It would be really cool if there were as many skeptic songs as religious songs, but, since most folks are religious, I suppose that will never be the case. Still, there are some good ones out there. For example:
Dear God by XTC:
“Dear God, don’t know if you noticed, but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book,
Us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look,
and all the people that you made in your image,
Still believing that junk is true.
Well I know it ain’t, and so do you, dear God.”
Opiate by Tool:
“If you want to get your soul to heaven
Trust in me, now
Don’t you judge or question.
You are broken now
But faith can heal you.
Just do everything I tell you to do.
Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
Let me lay my holy hand upon you.”
Anyone else have any suggestions? The song could really be fighting any kind of ignorance, but I guess anti-religious songs would be the most common. I’d love to hear of ignorance fighting songs on other subjects, though.
Perhaps this thread could be better titled: “Songs Cecil Might Like.”
Frank Zappa had a nice one. The Make Shall Inherit Nothing. It segues into Dumb All Over which has this great line: “if we were made in God’s image then God must be dumb (and maybe a little ugly on the side)”.
MusicJunkie’s post sent me on this tangent…a quote from Mark Twain “I was created in the IMAGE of God; but not enough like God to be MISTAKEN for him; except for the very near-sighted man.”
Wait, sorry, I just have to say that, even as a non-skeptic… that Zappa quote is one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen. I think I have a new sig line. Thanks!
“Well, you don’t owe me nothin’, and as far as I know, Lord, I don’t owe nothin’ to you.
I ain’t askin’ for a miracle, Lord, just a little bit of luck will do.
And you know I ain’t never prayed before ‘cause it’s always seemed to me
That prayin’ is the same as beggin’, Lord, and I don’t take no charity.”
Dave Carter and Tracey Grammer have a hymn to evolution called Gentle Arms of Eden.
"The moon feel on the breakers,
And the morning warmed the waves,
And a single cell did jump and hum,
With joy as though to say,
This is my home . . .
The day shone bright ‘n’ round her,
'Till the one turned into two,
And two into ten thousand things,
And old things into new.
And on some virgin beachhead,
One lonesome critter crawled
And he looked about
And he shouted out
In his most astonished drawl,
This is my home . . ."
Hmm… compelling lyric, from a brutal song. But not NECESSARILY an anti-Christian song. Indeed, if Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor had been a songwriter, she could have written those very lyrics.
Steve Earle isn’t anti-Christian, after all. He’s sung some explicitly religious songs in his time (though, politically, he’d have absolutely nothing in common with most “contemporary Christian” musicians).
The song, which was written by Robert Earl Keen, is told from the point of view of Tom Ames, a murderous outlaw. Now, I have no idea what Robert Earl Keen believes or doesn’t believe, in terms of religion. But this particular song wasn’t written to espouse or refute any particular faith. It was written to tell the story of one particular type of man- an angry, violent man who’s lived most of his life on the run. In a moment of weakness and fear, he attempts to pray… before finally deciding that praying is a stupid waste of time.
Keen and Earle don’t present Ames as a hero, nor are Ames’ conclusions necessarily theirs. There’s no clear “moral” to this song, and neither Christians nor atheists can neatly claim it for their side.
“and as for the truth
it seems like we just pick a theory”
“and though it seems grand
we’re just one speck of sand
and back to the hourglass we’re going”
This really impressed me as a song much more heavily grounded in scepticism than any of their previous stuff I’d heard from them. Granted, not as sceptic as can be, but it made me rethink my image of them as less mystical than i previously did.
Here’s one I just made up (apologies to William Blake):
**And did those feet
In ancient times
Walk upon England’s mountains green,
And was the holy lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon these clouded hills,
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
“Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.”
That doesn’t sound like “angry at God” to me. Even if it was, it’s possible to be angry at something you don’t even believe in (don’t ask me how; it just is!) and at the people who do believe.
And from the XTC song, there’s always the line “If there’s one thing I don’t believe in, it’s you… Dear God.” Granted I’m not the best at interpreting song lyrics, but it seems pretty clear.
The Comedy Channel used to run song bites. There was one that went something like: “My girl ran off with a guy named Jesus; I can walk on water too, when it freezes”.