MY FRIEND, AN ATHEIST
A good friend shared with me that he’s an atheist,
What philosophers call a materialist.
He believes what only science and data prove.
Anything else? He refuses to be moved.
What he can’t explain is, why is “something missing,”
That there’s much more to life, things like love and kissing,
Human rights and freedom, things for which we all long,
Equality, conscience, a sense of right and wrong.
“My enlightened reason best explains the cosmos.”
But that leaves life’s meaning no different than compost.
Using reason alone can’t explain life’s purpose.
It leads us to believe that life’s just a circus.
Do you not see design? This life’s an accident?
Surely life’s not pointless, a haunting incident?
Do you disregard your human intuition?
Doesn’t art tug your heart? Beauty has a mission.
You think we are alone, a speck of existence,
But doesn’t your heart yearn for something transcendent?
No one can “prove” that God does or does not exist.
Both take “belief” and assumptions that pre-exist.
Can reason assume its own omniscience, as though
Its scope and scale knows all it needs to know?
Can one claim that he sees all that he needs to see?
Is there not a great need for some humility?
The old book says that we listen with itching ears,
True, in our younger days and in our golden years.
Our bent, only to hear just what we want to hear,
And to only believe what we want to hold dear.
We all try to make sense of this world’s warp and woof.
All pre-suppositions are beyond human proof.
We use intuition, and our rational brain,
It is also social, and a personal vein.