Exactly! You don’t have to believe anything to understand the emotional state of the singer. You just have to be human. And the more I think about it the more I think the extent to which I respect religion is the extent to which it addresses basic human hopes and fears (metaphorically).
(I lose respect when it becomes signing up for the dogma.)
That one bugs me somehow, but hearing anything with “kyrie eleison” in it gives me chills. They’re not exactly “that’s beautiful” chills, but the sincerity of it is interesting and a little frightening.
I’m an atheist and some religious music gives me chills, but most often it’s going to be either things like Handel or really great gospel. I love religious Christmas music even though Christmas is, to me, a purely secular event.
I guess to me it’s like enjoying a song from a male point of view. I’m not male, I don’t have the blues, my man didn’t leave me for a carload of hookers and blow, but I can still appreciate songs telling those stories or from those perspectives.
The The’s “Love is Stronger Than Death” is like that for me. I don’t agree with the lyrics’ wishful thinking that substitutes for logic and reason, but it’s a powerful, moving song that gets me every time.
Plus, I’m a sucker for Hammond organ and harmonica solos. 
Hearing a really well done version of Schubert’s Ave Maria does it for me every time. Of course, I was raised Catholic, but when done right, that piece is absolutely gorgeous.
I went to a Jewish synagogue service last Friday, and I was really moved by a couple of the readings. Especially one that began something like, “God, as we struggle through the confusion of the world, we seek the words that will bring light.” I thought, Damn, if I’d been born Reform Jewish, I might not be an atheist today!
Of course, the service ended with a passage praying for God to achieve supremacy over all other Gods and for everyone on earth to bend their knee before God as God established a divine kingdom of holy law on earth, and I changed my mind.
But yeah, beautiful religious art is still beautiful art. Beautiful military art is still beautiful art. As a pacifist atheist, I can appreciate both.
Daniel
I’m pretty peaceful but I still get a tingle down my spine during the last two lines of the Star Spangled Banner.
For you atheists, although you don’t believe Jesus was a deity, perhaps at some level you believe that he was a real person that was killed just for preaching peace and love?
Meh, not so much.
I do respond to one song, Lost in the Stars (Kurt Weill, Maxwell Anderson, lyrics here ). Although for full effect you have to hear it sung - I recommend Wesla Whitfield’s version.
The reason this affects me is that it speaks to the very reason why so much of humanity embraces religion. We’re all afraid of the dark, afraid of being abandoned and alone, at least to some degree. This song is really much more about that feeling than it is about god or religion.
I think if we can trust what’s been written about him, he was killed for being a potential threat, or at least an inconvenience, to Roman authority in Judea.
I was raised Christian, and am now Pagan. That song has always struck close to my heart for some reason, and the first time I heard it played on bagpipes was in the “Star Trek” movie when they were sending Spock’s body out - I sat in the theatre and squalled like a baby. I had that song played at my mom’s memorial service. I’ve threatened to haunt my husband if anyone tries to “pray me into heaven” after I’m gone, but have asked him to have a recording of “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes played if he can find one.
Not to hijack, but this is an important question for me, so I’ll answer it.
If nutcases who ban Halloween and accuse humanism of doing the work of Satan (like Rev. Falwell, for example) are inspired by the story of Jesus Christ, I must come to one of two conclusions:
- Jesus was an asshole just like them, in which case he was probably not killed just for preaching peace and love.
OR
- The story is a bunch of bunk, in which case he may or may not have been killed for anything at all.
There’s a lot of religious songs that I like to hear.
One was Neil Diamonds “Traveling Salvation Show”
What a romp. So much energy. Hallelujah! And praise the separation of church and state.
Any expression of genuine emotion can be affecting. I also think that the actual tunes themselves can work on a subliminal level in evoking an emotional response. “Amazing Grace” has one of the most perfect melodies I’ve ever heard.
I like Johnny Cash an awful lot and he sang overtly Christian songs all the time. He sang with such sincerity and simplicity that you’d have to be made of stone not to feel him. “Like a Soldier” is a song I enjoy immensly, for some reason. I like to play it on the guitar and sing it, yet I don’t relate to its message of Christian redemption at all.
I get the same way. It’s the theme of human suffering and the longing for relief.
I love Johnny Cash and didn’t even realize he had a message of Christianity until recently. Part of the moral of this story, of course, is that I’m a little dense sometimes. But the other part is that religious images can raise emotions in the nonreligious, as is being noted a lot here.
I think a third option is that we shouldn’t draw conclusions from the actions of nutcases. In any case, my above post is just a hypothesis. We’ve all heard the Christian version of the story of Jesus and most of us have heard it since we were children. Old memories are difficult to overcome, that’s why I said “at some level”.
That’s a third option, which (presumably) most non-nutcase Christians choose. I told you the two options I would consider, not all the options anyone in the world would consider. The rest are up to you to fill in for yourself, as I’m sure you have already.
I’ve never been Christian, and I think it’s pretty silly to assume that everyone has, especially when referring to a population of atheists/agnostics/humanists/what-have-you. I have no trouble overcoming that memory because I never had it.
I’m not assuming that everyone has been a Christian. I’m assuming that most people have heard the Christian version of the story of Jesus.
Maybe so. Here was what you said earlier:
Regardless of whether you were assuming that everyone was Christian at some point–which I admit I may have leapt to conclusions on–your question is whether I (as an atheist, and I know you weren’t asking me specifically) believed that Christ was a real person that was killed for preaching peace and love. My answer is no: I’ve never had any reason to believe that, and I don’t now. Having heard the story doesn’t mean I ever had any inclination to believe any of it, on any level. The connection between hearing and blindly accepting was never made for me.
Fair enough. That’s why I asked. Like I said, it’s just a hypothesis.