By Dr. Deuss *
Every Jones down in Jonestown liked Jesus a lot,
But the Dawkins, who lived on Mt. Oxford, did not
That Darwinian Dickens said “God’s Putative Son,
Was merely a mortal! Just some son of a gun!”
Who knows why the Dawkins became such a skeptic
But the hymns and the prayers drove him quite apoplectic
They say maybe his brain was a trifle too big
With too many modules there under his wig.
Or maybe his genes were a little too tight
Making him selfishly strike out and bite
Back at the God Fearin’ Born Again masses
Who were banning his books in their Sunday School classes
But whatever the reason, his genes or his noggin,
The Christians all thought that he needed a floggin
Sneering down from his Named Chair up at old Oxford U.
The Dawkins claimed Jesus’s Truths were not true,
But the Joneses all shouted to Dawkins, wait, wait!
Without Jesus to love, we’d have no one to hate
Are you saying Mohammed was better than Christ?
Not supporting our troops! Sir, now that’s not too nice!
He wrote: “Jesus, like Santa and Christmas tree stockings
Is just so much malarkey, it really is shocking!”
St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were muddled
Their logic so riddled that it left him quite puzzled
Whether God was a What or a How or a Why
Who imagined John Lennon with looking glass eyes
But besides their bad logic, there was one other thing
Those Christians would sing! and they’d sing! AND THEY’D SING
‘bout how Jesus was Love but His people were Soldiers!?
It all made Dawkins’ head spin right off of his shouldsters
And the more Dawkins heard all these Born Agains sing
The more Dawkins thought: “I must stop this whole thing!”
“Why for 66 years I’ve put up with this now!
“I MUST make these people think straighter!
..... But HOW?”
Then he had an idea!
A dangerous idea!
The Dawkins had a fabulous, dangerous idea!
“Aha ha, ha ha ha!” Dawkins laughed without pause
I will wear a red hat just like old Santy Claus
Then I’ll go down to Macy’s where I’ll let little kids
Sit on top of my lap while I’ll debunk the fibs
And the fables their parents have fed them for years
About Lucifer, Hell, building horrible fears
I will tell kids to stand up and shout: “I won’t sing!
I won’t sing about angels and fictitious things!
I won’t pray for troops killing Arabs for God!
I won’t even say prayers for a brand new iPod!”
Well, he went down to Macy’s, and waited around
Until good old Saint Nick startin’ feelin run down
From the thousands of brats hot with luxury fever
Then Dawk offered to give the old Saint a short breather
But his plan started sputtering right from the start
When his first little customer tugged at his heart
It was Cindy Lou Jones, from All Saints Bible School
And she whispered “Us kids aren’t really such fools!
I can see you’re the Dawkins and not the real Saint
And I know that you think that Pascal’s wager ain’t
Such a sensible case that’s it quite so airtight
But just think about this if you can, if you might
Maybe it’s a real long shot that Jesus is real
But then what if Mohammed is really the deal
Then there’s Buddha, Jehovah and six hundred more
Bet on all of those horses and maybe you’ll score!
Dawkins drew in his breath, and he started to stew
“Now Cindy let’s start to add up two and two”
But before he could finish, she added one point
She said “Dawk, take a really good look round this joint
If this crowd stops believin’, then Christmas sales end
No more microwaves, skateboards, no more blenders that blend
No more digital cameras or TVs or toys
But the biggest and selfishest thing, my old boy
Is that sales of your books would then take a big drop
No more amazon dot com, so think it through, pop!”
When you add up the millions of bookstores and malls
A profit’s a profit, no matter how small!
“Beg pardon,” he snorted, “I’m not in this for the beans!”
“But Sir Dawkins, you must have forgotten your genes!
To you a few quid may not seem a big deal,
But a million here, million there, starts to get real
Have you no son, no grandchild, no niece?
Your in-clusive fitness could be wrapped in gold fleece
For your genes as they sail down the River of Eden
Every buck means some other bloke’s genes’ll get beaten!”
And he thought and he thought till his modules were sore
As he bumbled and stumbled right out of the store
“If religion means Christmas and Hannukah too
And new books all wrapped up in paper and glue...”
And what happened then?
Well in Jonestown they say,
that the Dawkins’ big brain shrunk three sizes that day
And he lost all his memories of Pascal Boyer
Forgot all that Dennett and Atran might say
And the minute his skull didn’t feel quite so tight
He concluded instead that Believers were Right
So he told his press agent to send a release
For his new book expounding on Warring For Peace:
“The Extended Magical Mystical Phenotype of Christ”
Could be bought in advance for a discounted price
He’d explain his new JudaoMuslim Unification
With a number in Texas for Sending Donations
And lest anyone think that his life’s work was wrecked
He swore, HE,
He the Dawkins,
Would cash the first check!
*This work, inspired by concurrent reading of Dr. Seuss with my preschooler, and Prof. Dawkins with my graduate students, originally appeared a while back in the Human Behavior and Evolution Newsletter (where it may have been read by 12 people, 2 of whom might also read this blog, to whom I apologize if they happen to get to this point and have a vague sense of deja vu).
For Further Reading:
Dawkins, R. (2006). The God Delusion. Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin.
Seuss, D. (1957). How the Grinch Stole Christmas. New York: Random House.
