Art and Religion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :wink:

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

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

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.

Yes, that’s where you’ll find me :open_mouth:

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:

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.

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.

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.

Note from the same article above;

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.

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.

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.

What I have presented are recognized facts.

In a way, the world’s great religions did arise within a certain period of say 5000 years or 10,000 years. Note Hinduism [the early Vedas] arose more than 10, 000 years.
Yes, during this period, there was a flourishing of arts from these religions.
You should have qualified this in your OP earlier on, but regardless;
the principle remain, the arts that follow was driven by the inherent artistic drives of SOME of the believers and not because of the religion directly.
Religion preceded the arts and NOT vice versa.

Note the control point:
There is not only art in religion but in every field of human activities and knowledge since the artistic drive in human emerged tens of thousands years ago.

The oldest known cave paintings are more than 44,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic), found in both the Franco-Cantabrian region in western Europe, and in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

Therefore you cannot jump to conclusion that ‘religion’ during the said axial period was responsible for the arts that followed.

I did not take the story of Abraham literally.

I am highlighting the following principle.

My point was, with fear of the existential crisis and God providing the relief, believers will go to the worst extremes to secure that relief from the crisis [re a promise of eternal life in heaven].

This is evident from human sacrifices to please the gods within human history;
then we have Muslims who sacrificed their own lives to expedite their passage to eternal life in paradise, and the range of sacrifices [property, time, finance, social, knowledge, etc.] believers are willing to make for their God [which is an illusion].

So much to the axial age.

You can see the error in your thinking by just acknowledging that you don‘t have to be an artist to appreciate art. Then you say that religion precedes art, whilst giving me an example where art has been found preceding [by far] the axial age.

What I believe is that art and religion went hand in hand throughout the development of mankind and became equally sophisticated as time went on. In fact, religion without art seems to be dead religion, and the beginning of religious ideology. Living faith (in whatever) has found expression in various forms of art, and this has been the subjects of devotion of millions. Note: art is not just painting. So all I am doing is saying that I believe that religion is a form of expression that goes hand in hand with artistry using various methods of expression.

But that isn’t the issue is it. You have already shown that art in a primitive form was around 44,000 BCE, so it wasn’t anything new for it to be around in a more sophisticated way later.

Well, talking about “chopping off” someone’s head, which wasn’t the sacrificial method, does seem to suggest that.

I see my case as proven.

:text-merryxmas:

Nope!
What is an ‘alive’ religion is grounded on its founder and holy texts under the direction of God or otherwise.
Art is secondary to the above.

Note that art discovered to be 40,000 years old is not attributed to religion.
The axial age range from 10000, 5000 or 3000 years ago.
Therefore arts preceded religions which arose during the “axial” age.

The point was Abraham was willing to kill and sacrifice his son to God.
This is the principle re the test of faith of a believer in God.

I don’t have much respect for Armstrong’s intellectual credibility which is full of confirmation bias.
Armstrong was merely an ex-nun [sister] in a monastery who happened to read selectively and write a lot without much substance and groundings.

:text-merryxmas:

Despite what the conversation with Prismatic brought forth, I am experiencing the connection of religion/spirituality with art in many ways. I intend to bring more contributions, because I see the problem of religion in the devaluation of the broad spectrum of art.

If anyone has contributions, please feel welcome …