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First off, showers are seemingly the greatest place to conduct thoughts. It’s as though your thoughts, apparently electric, conduct the water in a brainstorm above your head.

Anyway, the point of this post is to address what I think is at the heart of contention in the religious sphere of our society: authenticity. What I mean by this, is that currently in the United States (and really, the world over), there is deeply rooted sentiment that there is “one true religion.” Essentially, that, every religion thinks that all other religions got it wrong; the God, the principles, how to pray, what is right about marriage, and how to treat someone that is different than you. Then, there is the atheist’s stance, which I think was nicely displayed in a meme on Facebook the other day, so rather than typing one thousand words, here you are:

UniverseMeme.

Which, at the time of sharing it, I liked it. I liked it, but I didn’t love it – because, as you can see, subtlety, the atheist is taking his piece of the pie. There is condescension in the post. The words, “insignificant, little, fighting, scribbled, coolest,” and the phrases, “Middle Eastern desert sect,” and “fairy tales,” are all designated words to captivate the selective crowd (atheists) in an echo chamber of superiority. Recognize that the atheist’s failure here is the same as the devout religious person’s failure, which is attempting to claim a truth higher than their truth. These are attempts at desperate self-righteousness, in all their humor.

Ultimately, however, we might find that, for the religious person, rather than the Judeo-Christian God being the only one in Heaven (because this is the current mode of thought in the United States), maybe Heaven is a big enough place to accompany all of the Gods of all of the religions, the world over. And the takeaway point for the atheist here, is that at the very least, what we can recognize from religion and ourselves is that scrambling to be correct about something, especially one of such an abstract degree (and in all fairness, even multiple universes can’t outright deny the potential existence of a place such as Heaven, and actually probably promotes it) is worthless except for attempting to pursue a greater condition or moral value in the world. Therefore, maybe we should all recognize that every religion or religion-less person has a way of identifying their spirituality or relation to the world and be okay with the fact that we all do so differently.

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Advocating any and all
believed biblical benignity
conglomerates cataclysmic conformity;
daring deranged and dogmatic
evangelicals to extrapolate exorcism
for their feared Father.

Gleefully grasping the grandeur
holism of Heavenly hopes
invigorates irate and irreconcilable
jabbering of jibberish jeers.

Knowledge is kindly kindling,
lingering and lofting in liberalists’
mere mentality, mastering
the notoriously nimble nihilism of
the “omnipotent” opposition or otherwise
playfully poking pedantic
quintessences of quirks, quickly
and rather rigorously reforming
simple and shameful “sinners.”

Treacherously, truth tantalizes and
usually unequivocally unties
vivacious valleys of vacuous
wishes which wistfully
xerox xeric Xanax
yanking youthful “yesterdays”
and zealously zapping zoilism.

- n.v.

So, one day I was talking to my brother and thinking about how shitty religion is. I wanted to write a poem that was an A-Z alliteration denouncing it. I sat down and wrote this. T-Z gets a little wonky.

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The story begins with two chaps debating: one has atheistic tendencies, the other has theistic tendencies. For the sake of simplicity we will acknowledge the atheistic person as, “A” and the theistic person as, “T”. The following is an example of the type of conversation that may happen.

  • They begin to talk about their beliefs and T says that he follows the Bible. A decides to interject T and say that the Bible is filled with awful ideas. T quickly rejects this claim and says that A is taking the Bible too literally.

Generally, this is the way many theists escape from criticism. The usual route that A would take is arguing that it’s ridiculous to take some things literally and some things figuratively. But, it’s not. And I’ll grant T that there can be passages taken literally and passages that can be taken figuratively. That’s fine. However, when it comes to an overwhelming amount of passages, the switch to figurative does no better than interpreting it literally and in some cases makes it worse. Such as,

  • “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” – Leviticus 20:13

I know, I know, it’s from the Old Testament so it doesn’t count. But, it does. At least, Timothy, Peter and Luke think so:

  • “ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” – Timothy 3:16
  • “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” – Peter 20-21
  • “But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.” – Luke 16:17

So, this refutation of the Old Testament is rendered invalid. Now, referring to the Leviticus quotation from earlier, the literal interpretation of it is that we kill homosexuals. “They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” I don’t think this is disputable. Nobody wants to own up to this claim though and so the blame falls on the person interpreting the quote as taking it “too literally.” Let’s interpret this quote figuratively, then!

  • “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” – Leviticus 20:13

We’ll break it down so it’s easier to follow.

  • “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.”

Okay. So, figuratively (or, metaphorically) Leviticus is saying that if a man has sexual relations. Er, rather… we’ll just say that this passage means that if a man is very close, (but not actually having sex) just terribly intimate friends, then they’ve done an awful thing. We’ve avoided the claim that we’re against homosexuals, yeah!

  • “They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

This one seems tricky, but we can make it work. Instead of “put to death,” the Bible really only meant to say that they should be psychically alienated and scrutinized mentally to the point that they feel as though they’re dead, not physically dead. “Their blood will be on their own heads,” just means that they need to own up to their ugliness eventually.

Voila! The new, figurative passage would read something like this:

  • “If a man has a terribly close friendship with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be psychically alienated and scrutinized mentally to the point that they feel as though they’re dead. Their feelings about themselves should be in accordance with this deranged mental state.” – Leviticus 20:13 (reworked, figuratively!)

Perfect! Instead of the Bible being against gay men and thinking that we should kill them, we should just think of every guy who is close friends with another guy as an oddity and treat them as such until they treat themselves the same way!

And, there are endless other passages that operate the same way. Switching the language of the Bible from literal to figurative doesn’t help its case. In fact, in this situation, I’d say it makes it worse: don’t kill someone, just make them live out their entire life mentally tortured and wish that they were dead. As one of my friends aptly put it, “It’s like those people who say, ‘I don’t mean to offend you, but you’re fucking stupid!'”

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learning every day to be perfect,
learning every day their virtues,
advice-given morals not lessons,
weaken the value; the mind lessens.
following these blind rules to pursue
a “faithful” lifestyle, not to be true
sitting in their perch, they sit still,
against everything: fight genetics, kill free will,
obstinate and stagnant, they reprieve,
depressed and anxious, they believe

-n.v.

 

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their castle is knit with wire
our castle is wit and fire
they protect and destroy
we elect and elicit joy
theirs is to believe and to blame
ours is to discover and accept shame
they raise him to demolish us
we deny him and promote us
visit the castles each and see
the ‘grandeur’ view of the heavenly, or
one of personhood and humanity

- n.v.

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oh, how we splendour in such short sight
so all of creation becomes a blight
when the King of Kings is the only light
and the thinker remains a parasite
please, allow that crafter of thought allude
to the grandeur of humankind, not some great Dude
because to craft a thought is a fine deed
and should not be discarded as a dead seed
thought is from the finite but creates the infinity
to show us ‘parasites’ we are the Divinity
its operation is humble but only to subdue
yet in grand ignorance seen as something to eschew
allow the power in Imagination to be found
therefore be renowned; Humankind be crowned

- n.v.