Am I a hypocrite?

[cynatnite]

I love Christmas music...even the religious stuff. Some of it is just beautiful and I find myself singing a long with it. I even yanked out the nativity this year because I thought it would look great on the stone fireplace...and it does when I added all the other christmassy stuff. Damn, I'm in a holiday mood this year.

Starting to feel like I'm a bad atheist. LOL

[enlightenment]

1. Christmas music? Why not? Some of it is really pretty music.

I wonder about the creche - but hey, it's your house and your life.

I watch "White Christmas" and get all sniffly every single time.

:)

[Deep13]

2. Inconsistency =/= hypocrisy.

A hypocrite is someone who does not live by the rules or standards that he insists others follow. So unless you are insisting that others eschew Christmas music and decorations, you are not being hypocritical.

[immoderate]

3. I invoke the "music and arts exemption."

Since art is fantasy, religion is fair game. You can even listen to the Ring Cycle though it's about gods. Tip: Bobby Timmons recording of "We Three Kings" is one of the best jazz cuts ever. :)

--imm

[salvorhardin]

4. I love all that Christmas-y stuff

And in general, mass-consumerism aside, I really like the message of the season (the peace thang, not the birth of the demigod as a result of the magic sky-daddy rape thang).

I also really like Maneko Nekis (Fortune Kitties) and Ganeshs. I own one of each.

There's a cultural aspect to religion in addition to the belief and dogma. Just because you like some of the cultural aspects of Christianity doesn't mean you're a hypocrite for not believing or following the dogma. A great many non-religious Jews have been comfortable with the cultural aspects of Judaism for a long time and IMHO it's high time us atheists who come from Christian backgrounds get comfortable with our cultural inheritance. Part of that is acknowledging it. So good for you.

BTW: Same goes for the pseudoscience and the paranormal. Just because you love ghost stories or find crystals attractive doesn't make you a hypocrite for thinking ghosts and new-agey crystal energy are bunk.

[Iggo]

5. I'm an atheist of the ex-catholic persuasion.

A properly sung Ave Maria absolutely fucking sends me, though.

I didn't stop liking pretty music just because I stopped believing in santa claus (All three).

It's music. It's intrinsically beautiful. You're not a bad atheist.:hi:

[onager]

7. Psst! "Ave Maria" was written by an atheist.

Or at least a strong agnostic - Giuseppe Verdi. When he was commissioned to write his other big hit, the Requiem, there was a huge outcry about a non-believer being paid to write religious music.

IIRC, Verdi's wife thought he was an agnostic, but some of his other friends were convinced he was a diehard atheist. The subject makes for a fascinating Google.

Too bad Bill Donahue wasn't around at the time...:rofl:

[Iggo]

8. No shit?

Wow!

[Jokerman]

6. Music is the closest I've ever come to a "spiritual experience".

Listening to a well written and performed piece of music can sometimes produce a sense of euphoria in me that I'm guessing many people would interpret as having "touched their soul". I've had this feeling listening to many different kinds of music including some types of gospel.

Truth is, had I grown up in the type of church where music was integral to the service, it is entirely possible that I may have interpreted my love of music to be spiritual. Fortunately, I give credit to composers and musicians for the powerful emotions their music invokes instead of some non-existent being.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

9. Well, I am awed by the Pyramids

and I don't believe in Osiris.

[onager]

13. Yep. Ditto for Notre Dame Cathedral

Though it had a nice secular touch inside - some large dioramas showing how Notre Dame was built. The scaffolding, workers hauling and cutting stone, etc. etc.

With my Fundamentalist Atheist mindset, I liked to think this was sending a great visual message: "This place was built with the imagination, sweat and blood of ordinary human beings. So don't be thinking any of that 'Goddidit' crap."

I read somewhere once that, in the Middle Ages, many Europeans believed the old Roman roads had been built by Gawd so they could carry their produce to market. How the roads were really built had been almost wiped completely from the collective human memory bank. A weird and sobering thing to think about...

[Warpy]

10. Great music has been sponsored by some pretty bad people

over the years. I'm thinking specifically of the great cathedral music that came out of Europe over the years. One of my favorite recordings (I've worn out 3 in vinyl and I'm on my second CD) is of Gabrielli recorded in the Cathedral of San Marcos, with multiple choruses and period instruments.

So no, you're not a bad atheist. You're recognizing the talent of the composers if not the lyricists, along with remembering the feeling you had as a kid of impending loot delivered because you'd been so good all year (ha!).

It's like recognizing the bible as literature or watching "The Da Vinci Code" as a taut thriller. It's perfectly possible to appreciate the artistry while rejecting the premise.

[FiveGoodMen]

11. "I've worn out 3 in vinyl and I'm on my second CD"

If you wore out the first CD, that's just amazing.

I have one of rainfall that's been playing continuously for years (as white noise background).

[Warpy]

12. I had a spectacular failure in a CD player

that involved the internal mechanism and scratched the original CD beyond the ability of Turtle Wax to repair.

[redsoxrudy]

14. absolutely no!

In fact the religious carols are the best ones. Beautiful music is beautiful music, no matter if the inspiration is Jesus, Rudolph or Santa Claus. I also think there is a psychological connection between the music and all my wonderful memories of childhood Christmas's.

[Odin2005]

15. Nope. I find Gregorian Chant music hauntingly beautiful.

[pink-o]

16. The first time I ever visited the Vatican, I was almost crying at its sheer beauty.

I also love Victorian Xmas carols, which I used to sing with a chorus, and I even love the commercialistic store windows and urban-type Xmas ambience. And we also know Xmas has nothing to do with the story of Jesus, it was an assimilation not unlike the Borg to get more converts.

So the message is so far removed from anything religious, I figure it's fair game for us Agnostics and Atheists to cherry-pick the stuff we enjoy.

And speaking of Europeans, why is it that they're mostly Christian, yet they don't have to proclaim it from every rooftop? Even those same Italians that walk past St Peter's every day aren't repressed and guilty about their lives. Au Contraire, they live to the fullest and indulge in all pleasures and passions.

Americans are just stupid throwbacks to the stupid Puritans that were kicked out of England cuz even the Brits didn't want them!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

17. Most of the good church music is in Latin and was written for Catholics.

The stuff they do in concert halls. Berlioz Requiem, Mozart Requiem, Allegri Miserere, Panis Angelicus.



Protestant dirges, like Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, A Mighty Fortress, and such, they can keep.

[ZombieHorde]

18. Do you tell others not to listen to Xmas music?

If not, I would not worry about it.

[elleng]

19. Its our CULTURE!

[onager]

20. Late entry as usual. But one of my favorite...

...movies is Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. Most of you have probably seen it, and if you haven't, I would not want to ruin it by going into detail.

It's about angels. Which is like describing the Mona Lisa as "a picture of a woman smiling."

Obviously these are not Creationist angels. They stand on a concrete floodbank in Berlin and muse about watching glaciers cut the riverbed, many eons ago.

And you won't ever see a more "humanist" story on the screen, IMO.

You may have seen the Hollywood remake, City of Angels. Which naturally turned Wenders' dark, brooding, beautfiful movie, where the city of Berlin is one of the characters, into a boring rom-com set in Los Angeles.

Not helped by the fact that C.O.A. starred two of the most annoying assholes in cinema history, Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan.

Somebody should tell Cage to give it up on remakes. I make it 3-for-3 turkeys at this point: City of Angels, Gone In 60 Seconds, and...what in the non-existent hell was he thinking? The Wicker Man. And I'm probably forgetting a few.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. Ghost Rider. Remake of a comic, but still. -nt

[immoderate]

22. There is an art exemption.

Art is fantasy. Religion is fantasy. There's a connection there somewhere. :shrug:

--imm

[SkyDaddy7]

23. Hell NO! You are not a hypocrite!

Participating in human traditions is fun and that is why humans have traditions...I like some gospel music, religious blue grass and Xmas music but I don't believe in the mythologies that go with it.

I do believe in Santa! LOL!


I think the Pagans should get more credit than they do for our holidays...The Christians stole the holidays just like they have stolen land and how they steal young minds!

[pink-o]

24. Hey, yeah! The war on Soltice! n/t