Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2909 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 4:25 pm Post subject:
Re: Anti religious Electro
meloditech wrote:
Since the forum is rather wide in topic range I will from now on simply treat it as a transistor radio and tune away from what I find offensive and tune in to what I like..
Well goodness gracious there you are! A lovely path to amity and good will you are on. So .... we won't wag our fingers at your bad behavior if you will do the same for us. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Aug 28, 2006 Posts: 858 Location: Guangzhou, China
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 5:16 pm Post subject:
Religion and spirituality are very difficult to discuss online because I'm convinced that everybody means something a little bit different by the word "religion."
I think a lot of so-called "anti-religious" folk are not so anti-religious at the end of the day. But a whole lot of people, myself included, are horrified at the way the great insights of the world's religions are stolen by power-hungry nut jobs and corrupted -- twisted -- to justify grotesque and just plain disgusting authoritarian worldviews.
For me, this topic opens up a deep well of despair and anger. I had to leave my birth faith (Catholicism) before I could even begin to discover any meaningful connection to God, by way of Buddhism. (I use the word "God" for convenience, though I believe the word has been so pathetically reduced in its meaning that, today, to call God "God" is an insult.) I had to read the words of Thay Thich Nhat Hanh before I could connect with the wisdom of Jesus's teachings, and I don't think I exaggerate to say that Thay, a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, understands Christianity better than most Christians. I still haven't worked through all of the very deep resentment toward the Catholic Church -- perhaps more now than a few years ago, because now I can see how the seeds of wisdom (dare I say enlightenment?) are there in the faith, but in most parishes they go stale, and there's no help from the Vatican (which is more concerned with its iron grip over church politics than it is with a living faith -- a faith that does not answer to any human authority).
Unfortunately I think many of us can easily be sloppy in our thinking, or at least speaking. The fact that the name of God has been used to justify horrors and evils the world over does not mean that all religion is a poison. It does mean we have to be careful to distinguish between toxic religion and genuinely nurturing spirituality. It's easier to write off religion altogether than to make this distinction, but it's wrong to do that.
The worst consequence is that those of us who know better essentially give religion away to the corrupters, and by giving them ownership of "religion," there is nothing to stop them from entering an insular feedback loop where "religion" becomes more stupid, more fear-driven, and more insane.
The only way out of that is to keep planting the seeds that religion is not what the religionists want you to think it is. It doesn't have to be that way. The stupid, fear-driven religionists have no incentive to change the situation, but we do. Cracking mindless, tired jokes about religion doesn't bring about a new way, so I won't have any part of that.
I'm sorry to read that you were offended by the posts above meloditech. It was not my intention to hurt people with my remarks and I'm sorry to see that you seem to think otherwise. _________________ Jan
Cracking mindless, tired jokes about religion doesn't bring about a new way, so I won't have any part of that.
Actually joking, as in pointing out absurdities, about something, may indeed help to bring about a new way, or at least shed new light on things - or at the very least ease the pain of some things. This time the jokes were mainly on agnostics, and it was genuine fun, never heard those before. I can't see anything wrong with that. And frankly the abundance of absurd claims made by most religions provide an inexhaustible supply of material for humour - that's only natural, it can't be helped... I'd love to see more atheist jokes, it's just that atheism is rather boring in this respect, lacking elements of absurdity.
Perhaps I should take the righteous religious stance on this: "I believe that religion, or theism if you will, is absurd. I demand total respect for my beliefs and they shall be beyond criticism and ridicule". (Adding a for the humour impaired)
Quote:
...there is nothing to stop them from entering an insular feedback loop where "religion" becomes more stupid, more fear-driven, and more insane
Such feedback loops usually exists within religious communities independent of any specific 'corrupters'. Folks are always egging each other on. Some of these folks will become clergy; thus, you could say that the clergy (I assume that's who you mean by corrupters with ownership of religion) has been corrupted by the common folks. Ah well, I guess you could call them 'mutual corrupters'. Humor is a tool that can be used as a feedback destroyer, depending on the 'phase' of course .
meloditech wrote:
John 3:16
I note that you have a signature which asserts your one-upmanship on me. Shaking a threat in my face, of not being let in on the good stuff in life (or afterlife...) and instead being condemned to unspeakable horrors. It would be a bit like having a signature saying: "Those that think {insert synth brand of your choice} is the only true synths are OK, the rest of you are naughty and shall die horrible deaths". That's not so nice. I do have an issue with any religion or belief system that incite it's believers to assert themselves as superior to non-believers.
Edit to add: I don't (want to) believe that you personally really see it as appropriate for atheists to fry in hell - however, the religion you subscribe to speaks in no uncertain terms about our ultimate fate, and that scary fact should not be unsung. There - I managed to include a directly on-topic comment, even if it took elektro80's little reminder.
OK - enough banter. Meloditech, IMHO you are being too sensitive about this. EM is full of GOOD people who share the enthusiasm for electro-music. Most of them have humour too and will crack a joke now and then... I hope you can enjoy EM for what it is.
DJ
-- Last edited by DrJustice on Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:52 pm; edited 2 times in total
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2909 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:38 pm Post subject:
dewdrop_world wrote:
Cracking mindless, tired jokes about religion doesn't bring about a new way, so I won't have any part of that.
James
Here! Here! When jokes are cracked only crackers will have jokes and by God I'll have none none of that! _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
I think the right thing to do is move this thread into schmooze.
The intent behind the Diversity Forums was to create a .. well.. I dunno.. a place for discussion relating to it being OK for women and homosexuals and blacks and what have you to make electronic music. Put this way this sounds possibly offensive if you ask me, but for some reason this is how it is in the US still. Anyways, atheism and anti-religious music are proud white middle class, and surely kosher, activities that have been let out of the closet decades ago.
I vote for moving this thread to schmooze.
Carlo? Pope lakes? Has this something to do with incontince? _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Ah! We're in Schmooze already, I see. Does that mean we have to edit our posts to retract any remotely on topic content?
DJ
--
Ahh..
No need for that. Carlo will wake up soon. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
This still hints at one "possible" problem though. It seems that we really don´t have a proper subforum or subforums for discussion of music and such. We do have a composition forum that hopefully will grow with more on topic stuff soon, but most of the other forums are of some sort of technical nature. Where can the eager music lover discuss his favorite acts and artists? _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:16 pm Post subject:
Re: Anti-religious electro?
theestatemachine wrote:
Well, Front 242 had a track from 1988 called Welcome To Paradise. The original sounds a bit dated, and it's not the track you were interested in, but it's a "classic". They've lambasted religion in other ways as well, but being Atheistic is not necessarily their identifying characteristic. There are plenty more examples, i'm just not coming up with any names right now... I know i couldn't resist the urge to sample dialog from the hateful righteous idiots (which is to say: televangelists) when i first bought a shiny new Emax in '89... i'm sure lots of other people found the same.
Televangelists? They were one of my favourites to write out, songs wise. At my site:
- Thick / Skulled (specifically about Televangelism, and it's victims)
- What Do The Men Have To Say?
- Sinning On Saturday
The 1st 2 have at least 1 related speech sample. Lyrically, the 1st is against Televangelism and the 3rd is against hypocrisy.
(The 2nd is a live improv. recorded directly to tape, with speech samples from Canadian Televangelist Bernice Gerard as well as Bob Newhart (first speech sample), Bill Cosby and a few others.
I'm a former Roman Catholic; then former Atheist. I now simply, have faith. Haven't pinpointed what IN ..... I just have it, and that's it.
Carlo? Pope lakes? Has this something to do with incontince?
let's cut this out before it's too late
(no incontinence involved btw, just a recreational park with a lake, ducks, squirrels, camels and centurions, of course... ) _________________ homepage - blog - forum - youtube
Quote:
Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex - Frank Zappa
...mangled quotations of religious choral music...
A friend attended Catholic school as a child and remembers singing a song about "Gladly the cross-eyed bear." Funny name for a bear.
Billy Connolly claims to have done the same! _________________ Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
Anyway, I consider myself a spiritual atheist (note lover case) - how's that for an oxymoron? _________________ Where there are too many policemen, there is no liberty. Where there are too many soldiers, there is no peace. Where there are too many lawyers, there is no justice.
Lin Yutang (1895-1976)
Joined: May 16, 2005 Posts: 8905 Location: Birmingham, England, UK
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:47 am Post subject:
Blue Hell wrote:
I'm sorry to read that you were offended by the posts above meloditech.
I'm not sorry at all.
As I live in a democracy, it is my constitutional right to offend you as much as it is also your (I'm talking to meloditech here- just to make things clear), right to offend me. You should also be able to take offence and likewise. I don't buy this liberal nonsense that we need to mind our p's and q's, because imo, it erodes our right to freedom of speech. (have a look at British political correctness sometime).
However, I would like to make an observation that is, placing John 3:16; "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." is just a tad provocative and patronising- don't you think? So what do you expect (no 'Spanish inquisition' jokes please!).
KoukiAE86 is obviously a troll. He/She (I imagine its a 'he, because a kouki AE86 is a car ). Dear old (young?) kouki has only posted once since Feb '05, and we have all fallen for the bait.
quote wikipedia on trolls;
"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic" discussion".
Melodiman, I'm also a bit confused about your claim to be involved in 'electro-acoustic music', as your myspace account plays nothing but, what I would call 'christian music', which imo is rather bland. An electric piano, a guitar and a voice- which sounds like Spanish? It doesn't sound very 'electro-acoustic' to me Do you have any music that does sound like electro-acoustic music?
I´m fairly sure I moved the thread into Schmooze because this is simply is the only place it seems to belong, and not for it to get even more off topic. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2909 Location: Up in that tree over there.
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 6:09 am Post subject:
Oskar wrote:
...Anyway, I consider myself a spiritual atheist ...
ME too!
It's the faith thing. It may only take a mustard seed's worth, but my entire allotment was smaller than a neutrino. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 3390 Location: Sweden
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Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 8:13 am Post subject:
I can't help wondering about the negation of this thread: where's all the religious electronica? You can find Christian groups in most rock fields (metal, country, rap), but I don't know about any avant garde stuff spreading the word from the old book. Would a thread about that fit in the diversity forum?
I can't help wondering about the negation of this thread: where's all the religious electronica? You can find Christian groups in most rock fields (metal, country, rap), but I don't know about any avant garde stuff spreading the word from the old book. Would a thread about that fit in the diversity forum?
/Stefan
Electronica? A very problematic term. May we widen the scope a bit?
Traditionally the lighter and more popular strains of "space music" and "cosmic synth music" are somewhat inoffensive to christian values. JMJ won´t rock the boat. Too much focus on outer space, drugs, mind expansion and such will disqualify the music. The new age angle doesn´t help either.
This does not of course mean that there aren´t a lot of composers out there that have some kind of annual subscription to the idea of something approximating the christian concept of God.
BTW, the last time I took a hard look at recent so called anti-religious music, it seems that the bulk of it rather discusses organized religion and church issues rather than kicking God´s ass. I´m of course not talking about satanistic dark ambient and such + the whole lot of pretty amusing spiritual new age stuff that rather would be labelled religious music than anti-religious. _________________ A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"
I also have another song about being driven out of church by lies and gossip, but I never posted that. Hmmm, I think I will post it here as it seems so appropriate to this thread.
Antimon, I agree with you. To my ears, what most radio stations declare as "christian music" (I live in the Wild West of the US, there is an over abundance of both christian evangelists as well as christian radio stations here), is really christian words put into a very algorithmic formula of 5 year old pop, "metal", or "country" music as it were. I feel anytime I hear this type of music, it is very easy to predict (in my head:" oh, hear comes the chorus...one more measure, now the bridge, with an added oooohh...yep, there it is..."...and so on).
Of course, with such an algorithmic system, you'd think the christian mentality would be perfect for programming electronic sequences
Ironic, how the most vocal and typical christian evangelist stands against science, and the scientific method, and yet the "creativity" and methods of christian music are so very scientific indeed. I guess these follows are followers to the very ends of their being. (Pun very much intended.)
Back to the parallel topic, in Zen, the teacher has a keisaku, a stick that can be used (upon prior request) to smack a student during meditation, and used as a shock to the system, to overcome drowsiness, inattentiveness, and lack of concentration. I feel like religious fundamentalists are unfortunately lacking such a device in their practice.
As I live in a democracy, it is my constitutional right to offend you as much as it is also your (I'm talking to meloditech here- just to make things clear), right to offend me.
I know the "Zeitgeist" says this view to be hip, but I do not agree with it ... I see no reason to offend people while speaking out my thoughts or beliefs. Of course this is not fully under my control, as it takes two at least to play the game ... anyway, even when I try not to offend someone who still takes offense I'm sorry for that situation ... and just to make things clear, I do not think I said anything wrong in this thread. _________________ Jan
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Has this something to do with incontince? 
No need for that. Carlo will wake up soon. 
)
