Steve Martin joins the Steep Canyon Rangers at the New Orleans Jazz Festival to perform a little ditty that makes a pretty interesting point, actually:
Well, there was John Lennon's Imagine, but after that ....
Atheism simply doesn't inspire art, at least not sublime art. This is not to say that atheists as individual artists haven't produced great works of art, literature, or music, of course, but rather that the art that they have churned out has not, except in a relatively few instances been inspired by their atheistic worldview. Alexander Pope's Essay on Man comes to mind as an exception, perhaps, but little else does. If I remember correctly, Richard Dawkins laments the inability of the atheism to inspire great art in his book The God Delusion.
If it's true that atheism is such a dry well of inspiration we might take a moment or two to reflect on the reasons why that should be so. Perhaps it's because, followed to its logical conclusions, atheism offers no hope, no good, and no meaning to anything. It's a gateway to despair, and despair has never been an impetus for art that lifts the spirit and soars.
HT: First Thoughts
RLC
