslims who no doubt use this word for Christian and Muslim concepts that can't be neatly equated with pre-colonial ones. I'm not familiar with the actual usage of this term, but I can see how it might be used to refer to "false gods" in biblical contexts- would you call Ba'al a Filipino native deity? What about Asherah? We would need to know what the term means in actual usage before even considering changes like what you attempted.

Wiktionary is a descriptive dictionary based on usage. Our goal is to describe what terms mean when people use them, not to superimpose our idealized and sanitized views. The fact is that people believe a huge diversity of different things, out of which there's something for just about anyone to like, dislike or outright despise. Some of them are clearly wrong. Some are harmful or even dangerous. Wiktionary is not censored, so we can't just stick to those we agree with. Chuck Entz (talk) 16:47, 27 August 2022 (UTC)