God Debate Letter to Newsweek

April 10, 2007 Newsweek Letter to the Editor Gentlemen: In the God Debate (April 9 issue) between Sam Harris and Rick Warren, this much I should say: It does not bother me to realize that for millions of years before my birth, I was a nothing. Why then should it bother me to realize also that after my death, I will again be a nothing? In the meantime, just like everyone else, I too was born an atheist. Indeed, no child is born a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or what-not. That a creator made me in his own image is no burden to me. It’s the problem of the creator. After all, we are all born on a planet so tiny in that one million planets the size of earth can fit inside the sun. More than a trillion of such suns otherwise called “stars” comprise the cosmos. If the creator is also like a speck of dust floating aimlessly in space – what’s all this fear and guilt about behind man’s silly religious beliefs? If there be a purpose to life, that purpose must be those of the atheists – to leave this world a little better than we found it, or there is little reason for our having lived. Sincerely, Poch Suzara, San Lorenzo Village, Makati city, Philippines Cellphone: 09165724788

Philippine College Education

College education in the Philippines is about having two goals in life: 1) to be prepared to go abroad to earn your living. 2) to be prepared to go to heaven after death to earn your believing.
In the meantime, the Filipinos are the poorest people on this earth. Imagine for centuries us Filipinos impoverished with our brains washed with original sin and our hearts dry-cleaned with Christianity. Poch Suzara

Face Death

I am asked if I can face death without faith? What a silly question. After death, we have no more eyes to see, no more ears to hear, no more nose to smell, no more skin to feel, no more palete to taste. The better question to ask: what conceivable value has your faith after you are already faceless and indeed, - lifeless? Poch Suzara

Sam Harris

Sam Harris wrote a most interesting piece on the 10 myths and the 10 truths about Atheism. If you wish to read it, I’d be happy to email to you.
In the meantime, I have discovered the 11th truth about Atheism: - No one ever became filthy rich for believing that God is bad. Yet, millions upon millions upon millions of people are filthy poor for believing that God is good. Poch Suzara

World Insanity

During the Second World War, 1941–l946 American factories built 94,000 planes and launched 30 aircraft carriers. The question is not what happened to those planes and aircraft carriers after the war ended, but what happened to those factories, including those producing other weapons of destruction for battle in the field and in sea and in the air?
Notice in the meantime civil war has been the most frequent kind of war since 1946: something like two-thirds of all postwar conflicts have been within, rather than between, - states. And weapons used in these conflicts are “Made in America.” Not to mention American troops involved also taking them further and further away from home, though presumably in the cause of “homeland security.”
Indeed, more and more American kids are shipped overseas to fight terrorism or more specifically to drain the breeding grounds of anti- Americanism.
It seems to me clear that if America was truly the land of the free and the home of the brave, we Americans should bring the world together in putting an end to the worst of Anglo-American commercialism: the production of weapons of mass destruction to defend and protect nothing but capitalism. Poch Suzara

Scientist and Theologian

Better a scientist dissatisfied than a theologian satisfied. A scientist dissatisfied never threatens any one with eternal damnation if you do not believe in his tentative conclusions. Indeed, in science, far more questions are entertained than answers retained. Science is a never-ending search of the truth. Science is honest enough to admit openly and publicly that it understands only a little bit more than 1 per cent of the nature of reality
In theology, however, there are only answers. No questions are allowed. Moreover, there is also the threat of eternal damnation if you do not believe in the theological dogmatic claims. Theology is the study of the unknown for the sake of having faith in the unknowable. Who benefits in this religious mess? The silly theologians, who else, specially as they act in their respective churches, schools, colleges, and universities Poch Suzara

Women of the Philippines

Our women are still on their knees before the alter of mediocrity. They are always frightened to believe that someone died on the cross for their Original Sin. Indeed, the majority of our women prefer delusion to truth. It sooths. It is easy to grasp. They embrace faith; not reason. Faith, after all, is nothing but the free will to lazily avoid discovering what is true. Sadly, the intellectual capacity of our women to seek the truth has been damaged by stupid religious beliefs and values as taught to them in our schools, colleges, and universities. Poch Suzara

War as Big Business

As the number one supplier of arms in the world, the US government abhors the idea of peace agreement between countries at war. The US government loves to hear of conflicts or killings such as those between the Christians and the Muslims in the Philippines. Such evils create profitable opportunities to sell weapons to both parties at war within or even between, states. Such terrors keep the existence of US industrial-military-university complex on high gear. The war against terrorism is nothing but a business concoction of American capitalism. Decades ago, it was known as the war against communism. It was all a joke on the global scale. Today, the war against terrorism is another joke on the global scale. All thanks to the wealth, power, and glory of American Capitalism. Poch Suzara

Bertrand Russell

Russell’s intellectual life was devoted to three main quests. He sought impersonal objective truth successively in Religion, Mathematics, and Science.
I ask: can you name another scientist who lived to be ninety eight years, and devoted seventy years of it in the search of truth in Religion, Mathematics, and Science? In his remaining years, however, involved in global affairs, Bertrand Russell – the philosopher-humanist – worked very hard for peace on earth and goodwill to all governments, especially those headed by homicidal maniacs like the US government under the power of the industrial-military-university complex. Poch Suzara

Created Equal

If all men were created equal in the sight of God, what was God’s purpose in giving men free will? Especially to white men to wage war against non-white men in order to prove white men are free, rich, intelligent, and God-loving; while non-white men are slaves, poor, stupid and God-loving too. Poch Suzara

Rich in Spirit

Bless not those poor in spirit for they shall inherit lies. Bless instead those rich in spirit for they shall inherit the truth. Poch Suzara

Diminishing Faith

Nick fatool writes in the Manila Standard Today: “Faith is something that is sadly diminishing among us.” Sir, a man of faith is like a drunkard who clings to a lamppost for support, not illumination. Moreover, faith is never wanting to know what is true. Do you speak of faith that 2 plus 2 equals 4? Or that the earth is round? No, you only speak of faith when you do not know and hope to remain ignorant by letting others in authority do the thinking for you. This is wrong and childish . Faith in our childish religion has kept us spiritually stagnant as a people and morally malignant as a nation. In this 21st century, isn’t time for Filipinos to ask: where is our national health as a people and where is our national wealth as a nation under the power of Christian faith during these past 500 years in the Philippines? Sir, Christianity thrives not on love, but on guilt? Guilt, not love, is the fundamental emotion that Christianity seeks to induce – and this is symptomatic of a viciousness in Christianity that few Filipinos care to acknowledge. For all of its alleged concern for the “poor in spirit,” Christianity has only done its best to perpetuate spiritual poverty and intellectual stagnancy in the Philippines. Indeed, to be moral, according to Jesus, we must shackle the beauty of reason. We must force ourselves to believe that which we cannot understand. In the name of morality, we must always suppress doubts. We must never subject religious beliefs to critical examination. Less criticism leads to more faith – and faith – Jesus declares is the hallmark of virtue. Indeed, “unless you turn and become like little children, you will never the enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matt. 18:3. Children, after all will believe anything; even the promises of the mediocre politicians running for government office. In the final analysis, Christianity must first destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy joys of the heart and happiness of the mind before it can introduce salvation. Thus, we are neither growing as a people nor developing as a nation. We are not even reasonable in the race to achieve higher civilization; only faithful in the rat-race for eternal salvation. I say: to hell with faith in that biblical corruption called faith in the Original Sin. After all, none of us ever originated anything in this world to begin with. Poch Suzara

White-American Gimcrackery

On CBS ‘60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney remarked: “My father and grandfather didn't die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours.” No kidding? Any native Indian or native Mexican can cry about it with more truthfulness: “My ancestors died in vain for you to leave the countries you were born in to come over and claim it as your own by naming it the United States of America. And to think in America, there is this grand claim inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” At any given day, (7) seven million white American citizens cannot find decent employment in America. It is all about a lot of white American gimcrackery! I should know. As a poor immigrant, I lived and worked in America for some 17 years. My job there was about working hard to help my white rich employer become filthy richer. Oh yes, in America there’s the beauty of individualism; but what is, however, far more important is capitalism. US Capitalism now owns and controls more than 60 per cent of the world’s natural resources. Moreover, as the only super power, American capitalism has but one single goal: to rule the world unchallenged with its military fire power. My dear Andy Rooney, may I suggest you read history books written by a rare and honest American historian - Howard Zinn. It is truthful historians like Howard Zinn that prevents me from totally losing hope with America and its decent future. In his PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, he writes: - “We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources we coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to us in the form of terrorism… Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children … In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us then? Who would hate us then? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.” Poch Suzara

Email Response

I get messages such as "Please do not include me in your e-mailing list. My mind is not that great to comprehend your message."
My response: Ok will delete your name in my address book. I understand your predicament. You must be a college educated individual. I feel so sorry for you.
Yours sincerely, Poch Suzara, Chairman, High School Dropout Association of the Philippines.

Religious Morons

Religious morons will tell about the wonderful word of God written in the bible. But never will they ever inspire you to read the bible thoroughly and properly. You can only read the bible under ecclesiastical guidance. You are not allowed to interpret bible contents. In other words, the bible was not written for the inspired readers, but only written by inspired authors of God. Well, I read the bible and studied it for some 20 years. After I threw the bible out the window, I began to be happy as a thinking man. Also, I was able to recapture the lost reality of my birth called “atheism.” Just like you my dear reader, I was also born an atheist. Indeed, no one is born a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew, or what-not. We are all born devoid of conscience and therefore arrived into this God-forsaken world as unbelievers of the faith. Poch Suzara

The Filipino Challenge

The greatest challenge we Filipinos must face in this 21st century is to stand up as a people against our childish religious beliefs that have not ceased to inspire fear and ignorance, poverty and suffering, and backwardness in this Asia’s only Christian country.
We need public discourse about the life and times of our greatest hero – Jose Rizal and his courage not only at love of country, but especially about his critical thinking and intellectual honesty. Nothing stands in the way of this progress more than the respect we give to our Christian religion. Indeed, the same religion that has caused so much troubles and problems in the Western world ever since its Founder – the Son of God Jesus – crucified on the cross, cried out: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” Poch Suzara

Thought and Love

One of the horrors we first learned in school was how to be habitually thoughtless. We all wished to win the love of our teachers in school, and so we showed our teachers how happy we got to be thoughtlessly believing as we hated higher learning especially via hating questioning with deeper thinking. In the meantime, the greatest creation we can enjoy in life is not love but the power of thought; for, devoid of thought, the power of love cannot exist. Poch Suzara

Rizal's Death-defying Poem

In his death-defying Ultimo Adios poem, Rizal said: I go where faith does not kill, and God alone reigns over all.”
millions of Filipinos really believe that Rizal was such a mediocre thinker in that he was referring to the God of the Christians or the God of the Muslims or the God of the Jews or the God of the Lilliputians. Indeed, these assorted believers of Gods have not ceased cutting each other’s throats because they cannot even agree as to whether God is a he, a she, or an it?
Rizal was obviously referring to the God of the thinkers, philosophers, and scientists. The God otherwise known as the simple God of Reason. Poch Suzara

Poor Jose Rizal

I am asked to give three reasons why Jose Rizal should NOT be the national hero of the Philippines. I can only give one reason: Rizal died for thinking men and thoughtful women and for children to be educated with the values in truthfulness. Since we continue to be a nation of dumbstruck certified morons, Rizal does not deserved to be our national hero. Our real heroes should be the Knights of Rizal and other Rizalist groups who are all so proud and happy spreading more spiritual poverty, moral bankruptcy, political mediocrity, social insanity, and religious stupidity, not to mention science inefficiency as the great values and beliefs that keep the Filipino as the Sick Man of Asia who gives not a hoot about the habit of serious reading of books. Especially books on the philosophy of the sciences.
And to think our Asian neighbors are today enjoying not only the higher standard of living, but more so the higher standard of thinking only because they have been substantiating quite seriously what Jose Rizal has been saying more than a hundred years ago: -“If our country is ever to be free, it will not be through vice and crime, it will not be so by corrupting its sons, by deceiving some and bribing others, and it will be through education and industry.”
Poor Jose Rizal, he never knew that our schools, colleges, and universities will be under the manipulative control of his deadly enemy – stupid religion keeping the Philippines ever poor and ever backward. Poch Suzara

American Students and Apes

The push to teach “intelligent design” in America raises the question: “Does God have a place in American science classrooms?
The fundamentalists in charge of education in America apparently do not believe that God is omni-present. That God, somehow, during science classrooms is only omni-absent.
In the bible, God admits: “For dust art thou and unto dust shalt thou return.” Well, if God made man in his own image and likeness, it follows that God must be made of dust too. What purpose is there to put God in American science classrooms if God, like dust, were already omni-present everywhere?
For my part, I have more respect for the apes. They were designed not only intelligently, but more so gracefully. Look how the apes live in peace on earth and goodwill to all apes. Apes do not terrorize each other in God’s name. Apes do not go to war to kill other apes in order to establish freedom and democracy!
I envy the life of the apes. They have no system for eternal salvation. They have no church, no synagogue, and no mosque to inspire the faithful to become selfish, greedy, stupid, and insane. Apes do not prove themselves worthy of divine rewards by cutting each other’s throat so that they can go to paradise to be with a peaceful, kind, and ever loving God. Poch Suzara

Salvation via Corruption

There is economic growth in the Philippines for as long as there is corruption. Economic growth not only for the corrupt rich getting richer, but also for the corrupt poor getting poorer. Corruption as the basis of Filipino culture has more to do with Christianity. Indeed, why bother with the creation of a sane and a healthy society? Or respecting law and order? Or why bother with growth as a people and maturity as a nation? After all, for the sake of salvation, there is always the forgiveness of sin and the forgiveness of crime available at any time from God via the Christian priesthood industry. In the meantime, in this only Christian country in Asia, we Filipinos still faithfully believe what Jesus preached centuries ago: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” In other words: Do not think like men and women. Just believe like boys and girls do believe. Poch Suzara Atheist# Google# Twitter# Facebook#

Jesus as God and God as Jesus

In John, Jesus speaks frequently of his extraordinary status in life and speaks of himself in the most exalted language: I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 8:12 A AM THE BREAD OF LIFE. 6:35 I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 11:25 I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. 14:6 I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE. 10:30 WHOEVER HAS SEEN ME HAS SEEN MY FATHER. 14:6 NO ONE COME TO GOD EXCEPT THROUGH ME. 16:6 And yet, crucified on the cross, with more exalted language, Jesus cried out: “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?” Now how could a God possibly forsake Himself? And to think this is the same Jesus who, as a member of the holy trinity, pleaded: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Perhaps, Jesus was referring to those sinners who did not know what they were doing before the great flood and indeed, especially, even after the great Flood? In the meantime, I ask: why should God tell parents how to raise children when he himself had drowned his own children? In the last analysis, I am told that 98 per cent of Filipinos believe, love, and worship God; and only 2 per cent do not as they are the atheists - I am most proud that I am among those in the 2 per cent as I am not only deadly spiritually, but also lively intellectually as an atheist. Poch Suzara, Google# Facebook# Twitter#

God Found Me Experience

The bible relates an account of one man's "God found me" experience. It is recorded in the Hebrew Old Testament. His name is Elisha. The bible readers are inspired to believe Elisha probably experienced this unique encounter with God around 3,000 years ago.
“Come out," He called, "and stand on the mountain before the Lord." And lo, the Lord passed by.
There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind - an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake - fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire - 'kol demamah dakkah,' the sound of delicate silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. - 1 Kings 19:11-13 ***
Millions of people believe this fairy tale as something actual or factual. These are the same dumbstruck bible believers who are just as impressed with Jesus in the New Testament. Indeed, Jesus changed water into wine, cured leprosy, made the blind see, the deft hear, the dumb speak. Jesus raised the dead back to life.
It would have been far more miraculous, however, had Jesus cured diseases not in retail, but wholesale. How? By simply making not diseases, but health contagious. In this way, Filipinos would waste no more time waiting for the Second Coming of Christ to remedy the diseases that make for our sick society.
But then again, what could be more miraculous than curing not bodily diseases, but infirmities of the soul – that is to say curing men of their vices and their depravities, which are worse than germs, bacteria, and viruses living inside the human body created in the image and likeness of God? Well, this is Jesus – the Son of God? Now what about His God the Father himself? He was kind enough to send an angel to console and to assist a young Virgin Mary, while He left, and still leaves every day millions of mothers and children to languish and to starve to death.
As for me, I thank both God and the devil together that I am an Atheist. Indeed, a proud and a happy Atheist till the day I turn into dust. As a matter of fact, I would rather end up as a pile of dust enjoying infinity than having to meet in the "next world" either deviltry or divinity. Poch Suzara

The Stupid Devil

Was The devil really that stupid? The bible account clearly proves it. Please see Matthew chapter 4 verse 8-10. “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.“And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou will fall down and worship me.” “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Of course, Jesus in this episode, was not only childish himself, but also gullible. He miserably failed to remind the stupid devil that he had no legal title or rights of ownership to assets and properties and kingdoms of this world to offer to anyone. Jesus could have simply told the stupid devil that “Hey, you poor sap! What are you talking about? My father, the creator of heaven and hell, is the rightful owner of the kingdoms you are offering me!” Really, if we were to read bible contents inspired with critical analysis, we need not end up being bible believers stuck with mental paralysis. To begin with, why would God inspire only authors to write the bible? The more intelligent thing to do is to inspire the best part of any book - the millions of readers? In this way, we need worship divinity by hating humanity which in fact characterizes the entire history of Christianity. But then again, I could be dead wrong. The devil could be the smartest creature God ever created. After all, ours is not only the devil of religion, but also the religion of the devil! Poch Suzara

More on the Stupid Devil

Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr wrote “The devil continues to dangle every kind of temptation before us.” Manila Standard Today 2-27-2007
And to think that millions upon millions of poverty stricken Filipinos have never ceased praying daily to God to “give us this day our daily bread,” and to “lead us not into temptation.” Poch Suzara

Destiny

There is no such thing as destiny. There are only choices. For my part, I choose to live the good life - one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. After which, after death, I have no choice but to be where I was millions of years before I was born – a place called nothing. Just like you, my dear reader, and just like everyone else. We may fear dying, but death itself should not be feared because death is an absolute nothing and it is utterly foolish to live in fear of nothing. Poch Suzara

Newspaper Banner

The Philippine Star has this front page banner: THE TRUTH SHALL PREVAIL. No doubt, the truth according to the Catholic teachings. All the owners and stockholders and members of the Board of Directors and employees of the Philippine Star are all devout Catholics.
In the meantime, the struggle for press freedom in this God-forsaken country is a sick national mockery. Journalism is not answerable to the truth but answerable only to God via the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines. Indeed, in this 21st century, both readers and writers in this God-forsaken country still believe in the existence of eternal hell-fire as taught to us to believe when we were little boys and girls in school. Poch Suzara

Best Seller

Best sellers come and go, but the Word of God abides forever. Philippine Star January 29, 2007.
Obviously, the religious buffoon who wrote those words could not fathom two essential issues related to what he wrote. In the first place, in this country, nobody gives a damn about best sellers since we are not a nation of mature readers.
n the second place, if the Word of God written in the bible made more sense rather than nonsense, made more construction rather than destruction, indeed, made more social sanity rather than religious insanity - what need is there for best sellers? Poch Suzara

Erich Fromm

In his anatomy of Human Destruction, Erich Fromm wrote: “Man is the only animal who not only knows objects but who knows that he knows. Man is the only animal who has not only instrumental intelligence, but reason, the capacity to use his thinking to understand objectively – i.e., to know the nature of things as they are in themselves, and not only as means for his satisfaction. Gifted with self-awareness and reason, man is aware of himself as a being separate from nature and from others; he is aware of his powerlessness, of his ignorance; he is aware of his end: death.”
As a matter of fact, no other living creature on this earth except man who has the temerity to believe that God created man in his own image and likeness. Poch Suzara

College Students

College students, especially those enrolled in Catholic colleges are not taught to make things happen. Instead, they learn only to wait for things to happen. Especially to wait for the Second Coming of Christ – the Redeemer who will remedy all the ills of our sick society.
What’s sad, however, among my friends, relatives, and associates who are all college graduates is that they all love their so-called education, but hardly love the Philippines – their nation. Well, to begin with, they all were taught to believe in the better life to come after death in heaven. Such a sacred belief has certainly devalued human life in this country. Poch Suzara

Money

Aside from that love for divinity, most people love even more money. They have been taught to believe that money is not everything. It is the only thing. No, they would not bother looking for valuable answers to precious questions. Clearly, they haven’t got intelligent questions to ask. They are happy with the stupid answers. Inside or outside their empty head nothing intellectual bothers them. But they will do anything for money. Steal it. Swindle it. Grab it. Get married for it. Lie for it. Kill for it. Even inherit it. What matters is having lots of money. It does not matter where the money would come from. What matters is that they have must it. Tons of it. The crime or the sin involved along the way does not matter either. After all, what matters in the end is the forgiveness of human stupidity by a great and wonderful divinity. Poch Suzara

Born Naked

Just like every one else, I was born naked. But not like everyone else, I have every wish to leave this world one day stark naked. Indeed, if it is true that I will meet my creator after death, it would truly be exciting to meet a naked creator. God created man in his own image and likeness, didn’t he? Poch Suzara

Sex

To bring forth children into this world of hate and poverty is the greatest of crime. Men and women have yet to learn how to have sex for fun since only very few couples, married or un-married, have the ability or the talent to raise children with loved and affection. Children that are wanted, needed, and loved are never a disgrace; on the contrary, they always grow up to be a grace to the human race. If peace on earth and goodwill to all men will ever become a terrestrial reality one day, it will be due to all children being born welcomed not only by both mothers and fathers, but by a sane society in general.
To me, in my simplicity, mothers and children are the most precious people in this world. I should therefore be very careful and most concerned in how such precious children and precious mothers are being multiplied and replenished on this earth. Poch Suzara

Religion and Science

Science at its best is the rebellion against divinity. It is the exact opposite of religion – at its best it is the rebellion against deviltry. Indeed, in any human enterprise, science produces the greatest and the most original burst of creativity. Religion encourages only stupidity in facing reality as it promotes local as well as global insanity. Poch Suzara

War

War is not only a clash of values and cultures; it is not only a political decision; it is not only nature’s way of blasting stupid men out of their stupid existence. War is mostly about the owners, stockholders, and the traders of the arms industry who make tons of money. They pray daily to God to inspire nations to hate and to kill each other, especially in His name on this earth and for His glory in heaven. Poch Suzara

Eternal Salvation

Nothing could be more truthful than the belief that the dead man lives no more. Nothing could be more untruthful than the belief that the dead man is still alive.
In the meantime, the belief that we will be happy or unhappy after death of the body, is to pretend that we will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without skin. Indeed, the dogma of immortality is purely based upon the condition of a dead man who refuses to believe that he is already dead. Poch Suzara

Born Ignorant

We are all born ignorant, not stupid; we are made stupid by education. And to think that God gifted man with a free will in order that we may be happy with our stupid education down here. Indeed, to the mediocre, mediocrity is a form of happiness; especially for the sake of anything out there. Poch Suzara

Psuedo-Atheist

There is no such animal as a psuedo-atheist. Either you are a genuine atheist or just a religious clown pretending to be one. Once, however, you have seen the bright light of atheism, it is ridiculous to go back to embrace darkness called theism. Otherwise, if you do, you are either a “psycho-ceramic” in the scientific term; or, in the layman’s term, - a “crackpot.” Indeed, a troubled brain believes everything. It examines nothing. We atheists are fully aware that religion buys its benefits at too dear a price: - the mindless surrender of the self via the mutilation of the intellect. Atheism is all about the power of reason. It is also about the bed-rock of sanity in a world gone mad. We atheists do not want to believe. We want to know. And we know that the search for the truth is man’s most noble profession. Prove to us that God exists and we will prove to you that God is neither a Catholic, nor a Muslim, nor a Jew, or what have you. Intelligent thinking is far more valuable to an atheist than infantile believing. In the history of our world, no atheist has ever waged violence and war against other atheists for not believing in God. In the ultimate analysis, we do not hate life nor do we live in fear of death. We have no fear of what is known neither do we tremble before what is unknown. The human race is alone and insecure and doomed. Let us meet these facts with cheerfulness, courage, love, beauty, and the joys in life. Let us carry on the pursuit of our ideals for human happiness in the here and the now. We atheists would rather stand and face death with intellectual sobriety. We do not care to meet death on our bended knees drunk with ecclesiastical mendacity. Poch Suzara

I love and respect Scientists

In the conflict between the theology against science, I am on the side of the scientists. Never will I ever be on the side of the theologians. Especially the kind I had as my teachers in De La Salle University. They always threatened me with “believe this, because if you don’t, God will punish you.” I was therefore always punished in class because far more than I wanted to believe, I wanted to know and understand. In class, I always asked questions. I always wanted to formulate for myself better kinds of questions. Indeed, for me, hard intelligent thinking is more fascinating than just easy stupid believing.
With Jose Rizal, however, outside academic wall, it was, for him, a deadly experience. Theologians threatened him with: “Retract the truthful things you wrote about us in your NOLI and FILI books or we will have you executed in public by a firing squad.” Rizal virtually replied: “go fly a kite!” The theologians with authority and power over the civil government had Rizal put to death. In order to intimidate not only the brave thinkers in the minority, but also throughout the land – to frighten to death the cowardly and faithful believers in the majority.
And to think that today college educated men and women in this country would rather believe the theologians than be on the side of a mature and a courageous scientist like a Jose Rizal. He was, indeed, the first Filipino scientist who tried to generate the revolution of the mind to get the Filipino growing with self-respect as a people and to get the Philippines developing with dignity as a nation.
I ask: is it any wonder that in this 21st century we are known as the Sick Man of Asia? We live in a poor and backward country. Indeed, what have we Filipinos got to show for ourselves except, as a people, we can only be proud of the failures of our social and political and religious values under the great success of Christianity in the Philippines? Poch Suzara

Our Asian Neighbors

The secret why other Asian neighbors are economically ahead of the Philippines is no secret at all. They have been substantiating to the fullest extent possible what Jose Rizal, the nation’s chief hero, was precisely saying to fellow-Filipinos more than a hundred years ago: “Wake up! Embrace science! Utilize the scientific way of thinking! Start to emulate the freethinkers! Knowledge is the heritage of mankind, but only the courageous inherit it! We can only serve our country by telling the naked truth. However bitter it may be!”
Indeed, in this center of Catholicism in Asia, we would rather have more faith in the power of prayer and theology than seek the power of knowledge, science, and technology. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Retraction

If Rizal had retracted from his attacks against the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church, and if, according to his Catholic biographer Leon M. Guerrero, Rizal had gone to confession four times, heard mass in his death-cell, and received holy communion before he was executed, then Rizal should be branded a traitor to all freedom fighters. He deserved not to be respected or admired as a hero. He should, instead, be canonized a saint. But then again, if Rizal had retracted, why then should the church feel dedicated to get Rizal’s true character expunged out of the Filipino psyche? The truth of the matter was that the Church did everything possible to counteract Rizal’s honest-to-goodness scientific temper of mind. Indeed, in his Noli and Fili, Rizal exposed the Philippine damaged culture caused by organized superstition otherwise popularly known as Christianity. Thus, the story of his retraction was nothing more than a theological concoction to sanitize, if not to neutralize considerably the volume of Rizal’s humanistic and scientific messages to his people - the Filipino people. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Biographer

Rizal’s biographer – Leon M. Guerrero, clearly notes that Rizal returned to the Church of his youth in extremes of self-abasement, frenziedly in childlike fashion, spending the remaining hours of earning indulgences from purgatory by confessing four times, and obsequiously attending to Fr. Balaguer and Villaclara’s wishes. In brief, according to this biographer, Rizal died as a timid coward. Indeed, according to this official government commissioned biographer, our national hero in the end turned out to be a turncoat.
But then again, four years before his death, Rizal in 1882 wrote a letter to Gregorio Aglipay: “In all parts of the world where an honest man tries to achieve reform he is crucified on Golgotha. Christ had nowhere to lay his head, when Pilate governed. It is probable that I will be executed – then they will try to bring along my moral death by covering my memory with slander.” Poch Suzara

The Shame in Rizal’s Life

The shame in Rizal’s life is not the retraction of his deeds, writings or personal conduct. Such retraction was only a frailocratic figment of the impoverished priestly imagination. The real shame comes from the Filipino historians and other Catholic writers who believed not in Rizal’s power of intellect, but believed instead his enemies – the friars – who invented sacred lies about this great man. Via the control of the system of education in the Philippines, these friars have and still are blocking, expediently and consistently, Rizal’s qualified and legitimate entry into the world stage as one of mankind’s greatest thinkers. But then again how can the world learn of Rizal’s intellectual power if the Filipinos themselves know so little of the health and wealth of this great 19th century Filipino scientists and thinker and writer? Poch Suzara

Rizal of Ateneo and UST

Rizal was a product of Ateneo and Santo Thomas; yet both Catholic universities continue to assassinate the character of this great humanist thinker. Rizal had learned on his own initiative, outside academic wall, how to think deeply and how to embrace intellectual honesty valiantly. Indeed, to this day, all Catholic universities still teach that during his last day on this earth, just hours before he was executed for his principles, noble values, and rational beliefs, Rizal retracted and went back to embrace the Catholic Church and its teachings. What brazen lies! It is no less than a tall story. A cheap shot at a great man. Otherwise, after his death, he should have been given a Catholic burial and his bodily remains not just put inside an old sack and thrown in the Paco Cemetery in the corner where heretics are stashed away like dead animals. Poch Suzara

Rizal and Education

Jose Rizal pointed out that evolution in education, ( not reliance on foreign investments ), is the best hope of the nation to enjoy the highest standard of living and thinking. The system of education for the Filipino must be based on science and technology, and not on prayers and theology. Indeed, according to Rizal, a free nation can rise no higher than the standard of beliefs and values set in its schools, colleges, and universities. In there hope for the Philippines? Yes, there is! But first its system of education must be radically revamped. No more silly prayers to support a stupid theology. Only more science and more technology via more scientific method of thinking. Poch Suzara

Rizal – the Humanist

Rizal struggled not only against Spanish authority, but against superstition. He fought not in the battlefield, but in the minds of men and in the hearts of women. Rizal was Asia’s first scientific-humanist thinker put to death a century ago by musketry as imposed by theocracy. The same Catholic theocracy today that is keeping the Filipino youth via education to live in guilt and to fear new and fresh ideas; indeed, to keep away from the free market of ideas, and to hate, at the same time, the freethinkers, especially the books written by freethinkers. “Blotting out their brains,” Rizal wrote, “in faith, prayers, masses, novenas, superimposed these onto native superstition.” Poch Suzara

A century after Rizal’s Death

After a hundred years, how influential has Jose Rizal been on the Filipino as a people? Millions today would readily give credence by listening to the words of a Mike Velarde of El Shaddai preaching pastoral nonsense derived from the bible – a book written not by Filipinos but by foreigners. Only a handful of scholars would care to read and understand the real Rizal and carry out his principles and ideals for the achievement of pride, dignity, intellectual and scientific honesty for the Filipino as a nation. And to think, the Jews, the Chosen People of God, never considered the bible as a holy book at any time in their history. In fact, the Jews live in a Jewish State. They do not live in a Christian country – the land where Jesus Christ was presumably born. Poch Suzara

Rizal and Ninoy Aquino

Ninoy Aquino said: “The Filipino is worth dying for.” Well, Ninoy is a hero today. Filipinos killed him. Imagine Jose Rizal having said too: “The Catholics are worth dying for.” Rizal today would be a saint. The Catholics had him killed. And this is exactly how sick we all are today as the Sick Man of Asia. Thanks to Filipino catholic theologians, like Father Jose S. Arcilla, S.J., and his gang who have not ceased writing brazen lies about Jose Rizal’s soul saved in heaven. What a crock of religious lies generating hypocrisy! Poch Suzara

Rizal – a great Thinker

Rizal, indeed, was a great thinker. He clearly saw in his day what we vaguely see around us today: religion and diseases flourishing hand in hand under ignorance, filth, hate, and poverty. What irked the friars against Rizal was his refusal to continue to believe in Christianity; for, he learned to be on the side of humanity. For my part, if there’s life after death, it’s great thinkers like Rizal that I should wish to be with. Otherwise, if I will just find myself in the company of Filipino theologians, or among the Opus Dei gang – the kind of people who had Rizal put to death, please Lord spare me the sacred horror. I would rather be forever in hell. Poch Suzara

The Spanish Friars

The Spanish Catholic friars arrived in the Philippines bringing with them the holy bible and Christianity. They stole our land. Crushed our sense of human dignity and self-respect. And now via the schools, colleges, and universities that they own and control, the Catholic Church teaches us to be always grateful to the Lord for having saved us. In the meantime, if the Spanish friars had only introduced the concept of humanism instead of establishing in the Philippines religious barbarism and other forms of supernaturalism, Filipino priests like Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora need not have been garroted to death for wanting reforms within the Catholic Church in their time. Moreover, great thinkers like Jose Rizal need not have been arrested, incarcerated, and executed by Catholic firing squad for writing the NOLI and FILI - 2 books that could have brought enlightenment to the Filipino minds and hearts to earn national pride as a people and Asian dignity as a nation. Poch Suzara

Lies about Rizal

Rizal never said or wrote: “It was my pride that ruined me.” Those words were put into the mouth of Rizal by his official prize-winning biographer Leon Maria Guerrero who believed, as a Catholic, the Rizal retraction story as concocted by the sciolistic friars. Moreover, Rizal never “got rid of his political appetite, moral perplexities, and intellectual pride.” On the contrary, Rizal chose to die proudly. After the superstitious friars stripped him of his dignity, it was no longer possible for Rizal to go on living as a decent man and as a thinking Filipino. Poch Suzara

Rizal ’s Killers

What kind of men needed to see Rizal dead, discarded and forgotten? Were they men of reason, logic, science or philosophy? Were they avid readers, critical thinkers, or scientific investigators? Were they men at home with civilized humanity? No! On the contrary, Rizal’s enemies were the friends of blind faith: - the superstitious primitives, the sanctimonious hypocrites, and those indeed who were selfish, greedy, corrupt, stupid, and insane. Rizal’s enemies of a hundred years ago, are still the same enemies we have today. They are the ones insisting that it makes no difference whether Rizal retracted from his religious, political and philosophical principles or not. What a silly conclusion to bestow upon the greatest of Filipino seminal thinker who died for the liberation of the Filipino mind and heart, and indeed, for all mankind. Shame on you cowards - the so-called “Knights of Rizal.” Poch Suzara

What is a Great Filipino

A great Filipino is one who has had the intellect and the courage to put more sense where the theologians and the politicians in cahoots together have put only nonsense making for our sick society. In the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, only one rare Filipino had the courage and the intellect to stand up against great odds to be a great Filipino - Jose Rizal - a truth-seeker, a scientist, and a humanist. To keep the Filipino frightened of the truth, however, Rizal was publicly executed by those in church authority - the ecclesiastical liars gifted with a free will from divinity. Poch Suzara

Spanish Catholic Friars

In his official biography of Rizal, Guerrero disclosed that the Spanish Catholic friars made a firm offer to Rizal the amount of 100,000 pesos and a chair to teach philosophy at the University of Santo Thomas on the condition that he signed the retraction document. It has been reported by the friars that Rizal did sign his retraction papers. And yet, after Rizal was shot to death at the Luneta by a firing squad, not even a mass in church was said for Rizal who died as a penitent Catholic. In fact, Rizal was not even given a proper Catholic burial. His remains were just thrown in a little corner in Paco cemetery where heretics and infidels were buried.
The trouble with Guerrero as the Rizal biographer, he was more interested in defending the business of the Catholic Church and its teachings than defending truthfully the subject of his biography – Jose Rizal and his teachings.
As a great admirer, since Rizal never threatened me with eternal hellfire if I did not believe or spread any of his words, in the fight between Rizal and the Catholic Church, I will always be on the side of Rizal. Never will I abandon such a great man even if it means losing my stupid soul to end up in a stupid hell as managed by the stupid devil in cahoots with a stupid Supreme Being. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Predilection

After six months of stay, he left for Europe for the second time on February 3,1888 to pursue the task he had set for himself. His brief stay enabled him to judge the effect of his Noli Me Tangere. He knew he was a marked man for writing the book which not only shook the Spanish rule, but precisely rattled more the foundation of authority in the Philippines - the Catholic church and its teachings.
The military trial of Rizal was not meant to administer justice throughout the land. It was done purposely to execute him in public so that the Filipinos would be frightened to death and subsequently to stop dreaming of freedom under free and humanistic thought. Thus, when the so-called Spanish rule was thrown out with the interference of the US naval forces, what stayed behind to continue controlling Filipino minds and dominating Filipino hearts was the Catholic Church. Via Catholic schools, colleges, and universities – Catholic teachings prevailed in the Philippines. Consider the average Filipino in this 21st century. He is more conversant about the fantastic life and times of Jesus Christ than he knows anything about the realistic life and times of Jose Rizal. And to think Jose Rizal was born in the Philippines - a Christian country. Jesus Christ was born, if at all, in Israel that is today not even a Christian country. It is a Jewish State. Catholic friars claimed that before he was executed Rizal retracted and asked for the forgiveness of his sin against God and for the pardon of his crime against the Filipino people. These developments, however, are based upon religious hogwash. The Rizal retraction scandal was concocted by the religious cowards. Just as much as the religious cowards of our day – the Knights of Rizal - continue to be afraid to stand up to defend Rizal’s great intellectual capacity as a rare Filipino gifted with the capacity not only to think but also to die with self-respect and dignity. Poch Suzara

Great Men

India had Mahatma Gandhi. France had Voltaire. Germany had Nietzsche. Austria had Freud. China had Sun Yet Sen. England had Bertrand Russell. Italy had Galileo and Bruno. America had Tom Paine and Ingersoll. Cuba had Jose Marti and Fidel Castro. These were some of the great men who, with courage and intellect, put more sense into the minds of men and the hearts of women where nature has put only insane horrors. We could have had our own Jose Rizal. The greatest and rarest Filipino this country has ever produced. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church cut him down to size. Millions of Filipinos still have no inkling as to why Jose Rizal was one of mankind’s greatest heroes. Indeed, college professors, historians, biographers, newspaper editors, including his own descendants have been frightened by the Catholic Church authority to believe that Rizal was executed while repentant of his sins against God and regretful of his crimes against his own people. What brazen lies to tell about the greatest Filipino thinker who ever lived. The greatest Filipino who died sober and not drunk with sacred lies. In the meantime, pontifical fear and ecclesiastical ignorance are the recycled garbage dished out in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries. Especially those owned and managed by the Catholic Church and other religious organizations in the Philippines. Consider the average Filipino in this 21st century: he is more comfortable with childish prayer under a theology than he is at home with science and philosophy for the sake of our sense of humanity enjoying freedom and democracy under a sane and a healthy society. Indeed, science is what we know. Philosophy is what we do not know. Religion is pretending to know what we not know. In this past centuries, because Jose Rizal was more at home with the nature of science, philosophy, and the evils of religion, he was locally the pride of the Malay race; but today great men in the same intellectual level of a Jose Rizal globally is the pride of the human race. Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

Albert Einstein on Jose Rizal

“Great spirits have always found opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thoughts in clear form.” Indeed, Einstein had in his mind men like Jose Rizal when he wrote: “It keeps repeating itself in this world, so fine and honest: The parson alarms the populace, the genius is executed.” Poch Suzara

Bertrand Russell on Happy Men and Women

A man who has once perceived, however, temporarily and however briefly, what makes greatness of spirit, can no longer be happy if he allows himself to be petty, self-seeking, troubled by trivial misfortunes, dreading what fate may have in store for him. A man capable of greatness of spirit will open wide the windows of his mind, letting the winds blow freely upon it from every portion of the universe. He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world, In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of being a happy man. Poch Suzara

Carl Sagan on Jose Rizal

“As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our governments, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrificed short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.” Poch Suzara

Sam Harris on Jose Rizal

“We are the final judges of what is good, just as we remain the final judges of what is logical. And on neither front has our conversation with one another reached an end. There need to be no scheme of rewards and punishments transcending this life to justify our moral intuitions or to render them effective in guiding our behavior in the world. The only angels we need to invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil\s masterpiece.” Poch Suzara

Richard Dawkins on Jose Rizal

Fraud, illusion, trickery, hallucination, honest mistake or outright lies – the combination adds up to such a probable alternative that I shall always doubt casual observations or second hand stories that seem to suggest the catastrophic overthrow of existing science. Existing science will undoubtedly be overthrown; not, however, by casual anecdotes or performances on television, (or by public execution of scientists like Rizal) but by rigorous research, repeated, dissected and repeated again.” Poch Suzara

TO JOSE RIZAL

Wherever you are, I have the highest respect for you as a man, and I have the deepest love for you as a Filipino. In this connection, I shall continue, to the end of my days, to struggle against those who had you, publicly, put to death. They are still existing, alive and kicking doing more harm, more damage, than ever. Indeed, in this 21st century, your enemies are still in control of our schools, colleges, and universities twisting the mind of the Filipino to remain spiritually poor as a people, and still distorting the heart of the Philippines to remain morally bankrupt as a nation!
Sir: in the God-forsaken country, you are about the one and only Filipino, with dignity and self-respect, worthy to be called Filipino! The rest are trying only to save themselves the trouble of having to think. As the Sick Man of Asia, we only love to believe. Thus, instead of appeals to principles and logic and philosophy, our public spirit is only aroused by personalities and celebrities. Indeed, instead of being the mature masters of our ideals and principles as a society, we only continue to be the childish victims of a foreign Jewish deity. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Ultimo Adios

How do we summarize it? The poem was completed on Dec. 29, 1896 hours before he was executed. He was able to smuggle out the finished poem. He placed it inside a lamp and gave to his visitors, among whom was his sister and whispered to her: “look inside. There is something inside it.” He made an extra copy by putting it inside his shoe for insurance purpose.
The Ultimo Adios was Rizal’s last poetic defiance against those who continue to be childish believers instead of being intelligent thinkers. The Ultimo Adios is a strong message to the Filipino as a people: – to begin to think that we all share only one common enemy together. No, not the Spaniards or the Americans or the Japanese, or what have you, etc. But our enemy is stupid religion. Indeed, religion that encourages individual stupidity that culminates into social insanity. Poch Suzara

Mar Patalinjug

My great friend from New York wrote: Dear Poch: I think we should forget not only this generation of Filipinos but let us try forgetting a total of five generations. That's a period of more than 100 years. You and I won't be around by then. We will have long turned to dust! Mar
My response to Mar: I agree with you 100 per cent. Dust we are and unto dust we shall return. But we need not live as a farce just because we will end as a fertilizer. Let us, on the contrary, be involved and be like those rare thinking individuals who, throughout history, have had the courage to put sanity into this world where nature has only put insanity. In his NEW HOPES FOR A CHANGING WORLD, Bertrand Russell said it better: “Those who feel nobly, even if in their day they live obscurely, need not fear that they will have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, their neighbors, perhaps to long and future ages. I find many men nowadays oppressed with the feeling that in the vastness of modern societies there is nothing of importance that the individual can do. This is a mistake. The individual, if he is filled with love of mankind, with breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal.” Poch Suzara

Three Kinds of Filipinos

There are only three kinds of Filipinos in the Philippines: Those who upgrade humanity; and, those who degrade humanity. And the rest who could not care less
as nothing matters to them except worshipping divinity. Poch Suzara

Tony Abaya

Wrote a great article in the Manila Standard Today on how we are as a nation of Idiots with idiot candidates and idiot voters.
Far more disastrous, however, than we are a nation of idiots, we are, indeed, a nation of sinners and criminals.
Our schools, colleges, and universities are places where they teach us to believe that there exists a higher power called “God” who will not only provide from out there, but will also forgive us of our idiotic sins and idiotic crimes down here. No doubt, ours is an idiotic system of education. But blaming our officials and voters for what is idiotic in the Philippine government will not do. After all these Filipinos are among the prestigious products of La Salle, Ateneo, University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas, Miriam college, Assumption college, Lyceum.
Letran, San Beda, Mapua, Sta. Escolastica, Santa Teresa, Don Bosco, etc. Not to mention products too of Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and our public school system.
As for me personally, if there is anything I am eternally proud as a Filipino, it was my great success at having engineered my own expulsion out of high school in De La Salle University some 50 years ago. It certainly opened the greatest opportunity for me to acquire genuine learning. I hit my strides by enrolling in the greatest of all universities: it is but a collection of books – a library of my own. Happily, I am still a faithful and an active student even in my old age. Learning, indeed, is a never-ending adventure. Poch Suzara

The Hidden God

According to TIME, “There is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough darkness for those who do not want.”
I ask: What good is God’s existence if he does not expose himself by creating more and heavier light into this world of darkness? What good is a hidden God where, in darkness, he stays hidden? Poch Suzara

God Admits

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Exodus 3:6, Mark 12:26, Luke 20:37.
There is nothing written in the same holy bible where God also admits: I am the God of Juan de la Cruz, the God of Juan de la Tamad, or the God of Juan de la Sipul?
Again: I am God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Matt. 22:32
I ask: What have we living Filipinos got anything to do with the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? To think these bible characters were all born in some Jewish land, and have been long dead and buried in a foreign country since thousands of years ago. Poch Suzara

The Voice of the People

The Son of God Jesus, crucified on the cross, cried out: “Father, forgive them; for they know now what they do.” Luke 23:33
Well, if the Son of God Jesus clearly admitted that the people know not what they do, isn’t it rather childish to believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God? Poch Suzara

Mother Teresa

“…We cannot solve all of the problems of the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all that is that is to destroy love. And this happens when we tell people to practice contraception.”
This is really another pontifical way of saying that nothing pleases God more than to see poor women here and poor children there and the propagation of poverty spreading everywhere. After all, Mother Teresa loved not only poor people here and there but loved even more poverty everywhere. Poch Suzara

Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr.

wrote: “Somebody has remarked that if we offend God, God will forgive us if we repent. If we hurt our fellow humans, they will forgive us if we apologize. But if we destroy the Earth, it will not forgive us even if we ask for its forgiveness.”
Bishop Bacani ignores the biblical teachings of Christianity with its vested interests in poverty and misery: The bible clearly declares: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” John 2:15

Cardinal John Newman

wrote: “Conscience has rights because it has duties.” Indeed, it has: duties not to religious authority, not even to any other outside forces, but duties only to one’s self as a self-respecting man. Conscience should and must decide for itself what is good or evil. Revelation does not count. Revelation exposed “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Unfortunately, it has failed to reveal why such a silly tree had been created and planted by God to begin with! In the second place, no one knows where that tree is to be found anywhere in the world today.
In the meantime, Proverbs 28:26 states: “he who trusts in his own mind is a fool; but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Is it any wonder that the faithful always end up walking mindless, if not always thoughtless as believers of bible wisdom? Poch Suzara

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“Modern man . . . has long believed that right and wrong were only differences in point of view, but now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.”
I ask Archbishop Sheen: what about your own church from ancient days to modern times during these past 2,000 years? What exactly has your church done to diminish, nay, eliminate the evils in this world? What has happened to the power of God almighty always behind the power of your church? Poch Suzara

St. Augustine's Silly Philosophy

Wrote: “It is the mark of perfection to recognize one’s imperfections.” This is childish dishonesty with one’s self as far as I am concerned. I’d rather embrace Bertrand Russell’s sense of truthfulness: “No one is perfect and we should not be bothered by the fact that we are not.” Poch Suzara

Alvin Capino

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “There is no better expression of love than to help feed the hunger.”
Alvin, I totally disagree. There is no better expression of love than that of informing as well as encouraging would be mothers and fathers to seriously practice family planning and birth control. In this way, there will be less sick and hungry people to feed in our already sick and hungry society. Moreover, as we over-populate, nature will destroy us off with famine, disease, and environmental destruction. It is already a reality in so many parts of the fragile world. The alternative is family planning and birth control. In the meantime, every cause is a lost cause without population control. Poch Suzara

Emil Jurado

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “We all admire Pacquiao for his boxing skills. But I am afraid he’ll be a fish out of the water in Congress. What is pathetic about it is that he could win and kiss his boxing career goodbye. What happens if somebody in Congress challenges him to a debate? Will Pacman box him? Why can’t he just settle with the boxing career?
What happens, you asked, if somebody in Congress challenges Pacquiao to a debate? Well, what happens I ask, when Pacquiao challenges Congressmen to kneel down and make the sign of the cross before he starts punching everybody on the Congressional ring? Poch Suzara

G. K. Chesterton

Wrote: “The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing, it is that they thereafter believe in anything.”
I ask G.K. Chesterton: What happens when God stops believing in God? After all, God made it very clear in his first command: Thou shall have no other gods before me?” For Christ’s sake, who created those other gods? Where in hell do they come from? Poch Suzara

Miracles From Jesus

If Jesus performed feats of healing which were credited to him, is it not strange that during the days of his trial, or on his day of execution there was not one person who appeared and to protest because of his marvelous experience of being dead and resurrected back to life and restored back to health?
But then again even Jesus himself, dead on the cross, came back to life. I ask: Would a man who returned from the tomb fail to visit his mother? Only an extremely hard and thoughtless man could neglect his grieving mother. Also, how come there was no appearance to the idiots who had crucified him on the cross? Poch Suzara

Sigmund Freud

“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”
Gee, Mr. Freud, I regret to disagree with you. Years before I had a great opportunity to get know, understand, and love my father, my maternal grandfather, and my paternal grandfather – God had them expunged dead out of my life.
Happily, however, my mother is still very much alive. She is 94 years old. I am taking care of her. A devout Catholic that she is and despite her devotion to God all these past years, I love her more than I care to love Mary, the Mother of God, not to mention all the saints of God whom I have never met.
And to think that if the supernatural God and supernatural Devil have been in existence for more than 70 million years and we humans on the average exist only for some measly 70 years, why should we care about pleasing, or, as the case may be, care about displeasing supernatural beings out there? Poch Suzara

The Fools and God

Only a fool says there is no God. Why then did God create fools? Over a billion of them live in China. Perhaps, not all Chinese are atheists. But the Chinese have been irreligious since the 11th century. They do not believe that God is a Christian in general; or, that God is a Catholic in particular. Oh, the Chinese may not merit eternal salvation in heaven. At the rate, however, they are being created in the image and likeness of God (one out of every five people in this world today is a Chinaman) they will surely inherit the earth. Poch Suzara

John Blanchard

In his book: Has Science got Rid of God? Blanchard writes: “Atheism’s creed is clear and cruel: we began as a fluke, we live as a farce, and we end as a fertilizer.”
Obviously, like millions of Christians throughout the world, John Blanchard too is shamelessly ignorant of bible contents. Indeed, the creed of theism is just as clear and just as cruel too: “ For dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.”
The difference between an atheist and a theist is that we atheists do not believe in childish fairy tales. You theists believe that there is a God out there who will reward you for being a believer or will punish you for being an unbeliever. We atheists have no need for either rewards or punishments to make sense of our beliefs or, for that matter - disbeliefs. Poch Suzara

Idiot Candidates

“There are no idiot candidates where there are no idiot voters.” Antonio C. Abaya
As a matter of deeper fact, if our system of education were purely based upon the scientific revolution of the mind, and not upon the apostolic revelation of the idiotic soul - our politicians need not arrive at high government office by having achieved a reputation in mediocrity. In the meantime, our democracy is shallow, meaningless, and thoughtless since the majority of our people live in misery and in poverty.
And to think that far more evil than the idiot candidates and the idiot voters are the idiot religious so-called leaders. They still preach that poor Filipinos must and should continue to multiply and replenish for themselves more misery and poverty in this God-forsaken only Christian country in Asia. Poch Suzara

The Faith

The faith that does not doubt can only be the faith of the college educated men and women who are not the masters but the childish victims of the priesthood industry. Indeed, the faith that does not doubt can only thrive among those who were twisted emotionally, distorted mentally, impoverished spiritually, bankrupted morally, fooled politically, sickened religiously, and made insane socially. Poch Suzara

The US Social Security System

The Internal Revenue Service says Americans took tax exemptions for $88 BILLION in religious donations in 2004. Imagine that kind of donation in just 10 years. It would amount to $880 BILLION or almost a TRILLION DOLLARS. Imagine further that money, donated not to corrupt priests, greedy ministers, insane evangelists, and other religious charlatans, but donated to the pool of the Social Security system. Each and every one of SSS recipient could receive an average of $2,000 a month rather the measly $500 a month; not to mention even the hard working illegal aliens could receive social security as well upon retirement.
I wish we poor Americans would stop carping about the illegal aliens working hard to earn a living and trying to stay alive in America. After all, the only legal Americans are the Mexicans who owned the State of California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas in the past. And the Native Indians who owned the whole of the United States Continent until the White Race arrived. Indeed, they arrived greedy, selfish, stupid, and insane taking the land away from the native Indians and the Mexicans with the help of war, death, destruction and indeed with the inspiration from Christian values and beliefs. Poch Suzara

I Believe

The Filipino is good by nature. No doubt, there exist ills and evils in the Filipino social and political affairs. Such horrors, however, are to due to corrupt institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities as inspired by the rotten teachings of the Church. Such respectable institutions have made the Filipino good; specially good for the next life, if any; unfortunately, for this life in this country, good for nothing. Look at how we Filipinos are all loving of God up there by hating one another down here! Poch Suzara

Imagine

Imagine our great grandparents then praying daily to God to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation. Imagine our great grandchildren will also be praying to God to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation. That is hardly civilized progress in human affairs. Poch Suzara

Filipino Sociologists

Say that it would take more than 20 years of study to discover if we Filipinos were actually impoverished by a damaged culture. As a high-school expelled student, however, I say it should only take less than 20 days. Indeed, just visit the toilets facilities in any of our schools and universities, including our government buildings. One can easily deduce that Filipino culture has gone down the drain already severely damaged in this only Christian country in Asia today. In the meantime, take heed of the great Filipino historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo. He bravely wrote: “Self-deception is the worst tragedy of the Filipino as a people.” Poch Suzara

Healthy society

“Without the development of the whole society, economic growth cannot be possible.” Nguyen Tan Dung, Prime Minister of Vietnam
As a matter of fact, without the development of the whole human personality, it is not possible to create a sane and a healthy society. Poch Suzara

Faith and Reason

Faith is not wanting to know what is true. For my part, I would rather have more reason than have faith in lies. I want knowledge. I do not want faith. I reject the values of faith especially as it elevates thoughtlessness into sacred doctrines. Poch Suzara

Who is a Great Filipino

A great Filipino is one who has had the intellect and the courage to put beauty where the theologians and the politicians in cahoots together have only put nonsense for our sick society. In the 500 years of Christianity in the Philippines, only one rare Filipino had the courage and the intellect to stand up to be a great Filipino - Jose Rizal - a truth-seeker, a scientist, and a humanist. In order to keep the Filipino frightened of knowledge and wisdom, Rizal was executed in public by the Authority of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the same church that has vested interests in human misery and poverty in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

Truth and Lies and Liars

The truth hurts but lies can be far more damaging. Lies, especially ecclesiastical lies, - can last a thousand years. Take a good look at the priestly liars who, for centuries, with sacred lies have successfully kept the Filipino spiritually poor as a people and morally bankrupt as a nation! Poch Suzara

Rizal

After six months of stay, he left for Europe for the second time on February 3,1888 to pursue the task he had set for himself. His brief stay enabled him to judge the effect of his Noli Me Tangere. He knew he was a marked man for writing the book which not only shook the Spanish rule, but precisely rattled more the foundation of authority in the Philippines - the Catholic church and its teachings.
The military trial of Rizal was not meant to administer justice throughout the land. It was done purposely to execute him in public so that the Filipinos would be frightened to death and subsequently to stop dreaming of freedom under free thought. Thus, when the so-called Spanish rule was thrown out with the interference of the US naval forces, what stayed behind to continue controlling Filipino minds and dominating Filipino hearts was the Catholic Church. Via Catholic schools, colleges, and universities – Catholic teachings prevailed in the Philippines. Consider the average Filipino in this 21st century. He is more conversant about the fantastic life and times of Jesus Christ than he knows anything about the realistic life and times of Jose Rizal. And to think Jose Rizal was born in the Philippines - a Christian country. Jesus Christ was born, if at all, in Israel that is today not even a Christian country. It is a Jewish State.
Catholic friars claimed that before he was executed Rizal retracted and asked for the forgiveness of his sin against God and for the pardon of his crime against the Filipino people. These developments, however, are based upon religious hogwash. The Rizal retraction scandal was concocted by the religious cowards. Just as much as the religious cowards of our day – the Knights of Rizal - continue to be afraid to stand up to defend Rizal’s great intellectual capacity as a rare Filipino gifted with the capacity not only to think but even to die for a just and a decent cause. Poch Suzara

Helen Keller

A gifted blind-mute-deaf woman, Helen Keller was also a great intellectual with extraordinary social vision. She said: “Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature. . . Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Indeed, our planet earth is a speck of dust in this universe. It is most likely that we human beings are alone and insecure and doomed. There is no other way to meet life but only with courage especially in the pursuit of our ideals as inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Poch Suzara

Reality versus Fantasy

It makes more sense to face reality as we know something of it than be afraid of fantasy as we know nothing of it. Poch Suzara

A Sick Marriage

When the wife fears her husband because he is a psycho-ceramic; or worse, when the husband fears his wife because she is a crackpot – that to me is a sick marriage. I should know. I once experienced a sick marriage myself. My wife was always scolding me for something or another. Instead of correcting and learning from our mistakes, shortcomings, and imperfections, she would rather blame my parents, my sisters, in-laws and friends for what was sick about our marriage. I was on the verge of suicide. I decided, instead, to save my life. I abandoned her because I thought going back to my first and only real love – reading books - was a healthier kind of marriage for me than being married to an utterly thoughtless woman who loved her police dogs more than she loved me.
Do I ever feel guilty for having deserted my wife and children? Hardly. The constant message my wife always made me understand then was that our children will be raised and educated as good and faithful Christians. And that being a non-believer, even if I am the father of my children, I shall have no say whatsoever on the issue.
Well, Jesus Himself recommended deserting one’s family: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” Matthew 19:29.
For the sake of my personal sanity, however, I abandoned my faith precisely due to the teaching of Jesus as written in the Bible. Jesus said, and never will I ever agree with him that: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. “Luke 14:26. Poch Suzara

Catholic Free Will

Catholic teachings say that true freedom is not choosing our way, but yielding to God’s way. In other words, free will is not choosing our way, but yielding to divinity via papal authority. Catholics may have the free will to choose leaders, but not parents. Indeed, Catholics with free will have yet to figure what got them to be Catholics to begin with. Of course, Catholics believe in free will. They have to. They have no choice.
With free will to choose, however, try getting any younger, or try not getting any older. Golly, we never even had the free will to choose to arrive into this world born not naked, how may we have the free will to choose to leave this world one day naked as well? We were cast into this world by accident of time and place; and we shall leave this world one day against our will. Free will is bunk.
Is free will truly God’s greatest gift to men? Take a good look at those morons gifted with a free will, and created in the image and likeness of God. Those morons who successfully got Jesus, the Son of God, crucified on the cross! And to think that this is the same Jesus, while crucified on the cross, cried out” “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Poch Suzara

Silly Religious Beliefs

Why should we care for our spouses and children, our friends and relatives and neighbors, and indeed the whole of mankind specially senior citizens? After all, our stupid religion has deeply impressed upon our minds and hearts to love only God up there even if it means social insecurity under hate for each other down here? Poch Suzara

Communism and Capitalism

After all these past precious decades of threats of war and real wars against each other, all that wasted resources destroying each other, it has finally turned out that both Communism and Capitalism are not enemies. In fact, they both function very well together. Look at the wealth, power, and glory of China today enjoying both Communism and Capitalism as partners in peace and growth and productivity together. The credit goes to the Chinese – a great people. Bertrand Russell said it better some 50 years ago: “I have come to realize that the white race isn’t as important as I used to think it was. If Europe and America kill themselves off in war it will not necessarily mean the destruction of the human species, nor even an end to civilization. There will still be a considerable number of Chinese left; and in many ways China is the greatest country I have ever seen. It is not only the greatest numerically and the greatest culturally, but it seems to me the greatest intellectually. I know of no other civilization where there is so much open-mindedness, such realism, such willingness to face the facts as they are, instead of trying to distort them into a particular pattern.” Poch Suzara

Thomas L. Friedman

In his recent book - The Lexus and the Olive Tree, author Mr. Friedman wrote: “Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire with his own global network, declared war on the United States in the late 1990s, and the US Air Force retaliated with a cruise missile attack on him (where he resided in Afghanistan) as though he were another nation-state. Think about it. The United States fired 75 cruise missiles, at $1 million dollars apiece, at a person! That was a superpower against a Super-empowered angry man.”
What Mr. Friedman neglected to articulate, however, is how the US economy is based mostly on war production materials and at global activities creating enemies of all sorts to facilitate the use of US made weapons even if drains the national wealth or the USA allying herself with right-wing tyrannies overseas. Poch Suzara

The Human Heart

The human heart is more prone to hate than to love. That is why bullets, guns, and bomb makers have been the most profitable of industries. Especially in the United States of America. In fact, the economy of the USA has been and still is based not upon a world at peace with goodwill to all men, but upon foreign countries at war or preparing for war against each other. Thus, the core of the US foreign policy has more to do with military greed. It has virtually nothing to do with human need.
In the meantime, the whole world today is in desperate need to wage a battle against ignorance. It does not need to wage a war against terrorism. Terrorism is just one product of ignorance as inspired by stupid religion. Poch Suzara