"God pours His love into hearts to flow out to others." Philippine Star, Nov. 26, 2014. WOW God, at your age. Shame on you! Still playing childish games of love to accomplish what or to benefit whom? Poch Suzara Twitter# Facebook# Google#
There is nothing in the bible that states Christ was born On December 25. There is also nothing mentioned as to what date Christ was crucified on the cross. We atheists celebrate Christmas not because of the birth of Christ but because of the birth of man's capacity to put more beauty into this world where religion has only put horrors.
Obviously, there exist bigger things in this world than my own existence: my own family and the whole of mankind. Indeed, the human race is a greater reality than I am. I should, however, wish to specially include Bertrand Russell – the philosopher – logician - mathematician who was much taller, much greater, and much wiser than a lot of college professors I have met and argued with during these past decades. Whenever, during odd moments, I feel a general impression of depression, I read any of the books written by Bertrand Russell and I am quickly enlightened with the beauty of reason to go on appreciating the power of human intelligence. Aside from my own beliefs and disbeliefs that have already been published in my Blog, please expect in the coming weeks, months, and years ahead to learn more from Bertrand Russell ( 1872-1970 ). His intellectual life was devoted to three main pursuits. He sought impersonal objective truth successively in Religion, Mathematics, and Science. He was a passionate skeptic. His philosophy was a battleground on which he fought the philosophical losing battle against himself. He concluded that logic and mathematics are one and the same. One of his greatest achievement was to realize that the grammatical form of a sentence often fails to reflect the logical form of its meaning. He recognized that the non-human world is unworthy of worship. A Socialist and a Pacifist who was ready to be imprisoned for them. He actively participated in global politics and inspired protest against belligerent governments. A deeply religious man who hated all organized religions. A prolific writer. His critical views on sex and marriage and superstition and indeed education scandalized the powers-that-be and still do. With much gusto, I shall pass on to you what I think is Bertrand Russell’s best. For more published books and other reading materials, please contact the BERTRAND RUSSELL SOCIETY OF THE PHILIPPINES, C/O pocholo.suzara@gmail.com Poch Suzara - Chairman
“Those who live 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 even to long future ages. I find many men nowadays oppressed with a sense of impotence, 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 a breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal.”
“Fear has many forms - fear of death, fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific terrors. Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of the truth as in the endeavor after a worthy manner of life.”
“Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.”
“Heroic lives are inspired by heroic ambitions, and the young man who thinks there is nothing important to be done is pretty sure to do nothing important.”
“In human affairs, we can see that there are forces making for happiness, and forces making for misery. We do not know which will prevail, but to act wisely we must be aware of both.”
“We shall not create a good world by trying to make men tame and timid, but by encouraging them to be bold and adventurous and fearless except in inflicting injuries upon their fellow-men.”
“Forethought, which involves doing unpleasant things now for the sake of pleasant things in the future, is one of the most essential marks of mental development.”
“It is odd that modern men, who are aware of what science has done in the way of bringing new knowledge and altering the conditions of social life, should still be willing to accept the authority of texts embodying the outlook of very ancient and very ignorant pastoral or agricultural tribes. It is discouraging that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much wholly unnecessary misery. If men’s kindly impulses were stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these precepts are not to be taken literary, any more than the command to “sell all that thou hast and give it to the poor.”
“There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.”
"One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”
Education has two very different purposes: on the one hand it aims at developing the individual and giving him knowledge which will be useful to him; on the other hand it aims at producing citizens who will be convenient for the State or the Church which is educating them.
Without birth control, we could not dispense with the old checks on the increase of population – war, pestilence, and famine. This has been obvious since the time of Malthus. Every opponent of birth control, unless he is incapable of arithmetic, must be assumed to be supporters of war… Thus the practice of birth control should be regarded, not merely as permissible, but as a public duty; and every citizen should be helped to perform this duty. - Marriage and Morals
In my school, no obstacle to knowledge shall exist, of any sort or kind. I shall seek virtue by the right training of passions and instincts, not by lying and deceit. In the virtue that I desire, the pursuit of knowledge, without fear and without limitation, is an essential element, in the absence of which the rest has little value.
“How can you teach children to be good, they ask, if you do not teach them religion?” How can you teach them to be good, I should reply, if you habitually and deliberately lie to them on a subject of the greatest importance? And how can any conduct which is genuinely desirable need false beliefs as its motive?
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in Arithmetic, because in Arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
The teaching of hatred, however socially harmful may be the class against which the hatred is directed, always injects poison into the social system. When the immediate purpose has been achieved, the emotion survives as a habit and looks for new victims.
Man does right, as a rule, to have his thoughts more occupied with the interests of his nation than with those of others, because his actions are more likely to affect his own nation. But in time of war, and in all manners which are not of equal concern to other nations and to his own, a man ought to take account of the universal welfare, and not allow his survey to be limited by the interests, or supposed interests, of his own group, or nation. Poch Suzara
You can, if you think fit, prepare children for a military life by teaching them all to do the same thing at the same moment when they hear the word of command. If you do, they will grow up thwarted and stunted and full of deep-seated anger against the world – no doubt useful emotions if they are to be soldiers employed in killing, but not if they are to be happy citizens of a world at peace.
History makes one aware that there is no finality in human affairs; there is not a static perfection and an unimprovable wisdom to be achieved.
Education must foster the development of freedom of action and thought. This is the ultimate purpose of teaching and learning. Only a free human being can be a skeptical one; conversely, only a skeptical person can ultimately achieve genuine freedom.
Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible. There is nothing for the politician to consider outside or above the various men, women, and children who compose the world. The problem of politics is to adjust the relations of human beings in such a way that each severally may have as much of good in his existence as possible.
When I see people who desire money or fame or power, I find it hard to imagine what must be the emotional emptiness of their lives, that can leave room for such trivial things.
A freethinker’s universe may seem bleak and cold to those who have been accustomed to the comfortable indoor warmth of the Christian cosmology. But to those who have grown accustomed to it, it has its own sublimity, and confers its own joy. In learning to think freely we have learnt to thrust fear out of our thoughts, and this lesson, once learnt, brings a kind of peace which is impossible to the slave of hesitant and uncertain credulity.
I have been informed that suffering is sent as a purification for sin, but I find it difficult to think that a child of four or five can be sunk in such black depths of iniquity as to deserve the punishment that befalls not a few of the children whom our optimistic divines might see any day, if they choose, suffering torments in children’s hospitals. Again, I am told that though the child himself may not have sinned very deeply, he deserves to suffer on account of his parents’ wickedness. I can only repeat that if this is the divine sense of justice it differs from mine, and that I think mine superior.
