God – With a Poor Memory

God is depicted in the bible as being angry that “man has become one of us, in knowing good from evil.” I ask: did God have a poor supernatural memory in that he totally forgot to remember that he made man in his own image and likeness? See Genesis 3:22. Poch Suzara

Psychics Vs Psychotics

Psychics claim they can talk to the dead. Psychotics claim God can talk to them. Indeed, the psychics and the psychotics are able to talk to each other but only about a lot of childish nonsense. As for me, please excuse me. I would rather hold on to my self-respect and dignity as a skeptic. Poch Suzara

The Good versus the Bad life

“The good life,” wrote Bertrand Russell, “is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Does it not follow that the bad life is one inspired by hate and war and fear and ignorance? Such evils have always been behind the great religions that have contributed much to what is bad in this world. In the future, there is a big chance, that is, if we do not wake up soon enough, the great religions armed with nuclear weapons will reduce the planet earth into a lunar landscape. . . We atheists should work harder to convince the whole of mankind to start looking at atheism as the best and only road toward world peace and tranquility; indeed toward our sense of common humanity globally. Poch Suzara

Modern Education

Modern education has to do with pupils learning from the teacher, but more so, it is about the teacher learning from his pupils. Academic freedom means opportunity to develop one’s talents and abilities. This is where the teacher plays an important role – exploring or discovering the talents and abilities of his pupils as great gifts from nature. Modern education does not mean recruiting the young to become members of this or that political party or to become members of this or that church or synagogue or temple or mosque. That is not modern education. That is harmful indoctrination. Poch Suzara

Too Complex

We can see the micro universe better and brighter with a microscope, and we can see the macro universe better and brighter with a telescope. It is sad, however, to meet college-educated men and women insisting that they see better and brighter both the world in the small and the world in the large with blessed by God horoscope. Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

STAYING and LEAVING

One in three Filipinos have hopes of moving to another country. That’s about 29 million Filipinos. At one million Filipinos migrating per year, it would take 29 years to move them all out. Of course, after 29 years, at 2.3 per cent growth per year, our population then will have reached more than 150 million Filipinos.
What can be expected of ourselves as a people who, during childhood days at home, we were taught to believe that God will provide? And in school, we were taught to believe not in the power of reason and science, but only to have faith in the power of prayer as among the best way to solve real problems and troubles in life?
In this 21st century, even our high officials in government have high hopes that the best answer to all of our problems is not via efficient and honest government, but only by searching for the revealed truths in the Old or the New Testament.
I remember my grandfather asking: “Where is the government of the Filipino, by the Filipino, and for the Filipino?” to think this was some 50 years ago. Today, as a grandfather myself, I find asking: What government?” Poch Suzara

Happy New What

December 31, 2013 Dear Friends and Relatives: At the end of each year, we all greet each other: - HAPPY NEW YEAR! Never, do we ever, greet each other with:- HAPPY NEW IDEAS or HAPPY NEW THOUGHTS or HAPPY NEW VALUES and or HAPPY NEW BELIEFS! Thus, every new year, it is the same old corruption around us everywhere. The same old corruption in our government, and in our churches, and in our other institutions, and indeed the same old corruption via education in our schools, colleges, and universities yearly producing college-educated men and women proud of corruption as a way of life in the Philippines. To each of you, for 2014, I greet you: HAVE A HAPPY NEW PHILIPPINES! I love you all. Poch Suzara

Our Asian Neighbors

The secret why other Asian countries are economically ahead of the Philippines is no secret at all. Our Asian neighbors 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 beliefs in the power of prayer and theology than we should have more knowledge in the power of science and technology. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Revolution of the Mind

Unlike the rest of our national heroes, Rizal was the first and only Filipino revolutionary of the mind. He was the first Filipino who thought that human dignity and intellectual integrity should be solid as the foundation of Filipino culture. Owing to the successful retraction lies, however, Filipinos today believe Rizal not as a great humanist or a great freethinker, not even as a great man of intellectual capacity, but only as a faithful silly servant of the priesthood industry. 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 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

Santo Thomas University and Ateneo

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, to think deeply and to embrace intellectual honesty courageously. 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 have faith in the teachings of the Catholic Church. What brazen lies! It is no less than a tall story. Otherwise, after his death, he would have been given a Catholic burial and his bodily remains not just put inside a dirty old sack and then thrown in the Paco Cemetery in the corner where executed heretics are stashed away like dead animals. Poch Suzara

Rizal Versus Jesus

Rizal was involved not only with the cultivation of the mind but also with the development of the human knowledge. The exact opposite of what Jesus Christ stood for – infantile emotions, sentimental illusions, and proverbial delusions. Consider Jesus: he never uttered a word against slavery or against tyrannical oppression. Jesus appealed not to the intellectual power of man, only to his childish hopes and dreams. And to think that most Filipinos have more love and respect for Jesus who was born in a foreign country some 2000 years ago, than they care to study and learn seriously from a great Filipino thinker born in the Philippines some 150 year ago. Poch Suzara

Rizal and Education

Jose Rizal pointed out that evolution in education, ( not reliance on foreign investments ) is the best hope for our 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 upon 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 fear new and fresh ideas; indeed, to keep away from the free market of ideas, and to hate, at the same time, the 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 born. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Enemies

Rizal’s enemies were the theologians who gave themselves fancy titles: soothsayers, seers, charmers, prophets, enchanters, sorcerers, wizards, astrologers – all more popularly known as the Spanish friars. In brief, Rizal’s enemies were fear, ignorance, and superstition as embodied in the Catholic Church that felt threatened by Rizal’s writings. Rizal indeed aimed first at redeeming the Filipino mind damaged by indoctrination, as well as redeeming the Filipino heart impoverished by revelation. Rizal was a heretic in the eyes of the theologians – the power behind the Spanish Catholic authority. It is said by millions of Filipinos today that it does not matter whether Rizal retracted or not. This is so stupid; for, if Rizal indeed had retracted why was he still executed and then not even given a Catholic burial? 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 in hell. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Spanish Friars

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 executed by firing squad for writing to promote common human decency amongst Filipino learning to enjoy throughout the land national pride and Asian dignity. 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 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