Readers’ beefs

October 22, 2014 • 9:00 am

For some reason—perhaps because I’m on the road—the wacko comments have been less frequent this week. In fact, we have only two. The first is from reader “assisinaturecouncil”, who commented on my post, “Monastery of the Transfiguration of God” (as usual, I present the posts without editing):

am ecsatic show me a work of art that celebrates atheism

This is the usual triumph of the faithful that religion inspired much great art, including the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, some of the works of Da Vinci and Michelangelo, and so on. For reasons I can’t understand, this is supposed to buttress the claims of religion—or perhaps it’s just vindication of “belief in belief”: religion may not be true but it makes great art.

Since atheism is lack of belief in Gods, it wouldn’t be expected that there would be many cathedrals and paintings about lack of belief. However, every celebration of humanism and hedonism, from the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam to Breugel to Kerouac, is a celebration of life on this earth. However, perhaps readers can name some works of art that to celebrate nonbelief. I’ll start by naming the “screaming popes” of painter Francis Bacon.

*******

And reader “thaine” had this to say about my post, “The evidence for evolution: a short video and a slightly longer take“:

listen natural selection is adaption to survive not evolution. i want true scientificly proven evidence for a change of kinds, i dont want this crap about look at these new species of bacteria or new type of fish i want a change of kinds

 He wants a change of “kinds”!  Well, thaine, there are many examples of major transitions in my book WEIT; just leave your parents’ basement and find one in the bookstore. We have fossil transitions between fish and amphibians, amphibians to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, and reptiles to birds, just to name a few.  Is that not sufficient for you? Or do you want to see a reptile evolve into a bird in real time? I can’t help you there, any more than I can help you prove that your grandfather was once a child. You may have the photographic documentation, but I want to see them grow up before my very eyes. 

~

152 thoughts on “Readers’ beefs”

  1. I’m not sure of any work that directly celebrates atheism but I consider works like the Large Hadron Collider, Hubble telescope, any Neutrino detector and most of the fossils (which have to be cleaned and fixed) in places like the Natural History Museum, etc. The written works influenced by the discoveries of works like those are far greater and more important than any theological work. These works don’t celebrate atheism directly but they celebrate naturalism, almost the opposite of religion. I would always favour the International Space Station over any religious building.

    1. Yes, I was about to comment along similar lines. It’s hard to celebrate a negative as such, but considering naturalism as a positive aspect of an atheist life stance, that is something that certainly is celebrated in every scientific endeavour. But all those high tech objects might not qualify as art.

      However, I think the NHM qualifies as a work of art in its own right, the peer of many a cathedral.

      There is some atheistic music (e.g., Shelley Segal, Greydon Square), and others) that is often more ant-religious than pro-atheism or pro-naturalism:

      What will it take for you
      To start opening your eyes
      To start questioning the bullshit everyone around you buys
      You think it’s any of your business what goes on between my thighs?
      — “Saved” by Shelley Segal

      Oh my, what a beautiful sky

      Witnessed with a marvellously complex eye
      
Comprehended by an enigmatic mind
      
To those who can’t conceive that these wonders were not designed, well…
      — “Fallacy 1: Argument from Ignorance” by Words Such As Burn

      /@

      1. But all those high tech objects might not qualify as art.

        If a can of Campbell soup or this:

        Art from Trash

        is considered art then anything can be considered art.

    2. There is plenty of music by groups like Tool, 311, even Rush that have written songs directly criticizing religion and indirectly, if not directly written to provoke the listen to choose atheism rather than any alternative.

  3. can’t help you there, any more than I can help you prove that your grandfather was once a child. You may have the photographic documentation, but I want to see them grow up before my very eyes.

    Maybe his grandfather was never a child. We know that ‘thaine’ hasn’t matured yet. He may be a different ‘kind’ than his grandfather.

    1. The focus on ‘kind’, as perpetuated by the ever hilarious Ray Comfort, isn’t a scientific classification is it? Any demand for a demonstration of the delineation between ‘kinds’ is pretty much ridiculous, isn’t it? Or am I ridiculously ignorant on this topic?

  5. One of the main reasons that so much great art is concerned with religion is because the artists have to make a living and the church had the money. For example, Bach wrote for the church when he was working for it; when he was working for some aristocrat, he wrote secular works; when he wrote for himself, he wrote secular works. He never wrote religious music that wasn’t commissioned by the church.

    2. Besides, religious imagery is a nice short hand for things since someone else has already poured all the emotion into it. It makes great metaphor – just like Buffy the Vampire slayer!

  6. Didn`t Lorenzo di medici sponsor a fair bit of stuff by Michaelangelo and botticelli – not a religeous figure, just another rich guy

  8. What remember me something I wanted to mention about the pelvis of whales as vestigial organs: actually, they are not entirely useless: they allow to anchor the penis muscles, what can explain why they didn’t entirely disappear:
    J. P. Dines et al.: Sexual selection targets cetacean pelvic bones. Evolution, 2014; DOI: 10.1111/evo.12516

    2. Yes, I remember reading about this. A vestigial organ is not necessarily useless. They often retain a fraction of their ancestral use, but give away their origin in their specialized anatomy and often elaborate development.
      It reminds me of our tails, which develop at first as a pretty decent series of nascent vertebrae which then fuse and become our coccyx. This vestigial tail is still important as it anchors some of the muscles for leg movement, but that is a function that is also found for the basal tail vertebrae of other mammals.

  9. Atheism has not had much chance to produce great ‘visual’ art, having been suppressed for so long, but if you want cathedrals that are not religious, there are thousands of buildings from the industrial revolution – I am really near St. Pancras Station for example, & I bet Matthew could name a load of great Mancunian buildings that are not religiously inspired.

    There there is literary art…

    1. St Pancas – yes, Barlow’s magnificent glass roof. I was there a couple of months ago and I was pleased to see that the remodelling for the Eurostar terminal has preserved a lot of the Victorian structure below it.

      And at the other end of the Eurostar’s route, the Gare du Nord has a truly magnificent and immense Greek temple style facade. Truly a temple to the steam railway. I guess, in the days when it was built, the major railway companies were probably the ‘top dog’ in terms of industrial might and technology, and the Nord wasn’t going to let anyone forget it.

  10. Art that celebrates scientific discoveries and rationalism are abundant, and these I think are an acceptable rebuttal to assisinaturecouncil. Some examples are shown here. I particularly like the part that describes the plotline behind Mozart’s The Magic Flute.
    Also, we have museums of natural history, and thriving science departments at universities. Hospitals are also monuments to the power of belief in science applications.

    1. If you called the NHM a “temple of naturalism”, you wouldn’t be far wrong.

      1. When we visited the Smithsonian museum two summers ago, I felt emotions which I think are similar to how the devout may feel when entering a holy site. One of the highlights was when I found that they had the iconic Murchison meteorite on display. I do not think it is wrong to draw analogies for the sake of communication — it was like seeing a holy relic!

        1. Yes. I also have had emotional responses similar to how the devout may feel. Just one example of many, this from decades ago. Reaching the continental divide at the top of the Monarch ski resort, over 12K feet high, -5 F, clear skies, barely a breeze, standing there on my skis, no other people in sight or hearing, looking at the mountainscape falling away to either side with 12K foot + peaks close by all around.

          The hot chocolate spiked with brandy beside the giant fire at the resort later that afternoon was a fairly religious experience too.

          3. An absolutely beautiful spot. It is also quite amazing in the summer. I’m not sure if they are still doing this, but they would run the chair lifts for mountain bikers. (you then ride down the main forest road, a green trail in the winter). If it’s not thundering, it’s a great way to spend the day. I once found a huge patch of the teeniest (and most potent) strawberries I had ever seen.

          4. Oh man, I bet. What a great idea to open up for mountain biking during the summer. I would love to do that.

          5. Whistler’s gorgeous in the summer, too, for mountain bikers and hikers. You can take the gondola up one mountain, across the peaks, and down the other.

          6. aren’t wild strawberries amazing?? I’ve found something hiking in Ontario that tastes like a cross between raspberries and strawberries and I didn’t die…

        2. I like bowling people over with the reality of “Deep Time” using the view across Assynt from Cul Mor. I’ve had 3 people fall over backwards on seeing what the landscape tells them.
          this landscape was recently voted as the “best geosite in Great Britain“. I’m biased – this is where I learned that there were things called mountains. (And midges. Boy, are there midges.) It’s the bones of a landscape exposing the bones of a previous landscape, exposing the bones of an even earlier landscape, which itself has as much history as the succeeding landscapes. Until recently, it was thought that only the most recent of these landscapes had fossils in it (I collected some beauties when mapping a nearby area.), but more recently fossils have been identified from the landscape beneath, up to 1100 million years old (stromatolites). And there’s evidence of a meteorite impact too. So much, in such a small area – you can walk through 2 billion years of history between elevenses and lunch.

          1. I really need to find a geologist who’d be interested in giving an in-person guided tour of the Grand Canyon. The sense of Deep Time is unavoidable there, too — as is, also, the scale of the planet.

            Incidentally, about an hour from now is a great time to get a good visceral sense of the scale of the Solar System. The Moon will eat the Sun, or at least nibble ’round the edges….

            b&

          2. The eclipse was long after sunset here. But … November third last year?
            As for the Grand Canyon, well I’m sure there are plenty, but I’ve no idea where. It’d be a full 2-day trip, wouldn’t it – one day down, one up, assuming donkeys or similar transport. Or have they built a cable car or funicular yet, and is it at an interesting location?

          3. Yes — I remember that eclipse of yours. Definitely something…well…magical and other-worldly about an eclipse. I got a couple good shots of yesterday’s, but no photograph can compete with what you see live in the viewfinder.

            You know? The Sun is amazingly beautiful. I really ought to get serious about setting up a backyard solar observatory for some daytime astronomy.

            The closest thing to a cable car you’ll find at the Canyon is an helicopter, and I don’t think they’re permitted below the altitude of the plateau any more. The hike is usually a day each way, but you can speed that up or slow it down depending on what kind of pace you want to set, what kind of load you’re carrying, whether or not you’ve got any four-legged beasties to carry stuff (and what sort of pace they’re okay setting), and that sort of thing. Another popular variation is to take rafts or canoes on the Colorado River through the Canyon. I think you can also hike the river without special skills or equipment, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

            Ideal would be an even more extended journey that also went through Sedona’s Oak Creek Canyon and Red Rocks, the Painted Desert, Meteor Crater, Sunset Crater, and Monument Valley. And the Petrified Forest, too…Arizona has got to be some sort of a geologist’s paradise, and I know that there must be many of the same themes and variations running through all of them. But I also know that, lacking a trained eye, I’d certainly overlook them….

            Cheers,

            b&

          4. Another popular variation is to take rafts or canoes on the Colorado River through the Canyon. I think you can also hike the river without special skills or equipment, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

            From past experience on the joys of coastal and water-level traversing, and from what I’ve seen in rafting programmes on the Colorado … I would definitely take specialist local advice.
            I’m not unduly averse to discretion.

          5. Oh, no question — were I ever to do the rafting thing, it’d be part of a well-credentialed and endorsed expedition.

            What I meant was, I know there’re trails that at least go down to the river, and the river itself is much smaller than the Canyon. What I don’t know is if there’re any trails that run the length of the Canyon floor / river bank, or if there’re any choke points that you need to know what you’re doing if you wish to live to make it to the other side.

            If so, I think that’d be the way I’d want to do it: Hike down from the rim to the river, hike the river for a day or three or so, hike back up to the rim ideally somewhere many miles away from where I hiked down. Depending on river crossing options, maybe even on the other side of the Canyon…which would require an entirely different type of logistical support…but, hey — I’m fantasizing this, right? I can go anywhere I want in my imagination….

            b&

          10. I don’t know is if there’re any trails that run the length of the Canyon floor / river bank, or if there’re any choke points that you need to know what you’re doing if you wish to live to make it to the other side.

            “I really wish I hadn’t started on this route!”
            [Later] I really wish I’d turned back when I first really wished I hadn’t started.
            Been there, got the tee-shirt. And the need to change underwear. And hopefully a little common sense (that rarest of commodities).

          11. Yeah…I’ve done that in ways inconvenient enough to learn the lesson, but not on a scale to be dangerous. I’m much less reluctant to just turn around now. And I’m very reluctant to go down a spot where I’m not confident about getting back up again….

            b&

          12. In my original SCUBA training – in the 1980s – we used to call it “spiralling into the incident pit”.

          13. In a very similar vein, there’s a statistic of some double-digit number of seconds…that’s the average life expectancy of a non-instrument-certified pilot after flying into instrument conditions.

            The universal lesson: know your limits if you want to live.

            b&

        1. One of the few reasons (filthy lucre being another) that will get me into London. I try to visit every time I go to the Great Wen, but only succeed about half the time
          This morning another Linked-In recruitment monkey failed to read the bit of my CV that says “I’m not job hunting” and touts me for work. And work in London even. Living argument for thermonuclear revocation of planning consent that it is.

  11. Demanding to see the grandparents grow up, from blastocyst to adult … now that’s a sweet one. A good mirror. The morphological changes from liquid-dwelling speck to wrinkled cyborg are huge, but achieved all the time, by unskilled labour.

  13. I don’t see assisinaturecouncil’s post as “wacko.” He’s observing that humanistic art in a way, indirectly, is a celebration of atheism, and is asking if there are examples that are more direct. He even provides one of his own.

  14. Since atheism is simply the recognition that there is no evidence for god, I’d say that any art that was not inspired by religion or the idea of god is atheistic.

    So, nearly all art, music, and literature of the 20th and 21st century is atheistic: God is not obviously present. Pick your favorite jazz, blues, or pop music, or any modernistic symphonies, or most novels, or your favorite rock album art, graphic novels, etc. There is a HUGE body of artistic work out there that simply is not about god and was inspired by non-god stuff.

    In contrast, try to name some great art done since about 1950 that WAS inspired by god. A few novels with hidden Christian allegories?

        1. Yeah, just getting around to reading this thread now. Busy day. Preparing for a solo recital in a few weeks. Probably won’t comment substantially. Time for bed.

  15. I am moved to cite some poetry:

    In Broken Images

    He is quick, thinking in clear images;
    I am slow, thinking in broken images.

    He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
    I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

    Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
    Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

    Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
    Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

    When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
    When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

    He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
    I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

    He in a new confusion of his understanding;
    I in a new understanding of my confusion.
    –Robert Graves

  16. i dont want this crap about look at these new species of bacteria or new type of fish i want a change of kinds

    I would respond to this: first, define “kind”.

    1. Or ask for his definitions of natural selection or evolution.

      His words don’t mean what he thinks they mean…

    2. What he means by kinds is whatever the fundi website that he got this unoriginal objection from thinks it means.

  17. Show me art that celebrates the non-existence of unicorns, because there is a ton of it that celebrates unicorns!

    2. King Lear? De Rerum Natura (which I’ve only just started reading)? Candide?

      Maybe not atheist but scarcely theistic.

      1. Wonderful suggestions. Especially “De Rerum Natura” by Lucretius. Even in that, there are references to a goddess. However, that shouldn’t prevent anyone from reading one of the earliest presentations of atomic theory.

          6. Non, c’est Rousseau , “L’homme est né libre et partout il est dans les fers.” Le Contrat Social. Mon jeu de mots. x

          8. He wasn’t (so far as I know), but Candide is definitely deistic (if I’ve understood it correctly; I’ve read it twice).

            Has anyone else ever noticed how much anti-religious sentiment there is in the plays of Aeschylus?

          11. Priest to Voltaire on his death-bed: “Do you renounce the devil and all his works?”

            Voltaire: “Now is not the time to be making enemies.”

            Apocryphal, I bet. x

      2. Yes,De Rerum Natura… great reading. Remember that the dedication to Venus may be a lollipop thrown to Memmius, Lucretia’s benefactor. After that, religious mythology is pretty well disregarded. Enjoy!

        1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Reviews
          Book by Stephen Greenblatt

          Have you read this great book which relates to de rerum…

        2. Venus was an important goddess to the Romans because she was associated with Rome’s mythological founding. Lucretius’s dedication could seen as somewhat patriotic or at least a respect shown to the state.

  19. Re: the cathedrals you could as easily say that they were inspired by Roman basilicas, court buildings from which the design ultimately derives. Basilicas became churches became cathedrals. And to my untrained eye, the basilica influenced the covered hall in Trajan’s Markets. So why not say the Gothic Cathedrals were inspired not by God but by Mammon?

    Yahwistic Old Testamental Israel/Judah/Yehud is famous for its lack of art, apart from the Temple. When we think of fantastic Near Eastern buildings, we do not immediately think of Syro-Palestinian archaeology. Aniconic, no native pictorial representation, to my knowledge, of any ancient or classical Jew. Contrast that with the contemporary humanistic Greek statuary.

    Of course religion can inspire art, good or bad. It can also not inspire art.

    x

  21. well one of my favourite songs, nominated for one of the best of the 20th century, by the dearly missed John Lennon… “Imagine no religion…” the lyrics are hauntingly beautiful and inspiring, even though I’ve heard American singers replacing ‘no religion’ with ‘one religion’ (completely missing the point…) that is lovely…

  22. “… i dont want this crap about look at these new species of bacteria or new type of fish i want a change of kinds”

    The word “kinds” is from creation science, and is derived from Genesis, where we see that:

    Then God said, ‘Let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens.’ God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good. …then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind’; and it was so.”Genesis 1:12-24

    So, fish are a ‘kind’ of animal that lives in the waters, birds are a ‘kind’ of animal that flies in the air, and cattle, etc, are of the ‘kind’ of animal that live on the earth.

    So, if ‘thaine’ wants to see “a change of kind”, I would suggest he focus his attention on:

    * walking catfish – a fish that breathes in air and creeps along the earth

    * flying fish – a fish that flies above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens

    * penguins – birds that can not fly in the air, but swarm and swim in the sea

    to name a few.

  23. Awe, wonder, even fear, and every other powerful emotion in the human palette, caused by impactful experiences of nature has inspired more artistic expression than religion by far. Asking for “atheist” inspired art is useful only in revealing that the person asking for that has the typical erroneous, cliche, concept of atheism that is so often held by religious believers.

    In a worthwhile sense it could be said that the endevour of science, at both the individual level and as a whole, is, at least in part, an artistic expression inspired by awe of the reality in which we find ourselves.

  24. IMO, any art that celebrates atheism also celebrates ignoring the nonsense of religon. so, the classic “Rosie the Riveter” poster is art that celebrates atheism and not kowtowing to such ridiculousness.

  25. The great English composer Frederick Delius comes to mind. An unrepentent atheist, he wrote his magnificent choral
    work “A Mass of Life” which is totally void of any religious sentiment.

    1. Similarly Ralph Vaughan Williams, an atheist who among other great works composed much of the music for the English Hymnal.

      1. As well as the ineffably beautiful ‘Mass in G-minor.’ RVW didn’t believe in transubstantiation but certainly did in the self-transcendence music could invoke.

        1. Leonard Bernstein, a Jewish atheist, wrote the greatest mass of the 20th Century.

          Of course, it is a touch more sacrilegious than one would typically expect of such a work, but not so as to scare away the squares. Usually.

          b&

  26. If religious nuts can define what kind of “evidence” science must provide can scientists demand evidence they can’t provide?

    oh wait…

    1. I absolutely adore Goya’s oil paintings! As i understand, he was quite mad in the winter of his life from lead poisoning. My favorite works are from this period. I have a print of “Saturn devouring his son” hanging in my dining room.

    3. Don’t you just love those Romantic pictures and the gothic-y horror of it all? I really love the Romanic period for art and literature — they were real thinkers, before it all went to hell and the Victorians had to lament it to death.

  28. Also Giuseppe Verdi was a very inspired and inspiring atheist who produced the most beautiful requiems we have.

  30. The idea of celebrating atheism is off the mark. What about songs of love or just dancing or maybe getting a little respect (Aretha). Where is religion in any of popular music. The tome of what is popular rock music is about >99.99% secular. In many ways, these are written with no god in mind, therefore atheist.

    Religious people get it through your heads that the universe is secular. If you write about it, draw it, direct it, compose it, dance it, cook it (yet food is art too!), brew it, don it, without religion…then it is by definition art for secular sake.

    1. Indeed.

      Additionally, it’s child’s play to google atheist/agnostic artists and find long lists.

      And samples can be found here by choosing “artists,” “authors,” “musicians,” “composers,” “poets,” etc.:

      http://ffrf.org/news/day/topic

    2. I took the comment to mean this: ‘we religious people celebrate our belief in music, art, etc., we don’t just ignore it or put it to the side when doing art. Give me an example of an atheist artist celebrating his/her atheism in music, art, etc.’

      Sure there is a lot of areligious art, but those pieces don’t answer the commenter’s challenge.

  31. What would atheist art even be?

    To a Muslim, the Sistine Chapel is atheistic. To a Christian, Roman Pagans were atheists — and vice-versa. And what about when a Christian, for example, creates art about Orpheus in the Underworld — is that religious?

    As far as I’m concerned, the labels are meaningless. Is the art any good? That’s all I care about.

    b&

    2. Ben, Hi!

      According to “God Against the Gods” by Jonathan Kirsch, polytheistic Romans considered Christians as “atheists.” The Christians considered the Romans as “paganus” or “pagan.” A “paganus” is one who does not follow or join in. Best! Leon

    3. To a Muslim, the Sistine Chapel is atheistic.

      Surely not? Surely a Muslim scholar would consider the Sistine Chapel to be apostatic, not atheistic (the commissioning and production was done after the revelation to Mohammed, and it is implausible to claim that the commissioners knew nothing of Islam, and they rejected it : apostasy (and a death sentence) rather than atheism. Conversely,

      To a Christian, Roman Pagans were atheists

      Again, surely it matters when the artwork was produced. Something that was made in the 2nd century before the alleged birth of Christ predates the revelation of Christ, and so is not necessarily guilty of sins such as apostasy or atheism ; indeed, the pre-Christian Romans (and Greeks) got a “Get Out of Hell Free” card as “Noble Pagans”. Which is theologically why Dante’s guide through Inferno and most of Purgatorio could be Virgil, the Roman poet.
      I don’t know what the opinion of Christian torment-ologists (in parallel to apologists ; I don’t know if there is a word for people who concoct punishments in a “loving” religion) is on people who were born after the (alleged) Christ, but still didn’t hear the message. There’s an Eskimo joke (Eskimo : “If I did not know about god and sin, would I go to hell?” ; Priest : “No, not if you did not know.” ; Eskimo “Then why did you tell me?”) that has one opinion, but there are readings of Paul that say he believed that everyone should be able to figure all this out for themselves, a priori, and therefore everyone is toast. (Sithrak is oiling his spit, again.)
      But in neither case could the inspiration of the art be described as atheistic : they may have not believed in the same god as you did, but they did believe in some sort of god. Which is why, I’m told, putting “atheist” on my work permit application in the Middle East is worse than putting down “Jew”.

      1. Surely a Muslim scholar would consider the Sistine Chapel to be apostatic, not atheistic

        Well, what is an apostate but an atheist with attitude? Not sure how one can be both an apostate and a theist — at least, not outside the too-common caricature of an atheist as somebody who secretly believes in the gods in dispute but who pretends to not believe in them out of spite.

        b&

        1. apostasy
          The renunciation of a belief or set of beliefs. Specifically, the renunciation of one’s religion or faith.

          That does not mean the renunciation of all beliefs or faiths.
          Didn’t you see the kerfuffle over the woman in Sudan sentenced to death for apostasy because she married a christian and raised her child(-ren?) as christians? That she had moved to christianity wasn’t as important as the fact that she was moving away from Islam (and taking the children – a fatal move!)
          Atheism – the denial of any god is considered a worse threat than apostasy by many religions (that can conceive of it) because it threatens them all, equally.

          too-common caricature

          I wasn’t talking about caricatures. I was talking about what you write on your visa application or work permit application to enter or work in many islamic countries. You know – the forms that can get you refused entry if the entry officer doesn’t like your religion?

          1. It’s a weird psychological thing. I’ve spoken with Jehovah’s Witlesses who sincerely and adamantly insist that all those other gods simply don’t exist, and therefore anybody who claimed to believe in them were believing in nothing and therefore atheists. That sort of thing is very common, and very ancient — see, again, the Roman Pagans who called Christians atheists.

            It goes right to the heart of the famous Stephen F Roberts quote. To those who haven’t gone that one god more…well, they still agree with you that those other gods don’t exist.

            Now, ask me if I agree with these religious people or even if I think they’re being coherent, and you’ll get a dismissive snort. They’re barking mad, of course. But they are sincere, and it’s important to understand that a great many religious people consider everybody not of the exact same religion to be atheists.

            It’s even a very common thing amongst Christian denominations. Ask a Baptist if Catholics and Episcopalians are Christians, and the Baptist will often firmly reject the notion. And if even the Pope isn’t a Christian…well…you see where I’m going with that….

            Cheers,

            b&

          2. I’ve seen it work the other way – one of my co-workers, a lapsed Catholic and quite an intelligent well-read guy – equated atheism with paganism. When he learned I was an atheist he accused me of dancing round a maypole with nude virgins on May Day. I didn’t mind too much, the idea has its appeal…

            I *think* he was trying to wind me up, though he gave no sign that he was joking…

          3. Well, if some people can’t read the dictionary … [shrug].

            They’re barking mad, of course.

            I wonder why it’s “barking” mad, and not “neighing” mad or “meowling” mad? There’s probably a

          4. … button I shouldn’t have pressed.
            What was I thinking of? Something about a Tolkeinesque 23 volume tome on the Middle-English roots of the phrase.

          5. What I’ve wondered about is how most people who’re barking mad are also batshit crazy. Do bat farts sound like barking dogs? Has anybody ever even heard a bat fart?

            b&

          6. (I bet someone else has beaten me to this).

            Has anybody ever even heard a bat fart?

            Only by using an ultrasonic converter.
            Or, Flanders and Swann got a mention recently, so – from “A Song of Reproductions” :

            All the highest notes, neither sharp nor flat/
            The ear can’t hear as high as that./
            Still I ought to please any passing bat/
            With my HI-gh FI-delity!

          8. That’s entropy, man! It used to be that you could make century-old technology jokes and expect them to remain fresh!

  32. Shelley was an outspoken atheist, and some of his greatest poems – e.g. “Prometheus Unbound” or “Ode to theWest Wind” – can be seen as atheist works of art.

  34. Celebration of science:

    Last spring before the Smithsonian Natural History Museum closed the dinosaur exhibit for renovations (much needed but it’s closed for 5 years 🙁 ), I took my 7 year old to get one last look. After a day of commuter trains, T-Rex, a carrousel, French fries, ancient skeletons, a stuffed lion and more, I asked him what was his favorite part.

    Without hesitation he said “The horses.”

    He wasn’t talking about the merry go round. He meant a small exhibit off to the side of the dinosaurs with a series of drawings of various ancestors of the horse. Under each drawing was a skull and foot bones showing the progression from a smallish animal with fairly normal feet to the large modern animal that walks on one very large finger.

    This old dusty exhibit was a 7 year old’s favorite part of the museum and more. Tell me again that science doesn’t inspire.

  35. If religion can claim all of the religious art for themselves then I hereby claim all of the non-religious art for non-religion ha ha!

    1. Plus, the complainer undoubtedly was thinking of specifically christian art; what would his response be to explicitly religious jewish, muslim, hindu or buddhist art? I’m guessing he’d whine that they are “the wrong religion”.

  36. re: religion and art

    The wealth of religious art is due to the wealth of religions. If religious organizations didn’t grab resources from believers and then use them to create self-aggrandizing art, the artists would sell their services to others.

    If you look for non-theistic art rather than atheist art, you will find lots of it. The Taj Mahal, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, every work of Beethoven other than the Missa Solemnis, all of the pre-Raphaelites & impressionists, almost all modernist art, etc.

    You could possibly argue that John Cage’s 4’33” is atheistic, but it’s also about not collecting stamps or having a bald head.

    1. For the Cage…I think the only consensus you’re gonna get on that one is that it’s about four and an half minutes long….

      I would add that the piece definitely needed to be written and that everybody should absolutely go to a live performance of it at least once…but that one need not necessarily go to more than one such performance, save perhaps to encourage another to do so.

      I would further add that almost everything Cage wrote is often worth listening to at least once, though not necessarily in large doses. Steve Reich, on the other hand…well, the joke goes that Vivaldi wrote the same concerto 300 times, but Reich wrote the same measure umpteen brazilian times. Truly, I do not think I could listen to even four and an half minutes of Reich without committing horrifically unspeakable acts. There is little doubt but that he is an avatar of Cthulhu. As such, it is safe to say that his music is most emphatically religious — and the religion is almost as pernicious as that of the Roman Catholic Church itself!

      Ph’nglui Mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

      b&

      1. Right now I’m listening to Mark Knopfler playing ‘Wild Theme’ (aka Going Home) and just about having a religious experience myself. I nearly cried the first time I heard that particular rendition. No religious music has ever had that effect on me.
        NOT that Dire Straits were ever religious, so far as I know.
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh2GFoDae8Y

  37. Love the suggestions so far. Here’s a couple of possibly not completely worthless thoughts.

    First, non-religious art, comprising the vast majority of what has been made since the start of the 20th century, can be construed in an atheist/secular/anti-religious vein. After all, it’s the fundies who delight in quoting “he who is not with us is against us.” So we might not think that, say, some jazz standard is necessarily atheistic, but from the point of view of a fundagelical, it is. You may or may not know this quote by CS Lewis: “There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.” Lewis, of course, was totally off-base, but at least he was thinking consistently as a christian.

    I’m sure there are other more or less explicitly atheist works of art, too. One I would point out is the science fiction corpus of Robert Charles Wilson, probably the first science fiction writer I’d recommend to someone like our esteemed host. Although religion plays a small role in most of his novels, it is definitely unhelpful, and always subservient to science, with no lack of explicit use of evolutionary theory to explain how things really happen. Check his Wikiquote page (full disclosure: almost entirely my doing) for many interesting quotes, such as:

    “Goddamn you,” Jacob said.
    “There’s no damnation, Jacob. No Heaven but the forest and no God but the hive.”

    I believed there were no Hypotheticals in the sense of consciously acting agents—conscious entities. There was only the process. The needles of evolution, endlessly knitting.

    Evolution can’t be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it’s a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn’t aim.

    What had been released into the desert vacuum and starry oases of the galaxy was the inexorable logic of reproduction and natural selection. What followed was parasitism, predation, symbiosis, interdependency—chaos, complexity, life.

    There are other science fiction writers who are delightfully and brazenly secular or anti-religious (both Asimov and Vonnegut were voted “Humanist of the Year” by the American Humanist Association), but Wilson is probably the most literary of them. And, I still need to read his novel Darwinia.

  38. Knew I had one more thing to add…

    How about comic art, such as Jesus ‘n’ Mo, SMBC, Abstruse Goose, and any number of others that are pretty explicitly atheist or secular?

  39. Have a look at the “Impermancence” series of South Korean artist Seung-Hwan Oh. Not sure whether one should call this atheistic art but it is definitely inspired by science:

    http://www.seunghwan-oh.com/#!impermanence/c199t

    “For Impermanence, Seung-Hwan Oh exposes his practice to Science. As a microbiologist, he cultivates fungus that he applies to his film. Through this process, the microorganisms slowly devour the film. The artist proposes a depletion of an image. The intended result is what appears through disappearance.

    Oh has worked on this project for three years, where he has improved and increasingly controlled the effects of the microbes on the films. The poetry of his process and images remains in this uncertainty. Even if he doesn’t control the action of the fungus, he is still fully conscious of its chaos. They are cultivated with such a unique precision that he is able to achieve certain vulnerability in his portraits.

    … [Oh] proposes a reflection on the human being’s ephemeral and entropic nature…”

    1. Fascinating. Oh’s themes of ephemera and entropy remind of a visceral installation that I saw about 20 years ago at Witley Court in Worcestershire.

      Think Downton but more Great Gatsby than Henry James: burned down by fire in the 1930s. The entire shell remains. Installations in several rooms open to the elements. In the huge ballroom at the start of summer, the artist hung an enormous chandelier made of sweets. By high summer it was decaying, consumed by hundreds of wasps feeding on it and destroying it. Simultaneously beautiful and repulsive.

      On the British class system, but much more. x

  40. The Eiffel Tower. With its panels (not quite the right word I know) round all four sides inscribed with the names of French scientists, mathematicians and engineers – if not a tribute to atheism then certainly to rationality.

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