Atheist prayer/poem anyone? Your comments please?

Question

ATHEIST PRAYER

Lets put our hands together and pray
That God or Gods do not exist.
I know they don’t!
And add all Devils on that list.

Who needs them?
What for?

Have not humanity made fools of us
For two thousand years and more?
Enslaved, tortured and kill their kind
On Gods and Devils names?
Let’s toss them out and pray…
That they stay out for good.

Who needs them?
What for?

If humanity is to gain some self respect
They must worship some of their kind instead
Scientists and sages, heroes of human kindness,
Mathematicians, philosophers and artists
And all the ones who made this world
A kinder place to live.

And throw the supernatural beliefs
Back into the dark ages!
Who needs them?
What for?

Answer 1

A suggestion: in line #10, use the plural possessive forms and change "on" to "in" so you have "In Gods' and Devils' names"

Otherwise, you have a point and express it nicely. You'll be flamed today by the true believers...hope you're wearing your asbestos underwear!

;-)

Answer 2

Until I hit "If humanity is to gain some self respect," I thought this poem was working toward Juvenalian satire that could have used a little re-thinking in its approach in places. I would have liked it better if had remained so because the tone works so well for it. The title set me up for this expectation and the first three strophes didn't really do much to remove it. The fourth line encouraged it. I expected to see something about atheists praying for devils not to exist because they're going to hell. To be fair, without that fourth line, I probably would have dropped the idea of satire earlier in the poem.

As a pro-atheist poem, it really loses out. The tone and the first strophe, for one, leads you to expect exactly what happens in it. You've read one pamphlet on religion and you've read them all, pretty much. The merging of the more archaic syntax (eg, Have not humanity made fools of us) with modern diction (Let's instead of let us) is problematic.

While I'm here: Have not humanity made fools of us--note subject-verb agreement problem. Humanity is singular, not plural, even though the definition encompasses a lot of people. The plural of humanity is humanities.

You can turn pro-atheist tracts into something that even die-hard anti-atheists will reluctantly agree is good poetry even if they don't like a word of it. We all know the Waste Land is a good poem, but find someone who actually likes to read it. Anyway. First, I'd change the title. You're setting up expectations that the poem doesn't bear out. I'm not the only one who had issues with it. Secondly, I'd reconsider either the tone or the argumentation. The tone is very angry at best and derogatorily condescending at worst. The first is okay, the second casts the speaker into a certain, and negative, light so it should be used for its greatest effect. The argumentation is cliche, at least for anyone who has witnessed or participated in a religious dicussion. They're as rare as people who actually enjoy reading The Waste Land. The cliche, by the way, does bear up satire wonderfully, but when it comes to making a serious statement, well cliche does mean "overused as to make meaningless." Using rhetoric to make poetry is always difficult.

Finally, as an atheist, I find the idea of worshiping a human for any reason abhorrent. This is only important to your poem as it's an issue in your argument. Is this what you wanted me to think when you wrote it? If so, good. If not, rethink your approach.

Answer 3

Sounds more like a pamphlet to me than a poem.

As for your ideas, I just want to point out to you that to worship "scientists", "mathematicians, philosophers and artists" is not necessarily better than to worship gods. I could give you a list of them that supported Nazi Germany.

Answer 4

To what or whom would an atheist pray? I can't imagine.