Thinking of the good things religion brought to the world (Challenge)

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Out of the 30 years war came Westphalia and the modern imagination of secularism and the pillars of secularism which inform the modern liberal secular states of the 21st century.

The protection of and from religion for all people's regardless of their beliefs. Thank the protestants and reformationists [sic] for kicking the Pope out of Western and Northern Europe.

[Baruch]

(sorry for the digression from the point of the thread, but I really want to address this.)

I want to agree, but it strikes me as really odd to endorse these sorts of beliefs as good coping mechanisms.  I've struggled with this situation myself - I've found out just what a mistake it is to be brutally honest in these situations.  But I find it lamentable that our collective human response to grief is to lie to ourselves about reality.

Let's take three different people with suspect claims.  The first person says that he's bulletproof.  Complete lunatic.  The second says that he can transform into a tiger.  Total nutbar.  The third says he'll live forever in heaven.  Well, if that's what he wants to believe, I don't see a problem with it.  Hell, this belief could even be widely seen as noble or well-adjusted.

Is there really any difference between these claims other than their relative popularity?  Does nonsense somehow become respectable when it becomes popular?

Fortunately I am immune to the desire to be well adjusted or popular ;-)

[Mike Cl]

Fortunately I am immune to the desire to be well adjusted or popular ;-)

Yes! :)))  I can relate!

[aitm]

  Does nonsense somehow become respectable when it becomes popular?

Been a bone of contention for me for a long time. Just because stupid is popular doesn't mean we have to ignore common sense and reason in order to proclaim it is stupid. Religion does not need special rules to debunk it. Stupid shit is stupid shit.

[drunkenshoe]

Meh, humanity has done a lot of good things in the world. If you wish to say religion was the reason, you may. You're wrong of course, but you can say it.

Nobody said something like 'religion is the reason for good things done'. Whatever that means. So it's a strawman and a bad one. Also an invalid statement. It haas no meaning. Good...bad ? You are using the word 'good' in religious terms. Humanity is not some conscious entity that does or lead things. Human history is not a conscious, determined linear development for the better. 

And your common 'argument' of "this is wrong and stupid and that is all" has become a bore. You lacking historical perspective doesn't render things you don't like wrong.

[drunkenshoe]

I completely agree.  This is my answer as well.  Though of course, neither is dependent on religion - we wouldn't be living in some artless world without religion - these fantastic works of art just happened to coincide with religion.

Yeah religion was walking around moody one day and it coincided with art. It was a good date, look what we all got in the end.

The common lack of historical perspective in this forum enough to give a liberal art graduate a migraine.

[doorknob]

I agree that religion has inspired some very beautiful and valuable art. Also some of the chapels are quite ornate and in my opinion also a work of art. I actually like churches as a place to visit nothing more. I find them relaxing as long as there is no mass being held and it's quiet there.

[Baruch]

I agree that religion has inspired some very beautiful and valuable art. Also some of the chapels are quite ornate and in my opinion also a work of art. I actually like churches as a place to visit nothing more. I find them relaxing as long as there is no mass being held and it's quiet there.

The numinous experience of "holy" locations, if they are man-made .. is that of communing with the ancestors.  Atheist or not, you had a lot of theist ancestors.

[Cocoa Beware]

Now, I don't claim that these things are magical in nature, by any means.  But come on, the church definitely played a roll here, and a very major roll at that.  No religion means no chapel.  No chapel means no paintings in the chapel.  And nobody pushing Michelangelo to do a project he really didn't want to do also means no paintings in the chapel, painting, I might add, unarguably inspired by religious concepts and ideas.  To say the church played no roll, that's just wrong.  Religion has an effect on the world regardless whether fairy tales or real or not.  If you relieve the religious of any credit for the good because fairy tales aren't real then you must also excuse the religious of any bad caused by their religion.  It's not realistic.

I'm sorry, but I must disagree. I think its happenstance; a matter of who had the power and the money at the time.

If someone like Michaelangelo was alive today and unaffiliated with religion I cant see any reason to think he wouldnt produce something equally remarkable on his own.

Also, Im not sure why I cant blame religion for war, strife and slavery while not giving it any credit for art or architecture.

At its roots there is nothing that I know of in religion that encourages people to be creative and use their own minds (in fact if anything quite the opposite) People did that on their own. Completely separate so far as I can tell.

On the other hand, there are abundant teachings that promote killing, oppressing or enslaving people. Historically, these are popular courses of action with religion at the helm.

Now, if you were to argue that the developmental technology of weapons and tactics we use for war are also separate from religion, I would agree with you there because I think that's basically the same idea I'm driving at here.

Massive Cathedrals and monuments were built at immense human cost, taking advantage of whatever technology was available to merely reinforce the idea that there is no point in following that which did not coincide with what the Church (or said pious autocrats) dictated.

Among other purposes the presence of such monuments served as a reminder that they were clearly in charge, and the common man subservient, since the Church (or supposedly an invisible God) was given credit for all the largest and noteworthy structures. When the Church had their way they would give the impression that the world is ideal in its current state and no human progress was necessary, a phenomenon that has thankfully lost quite a bit of momentum. Any contrary or progressive ideas about how the Church thought humans ought to be governed or how the Universe must work were typically a major threat.

[drunkenshoe]

Being angry that religion was/is a cause of genocide, wars and many abhorrent things done is something, the FACT that religion had influenced major pillars of human development and STILL has a huge effect on the world is altogether another thing.

The only reason we are able to distinguish two different understandings of life -religious and secular- is because of a gradually built secular societies in roughly more than just a 200 years.

Before that there are no concepts, no language ground, no thought, NO understanding of SECULARISM remotely close to ours today.

ART, ARTIST, CREATIVISM ARE MODERN CONCEPTS. They need individualism to exist. What is this artist in freaking 15th, 16th or 17th century? Or even 18th ffs? The fact that words have been used has no affect on the enormous gap what they meant before and after modernism. Art for making art, to be considered as an artist is roughly hundred fucking years old.

The famous 'masters' (artists, architectures, musicians, engineers, humanist writers) of Renaissance, Baroque and much later ARE CLERKS, CIVIL SERVANTS TO KINGS and TYRANTS. Anything you read about them today is the result of made up of CULTS and CULTURE created in 19th century and gets keep upgraded and transformed in today's concepts.

Michelangelo is NOT an artist. He has no choice but to except commisions from higher stations. There is no market for art. He worked to send money to his father all his life. Michelangelo is a very religious man. WE looked back and called him an artist grading his works comapting to his peers. Leonardo is NOT an 'engineer', we define him as one. They are employed to entertain popes, kings and tyrants to GLORIFY their RULE and their RELIGION. OR 'religious virtue' through any 'religious morality'; in form of accepted beauty, doesn't matter if the figures are nude or the subjects of the art is pagan. Art became art as we know it, when it stopped depicting beauty; what was the defined norm of the 'divine' and the 'truth'. Humanist writers are neither secular, nor humanist as we understand today. Françoise Rabelais is not an atheist. Nither was Erasmus. There is no linguistic ground, no concepts required to sustain an atheistic view of life.

These people CANNOT even comprehend the meanings of those concepts we use today. Leonardo or Michelangelo cannot comprehend the meaning of 'art' or 'artist'. Same goes with architecture and engineering or science.

We are atheists, because we were born into a world which already had gone through the accumulation of knowledge and the linguistic development available to sustain an INDIVIDUAL ATHEISTIC VIEW of the world.

What they all left behind owned up by the secular Western civilisation and transformed into something else through modernism and post modernism by the developing languages. It's also profitable and benefcial. Creating a cultural identity. Renaissance is not a period, it is not the beginning of modernism. It's a movement started among Italian city states; it is the invention of creating a culture AND transforming that culture into politics and money. Capitalism. It is as dark as middle ages when it comes to the real life and people.

You are drowning in anachronisms.

[Baruch]

Having a POV is a tool.  So is the artificial dividing of time into periods ;-)  One can have the POV, my favorite, of being relatively free of prior influences, from my society or my parents.  But there is a POV opposed to that ... that we are the product of those prior influences, like it or not.  Artists face this same dilemma.  Do I make something relatively new (Picasso) or do I make something in competition to the prior artists (Renaissance vs Ancient Rome).  Each of us is the artist of our own lives ... and each of us has patrons that provide for our survival but limit our creativity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0j8w1c0HyOE

It takes a bit of imagination to think of a Pieta carved as a Braque or a panel of the Sistine Chapel as Cubist ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGnFDnnvT98

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's interesting that the less religious an institution is the more likely it is to be praised for it's "works". The Salvation Army's emergency response teams don't preach, and people comment positively on that.

[Baruch]

It's interesting that the less religious an institution is the more likely it is to be praised for it's "works". The Salvation Army's emergency response teams don't preach, and people comment positively on that.

That is the best preaching of all ... but loudmouths won't hear of it ;-)

[drunkenshoe]

Having a POV is a tool.  So is the artificial dividing of time into periods...

I was referring to a specific academic discussion. Defining Renaissance as a 'period' or a 'movement' is a topic itself in history, art history, cultural history...etc.

If you think the dramatic change in evaluating 'Renaissance' just between 19th and 20th centuries, why not a better one in 21st?

[Baruch]

I was referring to a specific academic discussion. Defining Renaissance as a 'period' or a 'movement' is a topic itself in history, art history, cultural history...etc.

If you think the dramatic change in evaluating 'Renaissance' just between 19th and 20th centuries, why not a better one in 21st?

We are too close to present events, to understand it.  Hence it will take a future generation to make an analysis.  This is true for anything "contemporary" in any period.  I thought the "pet rock" movement and the "beanie baby" movement would last ... who knew?