I believe I may have just written a gospel song for athiests

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It certainly wasn’t what I set out to do.

But, I was thinking about how one of the neighbors of the old lady I take care of has a young pitt bull, and I heard today that he wants to use the dog for fighting. This guy is a generally ok guy; I know he has a sense of right and wrong. But in Oakland, there’s all this pressure to be a certain kinda way, like, emotionally bulletproof.

And then I happened to ride by a church where the choir was practicing; I had to get off my bike and stop to listen, it was beautiful and uplifting.

Now, I am not a Christian. I’m an animist, but that’s another thread. But I was thinking about how you don’t run across many churchgoing young folks in Oakland these days; and I can completely relate to that. That doesn’t mean you can’t have an ethic, or a philosophy, or a code.

So I was ruminating on all this while riding to the grocery store, and anyway here it is:

**You got to believe in something
Have reverence inside you for something that’s good
If you don’t believe in God in Heaven
Then believe in peace in your neighborhood

If the church and the preaching just ain’t your thing
You can always believe in the power of love
You can fight on the side of truth and justice
If your god is inside, instead of above

A little child that loves you, that’s sacred
A small creature who trusts you, that’s sacred
When you help somebody who’s hurting, that’s sacred
When you’re kind because you wanta be, honey, that’s sacred

Every day in your life, you will find that there are choices
You say now, I could be hard here, or I could do right
It’s okay if you don’t have a religion
You can do right because you’ll sleep better at night

So believe, believe, believe in something
Believe in yourself, and don’t mess with nobody else
Because when all is said and done, I don’t believe there’s nothing
You will always have what you make of yourself

When you stand up for what you believe in, that’s something
When you show some mercy, that’s something
When you try to help in some kinda way, that’s something
When you live and let live, baby that’s something
**

2

Puh-raise Je-sus, brothers and sisters!! Puh-raise the Lord!!

(Never make it: you said “I could be hard here”–wash your mind out with soap!)

3

Silly me! Being hard is doing right! :cool:
…But in my head, you see, it was a woman singing – being one myself – and so the double entendre did not occur to me. I must be slipping.

(in case it isn’t clear, that’s “hard” like in “hard looks.” Like in, “easy to be hard.” Etc.)

4

I think it’s beautiful.

5

Steve Martin wrote “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”.

6

I need a tune. I can’t judge song lyrics without a tune. Do you know of an existing hymn with the right meter?

7

I really like it. Can I share it on Facebook? A friend of mine is a local atheist celebrity.

8

It almost works with “Every Sperm is Sacred” but not quite.

9

Unnecessary. As Mr. Martin points out in the song linked to above, we have rock and roll.

10

This! I don’t have any famous atheist friends, I don’t even identify as atheist <though I probably am by most definitions> but I do live in an area where most people think that ethics are attached to God and that’s it. I know they know better, but still…would be nice to remind them that good!= religious :slight_smile:

11

Wonderful! Another vote for needing a tune to go with it.

12

Hmmm. I can see what you mean by the tune “every sperm is sacred” almost fitting, especially the first stanza.

13

Where’s the verse about the blessed dog fighting and Saint Vick?

14

Let’s set it to some music and get 'er goin!

15

I’m a musician. It might be interesting if I tried to put a tune to it.

16

Heck, as a Christian I like it. It’s not anti-theist. It’s more “Just because you are an atheist doesn’t mean you are a horrible person.” And that’s a message every Christian needs to hear.

17

Pretty cool. It’s definitely got a lot of promise. I’d personally reword the “If your god is inside” line to something else as it seems to endorse the view that atheists don’t believe there is no god but instead believe they are a god. Some fundamentalists have argued, for example, that anything not endorsing religion should be removed from public schools because they argue that secularism is a religion saying people are gods, and if we can’t remove all religious beliefs we ought to then go with the most popular one (which, tah-dah, they’ll tell you is theirs).

As a matter of historical trivia, the song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (“Thoughts Are Free”) was sung at meetings of followers of the Freethought movement, which, while not exactly the same as atheism, has a large degree of overlap.

18

Yeah, kind of undermines the point of Steve Martin’s song.

I like that the OP has a nice generic ethical song. It’s different from what I think of as the classic songs of atheist belief, like Lennon’s “God” and XTC’s “Dear God.”

19

Nice, I like it.

Here’s some prior art in the genre: