5/19/2010—A very funny YouTube video features Steve Martin singing “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” (link to Religion Dispatches). The song is hilarious, but it makes an important point that atheists only think is funny.
According to the song, religious people have all this beautiful music and rewarding activity, but atheists only sing the blues, have their weekends free and watch football in their underwear (they also have rock n roll).
Well, what do atheists have, or for that matter what do secularists like me have? I talk about this in the book Hallowed Secularism. Yes, it is nice not to have to go to services, but where does spiritual renewal come from in a secular way of life? Of course, such renewal could come from elsewhere. Religion does not have a monopoly on the spirit. But where does it actually come from? Doing nothing is not an improvement on religion.
But go farther. What about repentence? Obviously secularists are sinners just like everybody else. By sinner here, I don’t mean to reference some particular sin, such as adultery. I mean the gray dullness of spirit that drags us all down. I mean the selfishness of everyday life. I mean the unclarity that fogs all our actions. How does the secularist repent of such sinful structures?
Perhaps it was not the law that kept Judaism going all these years. Perhaps it was the Day or Repentence, Yom Kippur. If so, secularism is a dead end. There is a new thought. Even though God does not exist, secularism still might prove a dead end, an end, that is, that deadens human life.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
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