[extropy-chat] Atheist Hymn Book

[Emlyn]

On 22/11/06, Anders Sandberg <asa at nada.kth.se> wrote:
> Damien Broderick wrote:
> > At 12:28 PM 11/21/2006 -0800, Avant quoth:
> >
> >>Here's one to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the
> >>Republic"
> >>
> >>http://www.spiritualhumanism.org/hymn.htm
> >
> > O my There-Is-No-God!
> >
> > "From one cell to a primate, to our present bipedal forms"
> >
> > Must these attempts be so doGgone *awful* and gruesomely comical?
>
> I think so. A reason religious songs do not sound comical is that we have
> been conditioned to feel awe for their symbols.

Yes, absolutely. I think that's actually a reason to try a bit harder
with this; those symbols gained their connotations in the first place
through a long history of exactly the culture building that I'm
interested in here.

> Quasi-religious pro-space
> songs like Ecklar's _The Phoenix_ are much better at sending shivers down
> the spine than fact based. But also, since statistically the number of
> atheist songwriters is much smaller than the number of religious writers
> there ought to be far more good religious music out there.
>

That plus the passage of time. Great swathes of the music of western
civilisation was commissioned by the church or otherwise created
inside religioun dominated social structures, so the great composers
necessarily wrote religious music (and were often highly religious, eg
Bach).

btw Damien, this is a reason that you should try your hand at it ;-)

Emlyn