Dear Dan Brown

Aug. 29,2004


Dear Dan Brown,

Re: ANGELS and DEMONS and the DA VINCI CODE

I am writing as an atheist. Just like you, and everyone else, I too was born an atheist. Unlike you, however, and billions of others just like you, I do not live in fear or in shame of this simple truth: All babies are atheists - free from theism. No baby is born a Catholic, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu. Of course, I was raised and educated as a Catholic; not because of my free will; but because my parents and grandparents were reminded of eternal hell-fire if they did not choose to enroll me in a Catholic school.

You say that science should use its own telescope to look at the heavens and see God. But isn’t God everywhere? I ask: What is God doing way out there anyway? Why is he not down here and running his own government? Do you know Dan, one of the reasons why I am a proud atheist? None of my atheist friends are in Congress pretending to solve daily the problems of the nation by praying for divine intervention.

Why are you asking the scientists: “do you not see God in your science?” Ask the theologians. They too have not seen God in their theology. Otherwise, they would not describe God as only an incomprehensible mystery. But isn’t science, study of something, much more reliable than theology, which is the study of nothing? Indeed, theology is the study of the unknown by means of the more unknown for the sake of the unknowable. At any rate, the existence of an all-powerful God is not compatible with the existence of hate in His name and wars waged for his glory!

You belittle “science looking for answers by probing our unborn fetuses, for rearranging our own DNA – shattering God’s world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning and all it finds is more questions.” What grounds have you to disparage man’s ability to understand nature, our world? Would you rather that we remain in a state of perpetual ignorance? Sir, the concept of God has been nothing but an asylum of ignorance? Otherwise, why has the power of faith been so often displaced by the power of reason?

You say science textbooks tell us how to make a nuclear reaction, and yet they contain no chapter asking us if it is a good or a bad idea. A good or bad idea for whom? Science is knowledge. The use of knowledge is powerful. Knowledge can be used constructively or destructively. The growth of knowledge itself presents us with the choice as to whether to use it for life or for death. We need our democracy to nourish science and we need science to nourish our democracy. Both are one and the same thing in determining freely what is true and what is false. In the meantime, science together with democracy sees to it that the frontiers of knowledge are always wide open. Knowledge needs to be increased continually in every human mind. The goal should be the greater awareness of the truth of reality for everyone.

You say that “religion is flawed, but only because man is flawed.” You would think that when God incarnated himself as a man, he could have corrected those flaws. Perhaps, instead of free will, the good will would have been more beneficial for everyone. But where is the power of God behind the power of religion to correct those flaws in man in order to defeat evil from the power of Satan? Meanwhile, the theologians continue to insist that our existence is a defect, and in order to win eternal salvation, we need not do reconstruction; no, we must only seek obliteration.

Why do you say that we humans now feel more depressed and defeated than we have at any point in human history. In the Middle Ages, when a pestilence appeared in a country, the theologians advised the people to gather together in churches to pray for deliverance; thus, the infection spread with extraordinary rapidity among the crowded masses of supplicants. The result was death in the millions. Today we have the spread of HIV-AIDS, but where is God to answer the prayer of the millions of victims? Happily, medical science has not given up searching for the cure.

I regret to see you are way off target with the Galileo case and how the church has tried to slow the relentless march of science with benevolent intention. The issue is not whether Galileo was right or wrong. The issue is: Why has the Church found it necessary and desirable to suppress free inquiry with the threat of force? The answer is obvious and revealing. Religion is peddling an inferior product, one that cannot withstand critical investigation. And if, as you implied, there should be no conflict between reason and faith, why then was Galileo, the scientists at the age of 70, searching for the truth with reason and evidence – imprisoned?

True, because of rotten businessmen in cahoots with corrupt politicians, science manufactured weapons of mass destruction. But look at almost every war: It is a religious war: - Northern Ireland, Vietnam, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, the 30 years War, the Crusades. Religion has not stopped demanding from science ever more deadly weapons. But is there hope? Yes, there is. The competition in science that has resulted in ever improving the technology of international communication and the spread of reliable information may be the only hope for establishing peace on earth and goodwill to all men.

Science has discovered that nature is a part of man just as much as man is a part of nature. In fact, we are all interrelated. It follows that the power greater in us is not some supernatural UFO out there. The greater power is our family, our country, and the whole of mankind. At any rate, if it’s true that the troubles in our world have been due to scientific intelligence, then what is needed is not less, but more scientific intelligence. Even Leonardo Da Vinci himself admitted: “There is no higher or lower knowledge, but only one, flowing out of experimentation.” And I might add: flowing too out of critical lively analysis rather than from mental deadly paralysis.

Finally, in your Da Vinci Code, a great thriller, after all is said and done, what does it really matter to the world still wracked with religious hatred, if Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a daughter named Sarah; or, whether the Catholic Church distorted the true message of Jesus or not? I think what matters the most is that if these were facts, then Jesus with his promise to return, should have already returned sooner considering he had a daughter and her mother waiting for him on this earth. But where is Jesus? Even the theologians do not know his whereabouts!

In the final analysis, I think religion should seriously cease supporting decaying familiarity. Let us instead work together for the growth of mankind with science helping and offering sensible uncharted opportunities for more love, more beauty, more knowledge, and more joys in life in THIS WORLD.

With all good wishes,

Poch Suzara
Bertrand Russell Society, Phil
P.O. Box 3036, Makati City