No, I read it all.
The lines and what was in-between them.
You read into me quite a bit. But not accurately. Perhaps true of me as well.
I’m increasingly disinclined to care.
Btw, what you are doing on this thread?
You’re here because I am. Same for Stephen. We’re not debating the fine points of early Christian history. We’re debating atheism (in your case, as a pretext for discussing my character, or lack thereof).
Are you an atheist?
Honestly, I have no idea.
In his original question opening this thread dgorden wrote
I would love to hear some feedback from agnostics / atheists.
So godspell given your repeatedly expressed semi-hysteria over the idea of being associated with atheism, one might ask, what are YOU doing on this thread?
Well, since I don’t believe Jesus was divine in any way, or that any part of the scriptures should be considered infallible (though some certainly do refer to actual events, however imperfectly), I think the question is relevant to me.
I will never call myself an atheist, never consider myself one, but that begs the question why.
And frankly, the answer is probably “Because of the behavior and thought patterns of people who do make a point of calling themselves that.”
And because sometimes I do feel God out there. And I don’t honestly think it matters that much what you call yourself. I think people who do think that tend to be a bit balmy. What do you think?
Semi-hysteria? Remind me again why you think you’re the polite one in this conversation?
A sense of humor might inform you that I’m having a very good time here. Though a real conversation with someone who could think–that’d be nice.
I didn’t ask you to repeat a discussion. I asked you a question. Do you consider yourself an atheist? Yes or no? I have no problem remembering Stephen’s attitude in this regard, which makes me suspect you never did answer the question in any direct way.
I went into a bit more detail than yes or no, but still just three sentences, that took me less than a minute to type. I do not consider myself an atheist, even though I do not think a belief in a supreme being is necessary to leading a good life, and people who identify as religious often lead very bad lives. Nor do I think denying a supreme being is necessary to being rational, as is evidenced by the very large number of irrational atheists. It is a matter of personal choice, and the answer is important to you personally, but it’s never The Answer, because there is no final answer for mortal beings. Nor will there ever be.
If your time is so limited and precious that you can’t briefly recap, can I ask why you’re still talking to me at such interminable length, when we could just agree to differ? I can guess the answer to that question easily, but you don’t like it when I do that. 🙂
dgorden said
[…]I found that to be an intriguing perspective and became very curious. Does it truly matter if a person is an atheist based on a Christian world view, Jewish world view, Hindu or other religious world view? I would love to hear some feedback from agnostics / atheists.
[Fernando]: Regarding the more than 3000 gods that humanity has invented (the figure is indicative and perhaps speculative, not based on solid evidence) since its dawn, I am an atheist.
But in a broad sense, I consider myself a skeptical atheist even of his own atheism.
And what does that mean?
That in order to believe in a god, whatever that being is, I need evidence that is valid enough, proven and credible. Meanwhile, I wait with stoicism but with almost no hope that if there is a god, he will deign to show his face and give me sufficient proof of his existence.
I refuse to play hide -and–seek or guessing games with any entity that may claim that is a God. In taht sense I found inssuportable, false and a moral monster the God of the Bible.
That said, I don’t give up or disregard valid things – especially in architecture, fine arts and religious music – that Catholicism, my culture of origin, has brought to humanity.
No other religious culture has given the Gothic cathedrals, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Pietà, the Moses (all works by Michelangelo); the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci; the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven, the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass) and the Exultate Jubilate, of Mozart, Mass Nº 3 of Bruckner…
And some of the Catholic traditions that have deeply rooted in popular culture, far exceeding their religious and ritual significance, such as the Holy Week Processions in many towns and cities of Spain. A must see…
I refuse to play hide -and–seek or guessing games with any entity that may claim that is a God.
Precisely. I fully accept the charge of arrogance and presumption implied but I will not accept a second-hand revelation. Why can’t I have a “Road to Damascus” experience of my own? Why doesn’t Jesus appear to me? Words from a two thousand year old book are not enough.
That said, I don’t give up or disregard valid things – especially in architecture, fine arts and religious music – that Catholicism, my culture of origin, has brought to humanity.
No other religious culture has given the Gothic cathedrals, the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Pietà, the Moses (all works by Michelangelo); the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci; the Missa Solemnis of Beethoven, the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass) and the Exultate Jubilate, of Mozart, Mass Nº 3 of Bruckner…
Agreed. I would just point out that if it had been some other religion that dominated the West some other equally beautiful art works would have resulted. No one system of belief has a monopoly on the human quest for transcendence and the desire to express that desire through art.
And some other religion would have not meant playing ‘hide or seek guessing games’? Which is pure emotionalism, btw. We do the same thing with philosophy, and you have no problem with that.
You seem to think there is no offense in you attacking religion (which I agree is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in a free society), but if anyone says one thing about atheism or prominent atheists who make dodgy statements (or commit dodgy acts), you bristle. You are not the least bit objective on the matter, and you’re not required to be. But at least admit it.
Your logic here seems to be equivalent to a coda tacked onto the parable of the good Samaritan. “But the man said to the Samaritan, ‘If you hadn’t come along, I’m sure somebody else would have poured oil on my wounds, taken me to an inn, and paid for my care and lodging there. If not a fellow Jew, possibly a pagan, or a member of the Mithras Cult. Or one of these people who believes in no god at all. Therefore, I have nothing to thank you for. But I’ll still take your generosity as my rightful due.’ “
The point of that story, of course, was that you shouldn’t care where kindness and compassion come from–they are pearls of great price no matter what the source. The same would be true of creativity, which stems from the same place in our psyches as our religious tendencies, which is precisely why religion and art are so closely linked across the millennia.
I do thank all the cultures and their various religions, who came before and parallel to Christianity, for their contributions to civilization and to our understanding of ourselves. I even thank atheists and their various forebears for asking worthwhile questions.
But when it comes to music, art, architecture, literature, even philosophy, mathematics, and science–it does seem the contribution has been relatively small to date (unless we define ‘atheist’ very very loosely). And if we count the crimes of religion against theism, we must count the crimes of 20th century dictatorships that rejected theism and committed genocides such as the world had never seen before into the equation, regardless of whether today’s atheists all agree with those regimes. If you’re a lumper when it comes to theists, you logically have to be the same with atheists. I’m more of a splitter myself–sheep and goats.
Or we could just say that neither theism nor atheism was to be blamed or credited at all, and it was just people doing stuff. But so far, the religious people have done more interesting stuff. And religion was not the force behind the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges, the Cultural Revolution, or the Cambodian genocide. Not theistic religion, anyway.
It’s worth thinking about. If we’re going to believe in things that can’t be proven–and we probably always will–maybe believing in some force of good in the universe (which can be defined in many ways, and never proven nor disproven) is better than believing that only chance and chaos rule. Since we can’t prove that either, you know.
Stephen said
Agreed. I would just point out that if it had been some other religion that dominated the West some other equally beautiful art works would have resulted. No one system of belief has a monopoly on the human quest for transcendence and the desire to express that desire through art.
[Fernando] In principle, I agree that “no religion has a monopoly on the human quest for transcendence and the desire to express that desire through art.”
But what happened with the Catholic religion has little to do with the importance of transcedence that only some artists seek to capture in their works, and much with the wealth and patronage of Popes and other high hierarchies of said religious organization and of the high Catholic aristocracy.
In some cases I have pointed out, such as that of fine arts and music, Catholic artists or those who worked for Catholic civil and ecclesiastical authorities, benefited from the fact that, unlike the Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church preserved the statues, the paintings, figures of the main biblical characters and the history of the church (especially, the Saints and the Virgin) before the Reformation.
With music, something similar happens. Luther composed hymns and songs. Nothing spectacular, although you should hear what Bach did with a simple hymn: Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott, in the first choir of the cantata BWV 80. And it is that the Reformation, without saints, without colorful altars or painting, austere as if it were poor, and without the traditional liturgy, the rich rituality, full of “teatralità“, pomp and display of wealth, it eliminated the orchestral and courtly, symphonic and even operatic style music, and only allowed the hymns, which sang the entire congregation, with the only accompaniment of a small organ, and not only performed by more or less professional choirs and soloists. So after Bach, Protestant religious music has neither the richness nor the variety nor the splendor that Catholic sacred music.
We can continue to explain the uniqueness of the art of Catholics, if we analyze the artistic poverty of Islam, for example.
Little or nothing has to do with metaphysics (theology in particular) the richness and enormous inspiration of the vast majority of artists and craftsmen who worked in the regions of influence of the Catholic Church. It was just a sociological issue and at best, an issue of ecclesiology.
godspell said
And some other religion would have not meant playing ‘hide or seek guessing games’? Which is pure emotionalism, btw. We do the same thing with philosophy, and you have no problem with that.
[Fernando] I’m sorry, but in philosophy you don’t play hide-and-seek or guesing games. At least, in the case of analytical philosophy, it should not be done.
You seem to think there is no offense in you attacking religion (which I agree is a perfectly legitimate thing to do in a free society), but if anyone says one thing about atheism or prominent atheists who make dodgy statements (or commit dodgy acts), you bristle. You are not the least bit objective on the matter, and you’re not required to be. But at least admit it.
[Fernando] Regarding what you say I do when “if anyone says one thing about atheism or prominent atheists who make dodgy statements (or commit dodgy acts), you bristle”, is an unjustified, gratuituos statement, because you don’t know anything about me. Ask before shooting me, please.!
I try to use the critical thinking and the most objective — contrary to what you claim I do without any basis – and informed judgement as possible when I read texts of believers and atheists. I am not interested in the thinker, the analyst, the writer, but what he says and writes. Therefore, I’m sorry, but I don’t have to admit your assumptions about me.
.Your logic here seems to be equivalent to a coda tacked onto the parable of the good Samaritan. “But the man said to the Samaritan, ‘If you hadn’t come along, I’m sure somebody else would have poured oil on my wounds, taken me to an inn, and paid for my care and lodging there. If not a fellow Jew, possibly a pagan, or a member of the Mithras Cult. Or one of these people who believes in no god at all. Therefore, I have nothing to thank you for. But I’ll still take your generosity as my rightful due.’ “
The point of that story, of course, was that you shouldn’t care where kindness and compassion come from–they are pearls of great price no matter what the source. The same would be true of creativity, which stems from the same place in our psyches as our religious tendencies, which is precisely why religion and art are so closely linked across the millennia.
[Fernando] I do not agree with what you say about artistic creativity and religious tendencies being processed in the same areas of the brain and through the same mechanisms and neural circuits. In the first place, it is again a very risky statement, because today the neurosciences cannot assure where and how the emotions, feelings and reasoning of human beings are processed. But from what is already known, and is being studied with increasing precision, artistic creativity and religious beliefs or emotions are not processed in the same areas of the brain or with the same mechanisms or with the same neural circuits.
That said, it is true that it is very difficult to separate emotions, feelings and reasoning since they all circulate through almost the same circuits of neurons and are processed in very overlapping areas of the brain. But we must try to separate then as objectively as possible, and as far as is known, religious beliefs serve as much as inspiration or motivation to trigger a process of artistic creativity. Then, as the process continues, usually artistic creativity and religious feelings each go their own way.
It is also true that art has served to express religious beliefs and feelings. But that same artistic creativity and his trade and expertise is what made Mozart compose sacred music taking advantage of material taken from scores and ideas of operas, symphonies or quartets composed before. Or to Michelangelo to sculpt his David with the same craft and beauty (to say that this is a work of religious art is not very successful) than his Pietà. Or Leonardo to paint the Gioconda and the Virgin of the Rocks or Mary Magdalene.
You have to be very careful and knowledge to talk about the relationship between religion and sacred art. A very interesting example is that of the Missa Solemnis, by Beethoven.
It was a professional commission of Archduke Rodolfo of Habsburg for the mass of his consecration as Archbishop of Olmitz. And although it is called Missa, it is not liturgical and therefore cannot be used in the Catholic cult, even in the most solemn masses. The work, a summit of the musical repertoire of Western high culture, is not properly Catholic. Like her inside skinned sister, the Ninth Symphony, it is the result of Beetyhoven’s Christianity, which is impregnated with freemasonry and deism. It is an amazing synthesis of the humanism of the Enlightenment and the romantic idealism of the German Naturphilosophie.
But it is such a great, complex, polyhedral composition that, together with clearly heroic, dramatic and martial music, it has some of the most exciting and profound religious music moments of all time. Just listen to the tenor sing “Et incarnatus est … Et,… Et hommo factus est” The way in which the “Et … Et” should be sung reflects the astonishment of the Christian mystery of the incarnation. Sounds like a Wow! of admiration and surprise. Another moment of incredible beauty and emotion is the singing of the violin solo in the Sanctus. Until the “Benedictus” of the Sanctus, the Missa Solemnis is of relatively normal classical proportions. But after an orchestral prelude, a solo violin enters its highest register symbolizing the Holy Spirit that descends to the earth. Then the most transcendentally beautiful music of the Mass begins, in a remarkably long length of the text.
There is much more music with deep feeling and religious symbolism in these Beethoven’s bars than in the whole history of the so-called “Christian music” in the Anglo-Saxon evangelical world.
It is a pleasure to talk with you, dear friend “gospel”, but in Spain it is late and I am in poor health.
If you are interested in my answers, tomorrow I will try to finish answering your interesting and well argued response to a comment from me.
Have a good night.
Stephen said
…the artistic poverty of Islam?Are you familiar with the history of Islamic art? It is extraordinarily rich, equal to anything in the Christian tradition. But of course all art is produced by human beings and each culture has its own concerns and obsessions.
Well said, and I’m not sure what he meant by that.
I am certainly not saying that the most reilgious people are always the best artists. I am saying that art and religion come from the same place–the need to transcend reality. Which is why materialists tend to be terrible artists. And artists, it must be said, are rarely very orthodox believers. (Well, maybe the ones who did those Russian icons.)
Stephen said
…the artistic poverty of Islam?Are you familiar with the history of Islamic art? It is extraordinarily rich, equal to anything in the Christian tradition. But of course all art is produced by human beings and each culture has its own concerns and obsessions.
[Fernando]
Islamic art is practically reduced to architecture and urbanism, but since about 1700, that architectural art declined and virtually disappeared from the culture of Muslim societies.
Its height can be located between the ninth and fifteenth centuries, taking as remarkable creations the mosque with Dome of the Rock and La Alhambra in Granada (completed around 1360).
Both the Blue Mosque (1617) and the Taj Mahal (1654) are late examples and result from the fusion of elements of other cultures with the Islamic.
But in sculpture, painting, music, literature (including theater), Muslim societies has hardly had nor has now any relevance.
Islamic art is practically reduced to the so-called decorative or minor arts.
But in sculpture, painting, music, literature (including theater), Muslim societies has hardly had nor has now any relevance.
Islamic art is practically reduced to the so-called decorative or minor arts.
Damn, I guess I’ll have to throw all my books and recordings away since according to you they don’t exist.
Everybody’s an agnostic, because nobody really knows (the only way to factually know there’s a God, I suggest would be to be God–a finite being can’t perceive an infinite being, can only intuit such a being’s existence, and Scotus Eriugena said that God wasn’t a being in the sense we normally mean). And as the saying goes when everybody is naked, nobody is naked. So I don’t consider it a terribly meaningful response, but I’ll accept it as legitimate in this context. (If only to close the subject.)
Atheists and Theists mainly admit they don’t know, but they have strong convictions on the subject, which they would like everyone else to share (and in some cases may try to compel others to share them). Which is why I consider both stances essentially faith-based in nature, though one is negative and the other positive–it’s a choice.
Personally, I don’t see why one has to make one choice and stick to it forever–why one can’t feel differently about it at different times. To be neither theist, atheist, or agnostic–to simply be open to different perceptions about an unanswerable question that still remains highly relevant to our existence.
And I don’t need a label for that.
Are we done yet? 🙂
Everyone has the right to self-define. No one has the right to define for other people. If someone says they’re an atheist or agnostic or believer then I might ask what they mean by that. But I tend to be more interested in how they arrived at their own point of view. I have respect for anyone making an attempt to think it through whether I agree with them or not. I have no respect for those who don’t try to think it though or who imagine that they can sit on some imaginary perch above the fray and judge the folks really struggling with these issues.
Make sense who may.
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