There are so many fallacies behind Claude Shannon's post that it's hard to know where to begin. I suppose I'll start with the works of art (including music). Yes, great works of art occured in Europe hundred of years ago, and Europe was heavilly influenced by Christianity at that time. But it should be pointed out that much of the great art was a product of the Rennaisance - a period when the shackles of strict religious thinking were thrown off.
You are seriously misinformed.
The so-called “Renaissance” started approximately in the 14th century and ended in the 16th century.
Homer wrote the Iliad well before the 14th century.
Virgil wrote the Aeneid well before the 14th century.
Dante wrote the Divine Comedy between 1308 and 1321 making it a work of the 14th century – right at the start of the Renaissance. It’s a religious, explicitly Christian epic poem…I’ll bet you didn’t associate it with the start of the Renaissance.
Bach was well after the Renaissance.
Mozart was well after the Renaissance.
Beethoven was well after the Renaissance.
Rachmaninoff was well after the Renaissance.
Construction of The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was begun in the 12th century: about 200 years before the beginning of the Renaissance.
“La Sagrada Familia” of Antonio Gaudy was begun in the late 19th century and continues to this day.
Saint Paul’s Cathedral is from the 17th century, a hundred years after the Renaissance.
Only the works of Michelangelo – the fresco from the Sistine Chapel, the David, the Pieta – are solidly from the Renaissance.
I could just as easily have used mosaics of Cimabue (13th century), or icons, or illuminated manuscripts from much earlier.
So much for the Renaissance as the “be all” and “end all” of artistic achievement.
Crediting Christianity for the great works of art created during a time when it was the dominant ideology is like crediting communism for Soviet advancements in rocket propulsion and space exploration.
I didn’t “credit Christianity.” The issue of the last few posts has been “Religion produces nothing.” I ridiculed that silly notion by showing great achievements by artists whose impulse was religious: to illustrate a religious them, or serve a religious interest or function.
And, I do credit communism for individual achievements in rocket science in the former Soviet Union. Just as I credit Nazism for building the autobahn, and credit Italian Fascism for making the trains run on time.
And alas, we get to the old atheist dictator argument. First off, atheism is not a philosophy or a worldview.
Wrong. Atheism = materialist conception of the universe. Its first official pronouncement was in a long poem having to do with cosmogony titled “On The Nature of Things” (De Rerum Natura) by Lucretius.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0131:book=1
If atheism were simply a denial of God or gods, with nothing to replace it, then the Lucretiuses and the Sam Harrises, and the Richard Dawkinses wouldn’t bother to write books, and others wouldn't bother reading them. No. Atheism is a philosophy in search of some shaping force to assert as a positive; that’s why DARWIN is so important to atheists on the extreme right and the extreme left.
Atheism is merely a rejection of a false cosmology, and a rejection of the idea that there exists a book which contains actual instructions from the creator of the universe.
If you’re speaking of the Bible, theism has no necessary connection with fundamentalism or Biblical literalism. That connection only exists in your imagination.
To give an analogy, I suspect Claude Shannon rejects astrology as having no merit, and that we could thus technically call him a non-astrologer. And despite being a non-astrologer, I suspect Claude would concede that that tells us nothing about his moral compass and overall worldview. It's the same thing with atheism - atheism is not a system of ideas by any means.
Not so. I have no militant agenda against astrology. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al., do have militant agendas against theism. It bothers them no end that other people believe in God. It doesn't bother me that others might believe in astrology. Additionally, I reject astrology as explanatory because there are better explanations from other sources; not because I find astrology inherently absurd, or inherently evil, and I wouldn’t judge someone who did find astrology convincing as mentally ill or morally depraved (as Dawkins judges theists).
The key principles of communism involve the abolition of private property, the collective ownership of production and the distribution of its rewards from "each according to his ability to each according to his need".
Those are, specifically, the key principles of Marxism. People voluntarily living on a commune may or may not practice all of these.
Religion was an impediment to the communist lust for power and control because the church was a very important cultural value to the peasantry, and it stood in defense of the existing social order. That is the main motivation behind communism's anti-religiosity.
Atheism per se is not a central component of communism, as one could be a communist and a Christian simultaneously and not be in contradiction.
Wrong. You would be in contradiction if you were a Christian and a Marxist communist. That such a person may not SEE the contradiction or ADMIT the contradiction is irrelevant to the existence of the contradiction.
As for your speculation about the reason Marxist communism was so anti-religion, I'm afraid that's wrong too. Even after completely conquering Russia, and having nothing to fear from the old social order, the Soviet Union used to incarcerate believers in psychiatric wards (which, of course, were really political prisons). The reason is this: to the extent someone believes in God as the source of rights and values is the extent to which one does NOT believe that the State is the source of rights and values. That automatically marks a believer as a political dissident and a potential troublemaker.
"Liberation theology" is in fact a synthesis of communism and Christianity. I would even argue that socialism is more logically in step with Christianity than capitalism with its emphasis on self sacrifice and altruism. Thus, we must conclude that the atrocities of Stalin and Mao were not an expression of atheism.
That’s a baloney argument made by Peikoff long ago in his Objectivist lectures. Mises, of course, disproved that by pointing out that capitalism is based on the social institution of “Division of Labor”, in which I produce something that YOU want and need, and YOU produce something that I want and need. It’s hard to get more altruistic than that. “Selfish” productivity would be autarky: withdrawal from the social advantages of division of labor, producing everything for yourself, by yourself. By that standard, the feudalism of the middle ages was much more individualistic than modern capitalism. Division of labor is NOT "individualistic." Howard Roark wasn't designing buildings for himself.
“Black Liberation Theology” manages to combine Marxism and Christianity because its adherents are so conflicted: their traditions taught them Christianity and conservative values; their upbringing and education (often provided by whites) taught them resentment, envy, and “blame whitey for our lack of progress.” There are lots of contradictions in BLT and many people see it.
Finally, your statement regarding the apparent “waste of resources” represented by the great cathedrals of Europe is nonsense. Read Mises. Profit takes different forms, the most basic of which is psychic profit. All life in the middle ages revolved around the church. Those who built the cathedrals were not slaves, and there was no sentiment by Christians of the day that the labor and stones used to build the cathedral could be better employed building condominiums as decided by “rational” profit-and-loss market calculation.
Given the obvious fact – obvious to everyone but you, apparently – that these cathedrals represent real achievement – artistically and in some cases scientifically – i.e., positive contributions to human culture, it’s narrow-minded and boorish to say, “Yeah, sure, they’re pretty, but that’s about all. The whole enterprise was just a big waste of labor, stone, and mortar.”
It’s as stupid as Picasso’s statement about the Apollo 11 moon shot: “It means absolutely nothing.”
The great cathedrals were the Apollo 11 moon shots of their day. They were public works, just as Apollo 11 was a public work.
If you can get out of Galt’s Gulch long enough to live in the real world for a little while, you’ll see that if you live in a society that insists on public works, better Notre Dame de Paris and Apollo 11 than “Piss Christ” and WPA.
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