Freethought Poetry

Proud to be a Non-Believer
By Barbara Stocker

I'm proud to be a non-believer.
Faith is always blind.
I'm proud to be a non-believer.
I'm proud to use my mind.
When you pray and call on Heaven,
Faith will always fail.
Rally round and shout for Reason
And Reason will prevail.

Barbara Stocker is a member of the Rationalist Society of St. Louis. This poem was reprinted with special permission of the author.

The Atheist's Grave
Anonymous

I wandered among the churchyard dead
On a sunny Sabbath day,
And I marked a grave where the sexton said
An atheist's ashes lay.
A headstone pointed the lowly spot,
Inscribed with his age and name;
But other memorial there was not
To draw either praise or blame.
Yet the daisy there was as fresh in its hue,
The elm did as lightly wave,
And the springtide grass as greenly grew
As o'er the Christians grave.
And I marked that the sunbeams through the trees
Fell as lightly on the sod,
As if its inmate had been of these
Who had lived in the faith of a God.
And o'er my mind the reflection came
Of a new and startling kind:
T'was whispered within me that man may blame
Where Nature can no fault find;
The bigot's curse from the Gothic pile
On the skeptical few may fall,
But Nature extends with a mother's smile
Her pity and love to all.

Big Bad God
By Dorothy Thompson

(Inspired by Christian Fundamentalism-David W. Hopewell. References-Numbers 15 & 31, Exodus 16:17-22, 32, Leviticus 17 & 18, etc).

That lame command that says don't kill,
An oxymoron if you will.
'Cause, Big Bad God sure kills a lot.
Let's see, how much time have you got?
God tells his chosen ones to croak
All Hittites and Jebusite folk.
Except, of course, don't kill the girls,
They're just for you, the untouched pearls.
"You must kill all the Canaanites"
He told the chosen Israelites.
And, though the Jews were always 
willing
God himself did lots of killing.
Male babies were his favorite prey.
He could squash thousands any day.
He killed Egyptian baby boys.
Just mowed 'em down like broken toys.
And the plagues Jehovah sent
Were meant to all the wars augment.
And each a killing spree event,
With suffering the sole intent.
God's ghoulish glee is sharp and keen.
He's quite a pain and death machine.
God's great pet peeve, idolatry
Brings a furious penalty.
Mass slaughter makes it all quite clear.
Jehovah's jealous and severe.
Once Jews danced 'round a holy calf.
God killed them all with fiendish laugh.
Three thousand slaughtered with one whack.
Their corpses piled up in a stack.
When Christians say god hates abortion
Their nose may grow with truth 
distortion.

Dorothy Thompson is a poet and freethinker from Oregon. This poem is reprinted with special permission of the author.