College Education

College education in the Philippines is mostly about accreditation, certification, and indeed, graduation. It is hardly about the lifetime adventure in the never-ending search of the truth. Indeed, nothing to do with the habit of more and deeper learning through serious reading. As a matter of fact, throwing books out the window is the fun part of college graduation celebration in our sick society.
I often ask my college-educated friends why is there more of the spread of intellectual poverty than there is the bread for cultural prosperity in this God-forsaken country? Their reply: “Huh?” Poch Suzara

Poverty in the Philippines

The war against poverty in the Philippines can only be won with the creation of wealth. Unfortunately, wealth can never be produced unless there is first the birth and growth of mental health. In this country, children at home and in school are taught to be greedy, selfish, stupid, and insane - in brief, taught to be poor in spirit. Thus, there is always the problem from those who are not rich in spirit. They are deprived of the power to nourish mental health. It certainly discourages, by and large, the creation of wealth as a responsibility of every grown-up man and woman in the Philippines.
In the meantime, the population uncontrolled growth in the Philippines is a greater evil than the evil of poverty. The population explosion is depleting our natural resources faster than nature can regenerate or replenish them. Indeed, our rain forest is beginning to look growthless. Just like the Lunar landscape that's lifeless. Poch Suzara

Search of the Truth

In the search of the truth, it is more reliable to be on the side of science than it is to be on the side of religion. In order to get a bigger picture of the truth, if any, science, for example, will not only study carefully the balance of nature, but also even more carefully study the nature of balance. Another example, science would look at the molecular rather than the spiritual basis of life. After all, the spiritual cannot be tested and observed inside a cathedral. The molecular basis of life, however, can be tested and observed inside a laboratory for further experimentation and analysis. In the religious way of thinking, the search of the truth is a waste of time since the truth has already been revealed. In the meantime, science is not only a body of knowledge; it is more of a process, a method of discovering the truth, if any. In science, knowledge can generate more knowledge and can be improved upon, it can be changed, and this emendation represents a natural growth and development of the scientific spirit. Poch Suzara

Terrorism

Sending a powerful message fit the definition of terrorism. Sending a message to a child about the existence of God is the worst kind of terrorism. Especially if the message were accompanied with threats of eternal punishment. Thus, due to religious terrorism, most children grow up believing in cruel God. They live in fear as they do not want to suffer eternal damnation punished forever in hell after death.
For my part, I was lucky. I managed, somehow, to see through clearly the childish message. I saw the existence of God as something superstitious, nay, excrementitious, based upon nothing but childish terrorism. Indeed, if God exist, I refuse to believe that such a loving God, such a Supreme Being should allow such scatological nonsense be taught to children about Him. Poch Suzara

The Poor, Sick and Filthy

If I were poor, sick and filthy, I have no right to have children because my children have no right to be poor, sick and filthy. No doubt God provides wealth, power, and glory; unfortunately, only for the priesthood industry. As for the poor, the sick, and the filthy, - these children of God, in a devastating typhoon, are not even allowed to take temporary shelter inside the House of God called “Churches” and “Cathedrals.” Poch Suzara

Root of all evil

The killing of Hypatia in the 5th century, the onslaught of the Dark Ages from the 5th to the 15th century, the Inquisition organized by the Church, Copernicus exiled, Galileo silenced, Bruno burned at the stake, Jose Rizal publicly executed by a theocracy in the late 19th century, not to mention, time and again, the Church blocking the way towards the advancement of knowledge and emancipation of the human mind. In brief, the good life - one inspired by love and guided by knowledge - is not possible in our world for as long organized religions – Christianity, Judaism, and Islam continue to retard the spiritual growth and the intellectual development of human beings born on this earth. Organized religion, indeed, is the root of all evil. Poch Suzara

Thanks to Faith

Thanks to our Christian values and beliefs, we enjoy having faith not only in things we know nothing about, but also in things that we know are not true. It spares us from the ordeal of having to think for ourselves as a people, and from the ordeal of having to take responsibility for ourselves as a nation.
Indeed, thanks to our faith in Christian values and beliefs our population growth is making sure that our natural resources are depleting faster than the rate nature can replenish or have them regenerated.
In the meantime, as the bible says: love not your country, neither the things that are in your country. If any one loves his country, the love of God is not with him. See John 2:15. Poch Suzara

Beliefs and Facts

The religious and the superstitious share a common denominator mutually together. They do not alter their beliefs to fit the facts. They would rather alter the facts to fit their beliefs. They are even proud to call it “blind faith.” Poch Suzara

The Catholic Bishops

Eternal damnation is what is in store for the Filipino newspaper columnist who ventures any criticism against the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines. There is not a single one of these columnists that I know of who does not live in mortal terror of the power of this religious group. If the Catholic Bishops can bluff its way into a preferred position, the fault lies not only with the Bishops but due mostly with our frightened columnists. And to think that these Bishops are not even answerable to our society under a democracy. As citizens of the Vatican State, they report to the Pope who is answerable to a higher power under a theocracy. In the meantime, the most that our college-educated columnists can do with their precious talents and valuable abilities is to sell them to the Catholic Bishops – the major owners, if not the stockholders of major newspapers of this country.
As a high-school dropout, I do not believe that the mind is a terrible thing to waste; on the contrary, I believe that it is a terrible thing to waste the mind. Poch Suzara

The Psychotic

One of the most idiotic, if not imbecilic, nay, moronic facts about our time is the stupid fanatic who is just as pathetic as he is a lunatic. He actually believes with all sincerity that everyone else is just as intelligent as he is! Poch Suzara

The Religious Attitude

Whether one is a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew – each would readily admit something like: - so what if this world were embroiled with poverty, pain, cruelty, violence, suffering, hate, murder, and wars?
There is always a better world to come after death with God, says the Christian. There is always a better world to come with Allah, says the Muslim.
There is always a better world to come with Yahweh, says the Jew.
Such is our unpredictably trouble-infested world. Thanks to religious attitude – the root of human stupidity lasting much longer than infinity. Poch Suzara

Money

“Our society,” Bertrand Russell wrote, “is so imbued with the belief that happiness consists of financial success that men do not realize how much they are losing, and how much richer their lives might be if they cared less about money. But the results of their instinctive dissatisfaction are all the worse for being unconscious.”

In the Philippines, however, even those who are not suppose to be in the business of making money are busy making money on the side – teachers and professors, congressmen and senators, and, among the most successful – the priests and nuns. Such religious men and women of God are able to collect and then remit, quite successfully, tons of tax-free money yearly to the Vatican bank. It is already worth In the trillion of dollars today. Thanks to so-called Catholic Charity.

In the meantime, most of my college-educated friends and relatives struggle in life over nothing except to earn or make more millions, if possible. They are the poor in spirit. For my part, I’d rather struggle in the search of the truth. The truth, after all, is worth far more than billions. Moreover, even if I were poverty-stricken, I would rather be happy getting richer in spirit. There is nothing quite like it in all the joys found in nature. Poch Suzara

Theological Rubbish

One of the ugly things about our society: millions of our children in school are still indoctrinated with threat of eternal damnation to believe and have faith in a higher power otherwise known as the Supreme Being.
There is, however, an uglier side to this sad horror. Most of the grown-up men and women in our sick society today still believe in the same old childish rubbish. They even believe in the Revealed Truth that has yet to the revealed.
As a schoolboy, once during weekly confession, I asked the priest to please reveal to me the whereabouts of my dead loved-ones? Are they in heaven or in hell? In what level of happiness are they in heaven? Or in what level of punishment are they suffering in hell? Today, as a grown-up, I am asking as to the whereabouts of the more than 1,000,000,000 Filipinos who already lived and died in the Philippines since Christianity arrived here some 500 years ago. How many Filipinos made it to heaven and how many have been damned to hell? I am told, however, that even among the brightest of the Jesuit theologians, no one knows as it is still one of God’s great mysteries.
In the meantime, critics today are asking me to explain what triggered my hatred of Catholicism. So that they could psychoanalyze my bigotry. It seems to be alarmingly translucent, however, that these critics are the same type of believers who had Jose Rizal put to death by musketry. What a bunch of faith-based, priestly-indoctrinated cowards. No, my friends, I do not hate Catholicism. I hate the lies and falsehoods behind the history of the Catholic Church. Poch Suzara

Superman and Jesus

In the Da Vinci Code movie – Jesus is a depicted as a man married to Mary Magdalene.
In the Hollywood movie, Superman is depicted as a hero to the millions crying out for a Savior.
Superman is a greater fictional savior than the biblical Jesus. A savior should not put his power in abeyance, nor should he be inefficient at his job. Consider how Jesus as a Savior has been hiding since his resurrection from death on the cross centuries ago! Poch Suzara

Faith

A Christian says: I have faith in God because my mother and father raised me as a Christian as both were themselves Christians.
A Muslim says: I have faith in Allah because my mother and father raised me as a Muslim as both were themselves Muslims.
A Jew says: I have faith in Yahweh because my mother and father raised me as Jewish as both were themselves Jewish.
Faith indeed is not a matter of free will, but a matter of accident as to which parents gave birth to each and every one of us. If our parents were Buddhist, we, most likely, would have been raised and indoctrinated as Buddhists.
My parents were both devout Catholics. Happily, they played no role during my free choice to decide for myself as to which freedom I should wish to entertain: the freedom of religion or the freedom from religion.
In the meantime, there is, indeed, something bigger and a greater power than my own existence to love and respect in this world. No, not a mysterious God out there; but my family, my country, and indeed, the whole of humanity down here. Poch Suzara

Jews and Muslims and Christians

To establish peace on earth and goodwill to all men, may I suggest that the Jews and Muslims should only sit down together and stop behaving like the good Christians. Indeed, they should all stop emulating the Christian way of hating and cutting each other’s throat and stabbing each other back in God’s name and for his glory in heaven. Look at the Catholics and the Protestants. After all this past centuries, look how they have not yet learned to love and respect each other’s beliefs in the same Jesus Christ to help establish local and global sanity! Poch Suzara

Adam and Eve

According to the bible, our first parents - Adam and Eve were the first couple to worship God. They were also the first human couple to be rejected by God. In His wrath over a meaningless, nay childish issue God punished and expelled Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden.
As a descendant of Adam and Eve, can you blame me for believing that God was such an ungodly God to our first parent? I say: Phooey to such a God! Phooey also to the Devil in the shape of a Talking Serpent! And if you, my dear Born-again Christians do not like to read what I write, then I say phooey on you too. Poch Suzara

The Right to Believe

Is it your right to believe there is a God? Is it your right to believe there is no God? As a matter of fact, you have no right to believe this or to believe that unless you have first fully explored every facet or duly discovered every angle of the belief in question. Indeed, everybody believes this or believes that. Nobody, however, knows exactly what believing means. For my part, I’d rather remain in constant doubt. I’d rather suspend my judgment. I do not care to believe. I only want to know.
In the meantime, we continue to spill blood over what is, at bottom, a conflict of sick beliefs. Arguments for or against healthy ideas have never done any one any harm.
I am a conscious objector. I do not believe in going to war against others just because they have weird beliefs.
The one and only war I approve without any hesitation whatsoever is the war of logic against the concept of the existence of God and the existence of the devil. Until the concept of supernatural monsters are defeated in the minds of men and totally expunged out of the hearts of women, we shall only continue to hate and kill each other for the sake of nothing. We shall never enjoy peace on earth and goodwill to all men. Poch Suzara

Atheism

Charles Bradlaugh was one of the greatest atheists who ever lived. I challenge you believers to discard your logical fantasy by listening carefully to this man’s logical reality: “Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says "I know not what you mean by God.” I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me.” Poch Suzara

An Anonymous Critic wrote

“Poch is a failure. You are rehashing your arguments for ages, like mustard seeds falling on arid soil.”
“It would be interesting though to read what triggered your hatred against Catholicism, so we can pychoanalyze your bigotry.”
“Catholicism or none, man is predisposed to supernatural beliefs. Just live with it. This diversity makes the world colorful. God--oops, did I offend you?-- I could not imagine living in a world with one train of thought, certainly not following yours.”
My response: the superstitious primitives are always predisposed to supernatural beliefs. They are the poor in spirit. For my part, I would rather be a failure at natural disbeliefs than be a success at supernatural beliefs. I have no desire to be successful at promoting ancient stupidity especially if it means embracing faith in the false foundation of Christianity. I was raised and indoctrinated to be a questionless Christian and so, eventually, in order to regain my self-respect, I dropped out. However, instead of believing more of the same old childish pursuits, like be a Born-again Christian, I decided to simply grow up.
In the meantime, my dear critic, please stop revealing your infantile contempt for human intelligence. It is always a virtue to be able to think for one’s self. Please stop displaying the inferiority of your childish faith. Instead, try to manifest your mind as something brightened and superior, and not something as frightened and inferior. Argue your case with the power of reason. Do not fault me for taking the side of science, humanity, respect for life, reverence for nature and understanding of our place in evolution, caring for our biological heritage and for the future of our children’s children. The higher power that you are referring to can only be found in the better part of ourselves as humans on this earth. It is we who must realize that love and happiness and the joys in life do not come from somewhere vague out there. They are clearly the beauties found right here as they come from our own minds and hearts, experiences, passions and compassions, laughter, friends and family. Poch Suzara