Where are the honest believers?
The ones who know life is a shell?
Who know that this life
Is just struggle and strife
Till we cross into heaven or hell?
Where are the moaners and groaners,
Condemned from the start, by The Fall?
Those who don’t find it odd
That, unless there’s a god,
Their lives hold no meaning at all?
Where are god’s empty meat puppets?
Where can such creatures be found?
They just stumble along
Terrified they are wrong…
They’re everywhere! Just look around!
Obviously, the bookend to my “where are the honest atheists?” from yesterday. The difference is, the honest believers are everywhere. They were the ones who inspired yesterday’s verse, after all. Most of them don’t realize the implications of their question, when they start their “if I were an atheist…”
And in any major story that even tangentially mentions religion, you’ll find them in the comments threads, reminding us that this life is nothing compared to the eternal one to come. And there is Rapture Ready, if you want an extreme caricature. No, I am not going to link to them. Life’s too short, and it’s a sunny day!
“god’s empty meat puppets”
Terrific description! I always enjoy your verse, but this turn smacks of inspired genius. If original, put it into copyright now… if not, I’d like to know author so I may read there as well.
A fan.
Everything here, unless explicitly labeled otherwise, is the product of what passes for my fevered imagination. And, technically, anything posted on a blog like this is automatically subject to copyright.
Fuck off!©
@3
Oh my. Someone touch a nerve?
I suspect Ulysses was just having fun with the notion of copyright.
Thank you, Cuttlefish, for understanding what I was trying to say. Sorry, Janice, that my humor is too wide off the mark for you.©
Rereading my initial post, I see that my words could be possibly taken other as meant…I, in no way, was trying to imply that because I thought the phrase was from an ‘inspired genius’; that it might not have come directly from the Digital Cuttlefish…in spite of my following ramblings. I, too, at that point was just having some fun with the idea of copyright, and just making an oblique reference to the thought that it was a phrase that could become a real defining element in our language. I do love it; and there was never the slightest thought of any ‘legalism’, or infringements intended.
If any event, the subsequent comments from Ulysses – Janice – Ulysses were pretty humorous.
Yeah, I was a honest believer, once. I truly believed I was worthy of hell because of my sins and imperfections, and I believed the world was worthless without God.
It very nearly killed me, as that Christian nihilism and self-hatred threw me into a depressive spiral, and pushed towards finally punishing myself for my sins as I felt I deserved (via suicide, ultimately, and via self-injury on the way there), or at least getting the horrible me out of the world so I wouldn’t screw up and send people to hell with my continually failure to be perfect. I started thinking even if I ended up in hell, at least justice would be served.
Of course, this sounds pretty insane to most Christians (and atheists, obviously), but it seemed like the logical conclusion to explaining suffering and theodicy: we deserved it, every last ounce of suffering was still better than we deserved.
To cut the story short (because I get pretty angry at religion, knowing it still infects my family and some of my closest friends and it continues to poison my self-worth with its lingering venom), I deconverted, and humanism rooted in atheism eventually pulled me out of my nihilism. I spent way more time as a nihilistic Christian than I ever did as a nihilistic atheist (which I mostly was because that was what I had always stereotyped atheists as being when I was Christian).
One of my co-workers had her computer set up with that Windows screen-saver that allows you to repeatedly scroll a message across the screen. Her message: God is in control.
I always found that to be a horrible thought. A. The world is a mess. If God is in charge and this is the best he/she/it can do then why should we worship such an incompetent bumbler? B. If God is controlling everything then I’m not responsible for anything. Whatever I do is because God made me do it… good things and bad things alike.
As for being an honest atheist (previous DC post), I don’t think my atheism plays as big a role in my personal way of life as my education does. As an atheist, I can go fishing on Sunday without feeling guilty for missing church. I can’t see that it influences many other aspects of my life. As a biologist though, I decided that since I was born into the (evolution) game, I would play it. In other words, I found a mate and produced off-spring. That decision has been a much more controlling factor of my activities for the last 28 years than anything to do with non-belief in gods.
Eat well, stay fit, die anyway!