Art and Religion

Aegean · December 19, 2019, 4:32pm

Religion, properly defined, refers to spirituality founded on text, that holds this text as being sacred.
Everything else can be differentiated by calling it spirituality.
Therefore, Hinduism and Buddhism and Paganisms are not religions, but types of spiritualism.
There are three major religions, all three related and sharing the same sacred texts - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three are anti-life, anti-wold, and therefore nihilistic. I call them the people of the Book, by the Book, for the Book.
This attitude is transferred into philosophy as an idolization of specific thinkers, and the use of their philosophical texts as if they were sacred - undeniable, absolute truth.

Bob · December 19, 2019, 5:53pm

I find it interesting that you say you are not religious, claim that religious art does not challenge, but think you know what religious art will comprise of.

I have read reports of UFO’s, Flat Earth and all sorts of claims. It doesn’t mean they apply to us all. You’re making assumptions because you lack experience. The arts can affect people in all sorts of ways, and because Sexson’s book is titled “Ordinarily Sacred,” even ordinary objects can cause an epiphany or religious vision. My intuition whilst attending religious services was that this is an experience of profound artistry. The way the service is held is to evoke a to and fro between the priest and the congregation, music is used, symbols and text. Attending a service you are drawn into an experience that you either take part in it, remain unmoved by it or you shy away. Pleasantness may occur, but attendance is intended to mean confrontation with the word. It is mythology at work.

When you practise in your own home, with meditation, contemplation or prayer, you generally use scripture, devotional writing, or religious songs to begin with, but the silence is the most important part, because you are required to listen, not just speak. Feelgood is just irrelevant.

God challenges, usually not the believer, although I have lamented in difficult times and asked a resounding “WHY?”

If you believe that it was only religious ideologies that burnt books and paintings, then you haven’t been paying attention in history class.

Bob · December 19, 2019, 5:56pm

As a musician, you must feel the soul that is in certain music, where the heart is touched in an almost religious sensual way. Being moved by your music, is there really a difference between artistry and religion in that moment?

Bob · December 19, 2019, 6:00pm

Well hello. Do Hinduism and Buddhism have no texts? Are you sure about that?

Another bold statement: All three Abrahamic religions are “anti-life, anti-world, and therefore nihilistic.” Well, I suppose you can pass that as your opinions, but they are not founded on much.

Aegean · December 19, 2019, 6:55pm

Ha!! you have a problem with reading?
Reread what I posted and then begin patronizing.

They are nihilistic because they propose an alternate reality to the one experienced. Like the existence of a singularity, and the idea that this existence is a staging for the more real reality; illusory.

Aegean · December 19, 2019, 7:14pm

Let me put it another way so seven someone as brilliant as you can comprehend.
Hinduism has no text that it holds as unquestionable and of divine origins - it is polytheistic - Buddhism does not even believe in god, but posits ways of reaching enlightenment - a nihilistic spirituality, but I will not get into that.
Only three major RELIGIONS, have a book, text, the declare unquestionable and of divine origins.
Maybe we can include Scientology and Hubbard’s sacred Book.

Now, return to your condescending demeanour.

felix_dakat · December 19, 2019, 8:04pm

For me the best performances have an ecstatic quality meaning that I get outside myself and feel as if I am a channel through which the music flows. That aesthetic experience seems to be similar with the religious idea of possession by a daemon or being filled with the spirit described by the ancients. Nowadays one doesn’t want to push the analogy too far as such things are looked on as pathological. But many of the best musicians I’ve ever associated with describe similar experiences and that’s what it looks like and feels like when you see or hear them performing. And that’s why a lot of them use drugs and/or alcohol which can enhance the receptive state although there may be unwanted side effects, unreliability and dependence that result.

Bob · December 19, 2019, 8:13pm

And you are sure of all this, I’m sure. Problem is, I’m not.

The intricacies of religious scripture fill volumes. The use of myth, allegory, metaphor and fable, as well as poetry or songs, shows me that the Bible, for example, is a composed narrative made up out of numerous sources that start from early mankind up until the story of Christ. It seems to attempt to map the progress of awareness in mankind, and address the paradox in which we live. Lacking science, the ancients mapped development out via stories. These are understandable with a bit of foreknowledge today because they address our situation. They are also very artistic in their expression.

Bob · December 19, 2019, 8:19pm

This has been similar to the experiences I have had whilst listening to or holding a sermon or a Bible meeting, when reading something engaging, or listening to music of diverse kinds. The feeling of being a channel through which love flows was also present during my time nursing the dying. It is hard to understand when it’s happening, but the “channel” is something I can follow. You can’t tell anyone either because they think you’re on a God complex.

felix_dakat · December 19, 2019, 9:12pm

Bob:

felix dakat:

For me the best performances have an ecstatic quality meaning that I get outside myself and feel as if I am a channel through which the music flows. That aesthetic experience seems to be similar with the religious idea of possession by a daemon or being filled with the spirit described by the ancients. Nowadays one doesn’t want to push the analogy too far as such things are looked on as pathological. But many of the best musicians I’ve ever associated with describe similar experiences and that’s what it looks like and feels like when you see or hear them performing. And that’s why a lot of them use drugs and/or alcohol which can enhance the receptive state although there may be unwanted side effects, unreliability and dependence that result.

This has been similar to the experiences I have had whilst listening to or holding a sermon or a Bible meeting, when reading something engaging, or listening to music of diverse kinds. The feeling of being a channel through which love flows was also present during my time nursing the dying. It is hard to understand when it’s happening, but the “channel” is something I can follow. You can’t tell anyone either because they think you’re on a God complex.

Right. What the ancients called the gods can now be found in the DSM-5.

Prismatic567 · December 20, 2019, 5:08am

We are in a philosophy forum, thus epistemology and knowledge of whatever.
What is religious art can be inferred objectively from observation of arts within religions.

Religious art or sacred art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the artist’s religious tradition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_art

Prismatic567:

I mentioned ‘soothing’ refer to more subliminal reactions and less of conscious soothing.
When a believer looks at arts related to his religion, there is a sense of ‘pleasantness’ that calms and soothe his whole psyche.
I have read of reports by Christians who feel good when they are in Church with paintings, statutes and architectural designs, etc. Same with believers of other religions in their own artistic environment.

However, an atheist or non-Christian who appreciate art will also feel something artistic and positive with the artistic works done, but that has nothing to do with religion and art.

I have read reports of UFO’s, Flat Earth and all sorts of claims. It doesn’t mean they apply to us all. You’re making assumptions because you lack experience.
The arts can affect people in all sorts of ways, and because Sexson’s book is titled “Ordinarily Sacred,” even ordinary objects can cause an epiphany or religious vision.
My intuition whilst attending religious services was that this is an experience of profound artistry. The way the service is held is to evoke a to and fro between the priest and the congregation, music is used, symbols and text. Attending a service you are drawn into an experience that you either take part in it, remain unmoved by it or you shy away. Pleasantness may occur, but attendance is intended to mean confrontation with the word. It is mythology at work.

When you practise in your own home, with meditation, contemplation or prayer, you generally use scripture, devotional writing, or religious songs to begin with, but the silence is the most important part, because you are required to listen, not just speak. Feel good is just irrelevant.

I agree ordinary objects [artistic or otherwise] can cause an epiphany or religious vision or even convert one to a religion.
But being religious do not cause one to be artistic unless one has some degree of an inherent artistic tendency or inclination in the specific part of the brain.

My point is more to feeling-less-pain than feeling-more-good.
DNA wise all humans are in various states [degrees] of primal-psyche-pain.
When one meditates, prays, sings, focus on certain acts, there is a lessening of the primal-psyche-pain.
One of the religious acts is the engagement in religious arts either as a participant [artist] or observer.
In the secular world, this is common with drugs, hallucinogens, pain-killers, nicotine, etc. which often lead to addiction due to the desire to lessen the primal-psyche-pain.

I did not say nor imply that.
I am very well aware of the the burning of books by the secular in history.

What I stated was, we need to stick to topic, i.e. “religion and art” and not veer off to activities outside this topic.

Bob · December 20, 2019, 7:01am

Yes, that’s where you’ll find me

Bob · December 20, 2019, 7:40am

However, the point that Sexson was making is that the sacred is sometimes the very ordinary until it is given meaning above and beyond what it portrays. The artist (like Felix) might feel the inspiration channel through him into what he is doing, or he might not. I once drew a simple sketch of the calvary cross in front of a rising sun and it was taken by a preacher as the subject of a sermon, and later I found the picture in various expanded forms all over the place. To me, the picture had religious connotations but I hadn’t imagined that it could mean so much to people.

Sexson gave an example of simple things becoming inspirational:

Lynda Sexson:

As metaphor empowers one discrete element of reality to mingle with another, religious metaphor pulls the artist into itself, too. More troublesome than the departure of the god’s is the departure of their playful influence on human creativity, their infusion into human expression, their touching of human events and objects. The gods had to leave because they had been literalised and cut in two. Perhaps the only way into a greater mystery is through the meagre, the minimal.
Julian of Norwich had an experience in which she found, in the palm of her hand something that was nearly nothing:
And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; thus everything has being through the love of God.
One almost suspects that Julian’s entire spiritual speculations and theology could have germinated with the seemingly quaint nutshell of her experience. It was through this homely vision, with few links (but with subsequent applications) to the particular theological tradition in which she dwell, in profound simplicity, of something like the “nothing” of a hazelnut in her hand, that there exploded in her certitude of who she was in relationship to God. Her amazement at that round, small thing, so inconsequential that it is remarkable that it is something rather than nothing, gives way to the deeper recognition that it is indeed nothing, appearing only by the grace of the only reality that is. Julian awoke to her God by looking at this little thing, “as round as a ball”; she came to know her theological universe as though it were a little hazelnut in her hand.
The box, the bundle, the hazelnut, are not objects but the interplay between self and universe, whereby the self originates poetic participation in the universe, and the universe is formed by that information.

It is this kind of experience that shows that religious inspiration may come from simple things, and therefore from art that was not deemed religious in the beginning.

Expressing your religious inspiration artistically is therefore not a question of exceptional ability, but of the need that wells up in one, and spills out in whatever art is peculiar to the believer.

I know that suffering is a part of life. Suffering comes in various forms, just as the solutions come in various forms. My point was that religious inspiration needs expression, regardless of ability, and it flows into art forms. Therefore, I felt that my intuition at religious services, that religion is akin to art, is validated in that this inspiration needs expression.

Prismatic567 · December 21, 2019, 4:54am

Bob:

Prismatic567:

We are in a philosophy forum, thus epistemology and knowledge of whatever.
What is religious art can be inferred objectively from observation of arts within religions.

Religious art or sacred art is artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual. Sacred art involves the ritual and cultic practices and practical and operative aspects of the path of the spiritual realization within the artist’s religious tradition.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_art

However, the point that Sexson was making is that the sacred is sometimes the very ordinary until it is given meaning above and beyond what it portrays. The artist (like Felix) might feel the inspiration channel through him into what he is doing, or he might not. I once drew a simple sketch of the calvary cross in front of a rising sun and it was taken by a preacher as the subject of a sermon, and later I found the picture in various expanded forms all over the place. To me, the picture had religious connotations but I hadn’t imagined that it could mean so much to people.

Sexson gave an example of simple things becoming inspirational:

Lynda Sexson:

As metaphor empowers one discrete element of reality to mingle with another, religious metaphor pulls the artist into itself, too. More troublesome than the departure of the god’s is the departure of their playful influence on human creativity, their infusion into human expression, their touching of human events and objects. The gods had to leave because they had been literalised and cut in two. Perhaps the only way into a greater mystery is through the meagre, the minimal.
Julian of Norwich had an experience in which she found, in the palm of her hand something that was nearly nothing:
And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed to me, and it was as round as a ball. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought: What can this be? I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that because of its littleness it would suddenly have fallen into nothing. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and always will, because God loves it; thus everything has being through the love of God.
One almost suspects that Julian’s entire spiritual speculations and theology could have germinated with the seemingly quaint nutshell of her experience. It was through this homely vision, with few links (but with subsequent applications) to the particular theological tradition in which she dwell, in profound simplicity, of something like the “nothing” of a hazelnut in her hand, that there exploded in her certitude of who she was in relationship to God. Her amazement at that round, small thing, so inconsequential that it is remarkable that it is something rather than nothing, gives way to the deeper recognition that it is indeed nothing, appearing only by the grace of the only reality that is. Julian awoke to her God by looking at this little thing, “as round as a ball”; she came to know her theological universe as though it were a little hazelnut in her hand.
The box, the bundle, the hazelnut, are not objects but the interplay between self and universe, whereby the self originates poetic participation in the universe, and the universe is formed by that information.

It is this kind of experience that shows that religious inspiration may come from simple things, and therefore from art that was not deemed religious in the beginning.

Expressing your religious inspiration artistically is therefore not a question of exceptional ability, but of the need that wells up in one, and spills out in whatever art is peculiar to the believer.

Prismatic567:

My point is more to feeling-less-pain than feeling-more-good.
DNA wise all humans are in various states [degrees] of primal-psyche-pain.
When one meditates, prays, sings, focus on certain acts, there is a lessening of the primal-psyche-pain.
One of the religious acts is the engagement in religious arts either as a participant [artist] or observer.
In the secular world, this is common with drugs, hallucinogens, pain-killers, nicotine, etc. which often lead to addiction due to the desire to lessen the primal-psyche-pain.

I know that suffering is a part of life. Suffering comes in various forms, just as the solutions come in various forms. My point was that religious inspiration needs expression, regardless of ability, and it flows into art forms. Therefore, I felt that my intuition at religious services, that religion is akin to art, is validated in that this inspiration needs expression.

As I had stated, religion cannot be akin to art.

Point is religion and art are driven primarily from different parts of the brain.

Religion is driven from the primal base of the brain which is the deepest and lowest part of the brain. The grounding for religion is survival, i.e. the existential crisis.

Art or Aesthetics is a very later evolutionary adaption of the brain and its neural circuits are located more in the mid and higher brain of homo-sapiens. Obviously we do not expect other animals or even higher primates getting involved with the Arts and Aesthetics.

That a hazelnut which induced a religious feeling do not necessary involved the art nor aesthetics impulses but rather it is the reverence for the omnipower of a God. It is the same if a religious person felt the power of God in the creation of the universe.
However if any religious person were to sense beauty in the universe, it is because that religious person has an inherent degree of Art or Aesthetics.

Art or aesthetics elements in religion are manifested from SOME believers who are inherently artistic, while the majority of religious believers are likely to be indifferent to any artistic or aesthetics elements in a religion. Note the theory of multiple-intelligences, e.g. the majority of Science, Maths, Engineering Nerds are not artistically inclined as dancers, musicians, artists, etc. and vice versa.

Therefore religion is not akin to art.

Prismatic567 · December 21, 2019, 5:25am

felix dakat:

Bob:

felix dakat:

For me the best performances have an ecstatic quality meaning that I get outside myself and feel as if I am a channel through which the music flows. That aesthetic experience seems to be similar with the religious idea of possession by a daemon or being filled with the spirit described by the ancients. Nowadays one doesn’t want to push the analogy too far as such things are looked on as pathological. But many of the best musicians I’ve ever associated with describe similar experiences and that’s what it looks like and feels like when you see or hear them performing. And that’s why a lot of them use drugs and/or alcohol which can enhance the receptive state although there may be unwanted side effects, unreliability and dependence that result.

This has been similar to the experiences I have had whilst listening to or holding a sermon or a Bible meeting, when reading something engaging, or listening to music of diverse kinds. The feeling of being a channel through which love flows was also present during my time nursing the dying. It is hard to understand when it’s happening, but the “channel” is something I can follow. You can’t tell anyone either because they think you’re on a God complex.

Right. What the ancients called the gods can now be found in the DSM-5.

Not only the ancients but even by modern humans, e.g.

Ramachandran, the Temporal Lobes and God
youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg

There are hundreds and thousands of such examples.

Bob · December 21, 2019, 5:51am

How the arts contribute to religion
The arts have always been used to express the divine, e.g., in Christian liturgical services. What is their role? Do they simply enhance certain texts, meanings, and feelings? Or are they essential to our perception of the divine? Indeed, if reality has a divine origin then whatever is part of it must be germane or at least analogous to the divine.

Generally, the arts, due to their strong emotional impact and ability to act immediately and directly upon our perception, prior to conceptual thinking, can enhance any area of experience, including religious experience.

Specifically, both natural and artistic beauty is capable of evoking what is called the sense of transcendence, or the presence of some deeper (divine) principles in the world. Art and beauty are immediately pleasing but the reasons for this are unclear. This means that the rules and principles of art are beyond us or transcend us: possibly indicating the presence of a higher principle (e.g., the divine) in the universe.
The arts are used for these purposes by most religious traditions, but specifically in the Christian tradition by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions.
web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/art … 0intro.pdf

Prismatic567 · December 21, 2019, 6:40am

Bob:

How the arts contribute to religion
The arts have always been used to express the divine, e.g., in Christian liturgical services. What is their role? Do they simply enhance certain texts, meanings, and feelings? Or are they essential to our perception of the divine? Indeed, if reality has a divine origin then whatever is part of it must be germane or at least analogous to the divine.

Generally, the arts, due to their strong emotional impact and ability to act immediately and directly upon our perception, prior to conceptual thinking, can enhance any area of experience, including religious experience.

Specifically, both natural and artistic beauty is capable of evoking what is called the sense of transcendence, or the presence of some deeper (divine) principles in the world. Art and beauty are immediately pleasing but the reasons for this are unclear. This means that the rules and principles of art are beyond us or transcend us: possibly indicating the presence of a higher principle (e.g., the divine) in the universe.
The arts are used for these purposes by most religious traditions, but specifically in the Christian tradition by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions.
web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/art … 0intro.pdf

Note from the same article above;

Tensions between the arts and religion
Historically, both of the above points also caused concerns about the
use of the arts by religion.

The strong emotional impact of the arts causes a concern
that the audience will simply be distracted by the beauty they
perceive and focus on the arts themselves, not on the words of the
scriptures, religious ideas or sentiments. For example, music, in
addition to creating an elevating emotion and the feeling of the
divine, can also be simply pleasurable and distract and lead astray
from the “word” of the Scripture and liturgical texts. The same can go
for images that are too enticing and beautiful. This concern generated
strong anti-artistic tendencies, especially in the Protestant tradition,
some branches of which rejected the visual arts altogether.

The second concern is just how well the arts can represent
the divine and what exactly they represent. According to some
traditions, only the words (scriptures) and speech can convey correct
dogmas and ideas about the nature of God, and the arts do it very
imprecisely and vaguely and can simply “lead astray” instead of
conveying the correct teaching. For example, neither music nor image
are conceptually clear and precise, as are the words, and it is
uncertain what sort of “message” they really convey. The model of
literature is also not very helpful: it does rely on words, but it is
fiction and therefore can be regarded, after Plato, as a “lie.” The
traditions that for this reason reject any visual arts, especially
representational, are, e.g., Jewish and Muslim: see section on
iconoclasm below.

Point is religion is religion.
Art is not akin to religion.

For some religions [as noted above] there are apprehensions and reservations regarding the corruption of the arts on religion.

So my point;
Art is not akin to religion.
But a certain minority percentile of religious believers are naturally artistic and they expressed their artistic inclinations onto their religion which has certain influence on some believers.

felix_dakat · December 22, 2019, 1:59am

Prismatic567:

Bob:

How the arts contribute to religion
The arts have always been used to express the divine, e.g., in Christian liturgical services. What is their role? Do they simply enhance certain texts, meanings, and feelings? Or are they essential to our perception of the divine? Indeed, if reality has a divine origin then whatever is part of it must be germane or at least analogous to the divine.

Generally, the arts, due to their strong emotional impact and ability to act immediately and directly upon our perception, prior to conceptual thinking, can enhance any area of experience, including religious experience.

Specifically, both natural and artistic beauty is capable of evoking what is called the sense of transcendence, or the presence of some deeper (divine) principles in the world. Art and beauty are immediately pleasing but the reasons for this are unclear. This means that the rules and principles of art are beyond us or transcend us: possibly indicating the presence of a higher principle (e.g., the divine) in the universe.
The arts are used for these purposes by most religious traditions, but specifically in the Christian tradition by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic traditions.
web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/art … 0intro.pdf

Note from the same article above;

Tensions between the arts and religion
Historically, both of the above points also caused concerns about the
use of the arts by religion.

The strong emotional impact of the arts causes a concern
that the audience will simply be distracted by the beauty they
perceive and focus on the arts themselves, not on the words of the
scriptures, religious ideas or sentiments. For example, music, in
addition to creating an elevating emotion and the feeling of the
divine, can also be simply pleasurable and distract and lead astray
from the “word” of the Scripture and liturgical texts. The same can go
for images that are too enticing and beautiful. This concern generated
strong anti-artistic tendencies, especially in the Protestant tradition,
some branches of which rejected the visual arts altogether.

The second concern is just how well the arts can represent
the divine and what exactly they represent. According to some
traditions, only the words (scriptures) and speech can convey correct
dogmas and ideas about the nature of God, and the arts do it very
imprecisely and vaguely and can simply “lead astray” instead of
conveying the correct teaching. For example, neither music nor image
are conceptually clear and precise, as are the words, and it is
uncertain what sort of “message” they really convey. The model of
literature is also not very helpful: it does rely on words, but it is
fiction and therefore can be regarded, after Plato, as a “lie.” The
traditions that for this reason reject any visual arts, especially
representational, are, e.g., Jewish and Muslim: see section on
iconoclasm below.

Point is religion is religion.
Art is not akin to religion.

For some religions [as noted above] there are apprehensions and reservations regarding the corruption of the arts on religion.

So my point;
Art is not akin to religion.
But a certain minority percentile of religious believers are naturally artistic and they expressed their artistic inclinations onto their religion which has certain influence on some believers.

For some reason you seem to be limiting the sphere of religion to monotheism. Are you unfamiliar with polytheism? Are you going to argue that polytheistic Greece was not one of the most productive artistic cultures in history? Or are you going to maintain that polytheism is not religion? Good luck.

Prismatic567 · December 22, 2019, 3:05am

Nope!

I have mentioned my reference to ‘religion’ is traceable to the evolution of religion since religions first emerged within humans, e.g. primal religions, animism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism

In the early days of primitive religions, the dominant emotion was that of ‘fear’ leading to animal, property, human sacrifices to the gods. This is even evident in the later religions, e.g. the disgusting intent of Abraham to chop off his son’s head for God.
How can that be related to the arts or aesthetics?

The artistic tendencies of humans came later in the evolutionary ladder.
Thus art is not akin to religion.
The religious drives preceded the artistic faculty within the human brain.

Bob · December 22, 2019, 7:29am

First of all: I understand how you see this subject from an evolutionary viewpoint. You have mentioned where art and religion are “sparked” in the brain. This is all very interesting, but we are not talking about mankind prior to culture, but the development of culture in mankind from about 3000 b.c., which was a sophisticated journey, not a primal one. It was then that religion became stories told and collected so that they gradually spread across the areas where cultivation was taking place. Being separated from another, the cultures developed in various forms, but they were sophisticated all the same. Karen Armstrong’s “The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions” offers a rich and insightful account of the Axial revolution as the tumultuous period in which the world’s great religions arose. They are all accompanied by numerous areas of art, and in fact, to begin with, were the subject of that art, because the connection between religion and dreams is fact.

Secondly: The story of Abraham is a mythological story, so the story gives archetypal references that are pushing an agenda far superior to demanding human sacrifice. Your understanding of these things is limited because they are only anecdotes for you. It has been said numerous times on this site that taking the Bible or any other scripture literally is to not take it seriously.