by Scott Kaelen
And repeat…
THE ULTIMATE FUTILITY OF RELIGION
The sharpened swords of Islam can behead as many infidels as they like. The sharpened tongues of Christianity can spew bigoted poison as often as they like. A few thousand years of humanity’s damage to itself and to its home planet is as a sneeze in the long life of the Earth.
Islamic extremists can cuddle under the Quran until they’ve killed everyone who doesn’t believe in Allah and Muhammad. Then they can tear into each other with renewed fervour, continuing to kill their own women and children, ensuring the ones they’ve recently impregnated by gang rape will never birth bastards nor breathe again. They can kill themselves and their religion from the inside out, if they so choose.
Christians the world over can continue confusing themselves about their religion. They can carry on vomiting bilious hatred and intolerance of anything that violates their beliefs. The milder of Christians can persist in spouting the nonsense that their religion is all about free will and love. They can baffle each other for centuries more, the worst of them mongering hate and bigotry that, unchecked, will lead to more murder in the name of God – murder of atheists and homosexuals and anyone else who doesn’t fit into their narrow-minded view of the world. Then, when only Christians remain, they can tear each other apart with wars over petty little differences in interpretation of the Bible, such as certain elements of the political-religious Troubles that occurred in Ireland between Protestants and Catholics for the final forty years of the twentieth century.
Other religions will rise and fall, and even the most well-intentioned of them will lead to brainwashing and a lack of free-thinking, and will result in bigotry, hatred, intolerance, sexual repression, gender oppression, repression of thought, social stagnation, rape, mutilation, murder, wars, genocide – because worship of anything is a weakness of self, a vestigial element of evolution; it’s the tail bone of the mind, but it’s a bone some of us were not even born with, while others have managed to shed it in their lifetimes.
The most well-intentioned members of any religion, those who believe utterly in peace and harmony, love and tolerance, free will and global acceptance – those people have either paid very little attention to the tenets, doctrines and commandments of their chosen religion, are extremely naive, have a staggering lack of comprehension, or have grossly misinterpreted the demands of their faith. For every “good” Christian, or “peaceful” Muslim, there are plenty more who would murder you if they knew they could get away with it.
Sadly, some of them do get away with it.
But all these religions can continue to spread hatred, they can kick the severed heads of murdered children through the villages, they can rape and beat and butcher women, they can torture and set fire to men as much as they want.
The Earth cares very little about the trifling bickering of humanity, because it’s going through its own mid-life crisis at the moment. Our planet has been around for a few billion years, and will only be around for a few billion more, because the life-giving Sun is going to swell and consume the planets in its inner orbit, utterly destroying all life on Earth. And in that destruction, any surviving religions will be snuffed out like a candle, if indeed any remain, if indeed humanity still exists so far in the future, which frankly I very much doubt.
I don’t believe humanity has what it takes to expand into the stars, though I do like to dream otherwise. We’re too hampered by myriad problems, all of which we’ve created ourselves. But if we ever do head out for other worlds, I really, really hope we leave the religions well and truly on Earth, because let loose in the universe they could cause unimaginable harm. Let the stars be the domain of a humanity that is pro-science and free of all religious shackles. Let Earth be the inheritance of intolerant rapists, butchers and cowards, and let them reign on their sacred little globe until the Sun goes nova.
In such a future, atheists would watch the event through their telescopes on distant worlds, with a tinge of regret at the loss of their once-beautiful planet.
They would shed a tear, but they would also be smiling.
For a time, at least.
TAKING THE PODIUM
(CASTING JUDGEMENT ON MANKIND)
When passing personal judgement on followers of organised religion, it can at times be too easy to forget that we’re talking about something that began as fevered and confused mindsets of primitive men, that over thousands of years have mutated into a global pandemic. Surely, then, today’s humans can’t be held responsible for merely being the latest victims of the religion virus? Well, yes and no; many of the 21st century’s humans are scarcely better or more enlightened than their predecessors of four millennia ago. In fact, they’d fit in quite nicely if we somehow were to shunt them back in time to witness Moses wandering back down from the mountain.
I can, and do, judge modern man as harshly as I do ancient man. In fact, I consider a huge chunk of the over-sized human population to have utterly gone off track. We’re each built with an innate resistance to stupidity and the urge to inflict pain, but too many of us are predominantly weak-willed, and lacking the necessary make-up to be decent individuals. Mankind simply isn’t ready yet to shed its barbarian skin.
I understand how religious beliefs originated and why they were necessary thousands, even hundreds of years ago. Judging the men of pre-Judean/Christian faith is perhaps not entirely fair, since their objects of worship were probably very vague. But from the rise of Judaism onwards I’m not sorry to shine an accusing light on every fevered mind that has been soaked through with devotion to the Abrahamic deity. Everyone is under the spotlight of scrutiny. Times have changed, but man has hardly changed at all.
We are altered beasts, but beasts nonetheless.
A believer in the Judeo-Christian-Islam deity (let’s call it ‘God’ for now, since the Abrahamic triune can’t agree on a name), when tasked with the age-old question of, “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” will answer with, “Neither. God came first and created both the chicken and the egg.”
An enlightened 21st century atheist will answer the same question with, “Neither. The stuff of the hot and dense primordial universe began with pure energy, cooling eventually to convert that energy into subatomic particles, then atomic particles which coalesced through gravity to become stars and galaxies, almost fourteen billion years before God allegedly created the Earth and its tiny corner of the ‘heavens’ surrounding it.”
Instead of, “Let there be light,” God might have been cleverer to go with, “Let there be energy.” Next he might have chosen, “Let there be protons, neutrons and electrons.” But, of course, he didn’t, because the Bible was written by man, and God was conceived by man. I find it almost inconceivable that modern man can still believe such nonsense. There’s nothing at all wrong with taking the few good lessons of the Bible and employing them into every-day use, but for modern humans to actually believe in God and to justify the plethora of atrocities in the Bible done by both man and God, is much more terrifying than ancient man doing so.
I judge the modern world for roughly six billion of its human occupants believing in and worshipping a divine deity even as we, as a species, are on the cusp of being able to create many of the things which those ancient men gave the gods the credit for.
I judge those people as hypocrites, who take the words of the Bible and twist them until they fit into versions of reality that their minds can handle. The Bible says God created everything in six days, roughly 6000 years ago, then he rested. Why does an apparently all-powerful being need to rest? ‘Rest’ is not something that should be ascribed to an omnipotent entity. Moreover, the universe consists not only of the Solar System and its blanket of neighbouring stars, but also of galaxies – hundreds of billions of galaxies. These facts would unhinge the likes of Moses and Noah and Jesus and Muhammad, but if they knew them they would still give credit for the existence of all those galaxies to the work of their divine deity, because how else could a
ll this be?
What chills me to the bone is that modern man also ascribes such staggering aspects of nature as galactic superclusters and immense dust clouds as being the handiwork of God, even though no mention of such things (and many more) appear anywhere in the Bible.
I judge modern man for its profound lack of consideration for the planet on which it lives. I judge the people of the world for knowing there is a population crisis but still breeding like rabbits without a care for the future of their children or their children’s children. The world in only fifty years will be an ugly mess compared to the world of today, and as for half a millennia from now…
Hell on Earth, incarnate.
Quite honestly, should the Rapture occur tomorrow I wouldn’t bat an eyelid, because as an atheist it wouldn’t concern me, but at least the grim future of our planet would be stymied by the sudden removal of most of the virus that is destroying it.
I judge the world of today, and I base much of my judgement on the naive world of yesterday and its need to conceptualise divine deities to provide answers to a child’s emerging questions. I judge humanity for not being able to learn by its own mistakes, its errors in supposition, its compounding list of atrocities made in the names and the words of gods. I make these judgements by my own authority, my own tenets, my own principles, as a human unburdened by such intellectual limitations as religion or the need to worship physically or mentally superior entities.
I make these judgements as someone whose life is not governed by the delusion of a heaven. How arrogant of a god-fearer to assume they deserve to exist eternally; I wish I could live for as long as I desired, but I’m not so deluded to presume I deserve such a reward. How obnoxious to think there’s a place in an afterlife among two hundred billion already dead humans since the dawn of time.
I point the finger at billions of today’s people and tens of billions of yesterday’s people and say, “Killing in the name of, judging in the name of, living in the name of, worshipping the name of and preaching the name of any god or gods is wrong, and is an insult to the growing intellect and understanding of a humanity who right now holds the ability to outgrow its ancient ways.”
I say, “Let go of yesterday’s ideas and embrace tomorrow’s. Leave all this nonsense behind once and for all. Let ‘worship’ be a thing of the past. Cast off your mantle of naivete, shed your skin of stubbornness, throw your fear of the unknown and your desperate need to believe in life everlasting to the stones and grind them under your heels.”
There is no eternity for us. But, maybe, for our distant descendants there could be a near-eternity, if mankind of today can embrace a humanity not weighed down under the oppression of deified concepts, and reach out into the stars.
The meek may indeed inherit the Earth, but it will be a dying Earth, and on it they will suffer as if in Hell itself. The daring, on the other hand, could inherit the galaxies, and in the infinitude of space they would prosper, far outgrowing mankind’s ancient ideas of what gods were capable of.
I ask the theists, “What happens when our Sun goes nova, as it most certainly will? What then, when it swells and consumes its planets, including Earth?” It’s possible that Earth would survive, but if it did it would be an incinerated husk utterly devoid of life.
Without humanity, without even a single human left in existence, would God still exist? Well, to a believer, asked the question theoretically, yes he would. And that same believer would claim God would just go on to populate another planet elsewhere.
Let’s say humanity were to emerge on another planet some time after Earth was incinerated by the Sun. I postulate that any emerging humanoid lifeforms would, in time, create the idea of gods, and of course they would not comprehend the age or the size or the components of the universe. The prospect that something similar to their own world and species might have already existed long ago on another planet wouldn’t and couldn’t so much as enter their tiny minds. They would, in short, be as our ancient men were, and ascribe the workings of their entire sphere of understanding to the acts of divine beings, and they would firmly believe their world and the universe was made not very long ago. Such is the nature of a species learning to ask questions and seeking – needing – answers.
But what if that doesn’t happen? What if Earth dies, humanity dies, and the universe just keeps on expanding for a hundred trillion years or more until everything crumbles, fades and disappears? What then? Will God still exist then? Will he have just been fucking around with thumb up arse for near-infinity? For what purpose?
I suppose believers in God would refute everything I’ve said by responding with, “After hundreds of trillions of years God would decide once again to say ‘Let there be light’, and there would be light. And he would make the heavens and the Earth…” So on and so forth. Because no matter how solid the argument made against the concept of a supreme deity, its followers will always have an answer. This is a constant that will not change as long as there are people who hold on to the false assumptions made by the ancients.
If only those men from long ago could know the damage they’ve caused.
DID YOU SEE THIS COMING?
Ah, God, my silent debater,
are your ears burning today?
Such news, is it not?
Another point scored
to show your truth;
another step to unveiling
the cloak from the greatest pretender!
Well now, my omniscient friend,
did you ever see this coming?
I have to say it was no surprise
to me, or to my brethren.
But what of your flock?
How will they shoulder
the news of this latest revelation?
Come forward, you rascal,
come and see, if you dare,
how they scatter and bleat
and stamp their feet in denial,
in the irrefutable face of such facts.
Oh, dear God, my faithful listener,
all these words that we’ve shared
through so many years.
And it was always me who spoke,
never you, yet I always knew
who you were, behind which stone
you ducked from sight or sense.
But, unlike your minions,
your babbling voices on this bauble,
I also knew what they did not –
that although we conversed
in this monologue of mine,
this oft-times diatribe aimed
not at your heart, but at the spaces
around you, you invisible clown,
I was talking – and still talk –
to the teacup of the sun,
tipping its rim in salutation
of a revelation, a breakthrough
in evolution that led us to here,
to another discovery that will lead
to the toppling of an empire,
perhaps not today, but patience
in the face of millennia
is virtuous.
Oh! And what virtue can huddle
in wait of the day that you,
my fine diviner of docile
livestock, that you finally wave
that white flag of yours, held
up your sleeve for four thousand years?
Yes, my dear and brooding brainchild
of dread, my amiable carver
of rampant insanity, I know you,
I know you well indeed,
and as the clock ticks into
the long tomorrow, its chime
will scatter the last remnants of you
to the cardinals of the cosmic winds,
and your final traces will whisper
such sonorous nothings as ever they did,
but this time the silence wll not be echoed
from the throats of your questioning choir.
God, you silver-tongued mute of vellum
and sapphire, you had your
day,
and I just want to say, with a wink
and a side-long smile: Goodbye,
my oh-so favourite rogue,
without you my life would have been
quite mundane, but with you it surely
was not spent in vain, using each
of my weapons to chisel away
at your conceptual statue, in a constant
attempt to dethrone you and watch
as your flock would flee from your
crumbled feet, your head laid
between them in opaque defeat.
Victory! My baleful vandal of souls,
my omnificent maker of nothing at all,
the piece is moved after great contemplation,
a hooded gaze in your vague direction,
a knowing nod that it’s checkmate,
old chum, and, although this game
has endured for so long, it’s time now
to throw in the towel and be gone!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Scott Kaelen writes in the genres of poetry, epic fantasy, science fiction, horror, humour, and non-fiction. His published works include his first poetry volume DeadVerse, and the non-fiction release Life, The Universe & Free Thinking. His current projects are an epic fantasy novel and a second volume of poetry.
He is modestly adept with visual creations such as sketches of character concepts and famous personalities. He also creates his own book covers and occasionally those of fellow authors.
His interests include etymology, psychology, Earth history, palaeontology, cosmology, playing computer role-playing games, and reading and watching sci-fi, fantasy and horror.
He also flosculates after each meal.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Short Stories
When Gods Awaken (2014)
Bleak ‘93 (2014)
Moses Garrett (2014)
The Lingering Remains (2015)
The Hyperverse Accord (2015)
The Verragos Tapestry
Night of the Taking (2015)
The Blighted City (due 2016)
Poetry
DeadVerse (2015)
Rogue Heart Stardrifter (due 2016)
Collections
From Grains To Galaxies (2014)
Non-Fiction
