Despite some fans’ claims to the contrary, Lennon was an atheist, citing religion as a barrier to his ideal of a “brotherhood of man”. His disdain for religion first became apparent in an infamous 1966 interview in which the Beatle stated, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I'll be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first— rock 'n' roll or Christianity.” Lennon’s irreligiosity was later expounded in his 1970 song, “God”, which opens with the line, “God is a concept, by which we can measure our pain.”. He goes on to list everything in which he doesn’t “believe”, naming both deities and those which are deified by man: “I don’t believe in the Bible”, “…in Hitler”, “…in Jesus”, “…in Kennedy” , “…in Buddha”, “…in mantra”, “…in Zimmerman”, and “…in Beatles”. The lines which follow are perhaps the most telling towards Lennon’s worldview: “I just believe in me, / Yoko and me, / And that’s reality.” This, in tandem with the song’s melancholy ending, “And so dear friends, / You’ll just have to carry on, / The dream is over”, reveals the bleak, temporal view from which Lennon saw life.
Rearranging that essay a little.
