INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN NATURE? NO KIDDING?

The creationists continue to amaze me. Specially those who insists that if there were no Creator, there would be no “intelligent design in nature.” Let’s examine, with a healthy dose of imagination, the creationists’ proposition. I should submit at once that if there were intelligent design in nature, such designs are as intelligent as the hairstyle of the evangelists preaching sacred lies on television. Let’s briefly explore “intelligent design” in the cosmos. How intelligent is it that everything out there, billions of galaxies are existing too far away from each other and traveling and getting farther every second away from each other? How are we to travel to the other planets and stars? Even nearby Andromeda, the closest galaxy to our Milky Way, is 2.2 million light years away (a light year is about trillion miles). One heck of a long and boring journey. Our own solar system, while relatively compact, is still a traveler’s nightmare. It takes our fastest probes years to reach the outer planets, and once we get there, we find not angelic nor demonic spacemen, but only find frozen rocks or giant balls of gas. The point is: design implies a designer; but more than that, design implies purpose. It’s hard enough to prove that the universe was designed by a designer. What’s even impossible to prove is that the existence of the universe has a purpose. The inner planets are almost as inhospitable. Mars is a dead, airless, dry, and frigid planet. One day, however, with scientific intelligence, Mars will probably be terraformed to make it habitable for humans. Venus is caught in an endless loop of a runaway greenhouse effect. Mercury’s surface temperature is over 450 degrees Celsius. Earth is our only home and we have yet to learn to love our home planet earth. But thanks to our conflicting religious beliefs, we only love God in heaven up there by hating one another down here on earth. Now comes the major premise of intelligent design - that life, specially, human life, is too complex to have just happened. If the creator had power, wisdom, and knowledge, it was shown by his creation of man. Unfortunately, we came not from among the best blueprint. In fact the creator failed to look at His master plan before starting work. Look at the facts. First, if we admit the desirable aspects of nature as products of design, we must also admit the undesirable aspects of nature as products of design. After Adam and Eve, who was the designer who designed the Talking Serpent who caused the Fall of Adam and Eve? Oh well, let’s leave that behind. Now there’s the problem of sexual reproduction. Requiring two people to make babies is so inefficient, painful and messy. Sexual reproduction breeds not only children, but also contempt. The male contribution to the process of making babies is so insignificant. It is accomplished in just a few seconds. The female then spends the next nine months in discomfort waiting the birth. The male, on the other hand, gets on with his life bragging about his God-given erectability. Now if the creator were an intelligent designer, Why would he just take a rib off Adam to design an Eve? Now look at babies born into this world. They come out of mother’s womb wet, hungry, crying, and indeed, as unbelievers of the faith. None of the baby boys born have one less rib than the baby girls. Now if circumcision were important to the creator, why did he put that extra foreskin in the boy’s genital to begin with? Sounds unintelligent to me. But then again, why couldn’t the creator designed the human stomach exactly like that of the Boa Constrictor, ( in order to survive, that snake needs only one full meal a month ). In this way, with a better designed stomach - the 800,000,000 women and children throughout the world need not go to sleep hungry every night. Next comes the fact that we are bipedal. That means when we are young we fall down a lot. And when we are old we fall down a lot. The other day, my best friend, who is neither young or old, but a devout Christian, fell down from bed and painfully broke his leg. And it wasn’t even his God-fearing wife who was with him in bed. Man is intelligently designed? How come we can’t breath water? Is that important? Think about it – what creator would make us so we can only breath oxygen, then puts us on a planet which is 78% water? Hello? Anybody home out there? The creator gave us a useless organ like the appendix, but couldn’t afford to throw in fins and gills as part of our physical nature so that we may live deep in the sea as well. All knowing and powerful, indeed. We are intelligently designed? From caducity to senility, we get sick, grow bald, get fat, lose our sense of hearing, teeth fall out, skin sag, bones become brittle, sexual performance fades, vision fails, arteries clog, senses become dull, memory becomes unreliable. Children are born ignorant in that the priesthood industry takes advantage of the situation by making it even more ignorant for the glory of God in heaven. Really, how so intelligent a design is the human body? Is it really a sacred temple of God? But the human body is also the happy home of some 2 billion germs, viruses, bacteria and other nasty little monsters trying hard everyday to kill vital human organs always at war against the human immune system. In the long run, however, as in cancer, a group of these little monsters engages in a career of imperialism, and in bringing the rest of the human body to death, these little monsters would decree its own death too. Most obviously the argument against intelligent design is the fact that we have a free will. We experiment. We observe. We discover. We think. We theorize. We disagree. We quarrel. We extrapolate. We make war against each other. If humans were the result of a master plan, the creator could have made us gifted not with a free will, but only with a good will. In this way, we need not doubt the existence of a creator or doubt the claims of his inspired writers of the bible. We could then learn to live peacefully and intelligently together as one big happy family exploring deeper the wonders in nature of which we not apart, but precisely a part of nature. In the final analysis, intelligent design is an argument from ignorance. It is equivalent to the “true or false” or “none of the above” test category. Intelligent design is a sophisticated way of admitting “I don’t know.” It is like asking: who designed the “turtle’s shell?” “I don’t know.” “You don’t know.” “Therefore we both know that the creator designed the turtle’s shell.” Indeed, an intellectually honest person, when confronted with something he knows nothing about, will admit at once that he knows nothing about it. In the meantime, in order to conclude that an object was designed, we must first establish that it was manufactured. Therefore, in order to conclude that the natural universe was designed, we must first establish that it was manufactured by an intelligent manufacturer. Nobody is perfect; but however scientifically well-informed many of us have become, the creationists would still insists that we all came from dust and unto dust we shall all return. But really, if the Creator made man in his own image and likeness, it follows that the Creator too is made of dust. Now, isn’t it rather silly to pray to a Creator who is made of dust to save our silly souls that’s made of dust too? Poch Suzara

Supernatural Light

Jesus said: “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me should not abide in darkness.” John 12:46

Oh Jesus, my dear Jesus, why all the drama? If you were a bright radiant luminous light yourself, darkness in the land of your birth yesterday need no longer continue to be in darkness today! Poch Suzara

As an Atheist

I have no access to radio, television, newspaper, and magazine – all are owned and control by the theists.

I have no access to express my views in the schools, colleges, and universities – all are owned and controlled by the theists.

I have no access getting into politics because if I admit my atheism I am automatically disqualified. Indeed, belief in God is mandatory in order win a government position.

I have no access to speak in the halls of Congress or in the Senate or even to speak to the General Assembly of the UN – all are under the eyes and ears of the theists.

I have no access to express my views to my friends, relatives, and associates as they have virtually banned me from their premises.

And yet, via the internet, as I am able to expound a bit of the views of an atheist, it is immediately branded as “atheistic propaganda.”

Well, Bertrand Russell, always on my side, summarized it for all of you: The love of “knowledge is very much more often useful than harmful and the fear of knowledge is very much more often harmful than useful.” Poch Suzara

The Religiously Ignorant

The religiously ignorant are so impressed with these words written in the bible:

“Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matt 16. 18-19.

Thus, the Catholic church is founded on Peter whom, four verses later, Jesus openly calls Satan.

“But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me.” Matt.16:23

Well, according to the bible itself, if the Catholic church is founded on Peter, it is founded on Satan – a fact I have long suspected ever since I was first year high school (1952) at De La Salle University. Poch Suzara

On Death

Death is the experience of nothing. Paradoxically, nobody dies of nothing. We all got to die of something.

The so-called near-death-experience is a not local, but a universal – hogwash. In fact, near-death experience is an occurrence by each and every one of us on a daily basis. Consider the day we are born, it is the day we also begin to experience dying.

Now I am told that in my death-bed, I will change and beg God to forgive my sins? I say: No way will I do such a thing! Over my dead body. I’d rather kill myself first.

No doubt, we all have talent for self-deception. Especially when our emotions are stirred and there are few notions more stirring than the idea that there is a better world to come after death. I ask: isn’t it better if there were a better world to create after birth rather than just believe that there is a better world to come after death?
Indeed, the very word afterlife is contradictory? How could there be a life after death when there is no such thing as a life before birth? What really is being suggested here is that life never ends and the first part of a human life takes place in a body and then that's disposed of but we somehow go on living with a soul. What a crock of superstitious crockery. It is all so childish as a belief and so infantile as a value unworthy of self-respect and human dignity.

In the meantime, I am indeed, dying and while I am at it beyond my control, I am living, thinking, learning, questioning, and thought-provoking.

The rest of my friends, relatives, associates, classmates, and schoolmates are doing nothing too but simply just dying too. It is nature's decree - the day we are born is the day we begin to live in a dying body.

Well, I asked it before, I ask it again: Why should we not try to leave this world a better place than we found it? Not for the sake of a sick divinity, but precisely with a healthy sense for humanity? Poch Suzara



Poch Suzara

Oh, Jesus

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have life everlasting.” John 3:16 This is the same Son of God Jesus, in Matthew 18:3 who said, “Verily, I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Well, it looks like Jesus himself never grew up. He was also an abused child. Crucified on the cross, he cried out loud: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Too frightened while crucified on the cross, Jesus could hardly hear the voice of God who said: “I help only those who help themselves.” And to think that in the Sermon of the Mount this is the same Jesus who exhorts the multitude: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” Matt. 5:48 For my part, I thank God I was an atheist when I arrived into this world and will be an atheist when I depart dead out of this world. In the meantime, I have no fear of death because I have already experienced death for billions of years before I existed on this earth. Poch Suzara

Please Read Your Bible

My atheism comes from reading and studying the bible. What about you dear reader? What do you really know about the incredible foundation of your religious beliefs that make for our sick society? I am not asking you to ignore, on the contrary, I am begging you to read and to study your own book.

Indeed, no other book has done more harm to the Filipino as a people and to the Philippines as a nation than the destructive messages written in the bible.

Take, as an example: “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 with him.” John 2:15. Or, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matt 3:1.. Or, “Take no thought for your life or for the morrow…” Matt. 6:24-35. Or, “Jesus prepares a special place for believers in heaven.” Thess 4:13-18

We Filipinos hardly know that the preachers of these messages have ended up not only as the owners of the Vatican Bank – the richest and the most powerful bank in the world today, but also the owners of the Philippines especially as it is a religious banana Republic. Poch Suzara

Nature

My dear reader, nature will kill you one day. At my age of 72, however, I am sure nature will kill me first ahead of you.

Nature is cruel. It is apathetic. Indifferent to the plight of humanity. Nature is devoid of love and bereft of compassion. Millions upon millions of people nevertheless do not call it nature. They prefer to call it God. In fact, they believe the cruelty in nature is really the will of God. They are the religious morons of this world. They have neither the inclination nor the fascination to study nature, like the scientists are doing, exploring the possibilities in how nature, like a wild animal, can be tamed to behave not recklessly, but friendly and harmoniously.

Perhaps, I may not be on this earth when that day comes. But science will one day will make longevity a matter of lasting creativity. Science will conquer death. Indeed, immortality of the human body will be one day soon a reality. I hope for that day to come soon. Especially as it will finally mean the death and burial of silly theology in a Catholic cemetery. Poch Suzara

Hope for the Philippines

We are told that as long as there is life, there is hope. Unfortunately, since we are already dead spiritually as a people, and, already dead intellectually as a nation - how can there be hope for the Philippines? We are, indeed, a hopeless country due to our hopeless system of education. Look how in this already 21st century, our educators are still pretty much concerned not with science shortage, the scientific way of thinking shortage, or technology learning shortage, but only stupid classroom shortage. As if the development of the Filipino minds and hearts can be the result from stupid classrooms! We Filipinos are the Sick Man of Asia. For us Filipinos, there could only be more of the same - more of the same prayers to forgive our sins against divinity and to forgive our crimes against our own country and - all for the glory of Christianity in the Philippines. Poch Suzara

Think of It

The great religions of the world, especially Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have enemies. No, not only the animosity of one against the other. The enemy is religion itself. This is due to faith in a local divinity that spreads stupidity globally.

To think that after all of these past thousands of years of God here, and God there, and God everywhere - the world today is still in a spiritual mess, still in a moral mess, and still in a religious mess. Especially due to fear hear, ignorance there, and human stupidity on the march everywhere. Poch Suzara

The Atheists

Unlike the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jews who have not ceased hating and killing each other – we atheists have no fixed or dogmatic faith. We atheists do not hate or kill other atheists for not believing in God. Indeed, we atheists do not kill people. With the power of reason we would rather kill mindless arguments or thoughtless testaments.

In the meantime, to encourage false beliefs and to protect them by discouraging, if not prohibiting, honest discussions and free inquiry may well be the road towards social sanity. Those who assume that some beliefs, even if false, are necessary to preserve morality have an infantile notion of morality.

For social cohesion morality is best when it is based upon the veracity of reality. It is worthless as it is based upon fantasy to please a divinity so at home with mendacity. Poch Suzara

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#