Atheist Poem by Jennie Radley

Why don’t I believe in God? Oh, heck; what a question.
Trying to form an answer gives me mental indigestion.
If you really press me, when push has turned to shove,
I think what really balks me, is “God’s Infinite Love”.

Whether you call It Allah, Shiva, Jehova or just God,
It seems to me Its way of showing Love’s extremely odd.
This love is not a parent’s love, that struggles to protect
The innocent and helpless from suffering and neglect.

If God has the power to create a daisy and a star,
And if we are God’s Creation, as the “Good Books” say we are,
He must also make the bad things that trouble his Creations
The earthquakes, floods, the pestilence – and always poorer nations.

Now, I know I’m not an angel, I’ve committed many sins,
But because of where I live, I’m on the side that wins.
No famine, pestilence or ‘quake have ever crossed my life,
And our country isn’t riven by civil war and strife.

In fact, I know we profit from other nation’s woes;
Just think where all the profit from bloody arms-deals goes.
Fat-cats in the City getting rich from obscene slaughter
While fly-blown children die because they haven’t any water.

If I was the Creator, I wouldn’t have the face
To let myself be worshipped, and ignore the human race.
I couldn’t sit in Heaven, and watch the suffering folk,
Knowing I’d the power to cure it with one stroke.

Give me God’s power for just one day, I promise you, my friend,
That the mess the world is in just now would soon be at an end.
You see, I am a pragmatist; I like to get things done.
But I am only mortal, not an All-Powerful One.

Religious leaders tell us that God’s purpose is a mystery,
And that’s what they’ve been saying through ten thousand years of history.
And the reason they keep saying it with such strong persistence?
It’s the only reason they can find to justify man’s existence.