As if it were magic, it happened last night,
And we woke to a very improbable sight—
It certainly got our attention, all right—
A mile-high statue of Christ.
We looked for its makers, but none could be found;
The atheists saw it, and termed it “profound”;
What’s more, it was floating, two feet above ground;
As evidence goes, it sufficed.
They called out the networks, and went on the air,
Admitting it seemed as if something was there,
And if some called it God, now, they thought it was fair
Cos the burden of proof had been met.
“To be perfectly fair, we have always maintained
That no proof could be found”, disbelievers explained,
“But the God explanation from which we’ve refrained
Is a likely hypothesis yet!”
“Though it seemed, till last night, our position was strong,
When new data come in, we admit we were wrong!
We admit it! So now, could we please get along?
There is much now that needs to be done!”
“If the theist hypothesis now is the best
We have new variations to put to the test—
For if one God is real, well then, what of the rest?
What a marvelous path we’ve begun!”
But believers were hesitant, slow to agree,
They ignored, for the most part, the atheists’ plea—
A demeanor, on their part, which none could foresee—
You’d have thought they’d be head of the line.
“Are we sure that it’s Jesus? We’re not being played?
We haven’t confirmed that it isn’t man-made—
(And I’m sure that His skin is a much lighter shade)
It’s too early to call this divine.”
“This isn’t the Jesus that my people follow;
His hair is too long, and his cheeks are too hollow.
If anything, maybe it might be Apollo,
A false god, who doesn’t exist!”
“Some billionaire made it, to make us lose face,
Or aliens, maybe, from far outer space—
Examine the evidence! Every last trace!
There are too many left on the list!”
In the meantime, the Muslims were busy denying,
And Orthodox Jews accused newsmen of lying,
While Wiccans, world-wide, began weeping and crying
And chaos pervaded the day.
The Christians, confused about what they were seeing,
Found one point on which every sect was agreeing:
“With each bit of faith, every ounce of our being,
We’re praying it just goes away.”
Yeah, it’s an old verse, but I don’t think it’s seen daylight since the early days of FtB, so it might well be new to you. I’m reposting it because I have seen one too many mention of those closed-minded straw-atheists who would (and do!) deny the existence of God in the face of any evidence whatsoever.
Mind you, I rarely hear anyone tell us what evidence would make them say their own religion was wrong, and another was right.
Indeed, I start discussions by making the theist describe the nature of the evidence that would convince them to abandon their current religion and convert to whatever religion they have a particular beef with. I find the discuss usually ends there.
This is my first time seeing this, and I’m finding it lovely. What a charming and very pointed short story this might make. I’ll also say I was tickled by the sepielle you posted a short time ago. I’d never heard of the format before, and had to Google it (though found little in the way of poetic results, and thus am still curious). But I have been in need of a smile lately, and reading this aloud provided it! =)
Pabs, the sepielle is a verse form of my own devising (though two or three of my readers have written their own as well). The posts tagged “sepielle” on this blog thus represent the vast majority of them in the world.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/category/sepielle/
I once used the “As an atheist, I merely disbelieve in one more god than you do” argument with a guy at my local watering hole. That shut him up for a while, but when I saw him next week, he declared that he thought there must be some truth in every religious tradition. So, in order to avoid becoming an atheist, he decided to become a pantheist!
@#4–My sister used to say there were many paths to the same destination; many interpretations of the same evidence; lots of blind men and an elephant, yadda yadda yadda.
I had to remind her that many of these different paths were mutually exclusive, and that people were willing to die and kill for the differences.
Well that was quite a pleasant read.