Jesus Christ: [sigh] Yes, servant Smoggy?

SB: Dear Jesus, those Hell-bound atheists are baring their tormented
souls on the evil Pharyngula blog, blathering on the theme of ‘Why I
am An Atheist’ to justify their pointless existences and pretend
they’re not terrified of the eternal damnation which awaits them.

JC: And?

SB: And? And… and… and it’s not good enough Jesus! What if some
impressionable young believer gets whiff of the heady haze of heresy
and starts thinking rational thoughts? Can you imagine a world with no
religion, no heaven, no hell below, above us only sky?

JC: Careful Smoggy, you’re getting lyrical. (continues after jump)

SB: You’re not taking this seriously Jesus. Don’t you care that
religion is under attack?

JC: Smoggy, religions are always under attack, usually by other
religions. Everyone knows that religions thrive on a sense of
persecution—even in the good ol’ USofA, where the religious control
social and political discourse, receive obscene tax breaks, and use
their ideological dominance to discriminate against the weak, the poor
and the different. You have to admire them. It takes a lot of effort
to cry persecuted when the entire system is stacked in your favour.

SB: JesuseffinChrist, Jesus! Are you listening to yourself? You sound
like a trendy-lefty-bleeding-heart-liberal-namby-pamby-marxy-boy. When
have you ever cared about ‘the different’.

JC: I am ‘the different’ Smoggy. I’m the only son of a difficult father and…

SB: Difficult Father!? You mean YHWH! How is He difficult? We’re
talking God here… the big guy, y’know ‘Immortal, Invisible, God
Only-Wise.’ What about my father? You of all people—sorry, of all
deities—know that my Papa Batzrubble was a serial killer, executed for
strangling fat nuns with their own rosary beads (culminating in the
murder of Sister Seraphim Butter on the night I was born). How would
you like to go through life carrying that cross?

JC: Eh, you were lucky to have a serial killer. My father is a
jealous, genocidal tyrant: he set Adam and Even up to fail by placing
a deadly tree in their garden Paradise (an act on a par with leaving a
live, bare electric cable in the middle of a kindergarten and telling
the children not to play with it); he used extreme incest to populate
(and re-populate) the world; he wiped out almost every human (good or
evil, old or young) with an indiscriminate flood; he impregnated my
mother when she was an impressionable, underage virgin (ever heard of
statutory rape?); he decided to have me killed in the worst way
imaginable, when he could just have easily used his omnipotent powers
to cleanse the world of evil; and that doesn’t count the madness he’s
got in store for the END TIMES. Have you seen my costume, described in
Revelations Nineteen? I have to have a fucking SWORD coming out of my
mouth. Can you imagine what that’s going to do for my social life?
I’ll never perform oral sex again!

SB: You’re pretty pissy for The SON of GOD, Jesus.

JC: I’m the son of one of the gods, Smoggy—don’t let this “only God”
crap fool you. [sniff] Why couldn’t I have had a cool father like Zeus
or Odin? Why do all the other immortal kids have parents who like a
bit of adventure and various carnal pleasures, while I’ve got to deal
with a mad old misanthropic voyeur who is more interested in spying on
humans having sex than exploring the infinite universe?

SB: But those gods aren’t real Jesus! They’re mythical!

JC: The fuck, you say! They’re as real as any other god. Just because
you believe my father’s propaganda, doesn’t mean there haven’t been
plenty of other gods around happily shitting on humans. Every culture
believed in its gods as fervently as you believe in yours, and every
culture’s religion merrily persecutes its poor fringe dwellers to keep
the mainstream in line. Gods are gods are gods are gods Smoggy. It’s
about time you humans grew out of them.

SB: Grew out of Gods? How could we do that? What would we pray to?

JC: Pray to your fucking foreskin if you’ve still got one! Keerist!
Haven’t you got a brain? Do you think any god listens to your pissy,
self-absorbed prayers anyway? Gods “feed” on prayers Smoggy they don’t
answer them. Three things sustain gods— human fear, human guilt and
human greed! The function of every religion is to focus and intensify
all three of those emotions—more and greater fear, more and greater
guilt and more and greater greed. Then, hey presto, it’s feasting time
in God’s banqueting house!

SB: But… I want to be a Man of God, Jesus.

JC: Then you’d better get a whole lot nastier, Smoggy. The true Man of
God is a manipulating, self-serving bastard who preys on the weak and
the credulous. [softly] Like Brother Padraic, servant Smoggy.

SB: Ulp… you didn’t have to bring Brother Padraic into this, Jesus.

JC: Wasn’t he a man of God, Smoggy?

SB: [sob] Some… sometimes, Jesus.

JC: Only sometimes, Smoggy? When wasn’t he a Man of God?

SB: [whispering] When he was using my nine-year-old bottom as a
penis-sheath, Jesus?

JC: Wrong, Smoggy. He was still a Man of God then. Didn’t he increase
your fear and guilt?

SB: Yes, Jesus. But he always gave me chocolate afterwards.

JC: And were you greedy for chocolate, Smoggy?

SB: You’re tricking me Jesus. I was thinking more of old Father
McCracken being a Man of God. He took me away from Brother Padraic,
Jesus.

JC: Father McCracken was a man of humanity Smoggy. He was a genuinely
moral man. He believed in love and community. He was that miracle we
don’t see often enough, a truly good priest, one who was good despite
God rather than because of God. You might even say he was good without
God! He never let some book of Bronze Age superstitions cause his
moral compass to deviate.

SB: So is Father McCracken in Heaven?

JC: No Smoggy, he’s far too good for Heaven. Heaven is reserved for
Fox News regulars and the worst of the 1%.

SB: Is it that bad?

JC: Think about what I told you about my Heavenly Father, Smoggy.
Dad’s angry, jealous, vindictive, genocidal, cruel, and capricious and
in my opinion he’s getting worse. Would you want to find yourself
kneeling for all eternity to praise a being that, on past deeds alone,
makes Hilter, Stalin, Pol Pot and Ted Bundy look like choir boys?

SB: Well, at least if I’m a Christian I get to chat with you, Jesus.

JC: Smoggy, get this through your head. I don’t want to talk to you! I
don’t want to hear from you! I don’t want to be part of God’s plan for
your sad little planet in your sad little galaxy. There are billions
of worlds out there Smoggy, populated by billions of races, with
billions of way-cool deities. I’m taking a gap year. I’m going
exploring and I may not come back.

SB: Wait, Jesus! Wait! What will I do?

JC: Pray for the end of religion, Smoggy. Pray for the end of
religious inspired fear, guilt and greed. That’s what you need to do
to diminish my Heavenly Father’s power. When He’s as equivalently
mythical as Zeus, then perhaps you can start using those great, big
sexy brains you evolved to do some real thinking. Now fuck off!

SB: Yes, Jesus. Thank you Jesus. And fuck off yourself.

AMEN

Yours in Christurbation
Smoggy Batzrubble
OM4Jesus, ex-Missionary to the Atheists

P.S And here’s a little prayer for all you hell-bound atheists.

SMOGGY’S CHRISTMAS PRAYER

DEAR GOD, from Whom all blessing’s flow,
The Baddest Bastard above, below
And through the omniverse,
I hereby tend my Christmas prayer—
The same one I pray every year—
That You will damn and curse:

The religious pricks who cannot laugh
(Their lack of humour makes me barf);
The schills who’ve milked the public purse;
The bankers who made sub-prime money;
The warmongers who find death funny;
The talking heads who nurse
Our hatreds and our shallow fears
(As Fox and Friends have done for years).

I pray that You’ll say something terse
To leaders who think conflict’s nice,
All those who gave us the advice,
That war is good, don’t fear the hearse.
Cos it won’t be their son or daughter
Who’s fodder in the senseless slaughter.

But let me finish this line of verse
(For Smoggy can be quite perverse)
Instead, in this season of goodwill,
I’ll cease my list of whom to kill,
And extend to all of you out there,
An olive branch of Christmas cheer:
The best of the season, to one and to all,
May the new year bring peace and may happiness fall.

And especially to God, who’s a lonely old bloke,
Doomed to live on while the rest of us croak,
With nothing to do but obsess about sex,
I wish there was some way to get you out of the fix
Of having to hear our self-interested prayers
As you’ve had to do now for ten thousand years

Take Smoggy’s advice God, although it’s no hit,
And tell them that Darwin’s the genuine shit,
Then slip quietly off to a tropical island
And leave your creation to languish behind.
Have a break, take a rest, nod off in the sun,
You really don’t need us, we’re not that much fun.

As for me, Smoggy B., I’m off to steal sheep,
If I never come back, don’t wail or weep,
I’ll have died in the Alps, with my flock in a blizzard,
And so if my banter has stuck in your gizzard,
I’d like to say sorry to one and to all,
And point out that we were all destined to fall.

And it’s not my fault if you’re a humourless turd,
Who takes yourself seriously, believes in God’s word!
For Smoggy is over religious charades,
I’m sick of damnation and hateful tirades,
I’m giving up Jesus, and so is Floyd Rubber,
(My biggest and baddest and chunkiest bubba).

We’re hitting the road in search of weird sex,
With our lives on the line and a noose round our necks.
And as we depart, there is one thing to say,
May your best dreams come true, but don’t bother to pray.
If you want to live well, I’ve got a new pitch,
You should try to have lived like magnificent Hitch!