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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Religion and The Arts, beauty and truth
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
In part of my view**, we spend too much time with religion arguing about what it true from the standpoint of either scientific truth or rhetorial truth (strength of argument). If all there was was facts would we have even have religion?
**I say 'part of my view', because I seem to have more than one.
I's like to suggest that without the arts (music, words, visual arts, choreography etc; I mean "arts" in the broad sense) there'd be no religion. Worship depends on ritual, the poetry of repeated and comforting words. Art raises questions about life, violence, love, death, our significance in the universe. The nature of the arts in a church reveals much about the nature of belief there and it's development over time. Art tells us something about the past, and also predicts the future. Art can also pull us to some altered consciousness of something holy. Art doesn't form the answers, but leads us to understand things beyond mere answers in mere human language. This is also where I come to have almost no understanding of atheism. The arts don't allow atheism.
The bible says that the Word was in the beginning, CS Lewis has Aslan singing creation into being, Bruce Cockburn has it being danced. Please may we discuss?
"Beauty in .... images [music, words, and dance] will capture our [perception], transforming us to envision the world anew, and empowering us to breathe a more equitable and peaceful common existence into being." (-Kimberly Vrudny, additions in brackets mine.)
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
I'd like to suggest that without the arts (music, words, visual arts, choreography etc; I mean "arts" in the broad sense) there'd be no religion.
People would still be able to get a sense of the numinous from nature - the wonder of a sunset, beautiful flower, etc etc. However, the urge to create, to express, to reproduce what you see, whether in words or with a charcoal stick on the wall of a cave, or by acting out in front of the camp fire, is a very old and fundamental urge that is part of being human. If you have people who are able to communicate with each other then creative expression will happen quite naturally at some point. By doing something creative you participate to some extent in what you're trying to convey.
I doubt if the arts would come in to early religion, which could just be as simple a matter as placating the storm god by throwing a handful of grain into the wind in the fervent hope the angry deity would be pacified. But this might become what you do in those circumstances, as simple as that. The storm god's presence and the need to placate would not be built on and become more elaborate until later.
quote:
Worship depends on ritual, the poetry of repeated and comforting words.
Not necessarily. Worship can be extempore and wordless.
quote:
Art can also pull us to some altered consciousness of something holy.
Art can pull many people in many different directions. Including the reverse. Sometimes it's shaped with a purpose, sometimes it's just an expression of creativity or a job done for money. The numinous breaks through when and where it feels like it.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Ikkyu
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# 15207
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Posted
The arts don't allow Atheism?
So I guess Picasso was not an Artist then?
I wonder what definition of Atheism you are starting from.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
People would still be able to get a sense of the numinous from nature - the wonder of a sunset, beautiful flower, etc etc. However, the urge to create, to express, to reproduce what you see, whether in words or with a charcoal stick on the wall of a cave, or by acting out in front of the camp fire, is a very old and fundamental urge that is part of being human. If you have people who are able to communicate with each other then creative expression will happen quite naturally at some point. By doing something creative you participate to some extent in what you're trying to convey.
Yes
quote:
I doubt if the arts would come in to early religion, which could just be as simple a matter as placating the storm god by throwing a handful of grain into the wind in the fervent hope the angry deity would be pacified. But this might become what you do in those circumstances, as simple as that. The storm god's presence and the need to placate would not be built on and become more elaborate until later.
I think they were a bit more sophisticated than that. You're consigning entire millennia of human existence to a level of intelligence comparable to Dumb and Dumber. These were people who discovered how to smelt copper, then bronze, and then iron, who set up trade routes covering thousands of miles from scratch, transported stones weighing tens (sometimes hundreds) of tons, and who later constructed the Ankythera mechanism.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Ariel
Shipmate
# 58
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
I think they were a bit more sophisticated than that. You're consigning entire millennia of human existence to a level of intelligence comparable to Dumb and Dumber. These were people who discovered how to smelt copper, then bronze, and then iron, who set up trade routes covering thousands of miles from scratch, transported stones weighing tens (sometimes hundreds) of tons, and who later constructed the Ankythera mechanism.
Yes, but that didn't happen overnight. I'm thinking very early prehistoric, around the time when people were just figuring out flint hand axes. It had to start somewhere and it will have started simply, before building up into later developments.
Posts: 25445 | Registered: May 2001
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
I doubt if the arts would come in to early religion, which could just be as simple a matter as placating the storm god by throwing a handful of grain into the wind in the fervent hope the angry deity would be pacified.
You've heard of prehistoric cave painting, right?
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Oh - I think he's talking before that too ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
In the period between apes treating weather as just weather and humans starting to be creative and progressing past B-movie hysteria on a stormy rain lashed night. i.e. the time before method acting was discovered.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Art doesn't form the answers, but leads us to understand things beyond mere answers in mere human language.
I'm pretty sure mere human language stretches to include Dante and Dostoyevsky.
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms. It's true that the default tendency is dismissive, assuming that anything of importance can be said in a discursive manner; but I think that provokes an overreaction and a tendency to boost the arts at the expense of discursive forms. They're complementary.
That is, assuming that there's a clear distinction between philosophy and literature, which I am not sure there is. Montaigne and Kierkegaard are certainly on the border.
quote:
This is also where I come to have almost no understanding of atheism. The arts don't allow atheism.
You haven't read Leopardi.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms.
It is exactly the opposite that led me to start the thread. The arts are underhyped in any religious experience with which I'm familiar.
My additional point about atheism is both personal and general. How can it be possible to not be moved beyond oneself by at least some aesthetic experiences? Was Picasso moved? Am I allowed to define being moved as moving in the direction of the Prime Mover?
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms.
What little I know of shamanism tells me that storytelling, theatre and music were right there at the very beginning. That theology and/or philosophy were, at the very least, co-dependent on the arts for a very long time.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
I'm very much with no prophet's flag is set so... on this one. The arts make out a big part of my spirituality, and I believe that they can help us understand things about God that words can't. God is the Creator after all, so creativity has very much to do with Her.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms.
It is exactly the opposite that led me to start the thread. The arts are underhyped in any religious experience with which I'm familiar.
My additional point about atheism is both personal and general. How can it be possible to not be moved beyond oneself by at least some aesthetic experiences? Was Picasso moved? Am I allowed to define being moved as moving in the direction of the Prime Mover?
If you start with the assumption that there is a Prime Mover you can. But I am reluctant to define
being moved beyond oneself in an exclusively Theist way. Zen lives in precisely that territory without having to assume a deity.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Interesting topic. As I've got older, my interest in religion has declined, and my interest in art has grown, so maybe there is a connection.
Nonsense about art and atheism, I think; I bet that many modern artists are atheists. Going beyond oneself = / = theism.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Palimpsest
Shipmate
# 16772
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Posted
The theory that arts are incompatible with atheism because you feel artistic transcendence is a move toward a prime mover seems implausible. That's how you experience it but not how atheists experience it. It would be nice if you didn't label atheists as really un self-aware theists.
Since Bower Birds, elephants , Octopi and the now extinct Neanderthals seemed to make art, are you claiming they're theists?
[ 13. March 2015, 04:02: Message edited by: Palimpsest ]
Posts: 2990 | From: Seattle WA. US | Registered: Nov 2011
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I think the arts, creativity and so on are connected - how could they not be? We are creaturely creatures. We don't need IS style iconoclasm.
Two extremes to avoid - the idea that these things ARE God - which is a view I have come across from some radical liberals - or else to deny their umportance.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
Ariel: quote:
I doubt if the arts would come in to early religion, which could just be as simple a matter as placating the storm god by throwing a handful of grain into the wind in the fervent hope the angry deity would be pacified.
Sounds like performance art to me. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms.
It is exactly the opposite that led me to start the thread. The arts are underhyped in any religious experience with which I'm familiar.
I agree that this is true in many if not most religious traditions. I'm just saying I believe there's a tendency to swing too far in the other direction.
(In general I think a high valuation of 'the arts' is seldom any substitute for a full engagement with specific pieces of art. Talking about how music as a religious experience is more productive of banalities and platitudes than talking about Bach as a religious experience.)
quote:
My additional point about atheism is both personal and general. How can it be possible to not be moved beyond oneself by at least some aesthetic experiences? Was Picasso moved? Am I allowed to define being moved as moving in the direction of the Prime Mover?
You're allowed to define whatever you want, but that doesn't mean that what you've so defined correctly describes what happens.
I think as a Christian, at least one who accepts that the god of the philosophers has some valid contribution to theology, one wants to say that all aesthetic experience does point towards God. Beauty, in a broad sense, is one of the three transcendentals along with truth and goodness. But I don't think that is some immediate experience as much as a point of theology.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
The arts are underhyped in any religious experience with which I'm familiar.
A few years ago I attended a conference on Christianity and the arts, which to my surprise attracted people from 22 states and 6 countries (I had assumed it was a little local conference). A commonly expressed reaction was "this is the first time in my life as an artist that I heard the word 'artist' and 'Christianity' approvingly in the same sentence."
Speakers said (obviously a quick summary, not correct in every detail) the church kicked the arts in the Reformation, linking arts with idols. So we have become only verbal, plus a bit of music, that's it. Rarely a hint of theater, sculpture, painting, dancing or other active artistic expressions of faith.
They said artists do art, the church kicked them out, so artists turned to secular matters, which made the churches distrust arts and artists even more.
So I was intrigued, when looking for positive spiritual disciplines, to bump into a list that included a few religions encouraging writing poetry as a spiritual discipline, painting from nature as a spiritual discipline, not just looking at someone else's painting or stained glass or sculpture, but *doing* an art you enjoy (within your ability) as a way of actively connecting with/expressing God.
The "church became verbal" is an intriguing insight and I think 95% accurate. Human are made to be creative, reflecting the Creator. A 95% verbal church is a less that healthy church.
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: Two extremes to avoid - the idea that these things ARE God
Guilty. I believe that these things are God in a sense (but She is also more than that).
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Teilhard
Shipmate
# 16342
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Posted
YES … !!! Too often, "religion" and "faith" and "worship" are wrongly collapsed into -- confused with -- "theology," and "doctrine" and so on …
Fred Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was correct, IMHO, in understanding that the root of all religion(s) is "the feeling of absolute dependence" … except that I would call it more "awareness" than "feeling" (which for many is an unfortunately loaded term) …
The essence of all religion is awareness (of God), worship (of God), submission (to God) …
The multiplicities of theologies and doctrines and so on come later … What comes first is awe and prayer and sacrifice …
"Art" is part and parcel of that … It is about deep reflection of and upon reality, representation of existence and meaning(s) …
My own preferred way of understanding and talking about God The Creator is "God" as ... "Artist" ...
[ 13. March 2015, 19:40: Message edited by: Teilhard ]
Posts: 401 | From: Minnesota | Registered: Apr 2011
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Bax
Shipmate
# 16572
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Posted
No less an authority than St Thomas Aquinas said:
"All that is true, by whoever it has been said, has its origin in the Holy Spirit"
The truths that we perceived about ourselves and the world that we learn from art, music and so on are just as important as the scientific facts or rhetorical arguments.
Posts: 108 | Registered: Aug 2011
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm suspicious of overhyping for the arts compared to theology or philosophy or other discursive forms.
What little I know of shamanism tells me that storytelling, theatre and music were right there at the very beginning. That theology and/or philosophy were, at the very least, co-dependent on the arts for a very long time.
Whilst the motives may be different, the way we express art and religion come from the same creative place.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Extra post to add that art is an extension of communication so will be tied into nearly everything we do.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
noprophet's flag is set so... quote:
without the arts (music, words, visual arts, choreography etc; I mean "arts" in the broad sense) there'd be no religion.
[emphasis added]
You started a thread in praise of liturgical dance?! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
But seriously... yes, music is important to me. That's why I'm still an Anglican; I am addicted to Anglican church music. Otherwise I would probably have stomped off to join the Quakers by now.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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