When we were born, we were automatically trapped within a culture with a certain belief system. This shapes how we understand all things around us. In most cases, it also dictates how we should behave. It pervades our whole personality so much that when it is challenged and we realize that something is wrong about it, it can  shatter our orderly understanding of the world and leave us utterly confused.

There are so many things that ordinary Filipinos do not know about their national hero. Even if his two novels (Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo) are being studied in high school and his life and works in college as part of the curriculum, many things have been left out of importance. Many details in the novels have been omitted and some aspects of Rizal’s life have been neglected if not concealed for some reasons.

A large portion of the population of established religions today are nominal members (i.e.  members only by name). Most of them still attend worship/church services but some never go to church at all. Most of these nominal members believe in the essential doctrines of their religion specially those that seem to be right in their judgment. But, when the teachings of their religion go against their common sense and rational thinking, they reject them.

The pure and simple belief in God -- the Uncaused Cause and Designer of all things -- without the added baggage of unreasonable and unsubstantial claims of special revelations (i.e. ancient sacred books) is what defines deism. A deist’s knowledge about God is based on reason, nature and his own conscience.