THE DICK DELUSION

This year too the Jaipur Literary Festival had its creases, with the Dalits doing a big time pout at some comments by sociologist, Ashis Nandy. Last year it was Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses that came in for major communal sulks.

I too did my little bit of sulking in response to Richard Dawkins' exhortation to people in India to stop wasting time on God, who didn't exist. 

This piece appeared in the Agnel Ashram magazine.
 

The Dick Delusion

Dick is a very, very clever man

He does what every other man can:

He thinks!

                        Only he does it much better.

Or so he thinks.

                        For he follows the rules

Of that god called Science. He uses the tools

Of Reason, Mathematics and Logic.

(Not God with a capital G. Or Magic.)

Peering through electron microscope

Looking up the great Hubble telescope

He can see what every other man can

Only better than any other man.

Using pure theorem and syllogism

To demonstrate to one and all: the chasm

Between Rational Man and a thing called God

That made the earth with a word and a nod.

Nay says Dick, the only god he knows is

A blind watchmaker who fashioned all this

With a series of accidents that fell into place

In a book by Darwin, a charlie who says

Your great-grandpa was an ape and that you

Are what you are today because a few

Million years ago you or rather your genes

Did some selfish cherry picking, the means

By which Evolution separated

The boys from the men who grew up and dated

Your great-grandma. And so you are today

What you are today, hip hip and hurray!

Here in Jaipur, attending the Litfest

Reading from Satan and thumping your chest

And chanting “Aye! Aye !” in unholy fusion

With the author of The God Delusion.

Will someone please tell this clever man, Dick

That Truth is revealed to Science and Logic.

As well as to Metaphor, Intuition

Fairy Tale, Myth and Imagination

That God does not play hide-and-seek under

Microscopes and telescopes. His wonder

Is not unravelled by sums and equations

Or clever syllogistic deductions.

He is not a Q.E.D. at the end

Of a theorem, my dear memetic friend.

He may not be seen by the curious eye.

Or fathomed by crafty brain.

                                                The High

Priest and theologian too may not see

Through ground glass lenses of theology

Dogma, doctrine and apologetics

And all their studied catechetics

The true vision of that divinity.

Get real and accept that Infinity

Lies beyond the finite grasp of Logic

Even the logic of a very clever Dick.

The eyes that see Eternity are not

Up in the head but in the human heart

Magnified by Infinity’s lenses

Of Faith and Love -- not the senses.

Faith will see through a multitude of sins

What till now has been hid from Dick Dawkins.