I’ve never bombed a synagogue
I’ve never torched a church
No mosque has seen my violence—
Please, go ahead and search—
No meetinghouse, no temple,
Nothing anywhere you look
But still, they call me “militant”
Because I wrote a book.
My book was not a call to arms
It did not promise war
It didn’t make an enemy
Of those who live next door
No “Mein Kampf” manifesto
Of the goals I must achieve—
I’m “militant”, apparently,
Because I don’t believe.
Over at the Guarniad, Nick Cohen has a piece out, “the phantom menace of militant atheism“. While I can’t quite buy everything he says, it’s refreshing to see the false equivalence we have long complained about get skewered on a bigger stage.
People can’t stand to have their delusions attacked. I imagine it’s quite traumatic when someone comes for your security blanket. if I believed in Heaven I’d thank my parents when I arrived (as I surely would) for not poisoning my mind when I was a child.
The article is a breath of fresh air, but the comments are a mesh of “Of course I don’t attack atheists. No one does. So stop your complaining”, and “But atheists deserve it for speaking out way too much and without enough respect!”.
Classic poem and spot on.