Our Misplaced Love as a People and as a Nation

My dearest et al, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. ”Matthew 22:36-40 It is incredible how Jesus himself could not see his way clear that in view of the time and energy needed to follow the first commandment - very little time and energy are left for any of us to love our mother and father, brothers and sisters, nay, to love also our neighbor. In fact, this is how sick we are as the SICK CHILDREN OF ASIA - we have neither the time nor energy to love each other as Filipinos in the Philippines. We only have love for Jesus on earth as he is in heaven. I said it before, I say it again: It is time in this already 21st century to dump this obsolete Jewish Jesus hogwash! Poch Suzara

I love and Respect Ripley, NOT JESUS

I love and respect Ripley more than I care to love and respect Jesus. To the best of my knowledge, Ripley has never, not even once, threatened me with eternal punishment in hell if I refuse to believe any of his down to earth BELIEVE IT OR NOT proposals. Poch Suzara

Sometimes I Regret that I am an Atheist

Sometimes, I do regret that I am an atheist. I should have been an existentialist - they declare that even if God did exists, that would change nothing. Especially in the Philippines - even if there is a God - we would still be spiritually fucked as a people and morally fucked as a nation. Poch Suzara

I DID NOT FAIL IN SCHOOL

I did not fail in school. My school failed me. It also failed my country. As a grade school student I already had my suspicions that there is more to life than just learning how to pray daily, weekly, monthly,and yearly to: ST JOHN BAPTIST DE LA SALLE, PRAY FOR US. LIVE JESUS IN OUR HEARTS, FOREVER. No, De La Salle university did not expel me. Rather, I expelled myself out of that insane situation hardly known in the Philippines as "our sick system of education." Take a good look at the evils that's keeping our country poor and backward. Such evils all come from our sick system of education under the tax-free supervision by the Catholic church in the Philippines. Indeed, schools, colleges, and universities owned by the Catholic church are not educational institutions. They are commercial enterprises. Again, take a good look at our college-educated men and women. They are more at home loving God up there by hating our country down here. Oh yes, the holy bible is very clear on this issue. Listen to God, the Father of Jesus, warning: "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." 1 John 2:15. Now listen to the Son of God, Jesus, declaring: "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethern, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26 In the meantime, for as long we have poverty, perversity, corruption, insanity, daily prayers, dancers, singers, preachers, faith-healers, sex dealers, street walkers, swindlers, land grabbers, squatters, baby breeders, lotto losers, frightened teachers, corrupt traders, income tax evaders, law-breakers, corrupt law-makers, Jesus is the Lord movers, indeed, as long as we remain aimless as a people, and faithfully stay rudderless as a nation - "IT IS MORE FUN IN THE PHILIPPINES." Poch Suzara

Salvation at the Expense of Civilization

You can have tons of religion without an ounce of salvation." Philippine Star June 14, 2012 Sadly, in the Philippines, we do, indeed, have tons of religion; but hardly an ounce of civilization. Poch Suzara

With Stupid Prayers is there Hope for our country

The question I asked decades ago, I still am asking today: Is there hope for our country? Yes, with intelligent leaders producing more leaders! There will never be HOPE, however, if we just carry on as stupid followers! After all, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly - we Filipinos have not ceased to believe and to have faith in the power of prayer. Thus far, however, the result of our endless prayers is only that we must continue to pray endlessly. In the meantime, if God or Jesus answered our prayers to cure corruption out of our sick society, how come corruption is still a disease that afflicts every man, woman, and child in the Philippines? Indeed, if prayers were efficient or reliable all of us would stay young, healthy, attractive, learned, sane, kind, loving, intelligent, and rich in spirit. But we live in a sick, rotten, and a decadent society due to, if not because of our stupid faith in the stupid power behind stupid prayer. Poch Suzara

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSE RIZAL

HAPPY BIRTHDAY - JOSE RIZAL ( OUR UNREAD AND UNLOVED NATIONAL HERO ) You gave your life for our country's intellectual development. Indeed, for us Filipinos to be free-minded individuals so that we too may love our country. So, on the anniversary of your birth on June 19, I should wish to report to you what's happening to our people and to our country. Sadly there is little progress on both fronts since your church-orchestrated death; including the deathbed extraction or faking of your alleged retraction. Our country is still stuck in Third World mentality. Its now horribly bloated 100 million inhabitants ( 7 million in your time) still score comparatively low in world rankings in science and technology achievements. This goes for last year also. What is a sin for our women is contraception. And what, however, is still a virtue is self-deception. It is still inspired by divine revelation. Thanks to our corrupt system of education. In the recent impeachment trial the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,a Filipino more devoted not to love of country, but love only divinity under Christianity - Mass, daily prayer, and money - this God-fearing Filipino, was found guilty of violating public trust and culpable violation of the constitution. He has been removed from office. This development, the removal of one top government official, is, however, just the tip of the corrupt iceberg. There is still so much fraud, farce, ceremony, and thieving at all levels of our sick society. Corrupt government officials usually operate like a gang of hoodlums. They defend and protect each other inside or outside the court of Law. It is otherwise more known as the "due process of the law." Oh yes, your old and powerful enemy who had you falsely arrested, incarcerated, publicly executed are still here reigning in authority. They are still in control of the minds and hearts of our people; especially our women - the molded products of schools, colleges, and universities, owned and controlled or influenced by them. They still indoctrinate our youth in wasteful religious studies and rituals, especially in how to pray ever harder for divine miracles. Never mind concentrating on the facts and analyzing them in order to creatively solve real problems. Imagine the absurdity of inculcating habits of reaching out to fantasy solutions to solve real problems. Such faith-filled training orients our youth to downplay life on this earth in wasted preference and preparations for an imaginary better life to come after death. The Catholic charity activities in our country is active as ever . The results are more of the same this year as it was during the previous years. The charity recipients are getting poorer and poorer; while the charity organizations are getting richer and richer. In the meantime, just in Metro Manila alone - hundreds of thousands of Filipino families live off garbage in garbage dumps. They salvage what is sellable materials off dirty rivers, clogged esteros, and polluted lakes. No one in the government or in the church - cares. We are all reminded that God will provide for them! If not on this earth, in God's kingdom in the next world. In the meantime, politics and religion in our country are still not separated, but illicitly happy integrated together. The results too are more of the same old economic story: no prosperity, but only more of the same poverty spreading misery in our insane society. In the meantime, the sinners and criminals in our country are always reminded that no matter what sins or crimes they commit, there is always available from God, at any time, the forgiveness of sin and the pardon of crime! Yes sir, as it was during your time, it is still the same at this time: The only kind of salvation we Filipinos need is the salvation from fear and ignorance! Both evils are the curse and the cause of all our endless problems as a people, and our endless troubles as a nation! Our editors and columnists in the print media would readily write on the evils of politics; but would hardly write as well on the greater evils of religion. Indeed, stupid religion that is keeping us Filipinos intellectually impoverished as a people, and keeping the Philippines economically malnourished as a nation. Yes sir, we Filipinos continue to be the victims of indoctrination you had exposed and denounced. We are not the masters of education. We are still stuck into the Third World religious way of believing. We have yet to progress into the thorough scientific way of thinking that you emphatically favored and championed in your writings. Imagine: most educated Filipinos still do not care to read serious books. In fact I and close friends have not yet met a Filipino student or graduate who has seriously read your works. Remember your most critical satire on God, Jesus, Mary, Friars and Filipinos? Practically no one until now has even heard of it. Likewise, hardly anyone has even heard of that e-book talked about in the Internet that has proven the falsehood of your alleged retraction. It's as if no one cares to emulate your great personality and its depths. We have yet to allow science and clear thinking to transform ourselves into becoming dignified men and self-respecting women. We have yet to be capable of solving our problems not with infantile faith, but with the power of reason and science-oriented investigations. It is very painful to admit that millions of us Filipinos continue to contribute daily to keeping our own country poor, backward, unloved in effect. Nevertheless rich only in blind faith to carry on our traditional defects. Especially as we hardly reflect. We are only inspired to genuflect. You wrote a lot about these issues, which you called "lamentable nurtured defects and predispositions". But hardly any Filipino learns this from you, ironically their number one national hero. The mislabeled "pro-life" believers running and over-populating our sick society continue to insist that we have no population problem in our country today. They insist that there is enough to provide Filipinos with adequate food, housing, and schooling, even if our population reaches 200 million Filipinos. Even if that would wipe out many animal and plant species and much of our protective ecology. After all, we are still told - God loves us. There is always Jesus - our Savior. And so, in the Philippines today, an average of 3 babies are born every minute of the day or 1.8 million yearly. When they grow up, if at all, such children are also taught in schools to refer to Jesus in the bible for the moral guidance. Thus, we continue to be infamous as the Sick Man of Asia. Or, better said, we're getting more famous as the Sick Children of Asia. Instead of evolution to redefine our culture, we only have more of the same ancient revelation to further damage our institutions. Indeed, "It's More Fun in the Philippines." Our population growth is forcing a fantastic rise in malnutrition and illiteracy keeping us entertained as a people and faithfully wayward as a nation. Sir, again this year, as it was during the previous years, the faith-soaked politicians in government 'serve' our country not by telling the bitter truth, but by telling seductive sweeter lies. Like the official inflation and unemployment rates, which are always much understated and sugar-coated. Ours continue to be a government of the corrupt, by the corrupt, and for the corrupt. And we inhabitants as members of our respected churches are nurtured to always vote them into their high offices. Such horrors come nurtured from our schools, colleges, and universities. Millions of our college educated men and women are working not for our national growth and maturity, but are employed in foreign countries. Such Filipino emigrants enjoy the wealth of real education in such foreign countries. The kind of wealth that comes from science which is all about the courage to think, to question, to change, to grow, and to develop under a fearless, self-correcting enterprise. Indeed, science that shows people how to live the good life - how to be inspired by love and guided by the power of knowledge. My dear Sir, you were certainly a real hero during your century. Today, in our own century, instead of heroes in our God-fearing country we only have God-fearing politicians indoctrinated to have more faith in our blind Christian faith. They neither read enough for today's necessary quantum of knowledge nor make use of its power and diffusion. None of them, I dare to say, reads your works seriously and heeds them, which makes me wonder how you became our number one national hero. Our politicians would readily pray to a foreign divinity to remedy the traditional ills of our sick society. They do not pay any serious attention to remedy the rotten core that pretty much generate our corrupt system of education - the root cause of our daily way of confusion as a people and yearly delusion as a nation deprived of any critical science-guided sense of direction. Dearest Sir, Happy Birthday! I respect you. I admire you. I love you! Yes Sir, thanks to you, a few of us have managed to see and think through the evils of your enemy--reason-deadening faith in Christian values and beliefs. Especially the theocratic Catholic kind you fought and got killed you. Through reading your church-critical works and essays, we know what it means to love our country and to always be on the side of our fellow-countrymen, not for what we Filipinos are today, but for the free-minded reading Filipinos we can become tomorrow. Alas, you also repeatedly said something like that in your church-condemned and religiously suppressed writings. But better late than never. May we, the people, discover more of ourselves via discovering you as the most courageous Filipino thinker this world has ever produced. Yours sincerely, Poch Suzara

Greeting from a Humanist/Atheist

I am a humanist and an atheist who cares. If I had the power of a Jesus in the New testament, I would not cure one person of blindness, I would eliminate blindness out of this world totally. I would not cure one person of leprosy. I would abolish not only leprosy, but abolish all other kinds of diseases out of this world by simply - making health contagious. On top of it all - I would make all marriage between man and woman happy as husband and wife to each other, and even happier as father and mother to their children. In this way, the troubles and problems in this world, our world, need not be rooted in the human family derailed. Poch Suzara

Bertrand Russell as a HAPPY MAN

There was this accusation made by one of our contributors, who posted in our website and claimed that Bertrand Russell had been unhappy with his life because he had been married four times. This is contrary to what Bertrand Russell wrote to his wife, during the late years of his life as follows: To Edith Through the long years I sought peace I found ecstasy, I found anguish, I found madness, I found loneliness, I found the solitary pain that gnaws the heart, But peace I did not find. Now, old & near my end, I have known you, And, knowing you, I have found both ecstasy & peace I know rest After so many lonely years. I know what life & love may be. Now, if I sleep I shall sleep fulfilled. Bertrand Russell The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography What I Have Lived For Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. If Bertrand Russel had been unhappy during the early part of his life, not because of his failed marriages, but what he found in this world: "anguish, madness, loneliness and the solitary pain that gnaws the heart" And in the "The Prologue" he wrote:This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. Is this the words of an unhappy man? Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google# -

DO NOT ROCK THE PHILIPPINE BOAT

Here is the biblical foundation of our beliefs and values: Even if, in this already 21st century, our boat as a nation is going nowhere; even if it is still aimless, rudderless, and directionless - never must we ever rock the boat. Especially for the glory of Jesus Christ on earth as he is in heaven. Poch Suzara

Depend on Jesus if You Must

Depend on Jesus if you must, but remember it didn't work for the Jesus himself. The lunatics, the fanatics, and the Catholics of his community got Jesus crucified dead on a silly cross! Poch Suzara

In Search of Wealth Only to Find the Grave

We squander our health, in search of wealth. We toil, we scheme, we sweat, and we save. Then we squander our wealth in search of health; only to find the grave. As with me, however, I have been most fortunate. I squandered my health and wealth in search of the truth. It is a never-ending search; but in the process I managed, somehow, to discover the lies and deceptions that's keeping us spiritually poor as a people and keeping us morally bankrupt as a nation. In sharing, however, my discoveries with you guys and gals - I never intended to be vicious or malicious; in fact, I thought, I am just being ethically meritorious, if not philosophically courageous. In the meantime, the search of the truth is the most expensive of adventures: it entails the total submission to the power of reason via the mutilation of silly faith. Poch Suzara

Not the Sick Man, but The Sick Children of Asia

Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 18:3 Jesus repeats, "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children." Matt. 19:24 I said it before, I say it again: With Jesus as the one and only Savior we historically have as a people and indeed, as a nation - it is more honest to admit that we are not infamous as the Sick Man of Asia; nay, we are getting more famous as the Sick Children of Asia. Poch Suzara

My Death Soon and Judgement Day

Surely I look forward to my death soon to face judgement day. I am, however eager to appear at the bar not as a sinner or a criminal, but as an accuser. I hope to accuse God and his son Jesus not only guilty of the horrors of universal deviltry, but especially also of crimes against humanity via the teachings of Christianity! May God and His son Jesus and the Holy Spirit all rot as supernatural monsters in hell forever and ever! Poch Suzara

God in Hell, Devil in Heaven, Saints in Purgatory

Man differs from an animal only by a little. "Most men," said Confucius, "throw that little away." Sadly, dominated by silly religiosity, most men throw away their common sense for human decency. They would rather make a mockery of what human life should be down here; especially for the greater glory of a divinity up there. Like frightened faithfools on this earth, they would rather believe in the existence of a silly divinity in hell, and in the existence of a stupid deviltry in heaven, and in the existence of moronic saints in Purgatory! Poch Suzara

My Pleasures in Life

My pleasures in life are reading and re-reading; also writing and re-writing. Indeed, I have had greater pleasures in life experiencing intellectual orgasms with books than I have experiencing sexual orgasms with women. Poch Suzara

The Pope and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

The Pope may act outside the law, above the law, and against the law. - St. Robert bellarmine (1542-1621) Italian Cardinal If I may add, in the Philippines, such a pope, with a clear conscience, is more known as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. - Poch Suzara

Believing is Easy. Thinking is Hard.

Thinking is hard and believing is easy. It follows why there are far more stupid believers in this world than there are intelligent thinkers. For my part, each time I find myself unable to think; or, as the case may be, unable to believe, I do the next best thing: I suspend my judgment while I gather the evidences. In the meantime, I'd rather be wrong as an intelligent thinker than be right as a stupid believer. After all, anything mandated can, sooner or later, be amended. A stupid believe is right when it believes that the sun rises for the morning and sets for the evening. An intelligent thinker, however, has discovered that it is but a grand illusion. The sun does not move. It is the earth that rotates on its own axis and orbits round the sun giving the impression that it rises as it sets. Poch Suzara

So Jesus was a Genius - So What?

Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all. - Dr. Jose Rizal I asked it before, I ask it again: If Jesus were such a Genius how come in all of Asia only the Filipinos love, worship, and adore Jesus? The Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, Japanese, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Thais, Burmese, Cambodians, Mongolians have never heard nor do they care to hear about Jesus? - Poch Suzara

Jesus Hanged on a Tree - which Tree?

"The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree. Him God has exalted to His right hand to be Prince and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are His witnesses to these things, and so also is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.” Acts 5:30-32 I asked it before, I ask it again: Jesus was HANGED to die on which tree - the TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL - (Gen. 2:9); or, on the TREE OF LIFE? - (Gen:3:22). In the meantime, in the Philippine Star today it says: "the cross of Jesus is the supreme evidence of the love of God." What love of God? what cross of Jesus? Jesus was hanged on a tree? Poch Suzara