Sam Harris on Jose Rizal

“We are the final judges of what is good, just as we remain the final judges of what is logical. And on neither front has our conversation with one another reached an end. There need to be no scheme of rewards and punishments transcending this life to justify our moral intuitions or to render them effective in guiding our behavior in the world. The only angels we need to invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil\s masterpiece.” Poch Suzara

Richard Dawkins on Jose Rizal

Fraud, illusion, trickery, hallucination, honest mistake or outright lies – the combination adds up to such a probable alternative that I shall always doubt casual observations or second hand stories that seem to suggest the catastrophic overthrow of existing science. Existing science will undoubtedly be overthrown; not, however, by casual anecdotes or performances on television, (or by public execution of scientists like Rizal) but by rigorous research, repeated, dissected and repeated again.” Poch Suzara

TO JOSE RIZAL

Wherever you are, I have the highest respect for you as a man, and I have the deepest love for you as a Filipino. In this connection, I shall continue, to the end of my days, to struggle against those who had you, publicly, put to death. They are still existing, alive and kicking doing more harm, more damage, than ever. Indeed, in this 21st century, your enemies are still in control of our schools, colleges, and universities twisting the mind of the Filipino to remain spiritually poor as a people, and still distorting the heart of the Philippines to remain morally bankrupt as a nation!
Sir: in the God-forsaken country, you are about the one and only Filipino, with dignity and self-respect, worthy to be called Filipino! The rest are trying only to save themselves the trouble of having to think. As the Sick Man of Asia, we only love to believe. Thus, instead of appeals to principles and logic and philosophy, our public spirit is only aroused by personalities and celebrities. Indeed, instead of being the mature masters of our ideals and principles as a society, we only continue to be the childish victims of a foreign Jewish deity. Poch Suzara

Rizal’s Ultimo Adios

How do we summarize it? The poem was completed on Dec. 29, 1896 hours before he was executed. He was able to smuggle out the finished poem. He placed it inside a lamp and gave to his visitors, among whom was his sister and whispered to her: “look inside. There is something inside it.” He made an extra copy by putting it inside his shoe for insurance purpose.
The Ultimo Adios was Rizal’s last poetic defiance against those who continue to be childish believers instead of being intelligent thinkers. The Ultimo Adios is a strong message to the Filipino as a people: – to begin to think that we all share only one common enemy together. No, not the Spaniards or the Americans or the Japanese, or what have you, etc. But our enemy is stupid religion. Indeed, religion that encourages individual stupidity that culminates into social insanity. Poch Suzara

Mar Patalinjug

My great friend from New York wrote: Dear Poch: I think we should forget not only this generation of Filipinos but let us try forgetting a total of five generations. That's a period of more than 100 years. You and I won't be around by then. We will have long turned to dust! Mar
My response to Mar: I agree with you 100 per cent. Dust we are and unto dust we shall return. But we need not live as a farce just because we will end as a fertilizer. Let us, on the contrary, be involved and be like those rare thinking individuals who, throughout history, have had the courage to put sanity into this world where nature has only put insanity. In his NEW HOPES FOR A CHANGING WORLD, Bertrand Russell said it better: “Those who feel nobly, even if in their day they live obscurely, need not fear that they will have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, their neighbors, perhaps to long and future ages. I find many men nowadays oppressed with the feeling that in the vastness of modern societies there is nothing of importance that the individual can do. This is a mistake. The individual, if he is filled with love of mankind, with breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal.” Poch Suzara

Three Kinds of Filipinos

There are only three kinds of Filipinos in the Philippines: Those who upgrade humanity; and, those who degrade humanity. And the rest who could not care less
as nothing matters to them except worshipping divinity. Poch Suzara

Tony Abaya

Wrote a great article in the Manila Standard Today on how we are as a nation of Idiots with idiot candidates and idiot voters.
Far more disastrous, however, than we are a nation of idiots, we are, indeed, a nation of sinners and criminals.
Our schools, colleges, and universities are places where they teach us to believe that there exists a higher power called “God” who will not only provide from out there, but will also forgive us of our idiotic sins and idiotic crimes down here. No doubt, ours is an idiotic system of education. But blaming our officials and voters for what is idiotic in the Philippine government will not do. After all these Filipinos are among the prestigious products of La Salle, Ateneo, University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas, Miriam college, Assumption college, Lyceum.
Letran, San Beda, Mapua, Sta. Escolastica, Santa Teresa, Don Bosco, etc. Not to mention products too of Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and our public school system.
As for me personally, if there is anything I am eternally proud as a Filipino, it was my great success at having engineered my own expulsion out of high school in De La Salle University some 50 years ago. It certainly opened the greatest opportunity for me to acquire genuine learning. I hit my strides by enrolling in the greatest of all universities: it is but a collection of books – a library of my own. Happily, I am still a faithful and an active student even in my old age. Learning, indeed, is a never-ending adventure. Poch Suzara

The Hidden God

According to TIME, “There is enough light for those who want to believe, and enough darkness for those who do not want.”
I ask: What good is God’s existence if he does not expose himself by creating more and heavier light into this world of darkness? What good is a hidden God where, in darkness, he stays hidden? Poch Suzara

God Admits

I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Exodus 3:6, Mark 12:26, Luke 20:37.
There is nothing written in the same holy bible where God also admits: I am the God of Juan de la Cruz, the God of Juan de la Tamad, or the God of Juan de la Sipul?
Again: I am God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Matt. 22:32
I ask: What have we living Filipinos got anything to do with the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? To think these bible characters were all born in some Jewish land, and have been long dead and buried in a foreign country since thousands of years ago. Poch Suzara

The Voice of the People

The Son of God Jesus, crucified on the cross, cried out: “Father, forgive them; for they know now what they do.” Luke 23:33
Well, if the Son of God Jesus clearly admitted that the people know not what they do, isn’t it rather childish to believe that the voice of the people is the voice of God? Poch Suzara

Mother Teresa

“…We cannot solve all of the problems of the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of all that is that is to destroy love. And this happens when we tell people to practice contraception.”
This is really another pontifical way of saying that nothing pleases God more than to see poor women here and poor children there and the propagation of poverty spreading everywhere. After all, Mother Teresa loved not only poor people here and there but loved even more poverty everywhere. Poch Suzara

Bishop Teodoro Bacani Jr.

wrote: “Somebody has remarked that if we offend God, God will forgive us if we repent. If we hurt our fellow humans, they will forgive us if we apologize. But if we destroy the Earth, it will not forgive us even if we ask for its forgiveness.”
Bishop Bacani ignores the biblical teachings of Christianity with its vested interests in poverty and misery: The bible clearly declares: “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.” John 2:15

Cardinal John Newman

wrote: “Conscience has rights because it has duties.” Indeed, it has: duties not to religious authority, not even to any other outside forces, but duties only to one’s self as a self-respecting man. Conscience should and must decide for itself what is good or evil. Revelation does not count. Revelation exposed “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Unfortunately, it has failed to reveal why such a silly tree had been created and planted by God to begin with! In the second place, no one knows where that tree is to be found anywhere in the world today.
In the meantime, Proverbs 28:26 states: “he who trusts in his own mind is a fool; but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.” Is it any wonder that the faithful always end up walking mindless, if not always thoughtless as believers of bible wisdom? Poch Suzara

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

“Modern man . . . has long believed that right and wrong were only differences in point of view, but now when evil works itself out in practice he is paralyzed to do anything against it.”
I ask Archbishop Sheen: what about your own church from ancient days to modern times during these past 2,000 years? What exactly has your church done to diminish, nay, eliminate the evils in this world? What has happened to the power of God almighty always behind the power of your church? Poch Suzara

St. Augustine's Silly Philosophy

Wrote: “It is the mark of perfection to recognize one’s imperfections.” This is childish dishonesty with one’s self as far as I am concerned. I’d rather embrace Bertrand Russell’s sense of truthfulness: “No one is perfect and we should not be bothered by the fact that we are not.” Poch Suzara

Alvin Capino

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “There is no better expression of love than to help feed the hunger.”
Alvin, I totally disagree. There is no better expression of love than that of informing as well as encouraging would be mothers and fathers to seriously practice family planning and birth control. In this way, there will be less sick and hungry people to feed in our already sick and hungry society. Moreover, as we over-populate, nature will destroy us off with famine, disease, and environmental destruction. It is already a reality in so many parts of the fragile world. The alternative is family planning and birth control. In the meantime, every cause is a lost cause without population control. Poch Suzara

Emil Jurado

Wrote in the Manila Standard Today: “We all admire Pacquiao for his boxing skills. But I am afraid he’ll be a fish out of the water in Congress. What is pathetic about it is that he could win and kiss his boxing career goodbye. What happens if somebody in Congress challenges him to a debate? Will Pacman box him? Why can’t he just settle with the boxing career?
What happens, you asked, if somebody in Congress challenges Pacquiao to a debate? Well, what happens I ask, when Pacquiao challenges Congressmen to kneel down and make the sign of the cross before he starts punching everybody on the Congressional ring? Poch Suzara

G. K. Chesterton

Wrote: “The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing, it is that they thereafter believe in anything.”
I ask G.K. Chesterton: What happens when God stops believing in God? After all, God made it very clear in his first command: Thou shall have no other gods before me?” For Christ’s sake, who created those other gods? Where in hell do they come from? Poch Suzara

Miracles From Jesus

If Jesus performed feats of healing which were credited to him, is it not strange that during the days of his trial, or on his day of execution there was not one person who appeared and to protest because of his marvelous experience of being dead and resurrected back to life and restored back to health?
But then again even Jesus himself, dead on the cross, came back to life. I ask: Would a man who returned from the tomb fail to visit his mother? Only an extremely hard and thoughtless man could neglect his grieving mother. Also, how come there was no appearance to the idiots who had crucified him on the cross? Poch Suzara

Sigmund Freud

“The psychoanalysis of individual human beings, however, teaches us with quite special insistence that the god of each of them is formed in the likeness of his father, that his personal relation to God depends on his relation to his father in the flesh and oscillates and changes along with that relation, and that at bottom God is nothing other than an exalted father.”
Gee, Mr. Freud, I regret to disagree with you. Years before I had a great opportunity to get know, understand, and love my father, my maternal grandfather, and my paternal grandfather – God had them expunged dead out of my life.
Happily, however, my mother is still very much alive. She is 94 years old. I am taking care of her. A devout Catholic that she is and despite her devotion to God all these past years, I love her more than I care to love Mary, the Mother of God, not to mention all the saints of God whom I have never met.
And to think that if the supernatural God and supernatural Devil have been in existence for more than 70 million years and we humans on the average exist only for some measly 70 years, why should we care about pleasing, or, as the case may be, care about displeasing supernatural beings out there? Poch Suzara