Bertrand Russell – the Atheist

I am told that as the Head of the Bertrand Russell society of the Philippines, Russell must be turning over in his grave bothered by my logical inconsistencies and mathematical inefficiencies. I am duly flattered. However, after he died, Russell was not buried in a grave. He was cremated. His ashes were scattered over Welsh hills. I hope the Lord in heaven will not have a hard time resurrecting the ashes of Bertrand Russell during Judgment Day.

Russell was a man of enormous intellect. A rare genius. He deeply understood the power of creative thought. Indeed, there is neither logic nor mathematics in creative thought. Creativity makes its own rules. Genius transcends them. Russell shook the foundation of mathematics by reducing it into logic and showed how little logic can do especially in the search of the truth.

Russell was one of the founders of the computer age. In human affairs, he had the stature and the voice to speak up. Towards the end of his life, Russell became a world figure for global sanity, especially for the young. They read his books, listened to his broadcasts on radio and saw him on television. Russell helped set the tone for future protests and encouraged young people to challenge entrenched political and social ideologies. He had no respect for authority and encouraged everyone to share in his distrust of conventional politics and politicians. And for this alone many people will remain forever grateful. Especially this high-school dropout from De La Salle University in the Philippines.

Years before his death, atheist Russell wrote: “I may have thought the road to a world of free and happy human beings shorter than it is proving to be. . . Nevertheless, many (of us) still share the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle: to allow moments of insights to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination a society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them.” Poch Suzara

What is God’s Role

Who should we blame for all the troubles and problems of our world – the United Nations? But then again, when she was founded and then established, the Vatican State eventually became a member of the United Nations. God did bless the United Nations, didn’t He? So, what’s God’s almighty role in our world to begin with? Poch Suzara

Inspired Authors of God

In the ancient world they were called soothsayers, seers, charmers, shaman, prophets, enchanters, sorcerers, wizards, astrologers, medicine man, astrologers, channelers, imposters, magicians, barbarians, and the primitives.

In the modern world, they are called preachers, evangelists, clergymen, Opus Dei, Couples for Christ, El Shaddai preachers, bigots, hypocrites, Jesuits, Christian Brothers, Dominican priests, Franciscan bishops, cardinals, and pope.

They all share something in common together: They are precisely the kind of men that God would readily inspire to be the writers of the Holy Bible. Poch Suzara

Prayer of an Atheist

Oh God, my dear God, – you do not have to forgive me. I know what I am doing. I also know exactly where I am going. If, however, I am to meet with you after death, I hope you will be together with your friend and associate - Satan. I really would like to meet and give you and Satan a few suggestions on how to be more intelligent and constructive rather than continue to be mutually insane and destructive especially in this world of ours. To begin with, I’d like to suggest that you both need not forever be like the supernatural Saps you both are still so eager to win more silly human souls for yourselves. Why are you still in desperate need for human souls? Haven’t you already won billions upon billions of silly souls for yourselves during these past centuries. Really, my dear God, my dear Satan, I ask: – what’s the big deal about the human souls that you both have not ceased needing them with since the days when the Talking Serpent fucked the souls Adam and Eve to death, huh? Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

Likeness of God

If God made man in His own image and likeness, how come man is not a spirit, like an invisible God? Indeed, if God were a spirit and an invisible being, how did the theologians arrive at the silly conclusion that an invisible God make man in his own visible image and likeness? Oh well, what can one really expect from the subject of theology which is the study of the invisible nothing? Poch Suzara

George H. Smith

In his book – ATHEISM - THE CASE AGAINST GOD, Smith wrote: ”Just as Christianity must destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy happiness before it can introduce salvation. It is not accidental that Christianity is profoundly anti-pleasure especially in the area of sex. Pleasure is the fuel of life, and sexual pleasure is the most intense form of pleasure that man can experience. To deny oneself pleasure, or to convince oneself that pleasure is evil, is to introduce frustration and anxiety and thereby become potential material for salvation.” Well, for my part, thanks to atheism, I duly discovered that it is better to select rather than avoid pleasures in life. The noblest of pleasures, indeed, is the joy of understanding through free inquiry. Poch Suzara

Multiply and Replenish

We faithfully follow God’s word about multiplying and replenishing the earth. We Filipinos are busy making babies (and busy at praying too, of course). We produce 3 babies a minute or 1.8 million babies yearly in the Philippines. If you haven't had at least 4 to 7 kids yourself, you're just not going to make it to Heaven with God. Sorry, but God needs more Filipinos to love, worship, and adore him, given that his ego (and insecurity) is unstable, nay, insatiable. Never mind that under this plan, after a few more years, there won't be any room left on our land for Filipinos to be standing on. We can just stand on each other’s shoulders. This is fine and dandy. We can still make babies standing up -- in the missionary position, of course.

It's a good thing, too, about all that food that God provides us to eat. We'll need it. Eventually, though when we run out of rice, fish, pork, and beef, we can always eat the unbelievers like the pocholos and other heretics who just won't believe the myths no matter how much they're coerced or tortured or expelled out of high school. Those little bits of Christ's body and blood they serve in church on Sunday will just be a cannibalistic hors d'oeuvre. The main course will be atheist poch kabob--cooked on a spit, or perhaps slow roasted secular humanist or freethinker. Our Christian brothers during the Dark Age in Europe already perfected the technology of burning people at the stake. Doing it for a meal will take on an even deeper religious significance as a wholesome and nutritious family values bonding experience for Pinoys and Pinays and their legitimate as well as illegitimate sons and daughters. Poch Suzara

Thanks to Christianity

Thanks to Christianity and its teachings since the 16th century, we Filipinos look forward only to that better world to come after death with God in heaven. The price we pay for such biblical messages is much too dear: The mindless surrender of our pride as a people and the thoughtless mutilation of our intellect as a nation.

Look how during these past centuries under Christian values and beliefs – we Filipinos have learned to love not our country, have learned to love not fellow-Filipinos. We have no sense of common Filipino decency. No sense of growth as a people, and no sense of development as a nation. We have no sense of evolution. We are more into revelation. No sense of law and order. No sense of health, hygiene, and sanitation. No sense of national honor. No sense of direction as a people. We are rudderless as a nation. We have no sense of the good life – one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Why should we? Since we believe there is a better world to come after death anyway. Why should we bother with our health as a people and with our natural resources as a nation? We have been told to believe that such things are low, and depraved, and unworthy as they are especially in the eyes of God? We are told that this world is but a stopover on our journey to the next better world. Therefore the less attention placed on living the good and sane life and the more attention placed on God’s kingdom in heaven, the better.

The trouble of Filipinos in this country is caused by superstition. The problem of Filipinos in this country is caused by religion. Indeed, both religion and superstition encourages irresponsibility and an insufficient sense of reality enough to make us the Sick Man of Asia permanently

We Filipinos have yet to realize that knowledge is no mere argument or ornament. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is not an opinion to be held, but work to be done. Sadly, however, our children in schools, colleges, and universities are still being taught how to have more faith in a divinity up there. Never mind putting attention to our sense for common human decency down here. Poch Suzara

On The Uses of Philosophy by Will Durant

ON THE USES OF PHILOSOPHY by Will Durant After Bertrand Russell, here’s another Historian/Philosopher who got to be another of my greatest of teachers in my home library who I also learned to love, respect, and admire - Will Durant. . . If Will Durant were among my teachers in grade school and high school, never, would I have ever played hooky, or skipped classes, or engineered my own expulsion out of La Salle. I would have stayed on to creatively acquire all sorts of college degrees. It is incredible; but if I had not been expelled out of school premises at the age of 15, I never would have discovered Philosopher/Historian like Will Durant. Here, in his STORY OF PHILOSOPHY – are his introductory remarks - On the Uses of Philosophy: "There is a pleasure in philosophy and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, "that dear delight;" when the love of a modestly elusive truth seemed more glorious – incomparably -- than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. "Life has meaning," we feel with Browning. "To find its meaning is my meat and drink." So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-canceling vacillation and futility. We strive with the chaos about and within, but we should believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand. "Life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with!" We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov -- "one of those who don't want millions, but an answer to their questions." We want to seize the value and perspective of passing things and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little, and the things big, before it is too late. We want to see things now as they will seem forever -- "in the light of eternity." We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coordinate our energies by harmonizing our desires, for coordinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics -- and perhaps in logic and metaphysics, too. "To be a philosopher," said Thoreau, "is not merely to have subtle thoughts, or even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust." We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. "Seek ye first the good things of the mind," Bacon admonishes us, "and the rest will either be supplied, or its loss will not be felt." Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free." - Poch Suzara Google# Facebook# Twitter# To think that it was Will Durant who introduced me to Bertrand Russell. The philosopher/mathematician/logician already world famous. It was never my teachers in school, but Bertrand Russell who inspired in me to seriously look into the great achievements of great men and women who had the ultimate courage, a power of creating beauty into this world where nature has put only horrors. Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#

Unwanted Pregnancies

There are 70 million to 80 million unwanted pregnancies annually, the United Nations says, along with 19 million abortions and 150,000 maternal deaths. Indeed, for as long as women of our world are taught to believe that there is a God out there who will provide – needless unwanted pregnancies and abortions and maternal deaths will continue to prove that divine grace for the human race is really nothing but a global disgrace. Poch Suzara

Fooling Around

I stopped fooling around with women a long time ago. Fooling women during my younger days proved nothing but the perversity of virility, if not the mediocrity of masculinity.

In recent years, however, I found something much more challenging to be fooling around with. Indeed, I daily enjoy fooling around with Christianity. She is so indecent as a mystery, so childish in mendacity, so gross in hypocrisy, always promoting fear of divinity, and never-ending in her tradition to support misery and to maintain poverty. Especially against the creation of a healthy society for the sake of promoting common human decency. Poch Suzara

Talking Serpent

Where did the Talking Serpent come from? Who inspired it to play a leading role in the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden? On which day of the six days was the Talking Serpent created? After God made the beast of the earth of his kind. . . and God saw that, “it was good.” It was good how and for whom? Poch Suzara

Clarence Darrow

Clarence Darrow wrote: "In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in god and in personal immortality."

Yes, I quite agree. That is why, for a great many years busy writing, I have not ceased reminding my readers that infinity and stupidity are one and the same perversity. Except that stupidity is way way ahead of infinity. Poch Suzara

Darwin's Evolution

You got to give credit to Philippine politics. It has proved Darwin wrong. There is no such thing as evolution in the Philippine government. What it was last century, it is still the same rotten government run by corrupt government officials in this century.

Perhaps, there is an exception. There is, in fact, evolution in this only Christian country in Asia. Last century we Filipinos enjoyed national delusion. This century, however, there is an evolutionary improvement: we Filipinos are now enjoying national confusion. Poch Suzara

Peter’s Rock

“And I say unto thee also, that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matt 16:18

In the meantime, if there were no hell, there would be no need to build a church. Poch Suzara

Asian Countries

Other Asian countries are way ahead of the Philippines. Especially in the race for higher standard of living and thinking. It is mainly due to the power of science, the scientific way of thinking, and technology. They have nothing to do with maintaining or sustaining traditional dross.

The Philippines, however, has been left behind. It is still stuck in the race due to the power of prayer and theology that have mostly to do with the way of the cross. Poch Suzara

This World, Our World

My friends and relatives want me to go back to church. Be a repentant Catholic, and believe once again in the existence of God. Well, ok. Here, however, are my conditions:

I need meaningful miracles. I need from God an annual report as to the well-being or, as the case may be, - the ill-being of my dead loved ones, dead closed friends, and my dead great mentors. I need to know how happy are they in heaven or, as the case may be, how unhappy are they in hell. After I get this report, I should be proud once more to believe a God in heaven and to believe in the existence of a devil in hell.

Now if my conditions were not possible to meet, then just point out to me where exactly is it mentioned in the bible that God is a Catholic, and I will go back to being a faithful Catholic once again.

Otherwise, as an atheist, I shall only continue to embrace the most decent of my goals in this life - to leave this world one day a better place than I found it or there is very little reason for my having lived. Poch Suzara

Religious Friends

My religious friends get angry at me each time I challenge them to seriously read the bible for themselves. However, when I point out to tem religious garbage, If not ecclesiastical trash written in the bible - they get angrier at me.

In the meantime, there are a lot of Jews still existing today. They are same Jews mentioned in almost every page in the bible. Now there are also a billion Catholics existing in the world today. But where are they recorded or reported in the bible? Even Jesus was not a Catholic. He was a Jew – born and raised by Jewish parents living in a Jewish culture in a Jewish land that is still Jewish today. Poch Suzara

Poverty and Population

We are told that poverty in our country is not due to population growth, but due to corruption. No doubt, it is. Corruption of the worst kind: the corruption of self-respect as a people and the corruption of dignity as a nation. Indeed, in our corrupt society, we are not poor because we are corrupt; on the contrary, we are corrupt because we are poor. Via our schools, colleges, and universities we are taught to believe that contraception inside marriage is a sin. Outside marriage, it is immoral. What is not a sin or immoral, however, is to be vocal about the rights of the unborn for as long as one is silent and indifferent to their plight as soon as they are born. In the United States, abortion is legal. In the Philippines, abortion is a crime. But we consider ourselves good and faithful Christians. We do not abort. Instead, we allow babies to be born, we give them a fighting chance, and then kill them with poverty, filth, malnutrition, lack of hygiene and sanitation. In this God-forsaken only Christian country in Asia, we produce 3 babies every minute according to government statistics. That adds up to 180 babies born every hour; 4,320 babies born every day; 126,900 babies born every month; or, 1,522,800 babies are born yearly. Allowing for 20 per cent mortality birthrate, those are still impressive figures. What is even more impressive, however, is that the majority of those babies born under the horrors of religious nonsense will have no purpose in life except that when they are old enough, they too will multiply and replenish the Filipino for the glory of Christianity in the Philippines. Pro-lifers are so proud to teach God’s commandments in this country; especially the fourth - honor thy mother and thy father – to children even those living under subhuman conditions in the streets of our major cities. As if strength of character, or a high I.Q. is a requirement to bring forth children into our sick society. Yet the physical position that a man and a woman must assume in order to increase the human population has got to be one of the ridiculous positions assumed by would-be mothers and fathers. Honor is not something given. It is deserved and earned. In the meantime, since the 16th century, we Filipinos have been carrying Christianity on our backs. We are bent and twisted and crippled by its weight. We love only God up there. For the sake of gaining that better world to come in the next life, we must hate not only life but also hate one another down here. And that, my dear reader, is what poverty is all about in this already 21st century Philippines. Poch Suzara

Hereafter

Hundreds of millions, nay, billions have been frightened to believe that there is a better world to come after death. We can see the deadly results of what such stupid beliefs have done to our planet earth.

For crimes and brazen lies against humanity, If I had my way, I would have all the insane religious leaders arrested, tried in court, and then jailed. For two thousand years – the great religions, instead of civilizing, they have only been preparing us for that next life in that so-called next world to come. Indeed, instead of increasing better qualities of life in the here and now, the great religions have only been augmenting the worse – cruelty, greed, selfishness, corruption, fear, hate, war, stupidity, and insanity. Poch Suzara