The Paradox of Atheistic Art Appreciation

[Pandaemoni]

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the way atheists appreciate art.

They ascribe eternal value, transcendence, to what is literally dead matter, like bronze or paint.

But they deny that there is anything more to a human being than mere bio-chemical reactions.

To them, this:

[snip]

is more alive than this:

[snip]


How can that be ...

So your position is that anyone who is an atheist should not have an artistic sense. Do you think art is only beautiful (or interesting) because there is a God? Do you imagine that food would not taste good if there were no God? I ask because I do not see the link between God and such aesthetics.

First of all, I think I dispute that atheists like art solely because it is "transcendent" in some way. I think we all--atheist or otherwise--like things that fire up our imagination or challenge our perceptions in the way that art generally does.

Your premise seems akin to asking "How can atheists fall in love?" If you assume that love is a spiritual union, then, sure, people who don't believe in spirit should be (or expect to be) immune from it, but if you imagine that love is a chemical reaction and acclimation that occurs in the brain, then it makes sense that all humans (evolved to experience love as we all are) should be subject to it, whether they are atheists or theists (or vegans, or anarchists, for that matter).

In short, I don't think there needs to be an invisible, magical old man who lives in the sky (and yet is everywhere) for things to be pretty, or nice to look at or listen to. We evolved a sense of abstraction, and art is a way of playing with that abstract sensibility. We evolved to indulge that sensibility, and so art appeals to us.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

* * * * NOTE FROM THE ARTS & CULTURE MODERATOR * * * *

I have moved this thread to the Comparative Religion subforum. It has more to do with religion than with arts and culture.

 

[wynn]

Doreen -

Do you see this?!

This is exactly what you've been saying - a blindness to one's own compartmentalization process.

 

[Medicine*Woman]

*************
M*W: That's a new one. I'm an atheist, and I appreciate art. I was quite the artiste in my day. I think human beings are a wonderful and inspiring art form. I like to study human beings. Your theory is ridiculous.

 

[spidergoat]

In order to "ponder" and understand metaphors the way you want me to, I would also have to believe that this life, this body, is ultimately all there is, that there is no God, that the Universe is random and chaotic, and that every appearance of order is random, and that whatever seems as "more", are just epiphenomena, basically illusions deriving from matter, and that ultimately, the truth is this:

The opposite of believing in God is NOT that the universe is completely random. There is order and disorder, and neither come from a God. Chaos in physics is not synonymous with randomness and disorder, more like unpredictability generated by underlying simplicity.

 

[Doreen]

*************
M*W: That's a new one. I'm an atheist, and I appreciate art. I was quite the artiste in my day. I think human beings are a wonderful and inspiring art form. I like to study human beings. Your theory is ridiculous.

But you did not respond to the theory. The theory is not that atheists cannot appreciate art. Try reading it a second time.

 

[Doreen]

But how come they are like that?

Well, I can't make a claim to consistency myself. We get bombarded by mixed messages and mixed paradigms. I think on some level this causes distress or pain or confusion, but you can avoid noticing these affects. Humans can deny.

Whence this profound separation between art and esp. ontology and epistemology, and philosophy in general?

Morals also. Again if pressed on the philosophical side, many will say that morals are completely subjective, but in day to day life this is not how they are treated. If this is pointed out the person will take an objective view of themselves.

I think people confuse the answers they would write down on a questionaire with what they believe. I am not saying they are dishonest. I just think people only identify with a small portion of themselves.

It's as if art would be a specific way of philosophizing that considers itself to be above and beyond philosophical scrutiny.

There is, of course, the whole field of aesthetics which philosophers certainly get into, Suzanne Langer for one.

 

[Doreen]

Your premise seems akin to asking "How can atheists fall in love?" If you assume that love is a spiritual union, then, sure, people who don't believe in spirit should be (or expect to be) immune from it, but if you imagine that love is a chemical reaction and acclimation that occurs in the brain, then it makes sense that all humans (evolved to experience love as we all are) should be subject to it, whether they are atheists or theists (or vegans, or anarchists, for that matter).

The premise is not doubting the fact that atheist appreciate art, in fact it is clearly an assumption of the OP. The parallel to love is a good one. Of course atheists can fall in love. And if they conceive of this as being drawn to someone due to chemical reactions - pheromones, hormones, excitement in the amygdala, etc. - then they are consistent. And I am sure, sadly, there are athiests who conceive of love this way and not just when asked to analyze it from a scientific perspective. However most atheists, I would guess - and this is a charitable guess - conceive of love differently, most of the time. It it the contradiction between these two ways of conceiving of love that Signal is, in paralell, highlighting, but in the OP focusing on art.

 

[Doreen]

I have to say, this is a really weird thread. I can't say I've ever met a religious person who expressed an opinion anything like this. Why would it be strange that atheists appreciate art as much as theists? Art really has nothing to do with religion. True, a lot of art is religiously motivated, but that has nothing to do with appreciating that art. I have visited many cathedrals purely to admire their beautiful architecture, interior artwork, statues etc, all of which I can appreciate without sharing any of the personal beliefs of the artists.
Human nature inherently has a creative aspect, I personally consider it one of the most important gifts we have. Even the hard sciences require extraordinarily acts of creativity to progress.

The bolded portion above shows the problem. You are saying that the architecture has the property of beauty. This is not supported by current scientific knowledge. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder, period. It is a qualia. Caused by biochemical reactions in your brain. Period.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Of course atheists can fall in love. And if they conceive of this as being drawn to someone due to chemical reactions - pheromones, hormones, excitement in the amygdala, etc. - then they are consistent. And I am sure, sadly, there are athiests who conceive of love this way and not just when asked to analyze it from a scientific perspective. However most atheists, I would guess - and this is a charitable guess - conceive of love differently, most of the time. It it the contradiction between these two ways of conceiving of love that Signal is, in paralell, highlighting, but in the OP focusing on art.

Atheists have feelings. Duh? The scientists among us (and most atheists are not scientists any more than the majority of any other demographic group are scientists except the demographic of scientists itself) know that feelings are a reaction to hormones, pheromones, memories, visual stimuli, shared experiences, instincts, habits, reasoning and a thousand other stimuli, but that does not make them not real. The rest of us don't know where they come from, and that doesn't make them not real either.

If you're trying to say that a person can only love if he believes in superstitious nonsense, you've really lost me.

Certainly a large component of romantic love, especially at the beginning of a relationship, is irrational. So is a large component of one's feeling about a song or a painting or any other artwork, or about a city or a forest or a ski resort. I suppose I would compare the feeling about a potential mate to the feeling about a job offer: the decision is a little too important to make based solely on irrational reasons. You need to apply reasoning and decide whether there's a good chance this mate or this job will satisfy your needs.

For a job that means income, growth potential, comfortable environment, enjoyable assignments, feeling of accomplishment, etc. For a mate it means trust, carrying his/her weight, sharing humor/music/sports whatever is important to you, etc.

But in both cases you also must have that irrational emotion too, otherwise neither the job nor the relationship will work out.

This is true regardless of whether you believe in the supernatural, and regardless of how well you understand it.

 

[Doreen]

No you would not. That assertion manifests your refusal to investigate the concept of metaphor, for fear that you will develop insight into the collective unconscious, begin to understand the possible evolutionary origin of archetypes, and begin to break down your wall of cognitive dissonance--several of the keys to understanding humans and our culture, which I'm sure you're comfortably unaware of.

This is a claim to mind reading. I assume such claims should be kept in pseudoscience. Also there is no widespread acceptance of the collective unconscious in the scientific community. To raise this posited entity in this context is ironic.

You apparently have avoided taking any classes in science, or at least resolutely slept through them or played videogames on your iPhone--or simply went to school in America where "no child is left behind" no matter how much he deserves to be.

Ad hom. Reported.

Randomness and chaos exist in the universe only at the most miniscule subatomic level, where the motions of quarks and leptons balance each other out in a matter of femtoseconds. At the macro level where we exist, the operation of the universe is described by breathtakingly beautiful principles which we have spent 500 years discovering, while you people put on blinders and kept your noses stuck in a book of legends passed down from the Stone Age.

Ad hom. And assumptions abotu what kind of theist you are dealing with.

Even the terminology you pretend to learn in order to poke ignorant fun at science is almost a century out of date.

Epiphenomenon is hardly out of date, though people often talk about qualia. And, again, this was ad hominem.

Matter and energy are interchangeable.....

And nothing Signal said unfairly presented the scientific position. Your condescension is not warrented.

Are you even conversant with the issues that bedevil true scholars, such as the difficulty in relating gravity to electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces in order to arrange them in a neat paradigm?

True scholars are still trying explain consciousness and while most scientists tend to assume a dualist solution will not be the solution, they have not come up with a monist one yet.

Or are you still wondering how many imaginary angels can dance on a pinhead? Or whether the image on a tortilla is really the face of a biblical character of whom no portraits were ever painted to compare it to? Or whether the plight of the Haitians is the result of a pact with the Devil--the people who welcomed Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany when the United States turned them away?This is a place of science. It says so in our name, if you wouldn't mind carefully re-reading it. As a Moderator one of my duties is to enforce the scientific method. One of the cornerstones of the scientific method is the Rule of Laplace (or Sagan's Law as it is colloquially known): "Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect."

But, guess what. Signal raised an issue that is does not require extraordinary evidence. Signal, in this thread is not trying to prove the existence of God. Signal is raising issues around reconciling objectivity/transcendence claims related to art with a denial of other kinds of transcendence. In fact the focus is totally on the atheists. If there are contradictions there or if there are not contradictions there, this is entirely independent of the issue of the issue of God's existence. You answered that there is no transcendent value. Now, in this context. But perhaps you would balk when someone said that the music played bass in had no more value than disco or rap or whatever pet peeve music you had. Of course, you may, always, be consistent. Perhaps you have a tastes differ attitude - bass players probably are more likely to have this, at least the ones I know are more laid back then lead guitarists for example.

But even so, you must have noticed that most people really do believe their tastes are better. That there is beauty IN things, note my response to Kurro above.

So there is a contradiction out there in at least a significant number of atheists. When this is pointed out, they may say 'oh, well, of course, there is no transcendent aesthetic value', but these moments of metathinking do not discount the way they think probably most of the time.

That is the issue Signal is raising. And the truth is you owe Signal an apology for being insulting

NOTE

insulting not of the ideas, but of the person.

Because of this we are under no obligation to treat theism, religion, or any form of supernaturalism with respect.

Ibid.

 

[Doreen]

Atheists have feelings. Duh?

I asserted that of course atheists could fall in love. So I do not understand this comment.

The scientists among us (and most atheists are not scientists any more than the majority of any other demographic group are scientists except the demographic of scientists itself) know that feelings are a reaction to hormones, pheromones, memories, visual stimuli, shared experiences, instincts, habits, reasoning and a thousand other stimuli, but that does not make them not real. The rest of us don't know where they come from, and that doesn't make them not real either.

I never asserted that scientists or atheists did not think the feelings were real.

If you're trying to say that a person can only love if he believes in superstitious nonsense, you've really lost me.

Um, I clearly stated, in the post you quoted, that 'of course atheists can fall in love.

Certainly a large component of romantic love, especially at the beginning of a relationship, is irrational. So is a large component of one's feeling about a song or a painting or any other artwork, or about a city or a forest or a ski resort. I suppose I would compare the feeling about a potential mate to the feeling about a job offer: the decision is a little too important to make based solely on irrational reasons. You need to apply reasoning and decide whether there's a good chance this mate or this job will satisfy your needs.

This is irrelevent to the point I was making.

For a job that means income, growth potential, comfortable environment, enjoyable assignments, feeling of accomplishment, etc. For a mate it means trust, carrying his/her weight, sharing humor/music/sports whatever is important to you, etc.

But in both cases you also must have that irrational emotion too, otherwise neither the job nor the relationship will work out.

As was this.

 

[iceaura]

Returning to the OP:

They ascribe eternal value, transcendence, to what is literally dead matter, like bronze or paint.

But they deny that there is anything more to a human being than mere bio-chemical reactions.

The lack of familiarity with atheistic thought is only part of the problem with this kind of nonsense.

The lack of imagination and empathy, the lack of self-awareness and the projection unto others of one's own shallow incomprehension, is as much a paradox among self-proclaimed theists as any speculative deficiencies among "atheists".

Short response: patterns of biochemical reactions, and patterns of those patterns, and then patterns of those, are not "mere" biochemical reactions. They exist on an entirely different logical level, for starters. They include conceptions of God, absolutely everything ever thought of or realized about God by a living human being, for example. Humans capable of creating and believing in a deity are surely capable of creating profoundly meaningful works of art, no?

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

And the truth is you owe Signal an apology for being insulting

Well all right, I hereby apologize.

This is a place of science so we try to restrict arguments about supernatural beliefs or the absence thereof to this board and the Religion board. It's not easy since they pop up everywhere: we had to create a special thread for the Evolution Denial movement on the Biology board, and of course it's hard to talk about contemporary world politics without mentioning the eternal war between the monotheistic religions, and between them and everyone else.

This thread was originally posted on the Arts & Culture board, which I moderate, and I was trying valiantly to keep all discussions of woo-woo in their own ghetto. I eventually gave up and moved it here, without stopping to realize that the content of my own posts is less appropriate here.

Nonetheless, Signal's original comments about atheists, and how perverse it is that we can appreciate art when we can't appreciate human life, were condescending and insulting, not to mention poorly informed--a description echoed articulately by at least one other member. So my responses were in kind, if hyperbolic. Still, this is how flame wars start and as a Moderator I'm supposed to extinguish them, not add fuel, so I'm sorry for that.

 

[kurros]

The bolded portion above shows the problem. You are saying that the architecture has the property of beauty. This is not supported by current scientific knowledge. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder, period. It is a qualia. Caused by biochemical reactions in your brain. Period.

I wasn't saying the architecture has some inherent physical property called beauty, I was saying I thought it was beautiful and enjoyed looking at it. Of course beauty is subjective. What is the problem exactly?

 

[wynn]

Nonetheless, Signal's original comments about atheists, and how perverse it is that we can appreciate art when we can't appreciate human life

This is not a correct interpretation of my position.

I think atheists do not grant as much appreciacion to living beings as they do to products of art.



Moreover, it is strange that you automatically assigned me to being a theist. Of all the theists I know, not one thinks me an theist. It is only a few atheists here at this forum who think I am a theist.
Just because someone uses some theistic (-like) arguments does not make them a theist.

 

[wynn]

Well, I can't make a claim to consistency myself. We get bombarded by mixed messages and mixed paradigms. I think on some level this causes distress or pain or confusion, but you can avoid noticing these affects. Humans can deny.

Morals also. Again if pressed on the philosophical side, many will say that morals are completely subjective, but in day to day life this is not how they are treated. If this is pointed out the person will take an objective view of themselves.

I think people confuse the answers they would write down on a questionaire with what they believe. I am not saying they are dishonest. I just think people only identify with a small portion of themselves.

I suppose a large portion of the problem is also my default to presume about everyone that they are perfect, consistent, objective. This seems like a recipe for communication failure (and worse!), but what viable alternative is there?

I mean, we have to think something of other people, on our own, the "who and what they are and who and what we are" before we even approach communication, and then during and after communication.

If we think everyone is faulty, that doesn't make for happy times.
If we try to, on our own, establish the veracity of everything everyone says, that is prohibitively expensive and difficult.
Thinking that everyone else is right and that we might be mistaken is a way to avoid the above two, and the insanity of solipsism, but it is not a stress-free approach to communication either.
So what is left?

There is, of course, the whole field of aesthetics which philosophers certainly get into, Suzanne Langer for one.

I couldn't find anything from her in the libraries here ...

 

[Enmos]

I think atheists do not grant as much appreciacion to living beings as they do to products of art.

And that isn't insulting? It's also just not true.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

This is not a correct interpretation of my position. I think atheists do not grant as much appreciation to living beings as they do to products of art.

I fail to see any subtle difference between this attempted clarification of your position and your original statement. Nonetheless I will attempt to respond to it rather than the original. Especially since it's right here on the same page of the thread.

I have the same response: whatever makes you think that? On the contrary, it's many of the Christians and Muslims who don't place much value on human life, because of their fantasy that anyone who dies will continue to live on in an imaginary "afterlife."

Muslim extremists, in particular, see little harm in death because the good people will be transported to a much better place where there is no pain and sorrow, and the bad people will go to hell where they deserve to be anyway. This position has been taken by Christian warriors, although they often had the decency to admit that their enemies thought that they were on God's side too, so perhaps they would meet in Heaven and have a good laugh over a pint of celestial brew. In any case, both Christianity and Islam downplay the importance of mortal life, with the assurance that there is much more and much better to come later, if you can just patiently endure your travails until the Lord takes you.

We, who understand that mortal life is the only kind there is, are more motivated to respect it and even treasure it. If you are of the opinion that most atheists are curmudgeons who think that humanity basically sucks and the biosphere will be better off without us, you're just hanging out with the wrong crowd of atheists, and I assure you that there are much larger crowds of non-atheists who think the same thing. Many of my friends and I were cynics when we were young--and how can you not be when you discover that the majority of adults believe in fairytales--but we've all outgrown that. We love our fellow man as much as anybody, and more than some, and we cry especially loudly when one dies because we know he is really and truly gone forever.

Moreover, it is strange that you automatically assigned me to being a theist. Of all the theists I know, not one thinks me an theist. It is only a few atheists here at this forum who think I am a theist.

Well as the old saying goes, "If he quacks like a duck..." Your quacking is on page 9 of the Theist-Birdwatcher's Guide.

Just because someone uses some theistic (-like) arguments does not make them a theist.

I suppose not and I certainly apologize for the mistake, but it sure is unusual.

 

[wynn]

And that isn't insulting? It's also just not true.

I find it extremely insulting that someone pays 65 millions pounds for a piece of bronze while people are suffering from hunger.

Those 65 millions could be given to help solve the problem of hunger, poverty, unemployment, crime, disease. But they were not.