Religicide

I 'must believe' in something to be

Saved, so I've been told,

And practice all those rituals

Passed down from days of old,

Conform to thoughts conceived by men

Two thousand years ago,

The followers of Jesus, Buddha,

Krishna... So and so!

 

Then once I've made my choice I must

Resist all other faiths,

And war with each heretic, spill

Their blood, malign their race,

Aver that only my belief

Will take us to the stars,

While all those other foolish folk

Head to some place like Mars.

 

And all this on the words of those

Who trod the desert plains,

Who never saw an aeroplane,

Electric light or trains,

Knew nothing of the Internet

Or travel into space,

Who muttered superstitions round

The campfires of their race.

 

Our lives are fraught with peril as

Fanatics roam the earth,

Who seek to kill and maim us

By the values of their dearth,

No matter what I think, believe,

Or what man has begun,

The universe will plough its way

In circles, round the sun!

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Mark]

One of my favorite aspects of your writing, David, is how you can incorporate deeply-held personal views into a poem, letting people know absolutely where you stand, without giving offense or treading toes! This poem, though funny, is also very poignant. We who do choose to espouse the existance of one o'erweening God have certainly acted more than savage in the past, proving that humankind have still not gotten His core message. Well spoken!

[Tommy]

I couldn't agree more, and truly couldn't have said it better myself! This is asubject which has been playing cadence to my thoughts of late, and this piece is destined for my favorites!

Great Write!
RLG,
Tommy

[Tate Morgan]

This is now my favorite it reads like a comic book and holds to a more tangable idea of science over superstition

[DBURKE]

I see it as a win- win situation! You serve God and die if he exist you win if he does not then you lived a good clean life and in my opinion you win! I can only appreciate your honesty-

[Valentine]

David, to each of us our own deep thoughts about which God we serve..as you know I am a true believer but my husband isn't....maybe the two of you have your own god buried in your hearts somewhere..lol and God bless..Kathie

[R J Askew]

Yes, I don't think Nature cares one hoot for the gods man creates and then goes to war to justify. The notion of someone strapping a bomb to themselves and then going out to kill others to fast track to paradise because they have done something to please god is just bonkers. Most religions seem like gigantic confidence tricks ... Believe! believe! hallaluja! ... If I was god I would advise my followers to stop following me around, question everything and everyone including me. I wld not accept any petitions, I wld promise nothing and I wld never under any circumstances perform any miracles to boost my brand. My first act would be to meet the Devil for a beer and merge heaven with hell. There would be no more angels and no more demons. Actually, trying to imagine how a post-relious world might require a miracle.

[emmajoy]

Better to spend your life thinking about what you believe in than never caring whether or not there is something or Someone worthy of belief.

Whatever one's thought about past dogma and future invention we have to pause and ask if Man stands strong enough with his own weaknesses .. think on that.

Those men who didnt know the internet etc. invented Mathematics and the fluid machinations of the wheel, etc.. whether they did it cos of their beliefs or intelligence modern man will never know .. any more than they knew of our capacity to build machines and weapons of war, etc.

I think this is a brilliant poem, setting out reasoned thought and - in all probablity your final word on the matter. There is a phrase I'm taking with me: ' The universe will plough its way In circles, round the sun!

[spence]

You have expressed your atheistic beliefs very well in this and qualified them by drawing parallels between the now and the relatively recent past, (in terms of writing down the ancient creation myths as doctrine, as Ferg mentions in his review), where superstition and fear of the unknown informed all philosophy.
I think religion has suppressed far too much human development to be anything other than a hinderance to progress. I love this poem and i'll end my review with a famous religious quote that may act as a supporting statement to your wise assertions of truth,

'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things'.

Time for the species to move on, take care, spence

[Ferg]

i love the title! religions borne at the dawn of man, oral traditions passed down through the generations, transcribed into written language relatively recently, in the grand scheme of the universe.....who's to say who is right and who is wrong, but when you fall onto one side of the fence or another, you are bred to belive nothing else, at all costs, human or otherwise. religion will truly be the death of itself as the universe continues in its course.......excellent writing.
and the next insidiously penetrating religion to muscle its way to the fore????? :)

[Lena M. P.]

Too true. We are what we believe and we fear all those that are different. And yet the world turns despite us.