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U
upant
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“In the Garden of Eden”
ymmv
ymmv
U
upant
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U
upant
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last one tonight
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inocente
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A
ANV
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This is actually sad.
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Crusaderbear
Guest
God works in mysterious ways, if music gets through to someone in need, then so be it. It is not my place to judge, that is Gods, and Gods alone.
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AlNg
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Music is something beautiful and complex of course. But I don’t see how music would convince an atheist of the existence of a Supreme Being who knows all things? Some birds sing beautiful songs and it seems that music has undergone some sort of evolutionary process with its origin based on sounds and rhythms occurring in nature.God works in mysterious ways, if music gets through to someone in need, then so be it.
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Crusaderbear
Guest
I don’t think it was a question of converting atheists, it was something to remind yourself of God’s existence…
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Mike_from_NJ
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I mean the OP did use the word proof in the title, meaning that a non-Christian would look at it and have no choice but be convinced. I know IWantGod was probably at most semi-serious about it, but there are people out there who think the argument from Beauty is convincing.Crusaderbear
I don’t think it was a question of converting atheists, it was something to remind yourself of God’s existence…
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IWantGod
Guest
Its one of those things where you either get it or you don’t; its not really an argument or proof in the strict sense, but rather an experience that we take for granted and in looking for a metaphysical explanation for music coming to the realization that only something like God makes the best sense of that experience as opposed to metaphysical naturalism… Otherwise its just a brute fact that objectively meaningless sounds create meaning in our experience of those sounds. Music speaks to something unquantifiable. Music has meaning. Meaning transcends the physical. It points to life being more than just a meaningless mechanistic act. Music speaks to the soul. I would not expect to find the meaningful experience we call music in a world that is objectively meaningless.
Can music convince an atheist of God’s existence? To be honest i imagine that most atheists take the world of their experience for granted. They assume everything they experience is consistent with their disbelief in God or the supernatural. They are not compelled to make that kind of connection because they are not aware that anything is out of place. Things just are the way they are and music just so happens to be there for our pleasure and that’s that…
Can music convince an atheist of God’s existence? To be honest i imagine that most atheists take the world of their experience for granted. They assume everything they experience is consistent with their disbelief in God or the supernatural. They are not compelled to make that kind of connection because they are not aware that anything is out of place. Things just are the way they are and music just so happens to be there for our pleasure and that’s that…
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Crusaderbear
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You may be right, my brian just isn’t wired to think that way…
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IWantGod
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Richard Swinburne
A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, known for philosophical arguments about the existence of God, advocates a variation of the argument from beauty:
God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God’s existence. For, in this case, if we let k be ‘there is an orderly physical universe’, e be ‘there is a beautiful universe’, and h be ‘there is a God’, P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)… Few, however, would deny that our universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random, in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, The spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky, the water lapping against ‘the old eternal rocks’, and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates, contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works." [2]
A contemporary British philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne, known for philosophical arguments about the existence of God, advocates a variation of the argument from beauty:
God has reason to make a basically beautiful world, although also reason to leave some of the beauty or ugliness of the world within the power of creatures to determine; but he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve. Hence, if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. A priori, however, there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world. In consequence, if the world is beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God’s existence. For, in this case, if we let k be ‘there is an orderly physical universe’, e be ‘there is a beautiful universe’, and h be ‘there is a God’, P(e/h.k) will be greater than P(e/k)… Few, however, would deny that our universe (apart from its animal and human inhabitants, and aspects subject to their immediate control) has that beauty. Poets and painters and ordinary men down the centuries have long admired the beauty of the orderly procession of the heavenly bodies, the scattering of the galaxies through the heavens (in some ways random, in some ways orderly), and the rocks, sea, and wind interacting on earth, The spacious firmament on high, and all the blue ethereal sky, the water lapping against ‘the old eternal rocks’, and the plants of the jungle and of temperate climates, contrasting with the desert and the Arctic wastes. Who in his senses would deny that here is beauty in abundance? If we confine ourselves to the argument from the beauty of the inanimate and plant worlds, the argument surely works." [2]
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IWantGod
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How can a physical sequence of sounds be “sad”. Have you ever thought about that?
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ThinkingSapien
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+1You may be right, my brian just isn’t wired to think that way…
Can’t say that mine is either. While I appreciate music I can’t say that even when I was a Christian that did anything for me to further convince me of the existence of God.
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ThinkingSapien
Guest
It’s been suggested that this is largely the result of cultural conditioning; that the “cultural catalogue” of music that we’ve listened to and have in our memory has an influence on how we interpret other music emotionally. I can kind of see this, I know of people that associate “Toccata and Fugue in D-minor” with something being scary. Probably influenced by the music I listened to as a kid I don’t have that same association and rather enjoy that and many other songs in the minor keys. I know that when a sound track shifts to a minor key in a movie that this is usually to communicate a shift to a “negative” emotion. I probably know this because of the many movies I’ve seen before when bad things happen during a minor key soundtrack.How can a physical sequence of sounds be “sad”. Have you ever thought about that?
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AlNg
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Mathematics and music are related.Music speaks to something unquantifiable
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AlNg
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There is beauty in the world, but there is also ugliness and evil.there are people out there who think the argument from Beauty is convincing.
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Mike_from_NJ
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IWantGod, I think your argument in post 11 assumes a few incorrect things. First, you "imagined’ that atheists take our experiences for granted, that we don’t dig deep into what happens to us and what we feel. You’ve talked to enough atheists on CAF that you should know that is not the case. Second, you’re assuming that one’s reaction to hearing music can only be explained by the existence of a soul. We know that certain portions of the brain – a physical organ – can come from music (among other things). An explanation without a soul is right there.
Plus we react to all sorts of different stimuli and not all in the same way. A year ago I stepped into a restroom in my office building that was recently cleaned. I had an adverse reaction to the smell, but it took me all night to explain it. Then it clicked. It was the brand of cleaning solution they changed to. It was the same kind I had used liberally 20+ years earlier when I worked at a game stand on a Jersey Shore boardwalk. It doesn’t have to be a memory, but our brains can react strongly to things we see, hear, smell, and touch. Music is no exception in the fact that it doesn’t suggest a supernatural explanation.
Plus we react to all sorts of different stimuli and not all in the same way. A year ago I stepped into a restroom in my office building that was recently cleaned. I had an adverse reaction to the smell, but it took me all night to explain it. Then it clicked. It was the brand of cleaning solution they changed to. It was the same kind I had used liberally 20+ years earlier when I worked at a game stand on a Jersey Shore boardwalk. It doesn’t have to be a memory, but our brains can react strongly to things we see, hear, smell, and touch. Music is no exception in the fact that it doesn’t suggest a supernatural explanation.
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IWantGod
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So the experience of the kind of meaning that we find in music and the experience of beauty is consistent with metaphysical naturalism in your opinion?IWantGod, I think your argument in post 11 assumes a few incorrect things. First, you "imagined’ that atheists take our experiences for granted, that we don’t dig deep into what happens to us and what we feel. You’ve talked to enough atheists on CAF that you should know that is not the case. Second, you’re assuming that one’s reaction to hearing music can only be explained by the existence of a soul. We know that certain portions of the brain – a physical organ – can come from music (among other things). An explanation without a soul is right there.
Plus we react to all sorts of different stimuli and not all in the same way. A year ago I stepped into a restroom in my office building that was recently cleaned. I had an adverse reaction to the smell, but it took me all night to explain it. Then it clicked. It was the brand of cleaning solution they changed to. It was the same kind I had used liberally 20+ years earlier when I worked at a game stand on a Jersey Shore boardwalk. It doesn’t have to be a memory, but our brains can react strongly to things we see, hear, smell, and touch. Music is no exception in the fact that it doesn’t suggest a supernatural explanation.
You see, it really doesn’t matter if the meaning that we discover in music is subjective. Its the fact that we experience any meaning at all that causes me to question a fundamentally materialistic view of reality. If anything the idea that these things are subjective and do not have an objective object causes me to think that what we discover and experience in the medium of sounds points to something that cannot be physically quantified in principle. Something more is involved than simply a process or hearing something. You can quantify the processes involved in hearing sounds, but you cannot quantify and give a physical embodiment to the emotional meaning that we discover through the medium of sounds.
I also challenge you to find anyone that doesn’t find Adagio for strings emotionally sad. It would be quite odd if someone found it to be a happy song, in fact i would think they were lying or had a brain defect. I don’t think its true that there is no objectivity involved in the experience of music. We are not just hearing sounds and inventing meaning for them.
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