Work of Fiction

No matter how a reader views a work of fiction, it cannot be denied that reading fiction shapes imagination, stirs emotion, and stimulates the intellect. Such is Dan Brown’s best seller the Da Vinci Code – 60 million copies sold and translated into 24 different languages worldwide.
The church claims that it does not manipulate revealed truth. It only serves the truth. What the church really means is that it serves fiction as the revealed truth has yet to be revealed. In the Da Vinci Code novel, a historian asked: what if the greatest story ever told is a lie? I watched the movie, then I read the book.Dan Brown indeed is a great writer. A better author than all the bible writers put together. Dan Brown makes his readers think. He teaches his readers to question and therefore to become less gullible.
To Dan Brown, please accept my deepest apologies for having written criticisms against you. My attack against you was based on catholic ignorance about your work. I am sorry, but now I know better. Thank you. Poch Suzara

The Death of Religion

A psuedo-scientist writes: “Humankind cannot abide the terror of mortality without the promise of immortality, I have argued in the past. In the absence of religion human society sinks into depressive torpor. Secular society therefore is an oxymoron, for the death of religion leads quickly enough to the death of society itself.” I ask: how true is this in China today as the Chinese people have been irreligious since the 11th century? Or take the USSR – a so-called atheistic nation that eventually crumbled but only because after dumping Christianity, the USSR replaced Christianity with another religion called “communism.” In the meantime, our world view has been deranged by myths imposed upon us by Christianity. For my part, I refuse to believe that centuries before Christianity arrived, ours was a dying society deprived of Christian teachings, values and beliefs. In fact, what diminished the Filipino of their rights to grow and to mature as decent human beings is evil of Christian religion. Indeed, up to this day and age, we still believe that religion has only to do with our knees, and not with our heads. I ask: What happened to our sense of intellectual honesty? I say phooey on Christianity. It continues to twist our minds as a people and continues to distort our hearts as a nation. And until we dump the evils of Christianity out of our country, indeed, out of our culture and tradition, the nothing that we Filipinos accomplished in the 16th century, we will only continue to accomplish more of the same nothing in this 21st century. Poch Suzara

The World

The world is painfully split into areas of wealth and poverty, with little prospect of narrowing the gap. The politics of global economic affairs in this century, as it was during the previous century, have been the politics of inequality, inherently a politics of internecine suspicion and power struggle and wars. With thanks to the US government always ready and eager to install freedom and democracy overseas. To mitigate not world poverty, but to liberate countries in order to promote and to develop American prosperity. Poch Suzara

Curiosity

Curiosity killed the cat. How fortunate for the cat. At least it was curious before it died. A lot of my friends and relatives and associates in the media and as professors in college who are all still alive have, instead, unfortunately, already killed their sense of curiosity. Consider the religious nonsense they were taught to believe during infancy; they still do believe it today even as they are already approaching senility. Poch Suzara

Prayers

The existence of hospitals prove that prayers are utterly useless. As a matter of fact, if prayers work, we must pray harder for more hospitals, especially mental asylums, to be established throughout the Philippines. We need such facilities to help cure the Sick Man of Asia. A great many of them today were my former classmates, teachers, and professors at De La Salle University. Imagine these people. They still believe that the birth of health and the spread wealth and the general promotions of Filipino decency throughout the Philippines as a nation can only be a reality as soon as the Son of God Jesus from heaven will return back to his place of birth and death in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. Poch Suzara

The Archbishop of Manila

The Archbishop of Manila urged the faithful to pray for Filipino priests so that they may remain true to their vocation.
I ask: if God does not listen to the prayers of his priests, why should God listen to the prayers of those who are not priests? And to think that these religious cripples are suppose to be our spiritual guardians! Is this therefore a matter of: - ask not what God and his archbishop and priests can do for you; instead, ask what you can do for God and his archbishop and priests?
And to think that these are the same mental midgets who inspired the Filipino since the 16th century to believe that God will always provide!
In the meantime, may I suggest to you so-called religious leaders of this country please read Bishop John Shelby Spong’s - WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE: “Christian ethics are not found in a system of behavior control. They are rather found in a call to the fullness of life. The business of the church is, therefore, not to judge life, but to enhance consciousness, to expose ignorance and prejudice, and to remove the barriers to life in all of its fullness. The Church’s task is to assist its people in plumbing the depths of their own humanity, where transcendence, mystery, being, and even love are to discovered, and to bring qualities found in the center of life into the world." Poch Suzara

God and Jose Rizal

God does not prevent an airliner from crashing into a mountain; does not prevent a passenger ship from sinking into the ocean; does not prevent a residential building from burning; or did not even prevent the Catholic Spain in the 16th century to conquer the Philippines in his name and for his glory.
But lo and behold, because our Jose Rizal dared to bring intelligence and enlightenment to the Filipino mind, God was able to successfully prevent our national hero from getting executed without first signing the retraction papers.
And to think that if Rizal retracted, the Catholic friars who planned his death could have given him a decent Catholic burial. Instead, after being shot dead, this rare Filipino was just put inside an old sack and then thrown in a little corner where heretics and infidels were buried in Paco cemetery. In the meantime, for the love of Jesus, even the distant relatives of Rizal today have been kept unduly frightened by the mediocrity of the Catholic authority.Poch Suzara

Darwin and Rizal

Charles Darwin was a more fortunate scientist than our own scientist Jose Rizal. Due to his own theory of intellectual evolution for the Filipino, Rizal was put to death by musketry as decreed by the ecclesiastical authority. Darwin was only arrested and then incarcerated. Darwin’s evolution, however, is no longer a theory. It is a scientific fact. In the meantime, intellectual evolution for the Filipino in the Philippines remains neither a fact nor a theory. It is simply, a Catholic inspired tragedy. Poch Suzara

The Catholic and the Protestant

The difference between a Catholic and a Protestant is that both read the bible but do not agree as to what exactly the so-called good book says. The similarity, however, is that both the Catholic and the Protestant are mutually inspired not by the Satan of religion, but to follow the religion of Satan. Look how the Catholics and the Protestants treat each other: they have not ceased hating each other for the sake of deviltry keeping our country poor and backward. Poch Suzara

Pope Benedict XV1

Pope Benedict XV1 discounted efforts by some quarters to rehabilitate Judas, calling the 13th apostle of Christ “a greedy liar” who cared nothing about love.
I ask: What happened to that message as preached by Jesus in the bible such as love your enemies? Poch Suzara

Catholicism

As a devout Catholic during the first 18 years of my life, I was then good; unfortunately, good for nothing. I loved Jesus more than I loved my mother and father and my sisters and other relatives and friends. I was always ready and willing to defend the values and beliefs of Christianity. I could not care less about the human family. I could not care less about the plight of humanity. I certainly had no feeling of urgency to participate in the struggle for either social sanity or for peace on earth and goodwill to all men living in harmony. Mine, indeed, was the triumph of faith; but a dismal failure in education. It was the philosopher Bertrand Russell – who showed me that there is more life than just my silly beliefs. Who showed me the way towards grace as to why I should always be on the side of the human race. Indeed, to love mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination shows that they have in them to become. Poch Suzara

Death

I have more respect for the dead Filipino than I have respect for the dead Jew. When a Filipino dies, he does not resurrect back to life. He does not make a mockery of immortality.

In the meantime, there is only one truth, only one fact, and that is the reality of our own mortality. Religion is often used to deny this truth, to negate this fact. However the case may be, no matter how one looks at it, life is but a brief fleeting, bittersweet instant in eternity.

For my part, as an atheist, I entirely agree with Bertrand Russell: If we must die, let us die sober, and not drunk with lies. Poch Suzara

Christianity

Christianity is not only something of a superlative entertainment. In the world of trade and commerce, Christianity is also the most profitable of business enterprises. Consider the price of admission needed to gain entrance to this greatest show on earth. It is rather too heavy a price to pay: the mindless surrender of the precious self via the mutilation of the intellect. Poch Suzara

People Who Need People

People who need people are not only the luckiest people in the World. They are also among the wealthiest people in the world; especially if they were in the business of foreign politics specializing in the business of foreign wars. Poch Suzara

As an Atheist

I stand alone. It matters little to me if there were 10 or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 or even 1,000,000 other atheists standing behind me. As an atheist, I have no need of other atheists to hold my hands especially as I struggle against the never- ending evils of superstition otherwise more popularly known as religion. To be worthy of atheism one must only carry on with the joys and beauty of intellectual courage. After all, all the great virtues are the virtues of men who stand alone.
In the meantime, as an atheist, let it be clearly understood that I do not believe in the existence of the God of the Catholics. I do not believe in the existence of the God of the Protestants. I do not believe in the God of the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or even in the God of my own creation, another omni-absent, good-for-nothing, supernatural -the ever mysterious and never so serious - Pocholian God! Poch Suzara

Imagine

What if Jesus, Mary and Joseph together with the twelve apostles were first created by God in the Garden of Eden? What if Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel and the Talking Serpent have had no existence to disgrace the future of the human race? And to think that the bible admits that everything is possible with God. He could even impregnate a Virgin Mary to improve upon the descendants of Adam and Eve. And yet, God could not find it possible improve upon His original mess. Poch Suzara

The Wicked Says

In his pride the wicked says, There is no God to ask me for account. Psalm 10:4
On the contrary, there if there is a God, He should be held accountable for the conditions he had created that made men wicked. Poch Suzara

Religion and Prayer

Religion is supposed to comfort, not frighten – people. Religious people may feel the comfort of religion, but only for as long as they believe in what religion teaches, especially how to fear both life and death.
In the meantime, prayer is charlatanry, if not beggary; indeed, a pretentious effort at work to win that pie in the sky. Honest work is the only miracle that works. Poch Suzara

Religious Believers

The religious fanatics are up in arms about the Jesus and Magdalene marriage scandal written in the Dan Brown’s book the DA VINCI CODE – a work of fiction. But if you really want to get at the sources where Dan Brown formulated this work of fiction, please read the non-fiction book HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Indeed, in HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL Judas never betrayed Jesus who did not die on the cross. Jesus was married, a father of sons and daughters, and that his bloodline still exists today. The parchments found in the South of France a century ago reveal only a tiny portion of the best-kept secrets in Christendom. For my part, one need not go that far. Just read the four Gospel writers – Matthew, Luke, Mark, and John in the bible - to discover more about the pious frauds and other sacred lies that have kept Christianity rich and powerful during all these past centuries. Poch Suzara

Faith

Faith has reached its end. It is now dead. Any one who claims that he is a man of faith is not only insulting himself, but is doing his utmost best to prevent his own enlightenment. Respecting a man of faith is like respecting a drunkard who clings to a lamppost for support, not illumination. Poch Suzara