Atheist Poetry

[Glenn]

Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves

Was born and nurs’d in Ocean’s pearly caves;

First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass [=microscope]

Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass:

These as successive generations bloom.

New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;

Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,

And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.

Thus the tall Oak, the giant of the wood,

Which bears Britannia’s thunders on the flood;

The Whale, unmeasured monster of the main,

The lordly lion, monarch of the plain,

"The eagle soaring in the realms of air,

Whose eye undazzled drinks the polar glare,

Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd,

Of language, reason, and reflection proud,

With brow erect who scorns this earthy sod,

And styles himself the image of his God;

Arose from rudiments of form and sense,

An embryon point, or microscopic ens!"

Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature, facsimile of 1803 edition (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1973), canto 1, ll. 295-315.

https://evolutionnews.org/2022/01/the-legacy-of-erasmus-darwin/

This was and is not science, and went much against the grain of Christian beliefs. He and his grandson were closet atheists.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Lots of good, atheist poetry out there, a good deal less doctrinaire than the one above

The Planet on the Table

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

Wallace Stevens

[Glenn]

You do realize religion and science are different?

[Glenn]

Interestingly enough,

"When Stevens was being treated for stomach cancer at the St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, he wanted to discuss Catholicism with Fr. Arthur Hanley, the chaplain. The priest remarked later that Stevens already knew quite a bit about the faith, but had questions about Hell and God’s allowing so much evil in the world. Stevens asked for baptism, which Fr. Hanley performed with a nun as witness."

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2021/07/12/the-strange-conversion-of-wallace-stevens/

[Martin Harran]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2022 15:00:17 -0800 (PST), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

So what if they were?

[J. J. Lodder]

Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:

> This was and is not science, and went much against the grain of Christian
> beliefs. He and his grandson were closet atheists.

Not very 'closet'. It was said in his day that Erasmus Darwin
was 'tempted into sin' by his study of Mount Vesuvius.
He noticed (from the descriptions of others)
that Vesuvius must be much older than 6 000 years,
because the lava from succesive eruptions
lies on -heavily weathered- lava from previous ones.
So postulating more frequent eruptions in the past
doesn't help to force it into a biblical time scale.

A useful study, for modern young earth creationists too,

Jan

[broger...@gmail.com]

I'd say that T.S. Eliot's early poetry counts as atheist poetry, even though he later converted to Anglicanism. Stevens may well have had a deathbed conversion, but that was after all his poetry was already written. There's only the account by the chaplain to support it, no documentation of the baptism, and Steven's daughter didn't believe it. But, why not? Deathbed conversions happen (in both directions). And there's no particular reason to think the priest made it up.

[Abner]

Broger wrote:
> I'd say that T.S. Eliot's early poetry counts as atheist poetry, even though he later converted to
> Anglicanism. Stevens may well have had a deathbed conversion, but that was after all his poetry
> was already written. There's only the account by the chaplain to support it, no documentation
> of the baptism, and Steven's daughter didn't believe it. But, why not? Deathbed conversions
> happen (in both directions). And there's no particular reason to think the priest made it up.

A valid point of view, but it doesn't address the main point of this thread, which is that atheists shouldn't write poetry - or, if they do, they shouldn't write poetry espousing an atheistic point of view. After all, it's not like theists ever write poetry about their belief in their gods, right? So why should atheists be so warped and evil as to openly espouse an atheistic view in an artform when theists never commit such a dastardly crime! :)

[broger...@gmail.com]

I'd accept a milder version of your (sarcastic) main point of the thread. Atheists should avoid writing platitudinous, doctrinaire atheist poetry just as much as theists should avoid writing platitudinous, doctrinaire theistic poetry. There are certainly lots of great religious poets who write beautiful poetry, Dante, Hopkins, Milton, Herbert; and lots of atheists who write much better poetry than the bit of doggerel by Erasmus Darwin in the OP.

[Abner]

Broger wrote:
> I'd accept a milder version of your (sarcastic) main point of the thread. Atheists should avoid
> writing platitudinous, doctrinaire atheist poetry just as much as theists should avoid writing
> platitudinous, doctrinaire theistic poetry. There are certainly lots of great religious poets who
> write beautiful poetry, Dante, Hopkins, Milton, Herbert; and lots of atheists who write much
> better poetry than the bit of doggerel by Erasmus Darwin in the OP.

IMO bad poetry is plentiful no matter who is writing it, theist or atheist. And you don't get to writing good poetry without generally writing a lot of bad poetry first ... so go for it! Write bad poetry, write bad fiction, make bad paintings, sing off key, it doesn't do any real harm. The truly bad stuff tends to disappear over time, except for 'masterpieces' like the Eye of Argon that are remembered specifically because they are bad.

I don't think Glenn objected because the poetry wasn't great. I think he objected because it was written from an atheistic point of view ... and he would probably have objected to it all the more if it had been great atheistic poetry instead of poor quality atheistic poetry!

[Burkhard]

"On breathing the Nitrous Oxide
Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire
Have I beheld a rapture wakening form
My bosom burns with no unhallowed fire
Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm
Yet are my eyes with sparkling lustre filled
Yet is my murmuring mouth replete with dying sound
Yet are my limbs with inward transports thrilld
And clad with new born mightiness around"

One of the many poems with which Humphry Davy, Erasmus Darwin's
contemporary, used to explain science to the general public - here his
important discovery of the use of laughing gas for anaesthetic purposes.

Maybe Glenn prefers to get operated on without anaesthetics and
analgesics if their origin is such a disreputable unscientific source, a
poem by a scientists whose strong religious convictions also found their
way into his science poetry, as here in one of his geological studies:


"Long shall thou rest unalter'd mid the wreck
of all the mightiness of human works,
for not the lightning nor the whirlwind's force,
nor all the waves of ocean shall prevail
against the giant strength and though shalt stand
till the Almighty voice which bade the rise
shall bid thee fall"

Or in the words of the Catholic Standard 1837 in a review of one of his
biograohies: At every step, Sir Humphrey saw and confessed the presence
a creating and all-ruling Providence. In every thing belonging to the
economy of nature,’ he says, ‘I find new reasons for wondering at the
designs of Providence—at 'the infinite intelligence by which so many
complicated effects are produced by most simple causes. The
precipitation of water from the atmosphere, its rapid motion in rivers,
and its falls in cataracts, not only preserve the element pure, but give
it its vitality, and render it subservient even to the embryo life of
fish. ... So that the perturbation and motion of the winds and waves
possess a use, and ought to impress us with a beauty higher and more
beautiful even than that of the peaceful and glorious calm-" Great as
were the acquirements of his mind, and much as he must have admired the
developement of genius and the results of deep study in other men, he
declares that he considers a firm faith in the doctrines of Christianity
more highly to be prized thaw any other ornament of the human mind

For scientists during Romanticism in particular, combining science,
philosophy/religion and poetry for communication purposes was considered
an ideal. If this is in any way suspect, one woudl have to write off a
good part of 18th and 19th century science.

[Glenn]

Using poetry to support claims is not science, or do you disagree?

[Martin Harran]

Glenn's answer is nothing.

Makes you wonder why he bothered to post the stuff.