Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has been criticized over his comments on God in the past but that hasn't stopped him from sounding off again, this time declaring that if there is a God, there should not be any hell, war or poverty.

According to the Manila Bulletin, the controversial figure said in a speech in Cebu City on Tuesday that while he believes in God, he has his 'own concept of God.' 

The God he believes in, he said, 'controls the universe.' He mused, 'We will be sucked to several of those black holes. And yet, we have been here on Earth for 4.5 billion years. There has to be a God.' 

But he admitted to his audience, 'I don't know how He works.'

In his speech, he questioned why God would create hell and how God could exist when there is poverty and war in the world.

'If you are God, you don't create hell. If you are God, you don't create wars. If there is a God, then there is no poverty. If there is God, then nobody dies of hunger. If there is God, you are not refused burial services on Sundays,' he said.

Duterte, a former Catholic who claims he left the faith after being sexually abused by a priest when he was younger, has previously courted controversy for his comments on God.

When the Catholic Church criticized the brutality of his war on drugs, the Philippines president responded by calling God 'stupid.'

The comments appeared to have a knock-on effect on his approval ratings, which fell in July to their lowest since his election in 2016.

Aries Arugay, a political-science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told the Washington Post: 'It's one thing that Duterte attacks the church; it's another thing that he attacks God himself.

'The church's power and political influence might have been in decline; however, that doesn't mean that Filipinos are not religious and spiritual anymore.'