Do You Avoid Religiously Inspired Art Or Music?

People draw inspiration from an endless list of different sources - love, birth, sex, jealousy, war, god, death to name a very select few - and the outcome of this inspiration is often beautiful and terrible, touching and uplifting, infuriating and bold. I've already written that I reject the claim that art and the ability to fully appreciate art is a divine gift, but I have known religious people who could not stand 'atheist' art - music which professes happily or with sorrow that there is no god, paintings which show no reverence for typically sacred imagery or specific subjects and the like. I've even seen this kind of behavior exhibited by atheists in regard to religiously inspired art or art which has religious imagery involved. One specific reaction I have heard is this:

I spent 17 years of my life feeling ashamed and afraid about eternity. I don't want to waste any more of my life 'appreciating' anything religious.

I understand this position, but I certainly don't personally share it. I feel that some people have had such a negative experience with religion that religiously inspired art seems to have the same affect on them as a person who was raped looking at Rape of the Sabine Woman by Giovanni Bologna - while I can look at the sculpture and feel sorrowful for the Sabine woman or uncomfortable with the rapist who has her held in his grip but still appreciate the form of the sculpture and the skill with which the piece was made, a person who has experienced the crime might only be able to see the ugly subject matter and may even be forced to re-live their own experiences.

As I said, personally I really like art and a good amount of music that is religiously inspired. I feel like the passion and intensity that is often put into these kinds of creations is evident and adds to the impact of the painting or sculpture or what have you. I don't believe that you have to be religious in order to appreciate the power that religious imagery has - from comics to coins to paintings, religious symbols and themes are often gripping subject matter whether the goal of the artist is to show reverence or disdain.

Racist Jesus Puppets?

I don't...I don't even know what to say. But on that same vein...



(Thanks to martinpribble and shiidii for the heads up on the first vid.)

The Biblical Unicorn - Believe In It Or Burn

I've never really studied the bible outside of comparative religions classes a little bit of fruitless reading on my own which left me tired and confused, so some of the more subtle nuances of the book have escaped me. The more I learn about all of the claims the bible makes, the more I wonder how anyone with any amount of self respecting intelligence could possibly literally follow it as if it is their god's unfiltered word.

For instance, did you know that the bible mentions unicorns? AIG (the people who brought you that bastion of absurdity, the creation museum) spells it all out for us -

Some people claim the Bible is a book of fairy tales because it mentions unicorns. However, the biblical unicorn was a real animal, not an imaginary creature. The Bible refers to the unicorn in the context of familiar animals, such as peacocks, lambs, lions, bullocks, goats, donkeys, horses, dogs, eagles, and calves (Job 39:9–12.) In Job 38–41, God reminded Job of the characteristics of a variety of impressive animals He had created, showing Job that God was far above man in power and strength.

Job had to be familiar with the animals on God’s list for the illustration to be effective. God points out in Job 39:9–12 that the unicorn, “whose strength is great,” is useless for agricultural work, refusing to serve man or “harrow (plow) the valley.” This visual aid gave Job a glimpse of God’s greatness. An imaginary fantasy animal would have defeated the purpose of God’s illustration.

Modern readers have trouble with the Bible’s unicorns because we forget that a single-horned feature is not uncommon on God’s menu for animal design. (Consider the rhinoceros and narwhal.) The Bible describes unicorns skipping like calves (Psalm 29:6), traveling like bullocks, and bleeding when they die (Isaiah 34:7). The presence of a very strong horn on this powerful, independent-minded creature is intended to make readers think of strength.

The absence of a unicorn in the modern world should not cause us to doubt its past existence. (Think of the dodo bird. It does not exist today, but we do not doubt that it existed in the past.). Eighteenth century reports from southern Africa described rock drawings and eyewitness accounts of fierce, single-horned, equine-like animals. One such report describes “a single horn, directly in front, about as long as one’s arm, and at the base about as thick . . . . [It] had a sharp point; it was not attached to the bone of the forehead, but fixed only in the skin.”

The elasmotherium, an extinct giant rhinoceros, provides another possibility for the unicorn’s identity. The elasmotherium’s 33-inch-long skull has a huge bony protuberance on the frontal bone consistent with the support structure for a massive horn. In fact, archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, in his 1849 book Nineveh and Its Remains, sketched a single-horned creature from an obelisk in company with two-horned bovine animals; he identified the single-horned animal as an Indian rhinoceros. The biblical unicorn could have been the elasmotherium.

Assyrian archaeology provides one other possible solution to the unicorn identity crisis. The biblical unicorn could have been an aurochs (a kind of wild ox known to the Assyrians as rimu). The aurochs’s horns were very symmetrical and often appeared as one in profile, as can be seen on Ashurnasirpal II’s palace relief and Esarhaddon’s stone prism. Fighting rimu was a popular sport for Assyrian kings. On a broken obelisk, for instance, Tiglath-Pileser I boasted of slaying them in the Lebanon mountains.

Extinct since about 1627, aurochs, Bos primigenius, were huge bovine creatures. Julius Caesar described them in his Gallic Wars as:

“a little below the elephant in size, and of the appearance, color, and shape of a bull. Their strength and speed are extraordinary; they spare neither man nor wild beast which they have espied . . . . Not even when taken very young can they be rendered familiar to men and tamed. The size, shape, and appearance of their horns differ much from the horns of our oxen. These they anxiously seek after, and bind at the tips with silver, and use as cups at their most sumptuous entertainments.”

The aurochs’ highly prized horns would have been a symbol of great strength to the ancient Bible reader.

One scholarly urge to identify the biblical unicorn with the Assyrian aurochs springs from a similarity between the Assyrian word rimu and the Hebrew word re’em. We must be very careful when dealing with anglicized transliterated words from languages that do not share the English alphabet and phonetic structure. However, similar words in Ugaritic and Akkadian (other languages of the ancient Middle East) as well as Aramaic mean “wild bull” or “buffalo,” and an Arabic cognate means “white antelope.”

However, the linguistics of the text cannot conclusively prove how many horns the biblical unicorn had. While modern translations typically translate re’em as “wild ox,” the King James Version (1611), Luther’s German Bible (1534), the Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate translated this Hebrew word with words meaning “one-horned animal.”

The importance of the biblical unicorn is not so much its specific identity—much as we would like to know—but its reality. The Bible is clearly describing a real animal. The unicorn mentioned in the Bible was a powerful animal possessing one or two strong horns—not the fantasy animal that has been popularized in movies and books. Whatever it was, it is now likely extinct like many other animals. To think of the biblical unicorn as a fantasy animal is to demean God’s Word, which is true in every detail.

...I just. I don't really know what to say. All I can think of is how Lisa Frank much have had some divine inspiration when she was designing my trapper keeper in 7th grade.

Why Are You A Vocal Atheist?

In a recent post regarding the Cherry Creek Public Schools lawsuit where the FFRF sued over a program which asked the children of the public school to "spend one or more hours per week in activities in a religious institution” Hemant Mehta asked "Should atheists fight these seemingly “minor” battles? Do they have a meaningful impact?"

My response to this question is a resounding yes because every infringement on our rights, however tiny or seemingly insignificant, is an infringement just the same and is just as unacceptable as the most overt attempt at blurring the separation of church and state. This particular story hit close to home with me because religious pressures and interventions in public schools is the very occurrence which inspired me to become more vocal about my atheism and my rights as an atheist in the first place.

I have never been shy about my atheism. When asked, I have always told people that I was either an atheist or, during some parts of my life, I would say I had Buddhist philosophies but didn't feel like Buddhism was my religion because I didn't participate in it in a religious way. Whether long winded or succinct, the answer was always pretty much the same - I'm an atheist.

The catalyst for my becoming more vocal in my atheism was my son getting old enough to go to school. I started researching schools and curriculum and was astonished at what I found. A lot of schools even in my beloved and presumably progressive Washington state were ducking huge chunks of biology (specifically the theory of evolution) in order to appease religious groups. Looking into the matter further I understood why they did it - religious groups had a keen way of rallying public support behind their bullheaded stupidity in a way which turned a religiously based complaint into a public outcry.

I don't want my son to grow up learning apologetic history or inaccurate and incomplete science. I want my son to have more opportunities than I had and I want him to be a part of the future generations of this country that help defeat the "stupid American" stereotype. When I looked into the roadblocks that existed between my son and a proper basic education to get him ready for college, I perceived religious censorship of knowledge as one of the major hurdles my son would have to overcome and I decided that was entirely unacceptable.

So I stopped being quiet and silently rolling my eyes and started speaking up when religious groups try to stifle me and my son's opportunities and rights in favor of their own personal beliefs. I don't know if I'll ever stop speaking up now - it may not be much in regard to society at large, but I feel that speaking up when you feel that something is wrong is the least we can do for ourselves and one another.

Music, Passion, And Atheism

As anyone who follows my twitter knows, I've been going on a music binge the last few days. Like most people, I love music and listening to all my old favorites while finding some new ones has got me thinking about music and how religious people tend to want to shanghai music and the arts as being products of faith. Either that, or religious people have declared at times that appreciation for these finer parts of life isn't possible without faith.

I have never believed in god or had those passionate feelings people of faith seem to feel when they're talking about their relationship with god. I have never accepted anything about Jesus or Mohammad or anything of the sort. Yet, I do feel profoundly moved when I listen to music. I feel emotions well up in me, I feel like dancing, I smile and laugh when some music comes on and I grow morose and somber when I hear other songs. I can't image that the feelings I'm feeling are somehow muted because I don't believe in god and I don't know how someone who does or doesn't believe might be able to tell to the other person how they specifically feel or what they don't feel.

I think that music is something all people share and it is insulting, ridiculous and rude for someone to say that atheists can't appreciate music as much as anyone else just as it would be insulting to say that doctors, Jews, rugby players, or any other group of people can't enjoy music as much as everyone else.

I laugh when I read someone building that tired old atheist straw man - the atheist who finds no joy in life and lacks passion, is a grump and is cold-hearted but sometimes this stereotype does honestly hurt my feelings. I have a lot of passion for life because I believe it's the only one I have. I try to be both warm and inviting to people but also respectful of their privacy because that's how I prefer to be treated. I have a passion for knowledge but that doesn't mean that by default my demeanor is fridgid.

Atheists may seem cold and mean because we require the build up of a pretty thick skin in order to deal with being told we're arrogant, we're insolent, and we don't feel the same way everyone else does. Most days I don't care one bit about the uninformed opinions that people have about me because I'm an atheist, but today I was so happy listening to music all day long that I was reminded by my own enjoyment just how wrong those uninformed opinions are, and for the first time in a long time, I felt hurt.

Pope: Atheists Are Greedy! (Pay No Attention To That Fortune Behind The Curtain)

The pope has laid it out on the line - environmental irresponsibility is inevitable when people stop believing in god:

Experiencing the shared responsibility for creation (Cf. 51), the Church is not only committed to the promotion of the defense of the earth, of water and of air, given by the Creator to everyone, but above all is committed to protect man from the destruction of himself. In fact, "when 'human ecology' is respected in society, environmental ecology also benefits" (ibid). Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

The funny thing is, anti-environmentalism as far as I've known has largely been a religiously motivated pursuit. Not to mention - the pope is complaining about 'egoistic possession'?

When looking up information about the wealth of the Vatican, there is a very popular quote which pops up over and over which seems to have originated from this article:

The myth of Vatican wealth. “At the Vatican, everything is for sale, in the popular mind,” Allen said. In reality, the Vatican’s annual operating budget is about $260 million. Allen contrasted that to Harvard University, which has an annual operating budget of $1.3 billion.

“ (Harvard) could run five Vaticans every year and still have pocket change left over for an endowed chair,” Allen said, equating the Vatican’s patrimony - all the assets it could sell - to that of a medium-sized Catholic university. Its total patrimony is $770 million. The University of Notre Dame’s endowment is four and a half times greater, he said.

Allen noted that while people often assume a significant monetary value attached to the artwork the Vatican holds, it is not for sale.

Which is to say that the Vatican doesn't have a lot of money because the annual operating budget for Harvard is greater than the annual operating budget for the Vatican. OK, that's interesting, but that doesn't seem to address the actual question which is in regard to the wealth of the Vatican. The last sentence in the quote seems to be the most telling - A large percentage of the Vatican's wealth is found in non-liquid assets. And those don't count, according to Catholic apologists. Well of course you guys don't think that should count, if it did there is no way you could argue that the Catholic church is not worth a staggering amount of money!

Catholics like to say that the wealth of their church is a myth, but it's hard to swallow that story when it's so obviously not the case. A financial statement of the Holy See for fiscal year 2000 states:

For the eighth consecutive year, the operating statement for fiscal year 2000 for the Holy See closes with a net gain of 17.720 billion, equal to $8,516,000 US at the exchange rate at the end of the year of 2,080.89 lire per dollar. The total expenses were 404.378 billion and the total income was 422.098 billion. Compared with the previous fiscal year, the income was more substantial, having increased by 64 billion. As is easily imaginable, the increase in expenses is strictly related to the celebration of the Jubilee Year, which brought with it greater activity, and therefore a greater need for personnel, within the various offices of the Roman Curia and also of the media organs connected with the Holy See.

As the article states, this is less of a gain than what is normally seen because in 2000 the church had a lot more expenditures with their celebrations of the new millennium. That's the church itself - greedy, for-profit, catholic church. The pope as an individual is no better. The pope is allowed the best medical coverage, the poshest of transportation choices, a spectacular living quarters (see right) and everything he may want free of charge. The pope's only argument in defense of his irresponsible comments regarding greed and atheists is that he himself has no concept of greed since he gets everything he wants without having to even consider a paycheck - all the pope has to do is ask and it is there.

I know it's easy to blame us baby eating atheists for all that's wrong with the world and I know it's tempting - we don't have many righteously indignant platforms to hide behind and so we are easy targets when it comes to flinging ridicule. However, Mr. Pope, it would be nice if next time your attack of us was a little less simplistically easy to refute and reject on the basis of bias and projection. Thanks Nazi buddy!

The Fight That Religion Has Picked

I just realized a mistake I have been making in my thinking and I get very excited when I have such realizations because I feel like the day I stop have realizations is the day i should mark on my tombstone as date of death, regardless of how long my body lives. I have bought into the religious fallacy of, in part, regarding science as if it is in diametrical opposition to religion. It is true that science and religion sometimes address similar subjects, but this does not lend credibility that one is the antithesis of the other.

The only issues which science deals with are natural ones. Some religious people dislike the scientific data that gets released about certain topics. One of the most hot button scientific theories out there is evolution, but evolution is only a controversial issue because religious people say it destroys belief in god. Religious people say this. Scientists say that they've observed X and Y and because of verifiable experimentation and empirical data, accept that X is Y because of A, B, and C. Scientists may personally wonder if these results might indicate something about god or a creator, but the foundation of the creator myth is in faith, not logic. The scientific application of evolution in regard to god is impossible because you cannot legitimately apply science to supernatural concepts.

Besides these few scientific theories and findings, science has very little to do with religion but it seems religion can't stop trying to interject itself into science. Evidently, in part, to weaken the 'Evil Secular Hypnotic Hold' as some have said of science on the youth of America.

This is why I find christian pseudoscience so puzzling. Why would any religious person want to try to scientifically prove any part of something whose most basic pillar is faith - an entirely non-scientific concept? Faith in the biblical sense is believing in something regardless of logic or evidence. Religious people seem desperate to prove that all people live their lives according to faith, making claims like 'you don't know what might happen if you cross the street - you have faith that you'll be OK even though it's been proven in some cases that crossing the street (and getting hit by a car) is fatal. This application of faith in the biblical sense doesn't apply, however, because before crossing the street, you look both ways in order to gather evidence as to the presence of cars which might make crossing the street at that point potentially fatal. People don't fly in planes because they have faith that the planes won't crash. Most people are aware of the statistical improbabilities of a plane crash and are willing to take the risk. Religious faith may be established with information which seems similar to that of plane crash statistics or evidence gathered when crossing the street in the form of personal or anecdotal information, but these things are not scientifically sound. It is irrational for someone to believe that cats steal the souls of sleeping children even if a large group of people tell them it is true.

The motivations of the religious community may be understandable - in very simple and constrained terms - fear, comfort, faith, etc., but to me it seems like religion has not only picked a fight with science, but now that scientifically trained people are defending themselves against this behavior, religious people are now trying to take up that familiar position of the persecuted.

There is no honesty in acting bullied and wounded when someone defends themselves against a fight that you started.

Valley 6 Drive In Donates 2,945 Pounds Of Food

On August 26th the Valley 6 Drive In Theater in Auburn, Washington had a food drive. The deal was, if you brought in a can of food you got in at the junior rate. If you brought in five cans you got a carload for five bucks and if you brought in ten cans or more you got in for free, regardless of how many people you had in your car.

The expectations for this drive were not terribly high, but we all thought it would be a good thing to do for our community since the local food bank has been literally running out of food. The amount of families using the food bank has doubled since last year and the donations have dramatically dropped off causing far more demand than supply.

The night of the food drive was awesome. I was working in the box office that night and not one person brought only a single can and very few people only brought five. Most people who came through brought ten or twenty cans and in some cases people brought in flats of food. While there was the occasional can of eel in olive oil (not joking) or out of date products, most of the food we collected were delicious staples - tuna, corn, mac and cheese, instant mashed potatoes, peas, soups, broths and the like.

Today we brought the food to the Auburn Food Bank with the help of another employee at the Drive In who also has his own business installing and repairing garage doors. We used his box truck to bring the food to the bank and weighed the boxes and bags as we went.

The end result was 2,945 pounds of food - a total which exceeded our highest hopes.

We are already planning on making the food drive an annual event. It was a great day and I feel proud to have been a part of this immensely needed and appreciated gift to my community.

Example of Religious Evil Or Just Plain Nuts?

Somewhat breaking news, a girl who was kidnapped at age 11 in 1991 has been found. Her captor was...a religious nut. Well, I should say captors since the guy had a wife, but she's staying sensibly silent while he is not.

Mr. Garrido gave a telephone interview from jail to station KCRA in Sacramento, saying, "In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story."

"My life has been straightened out” in recent years, he said. “Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. You’re going to be absolutely impressed. It’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around."

Yeah, I'm sure it's totally a heartwarming story involving you impregnating a 14 year old child you abducted and forcing her and the children to live in tents in your backyard without outside contact or medical attention for almost two decades. He had two kids with the girl, an 11 year old and a 15 year old. Previous to the abduction he had been convicted on charges of rape and kidnapping of a minor and was an apparently legally compliant registered sex offender.

This man is obviously a bit crazy. Take a look at his blog and you can see how the guy is convinced he can control sound with his mind.

So the question has to be posed - is this an example of how strong religious belief is a farce or worse, an indication of mental illness or is this guy just a perverse psycho who happened to seek out religion as his most recent outlet?

I think the better question would be, why is it that crazies tend to seek out religion as often as they do and is that occurrence indicative of a sinister nature that religion easily supports and nurtures? I suppose anything is justified if you do it for a god or if you later believe in a god that admonishes you of all fault.

Hitchens 2007 Seattle Town Hall And The None Zone

I just ran across this article from a year back in Seattle Magazine online and I thought I would share:

Grey Matters: Just Say None
By Knute Berger

What is the None Zone? It’s a term coined by religious researchers who reported in 2004 that the Pacific Northwest—Washington, Oregon and Alaska—is the only part of the United States where a majority of people (more than 60 percent) check “none of the above” when asked their religious affiliation. That compares with 40 percent nationally. And nearly one-third say they are purely secular “humanists” or have no religion at all. That compares with 19 percent nationally and a mere 11 percent in the South.

In short, the None Zone is the opposite of the Bible Belt.

Seattle has gained a reputation as a particularly godless corner of the None Zone. For a time last summer, the most-watched video on the Seattle Channel Web site was a Town Hall lecture by Christopher Hitchens about his provocatively titled book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

During the City Council races last fall, candidate Tim Burgess was put on the defensive for being a Christian “values” voter. In Seattle, that made him suspect despite his liberal, green and pro-gay politics. And in November, Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist D. Parvaz was excoriated by right-wing Web sites and the Fox TV crowd for seeming to condone “church burning” in a piece about a self-proclaimed performance artist who was alleged to have contemplated torching a church for the sake of “art.” One Northwest Republican blogger concluded that Parvaz “obviously hates Christians.” Though a complete misreading of what Parvaz said, it fit the image that liberal Seattle’s idea of religious tolerance is to tolerate people who would burn churches.

Seattle and the Northwest are not completely irreligious. There are plenty of Catholics and Protestants, and there’s a yeasty fermentation in the number of evangelical entrepreneurs, New Age groups, neo-pagans and other nonmainstream religious groups that call the area home. The West has always been ripe for religious and utopian experiments. And many Nones still profess a belief in God. They may not sit in a pew on Sunday, but most aren’t atheists. They may simply be skeptics of organized religion.

Perhaps the largest contingent of Nones are nature worshippers. In an article on specific Northwest religious trends, called “Secular But Spiritual,” Mark Shibley of Southern Oregon University wrote that “nothing is more central to Northwest nature religion than the idea of wilderness.” Preserving wilderness, therefore, is a sacred act. As a result, he says, “Much contemporary environmentalism in the Northwest is a religious system.” You get a sense of that zeal in the growing movement led by Al Gore, Greg Nickels and others to save the world from the apocalypse of global warming.

The source of Seattle values would be a private matter if it wasn’t for the city’s widespread cultural and technological influence; it matters to people everywhere if Microsoft supports gay rights or whether Starbucks shows a mermaid’s bare breasts on its logo (it once did, but no longer).

Few expect perfect moral behavior from corporate players—heaven help you if you raised your child to be like Boeing, a company that has a history of bullying and cheating to get what it wants. But knowing the source of a company’s values can offer insights into its behavior. Newspaper and magazine columnist (and founder of Microsoft’s Slate magazine) Michael Kinsley says that Ayn Rand is popular at Microsoft. She was an atheist who originated the philosophy of Objectivism and touted the virtues of selfishness and dog-eat-dog competition. No wonder she’s the darling of Redmond’s chosen.

Another reason values matter: Seattle is a biotech research center, and we stand at the threshold of fundamentally changing the world with cloning, gene manipulation, nanotechnology, the wiring of human brains, the impact of new drugs and genetic treatments. We also are home to global organizations that will spread these techniques and technologies to the world. What do these people who carry our future in their hands ask themselves when they go into work each day? “What would Jesus do?” “What would the Dalai Lama do?” “What would Ayn Rand do?” “What would Gaia do?” “What would Darwin do?”

Here in the None Zone, there is no single answer, but the answers are still important.

In case you're interested, the Hitchens Seattle Town Hall can be found here.