Songs with an atheistic perspective

[Darren_Garrison]

@Dobbs

There’s this one guy, Tim Minchin, who has several songs that fit the bill. I’d start with this because he explains his point of view prior to the song.

I rather like his Pope Song (aimed at Pope Ratslinger, not the current one.)

[PatrickLondon]

This one’s more against pharisaical hypocrisy than atheistic, but all the same…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbvrRct-TXc

While this one’s more anti-clerical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvhYqeGp_Do

I suspect thoughtful Christians would enjoy them as much as anyone else, likewise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23Dm7sQ1C1E

[Prof.Pepperwinkle]

Randy Newman’s Old Man:

“Won’t be no God to comfort you,
You taught me not to believe that lie.”

[Banksiaman]

@Staggerlee

David Bowie’'s ‘Quicksand’ from album Hunky Dory is rather bleak, beautiful and godless. A tad Nazi-ish, annoyingly, too, if I remember rightly.

But what if it was Charles Darwin channelling Bowie?

One of my favourite Horrible Histories songs. Unfortunately its just audio and lyrics.

‘The idea that we came from ch-ch-chimps
Questioned my Christianity’

[Siam_Sam]

Not sure if this counts, but “White Punks on Dope,” by the Tubes, has someone screaming “Fuck you, Jesus” in the background at one point.

[F.U.Shakespeare]

There’s a blues lyric in John Lee Hooker’s song “Burning Hell”:

‘Ain’t no heaven, no burning hell, where I go when I die, can’t nobody tell’.

It’s in an earlier song by Son House, the name of which escapes me.

[CalMeacham]

@EinsteinsHund

I’m doing my Friday night routine listening to music, XTC’s* Single Collection 1977-1992*, and Dear Godcomes up. Now, I really love XTC and find most of their lyrics quite clever, but this is not one of them, though I’m sympathetic to the message. But this is a naive and juvenile way to tackle the subject, though typical for an angry young man with a guitar. I used to be this young man, sans guitar, but I got wiser. The song has just too much of a atheist-being-angry-with-god vibe for me now. A very courageous song for a single in 1986 nonetheless.

A, well, tad better and cleverer example of the subject is Randy Newman’s God’s Song (That’s Why I love Mankind). Interestingly, there’s a song with lyrics that mirror somehow Dear God’s on the same Newman album, He Gives us All His Love, which you could mistake for a song about being angry at God too, but the dead-pan way in which Newman delivers it leaves not doubt about being deeply sarcastic.

These are three examples, and to get it out of the way, obviously John Lennon’s Imagine. I’ve read that Jethro Tull’s whole album *Aqualung *is one big critic of religion, but I’ve never had time to listen through it. What else it there?

The song that gave the album its title – He Gives us All His Love – was written for the 1971 Norman Lear film Cold Turkey. It was Newman’s first motion picture score. The song is played over the closing credits, and its clearly ambiguous. It might be referring to God, but it could as well refer to the president (Nixon at the time), flying over the town that has won the big military contract (to its regret, because the industry turns out to be a major polluter).

[cerberus]

It’s subtle, but Neko Case’s “I Missed the Point”.

Or maybe not .

[nearwildheaven]

@blondebear

Not sure if it qualifies, but how about Todd’s “God Said”?

I assume you are referring to Todd Rundgren?

[gaffa]

@blondebear

Not sure if it qualifies, but how about Todd’s “God Said”?

On the other hand, Todd Rundgren wrote Hawking, about Stephen Hawking’s plight:

Whenever I
I close my eyes
Then I don’t mind being the way I am
But whenever I try
Explaining why
I know I never can

Now that it’s
Gone, paths I used to travel
Gone, things I used to handle
Gone, once I had a choice what to be

But then God kissed me
And I lost it when I fainted in his arms

[Superdude]

Ben Folds Five, on their album @
The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, have a song called “Mess,” which includes the line, “but I don’t believe in God, so I can’t be saved.”

[golffan1963]

In regards to the song “I Believe In Father Christmas” both Greg Lake and Pete Sinfield, who contributed to the lyrics of the song, have said that the song is neither anti-Christmas nor atheistic. Said Sinfield (from Songfacts.com): “It’s not anti-religious. It’s a humanist thing. It’s not an atheist Christmas song, as some have said.”

It is also stated in the the Wikipedia article on the song that in the end, both Lake and Sinfield also called the song a “protest of the commercialization of the holiday and…about the loss of innocence”.

[Human_Action]

Sturgill Simpson (Kentucky’s own!), “Turtles All The Way Down”. Rejects religion, in favor of experiences of universal love brought about via drug use.

[GargoyleWB]

Roy Harper - The Spirit Lives. He’s been a pretty blunt atheist over the years. A snippet…

“The history of religion is the history of the State
Incestuous exploiters of a catalogue of hate.
The man of peace was over-run by armies of the Lord
Who signed their names to any war
And sang to praise the sword.”

[lawoot]

Many mentions of I Believe in Father Christmas - but no one mentions The Emerson, Lake & Palmer song The Only Way (hymn) -

a sample of lines:

“People are stirred
Moved by the Word.
Kneel at the Shrine
Deceived by the wine”

and
“Can you believe
God makes you breathe?
Why did he lose
SIX MILLION jews?”

YouTube link: The Only Way (hymn)

[PatrickLondon]

@gaffa

On the other hand, Todd Rundgren wrote Hawking, about Stephen Hawking’s plight:

Whenever I
I close my eyes
Then I don’t mind being the way I am
But whenever I try
Explaining why
I know I never can

Now that it’s
Gone, paths I used to travel
Gone, things I used to handle
Gone, once I had a choice what to be

But then God kissed me
And I lost it when I fainted in his arms

That would be the Hawking who said:

“When people ask me if a god created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn’t exist before the big bang, so there is no time for god to make the universe in. It’s like asking directions to the edge of the earth; The Earth is a sphere; it doesn’t have an edge; so looking for it is a futile exercise. We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe,and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful.”

… would it?

[Infovore]

Two that come to mind are Rush’s “Ghost of a Chance”:

I don’t believe in destiny
Or the guiding hand of fate
I don’t believe in forever
Or love as a mystical state
I don’t believe in the stars or the planets
Or angels watching from above
But I believe there’s a ghost of a chance we can find someone to love
And make it last…

and Assemblage 23’s “God is a Strangely Absent Father”:

*Believe in me
It won’t make me exist
No matter how
That rumor may persist

Your Kingdom is
The earth on which you walk
Reap your reward
Before it’s too late

God is a strangely absent father
His back is turned perpetually
All the orphaned sons and daughters
Abide in their suffering*

[Jeff_Lichtman]

When I’m Gone by Phil Ochs

[Czarcasm]

@EinsteinsHund

These are three examples, and to get it out of the way, obviously John Lennon’s Imagine.

Values.Com, a public service group with strong religious ties, has been using almost all of Lennon’s Imagine in their ads lately. Guess which part of the song was cut?

[EinsteinsHund]

@Czarcasm

Values.Com, a public service group with strong religious ties, has been using almost all of Lennon’s Imagine in their ads lately. Guess which part of the song was cut?

You know, I was always willing to defend Yoko Ono against sometimes very mean and undeserved criticism by Beatles fans, but fuck her for allowing that.