Spring Semester Skepticism

Songs to Doubt by:

After Dr. Robertson recently posted his soundtrack to our course, I was inspired to create my own interpretation. I've compiled a playlist of ten songs. For each I'll provide a link and some reasoning for why I chose it.

1. "Clap Your Hands!" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I can't think of a better way to begin this soundtrack. Just listen to that crowd of background singers who are being commanded to clap their hands. They're totally skeptical!

Particular Lyrics: "CLAP YOUR HANDS! (But I have no money.) CLAP YOUR HANDS! (Are you up to something?)"

2."Jesusland" by Ben Folds

If you have to watch an ad in order to see this video, I apologize, but I think you'll find it's worth the wait. Yes, this is a song about living in America, but on another level it's about being surrounded by religious zealots and hypocrites.

Particular Lyrics: "Billboards quoting things you'd never say, you hang your head and pray for Jesusland."

3. "No Sunlight" by Death Cab for Cutie

Rule #1 of making a mix is that the third song is the most important. I'd argue this is the most relevant song I've got. This song reminds me that as we grow older we lose much of the optimism that Voltaire attacks in Candide and move towards a more cynical nature like that displayed by Hobbes.

Particular Lyrics: "It disappeared at the same speed as the idealistic things I believed, and the optimist died inside of me."

4. "Thoughts of a Dying Atheist" by Muse

It's all there in the title. Several authors in this course have expressed their thoughts about what may happen to us after death, and many maintain that it's nothing. So, for an atheist, wouldn't death be terrifying?

Particular Lyrics: "Look through my faithless eye. Are you afraid to die?"

5. "Jesus Christ" by Brand New

This song follows the same theme as the last track. It's all about that universal subject of the fear that accompanies that doubt about what may or may not result from death.

Particular Lyrics: "Well, Jesus Christ, I’m alone again, so what did you do those three days you were dead? Because this problem's gonna last more than a weekend."

6. "Antichrist Television Blues" by Arcade Fire

Have you seen that shirt I wear with the neon bible on it? Here's why. This song, in my opinion, is very complicated, and I considered leaving it out. On the one hand, the speaker might honestly profess strong faith in God, in which case this song doesn't seem to belong here. On the other hand, the seemingly devout nature of the lyrics might be ironic or satirical like Gibbon or Voltaire. Whatever your interpretation, I think there's an interesting mix of faith and doubt in this wonderful song. Also, the theme of fatherhood reminds me of Frankenstein.

Particular Lyrics: "Lord, would you send me a sign, 'cause I just gotta know if I'm wasting my time!"

7. "Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh" by Bright Eyes

In a way, I consider this a morose response to Dr. Robertson's final track, "Take Care" by Beach House. This is a song with lower expectations for human beings, and I feel that it's about loneliness and disappointment. It's about being let down, and I think that feeds doubt.

Particular Lyrics: "You said you hate my suffering, and you understood, and you’d take care of me. You'd always be there. Well, where are you now?"

8. "Constructive Summer" by The Hold Steady

Here's a more upbeat song to kick you out of the depression you might have suffered at the hands of Bright Eyes. This song puts the power in our hands. It says to me: It's up to us to do this, so we're going to act. We can do this. Not any god, but us.

Particular Lyrics: "I read your gospel, it moved me to tears, but I couldn't find the hate and I couldn't find the fear. I met your saviour, I knelt at his feet, and he took my ten bucks and he went down the street."

9. "A Comet Appears" by The Shins

A common theme in all of this (the songs and the course) has been the growing sense of dread that creeps into you and often accompanies doubt. This song really captures that feeling for me: the sadness that comes as you wonder if there's nothing you can reasonably believe in. Also, there's a bit of a Nietzsche reference in the lyrics.

Particular Lyrics: "Every post you can hitch your faith on is a pie in the sky, chock full of lies, a tool we devise to make sinking stones fly."

10. "Satan Said Dance" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I just love when I can make a mix come full circle, so here's another song by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The last track in my soundtrack is inspired by the last text in the course, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. How do you capture a novel like that with a song? This is the closest I can come to answering that perplexing question. It's chaotic, it's strange, it seems almost random, and it gives you the sense that it might be controlled by Satan; but still it holds together as a unified work of art.

Particular Lyrics: "And I know it is not how you thought it would be. No whips no chains just dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing dancing."

I hope you've enjoyed listening to this as much as I've enjoyed making this soundtrack. Enjoy the final hours of your spring break. I'll be seeing you in class soon.

A Society of Atheists:

If I'm not mistaken, then in the recent past Dr. Robertson brought up the question of what a society of atheists would really be like.  When I heard that question, I was reminded of a guy named George Hrab.  Now, Hrab is a musician and a damn good one.  Besides that, he is also an outspoken atheist and a podcaster.  I was listening to his podcast one time when he responded to a letter of fan mail.  The listener's question was something to the effect of: Don't we need religion in order to instruct us on how to live morally?  Hrab maintained that the answer is quite simple—that harmful actions are avoided for their negative consequences.  One commits no crimes in order to stay out of prison, and one is helpful for others so that others might treat him or her the same way.  You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.  In this way, narcissism drives the atheist to behave morally, because s/he does good deeds for his or her own good.  Following that logic, a society without religion would consist of people doing good for others for the sake of making it more likely that good will be done to them.

It took me a few years, but I finally realized what I don't like about that argument.  I think that, in that reasoning, there's an inherent (false) assumption about equality of status among people.  Hrab's idea fails to take into account one important, however unfortunate, fact of life: power.  If you have enough power and you wrong the right people, then this immoral behavior could go without any negative consequences for the powerful party.  For example, if Arnold Schwarzenegger mercilessly beat me to a pulp, then I would not be in any position to exact any revenge on him.  I am not strong enough to physically retaliate.  Even if I were to pump myself up for years (ironically using Arnold's own workout regimen and obsessively watching his movies to drive my lust for vengeance), no amount of time on the Bowflex could get me close to Arnold, because he also has political power.  As the governor of California, he must have a lot of security to defend him. I'm sure the man has some sort of weakness (Chuck Norris?), so maybe this isn't the best example, but I hope I'm getting my point across.

Corporate people in corporate suits find ways to exploit people on the other side of the world, and those impoverished workers will probably never have a chance to make their oppressors pay or even make their voices heard.  With enough power, it is possible to act in a morally reprehensible manner without suffering any backlash from your fellow man.  Such worldly wrongness makes many people flock to ideas like karma, the reassuring belief that those bad people will get what's coming to them before long.  If the villains die peacefully on their mountains of blood money, then some believe that their souls are burning in hell, while others figure they were reincarnated as a grasshopper or something, so they got what they deserved.  But now I've deviated from the belief system of atheists.  Here's a question: Is it possible to be an atheist and yet believe in karma?  Karma is hardly the same as God, but it is a supernatural or otherworldly force.  I wonder if that defies atheism.

For the time being, those are my thoughts on the subject.  Side note: As I wrote this post, I listened to Dr. Robertson's soundtrack for the course.  It made for some interesting listening.  I often enjoy making mixes and playlists myself.  Perhaps in the near future I'll make my own soundtrack for this course, as I interpret it.  Or, instead I might make an opposing playlist centered around belief, theism, and credulity.  If I have enough time, maybe I'll do both projects.  You'll see the track lists on this blog if I create them.