Arcade Fire and Atheists
This post is my attempt to up the pace around here. I’d like to write something every day but it turns out I’m not interesting enough.
I saw Arcade Fire on a re-run of SNL tonight. Hughes has raved about this band. I don’t get it.
A new Newsweek poll says that only 3% of Americans identify themselves as atheists. Only?!? They said “Just 3 percent of the public self-identifies as atheist, suggesting that the term may carry some stigma.” Wha? Maybe only 3% of people polled said they were atheists because only 3% of them were atheists. Do they honestly think that the poll was skewed by stigmas when 82% of people said they were Christians? I would argue that being an atheist carries much less of a stigma than being a Christian.
I don’t get the Arcade Fire either. Everyone has been talking about them for over a year now. I’d consider their stuff mediocre at best.
That being said, I’m not sure if you knew this or not Drew, but I am indeed an atheist and I’d have to respectfully disagree with you about being a Christian carrying a worse stigma than being an atheist. I think the fact that if 82% of the country identifies themselves as being Christian speaks pretty loudly itself. The 3% of people that are actually willing to say that they are atheists are in a drastic minority.
Having the gonads to actually say that you are an atheist in a public setting takes a strong conviction of your beliefs. By doing that you’re essentially saying that you refuse to believe what the other 98% of the world believes. Sort of like being the first guy to say “the world is round” or “the earth revolves around the sun” when everyone else believes the opposite to be true. A couple hundred years ago, you would have been beheaded or burned at the stake for not being a believer. To this day, some people still look at me like I’ve got three heads when I tell them that I’m an atheist.
I can see your point about how being a Christian may carry a bad stigma, like for instance how some people may lump all Christians into the “far right wing, evangelical, literal believers of the old testament” category. But intelligent folk (even us atheists) know that there are thousands of different types of Christians out there, and the vast majority of them have a grasp on sanity, and rational thoughts, just with a belief in Jesus and his teachings.
There’s only one type of atheist however. I have a lot of friends that are “not religious” but don’t intentionally don’t call themselves atheists. They refer to themselves as either “not religious”, “agnostic”, “secular humanist”, “non-theists”, “freethinkers”, etc, etc. All those terms are essentially just euphemisms for atheism. There are minor differences in the exact definitions but they all generally mean the absence of believe in a specific god or gods. I think that’s a pretty good example of what the article was eluding to. At times, I even refer to myself as agnostic, just because I think it’s arrogant to say that there is no possible way that a god could exist.
How can you say there’s no God after seeing the Cardinals win the World Series last year?
That was a joke.
I guess I’ve never thought of atheism as carrying a stigma, but I do see your point. I guess I’m most accustomed to seeing atheists speaking on C-SPAN while promoting their latest best seller. So I thought that the stigma of atheists being well-educated, well-read, and probably smarter than the rest of us was maybe not so bad. Especially when contrasted with the televangelist nut job asking you to reach out and touch the TV screen to receive your healing, all while asking you to send your money so he have can have another new car in the driveway while you ride the bus.
There’s no wonder people are so bitter towards Christians. Can you blame them?
I can most definitely sympathize with you when you say that some of your friends look at you like you’ve got three heads. It’s not fun. And you’re right, it does take guts to stand up in public and stand by your beliefs.
This all reminds me of a quote by the great Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. He said he could never be an atheist because it requires too much faith to believe that there is no God.
Wow! I didn’t actually read that Newsweek article until just now. There are some fairly alarming statistics on there (in my humble opinion of course). Like the following…
Really?!? Even the past two Popes believed that evolution was more than just a theory and that it could be congruent with “God’s master plan”. More quotes:
well, i am not an atheist, and not necessarily a christian…but i believe everyone should believe in something…and those who publicly have no issues or worries saying WHAT they believe and WHY….i respect, totally.
as far as the arcade fire goes…i have to say…not in love with their new stuff. i really wanted to be. i felt that there was ALOT of really interesting stuff on their first album. in truth, it could have been that i fell in love with that particular record, i do LOVE the sound of their first record..really ambient, sounds like real people playing real instruments in a room. not alot of studio trickery. the new album just has not done it for me…plus one of the song has a riff and chord progression that sounds like “Dakside” from John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown band.
i gotta go with ya on the arcade fire…at least the new stuff…i dont get it either. i would say my new favorite is probably L.E.O. http://www.myspace.com/bleuleo i assume you have heard of them already drew…but if not.. andy sturmer is in the band !!
jch
4 years later… Arcade fire rocks and did then too