How To Disagree Successfully

The older I get the less I take seriously
Humanists who criticise all the religions
in the world for being different to each other,
criticise the paths down which they don't go.
Because they disapprove of all hypocrisy.

Everyone who can't be consistent
needs to accept their hypocrisies,
to esteem to others and themselves
when they might not feel like it,
but need to keep the future open.

And if the Humanist line of consistency
in personal development is to be serious
then what are they/we going to do for jokes?
There will be nothing left to laugh at....

On the whole I believe that history
is full of folly, full of religions, and full of life.
If we deny it, and refuse to investigate it
then we will perish, along with our curiosity
and desire to learn-which will include our capacity
for disagreeing constructively and successfully.

Pegs And Mirrors

Polytheism permits it's believers as many behaviors
as the society they are part of need represented through their gods.
In such a place every deity has their own narrative
which reflects the complex gender and family relations between humans.

Their pantheons become halls of mirrors,
where people recognize themselves, but only dimly.
Cynics, atheists, and modernists will mutter
'anthropomorphism as tradition' to describe this,
whilst being blithe about the limits that their beliefs
set upon any society they happen to be part of.

But what of monotheism? The old alternative...
Men are never more singular than when fighting wars.
In the singularity of war warriors and their god become one. 
Their spoils as victors was not just the captives they took home
but the forced conversion of their enemies to their belief.
This leaves far less room for the deity to be a symbol
who reflects gender, choice and inconsistency in society.