The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #150071   Message #3528582
Posted By: Steve Shaw
21-Jun-13 - 05:54 AM
Thread Name: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
Subject: RE: BS: Militant atheism has become a religion
I'm very comfortable with all religion-inspired, art, architecture and music, and why on earth shouldn't I be? They are among the highest pinnacles of achievement of the human mind and I'm a human too. There's nothing I love more than to make a beeline for the cathedral if I'm visiting a city I haven't been to before. I was recently in the Accademia in Venice and was staggered by the beauty of the religious imagery on display, and I stood, gobsmacked, in front of a Titian Madonna for over half an hour (the missus thought I'd gone mad). Actually, if you go far enough back in music, you'd be hard-pressed to divorce almost any of it from murky religious origins. I'm not especially comfortable with the fact that much great art is "owned" by various religions, representing a large part of their untold and usually ill-gotten wealth, but, in that respect, religion is no different from any other capitalist individual or institution. All art is part of our shared heritage as human beings. I might even be so cheeky as to suggest (insupportably) that the unshackled mind of the atheist may well be far better equipped to appreciate it in the round...