Shakespeare is a subtle author when it comes to religion, and throughout Othello Iago never directly addresses his religious beliefs. Yet one passage in particular, that of Iago's attempt to persuade Roderigo to control his passions, demonstrates Iago's true atheism. It says: Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay on Virtue! a fig! it is in ourselves that we are this way or that. Our bodies are our gardens, of which our wills are gardeners: so, if we plant nettles, or sow lettuce, separate hyssop, and weed out thyme, we shall furnish it with one kind of herbs, or distract it with many, or to have it is sterile with idleness, or fertilized with industry; well, the power and correctable authority of this lies in our will. If the scales of our lives did not have a scale of reason to balance another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our nature would lead us to the most absurd conclusions: but we have reason to cool our furious movements, our carnal stings, our unbridled passions. , from which I believe that what you call love is a sect or an offshoot. Filled with biblical imagery, this passage is more than an attempt at manipulation. It reveals that Iago is a profound disbeliever in God who seeks to elevate himself and his belief in reason to the level of a deity. The most significant diction of the entire passage is directly biblical, derived in particular from biblical stories and fables concerning nature. Iago soon inaugurates the trend towards biblical rhetoric with his announcement of “a fig!” The fig leaf was worn by Adam and Eve upon awareness of their lineage and is deeply symbolic of human shame. Already in the Renaissance, sculptors and painters used the fig leaf to discreetly cover the genitals and thus hide the object of humiliation. To equate virtue with both shame and a mere leaf is to mock it in the extreme. The Bible often addresses the cardinal virtues, namely faith, hope, and love (all things Iago abandons). Therefore Iago's denigration of virtue is to equate Christian goodness (and chastity) with shame, and thus render it worthless; for what is the use of chaste virtue if it is shamed? Iago is the ultimate deconstructionist of myths and ideologies, be it the mythology of Othello's prowess, Desdemona's faithfulness, or the sacredness of religious values. By thus denigrating virtue, Iago makes it clear that he cares little about it. Furthermore, the passage itself willfully ignores the virtues of heroism. Rather than heroic iambic pentameter, Iago delivers a speech in coarse prose, in contrast to Othello's exaggerated language. For a play consumed with discourse, to make clear that Iago does not speak in the ennobled voice of virtuous rhetoric is only to further emphasize that he cannot, or will not, aspire to the great virtues of nobility and heroism. His contempt for virtue cements Iago as the antithesis of good Christian virtues, but arrogance is actually the great connection between Iago and atheistic qualities. Because Iago does more than simply denigrate Christian values. He goes a step further, affirming the absence of God and the need for man to be his own God, in an extraordinarily brazen act. To declare that “our bodies are our gardens,” in reference to man's free will, a few seconds after referring to the “fig” leaf, is to refer to the image of the Garden of Eden, a concept that will be confirmed by future references in the discourse to biblical plants and torhetoric. The Garden of Eden may have had Adam and Eve, but it also had a creator to care for it; that is, God, who can therefore be considered the “gardener” of Eden. For Iago therefore to declare that there is no great gardener, but only the rather egalitarian statement of the universal "we" that all men are gardeners, all men tend their own gardens and are responsible for their own downfall is a statement of astonishing, sacrilegious arrogance in abandoning God's role in determination. Iago observes that “we have reason to still our furious movements,” and this is what distinguishes us from animals. Yet there is nothing, in his opinion, that can separate man from the potential of divine power and absolute free will. Like Milton's Satan, Iago believes he deserves all the power God could ever possess. If therefore, Iago affirms the absence of God in the face of human willpower, the series of biblical allusions that follow this statement strengthen his atheistic point of view, since they show him to be devoid of sympathy or reverence towards traditional Christian virtues. Iago suggests a wide range of moral options in life, but, significantly, he places traditionally malignant references first, only briefly mentioning “thyme” with its positive association. First, it addresses the choice to “plant nettles,” referred to in Isaiah 34:13, Job 30:7, Hosea 9:6, and others as a destructive plant that occupies barren land, even surpassing that which a was once fertile. The “hyssop” spoken of was the branch which bore a vinegar-stained sponge and was offered to Christ on the cross, and in Elizabethan times it was seen as “the final 'torture' of the living Jesus, a needless humiliation and particularly repugnant of the dying man." This is in contrast to the reference to the “thymus”, an ornament of Christ's infant manger. The moral choice between these options of sterility, cruelty and kindness means nothing to Iago, he can easily jump between associations negative biblical (“hyssop” and “nettles”) and positive (“thyme”). He makes it clear that he cares little about the consequences of his actions; he claims that “fertilized with industry” or “barren with idleness”, it will be his choice. Using this term means referring to fertility, and therefore saying that for Iago the choice between fertility (and reproduction) or sterility (and death without offspring) is in fact irrelevant in the entire work, despite the surprising nature amount of real, fake and implied sexual activity, the entire cast remains sterile and dies with a sterile line. There is no observation of consequences, no concern for the legacy of lineage and name, and apparent ignorance of any biblical commands to be propagated. Iago is the first atheist, because not only does he subtly allude to his blasphemous views on religion (his is only talking about the fact that every man is his own gardener, rather than a divine presence), but his evident absence of reference directed at God merely cements Iago's view of the absence of God. It is surprising that a passage so full of biblical allusions and rhetoric does not mention God, and indeed this failure makes Iago's feelings about the absence of God even more evident. Discussing absence is inherently difficult as it cannot truly be pinpointed, but to refer to “power and correctable authority” and yet to declare that that same authority belongs only to humanity is to completely eschew all concepts of a powerful God, a God commander, and to raise man to the level of God himself. Iago then rises above all men, declaring that one of the most basic human emotions, love, is something disdainful. The book of John 4:8 clearly states that “He who does not..