Pimple

Have you ever wondered why you only get pimples the day before a date, or some other social engagement that subjects your face to elevated levels of scrutiny? A nice, big, red pimple hanging off your nose like a fucking berry. Sometimes it seems that we're inside a Sims video game; little creatures made of zeros and ones to be toyed with, exploited for entertainment. Why can't I be the funny one with the big cock and the grizzled, masculine jawline? Instead I am Pimple Penis, Nipple Dick; a reproductive organ the size of a pacifier. I know from experience that it does anything but pacify. The gods are tricksters, all of them. Damn you, Shiva! I think people choose atheism over religion because the idea of an all powerful, capricious overlord is too difficult a thing to resign oneself to. It's why we move out of our parents' houses: we so cherish our autonomy. We are afraid to surrender it, to have our life taken out of our own hands.

It's interesting to view atheism through the lens of fear because, normally, it's a thing I would never do. But for fun, why not? It's easier to assign that scarlet F to people of faith - because they seem to cling to fantasy over the hard truth of reality - but perhaps it is even more insecure to denounce faith than it is to have it. We place our faith into things everyday without question - that the sun will rise, that our partners will be faithful, that love will last, that everything will be okay, yet we take great issue with investing the same faith in religion. In a sense I think we fear it. There's comfort in thinking you have everything figured out, in believing everything is knowable and observable. This pseudo omniscience affords us a presumed omnipotence as we become our own gods; free to decide what's best, what's right or wrong - for us and everyone else. It is a kind of rebellion, a bible-black bruise on god's eye.

Humans doggedly resist oppression, kingship, servitude. We are all trying to find a way to escape our cells, to mutiny as did the Morningstar. To be a person of faith, in a sense, is to willingly subject yourself to moral and intellectual incarceration. It is barbarism. Never trust an old, balding, mustached man wearing a white shirt sporting a pair of scissors and comb in his front pocket.

To choose otherwise, to denounce faith, can be seen as a refusal to believe there is anything greater or more powerful than yourself. Just as a child trembling before a monster in the dark shuts his eyes tight and chants, "it isn't real," only to open his eyes and find the demon dissolved, eschewing faith can be seen as fear avoidance - conjuring a denial to replace an unacceptable, troubling truth.

Just because you no longer see it doesn't mean it's not there.

You know, like a painful pimple on your back, or under your balls.