Tell me, what makes this wrong.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is Michelangelo’s Pietà.



It’s one of my favourite sculptures. Even apart from the subject matter and the fact that Michelangelo was a devout (one might almost say ‘fanatical’) Catholic, when I look at it, I don’t see Jesus and Mary - I see a grieving mother cradling the body of her brutally murdered son. It’s terribly sad and profoundly moving.

Boru

Idk if it was so rosy as you say. It also seems that Catholicsm restricted Michelangelo and caused him to make some ugly art. Like when he painted or chiseled nude female body, he would basically make a man with tits that looked more like tumors:

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As if he restricted himself because he thought that the realistic (attractive) nude female body had some negative or sinful connotations.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘as rosy as you say’. I admire this particular sculpture irrespective of the Church or Michelangelo, nothing beyond that.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

To be clear, religion is not why we have art - the relationship appears to be the other way around. Michaelangelo didn't make christian art, he made pagan art suitable for christians, and it stands to reason he'd have made art no matter what other variables we push around.

When I look at that sculpture I realize that even though he would have been familiar with how to add emotion to the faces he fucked the pooch there for christian reasons. Would've looked too much like the heathen shit he modeled his christian shit after. Missed opportunities.

[Alan V]

Personally, I don't much care for religious art of any kind. It usually strikes me as too gaudy or overly-dramatized. Same for political art -- kings, battles, politicians, and so on.

I usually like the more everyday pieces which were created through the same times though -- portraits, landscapes, etc.

[Rizen]

There is no direct, observable, or testable evidence that proves the existence of a god or creator.

Despite centuries of searching, we have not found verifiable signs of divine intervention or supernatural activity that cannot be explained by natural phenomena.

Naturalistic explanations have been successful in explaining the origins and workings of the universe, life, and consciousness.

Evolution by natural selection explains the diversity of life without invoking a designer. Cosmology offers models of universe formation without requiring a creator.

God of the Gaps. Invoking God to explain the unknown has historically been replaced by natural explanations as knowledge progresses.

Some theists calling the universe "God" is unnecessary and risks mystification. We should embrace the clarity that the universe is awe-inspiring enough without inventing a divine label for it. Reason and evidence, not philosophy alone, guide us to truth.

Religion and Spiritualism must be forgotten and not allowed to flourish in place of objective reality.

Nothing is wrong until you got to the bolded bit.

Not only have religious/spiritual people made tremendous and beneficial scientific advances, in many cases they have done so because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them. Science aside, breathtakingly moving achievements in painting, sculpture, literature, and music have often been the products of religious beliefs. 

Boru

This is a double edged sword. People have been massacred for centuries because of religion. Religion is the antithesis of critical thought. It's because of religion that we have a convicted rapist, felon and terrorist for president. Teaching people to believe something regardless of facts and evidence is not only stupid; it's dangerous.

[AFTT47]

Nothing is wrong until you got to the bolded bit.

Not only have religious/spiritual people made tremendous and beneficial scientific advances, in many cases they have done so because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them. Science aside, breathtakingly moving achievements in painting, sculpture, literature, and music have often been the products of religious beliefs. 

Boru

This is a double edged sword. People have been massacred for centuries because of religion. Religion is the antithesis of critical thought. It's because of religion that we have a convicted rapist, felon and terrorist for president. Teaching people to believe something regardless of facts and evidence is not only stupid; it's dangerous.

I have little argument with that. However, I don't believe any kind of thinking (no matter how beneficial) can be coerced. It can be taught and advocated for but shoving it down another's throat will always be met with pushback. In fact, I would argue that that is the reason we got Trump. The election of Barrack Obama as President was a great thing but it resulted in a lot of pushback from the cockroaches of society who weren't ready for a black President.

I'm not going to pretend to have the answers to this problem. I'm certainly not sorry we elected a black President. I am pretty certain though that ramming thoughts down people's mental throats has real consequences.

Winning people over by convincing arguments is tedious and requires a lot of patience. But it's a real win when you manage to do it. Winning people over through force is no victory. They may comply in the short term but they will push back in the long term - sometimes explosively. This is especially true in a culture like the USA where the individual is highly resentful of being strong-armed.

[Thumpalumpacus]

To be clear, religion is not why we have art - the relationship appears to be the other way around.  Michaelangelo didn't make christian art, he made pagan art suitable for christians, and it stands to reason he'd have made art no matter what other variables we push around.

When I look at that sculpture I realize that even though he would have been familiar with how to add emotion to the faces he fucked the pooch there for christian reasons.  Would've looked too much like the heathen shit he modeled his christian shit after.  Missed opportunities.

Art and religion both speak to base human emotions. It stands to reason that both should address similar situations, and also that each should influence the other. There's overlap in the Venn diagram there. Inserting a divide strikes me as terribly artificial.

I'm not religious and my art is not influenced by religion, but the sources of both sensibilities is an inchoate interaction between the individual and the wider world. It's entirely possible that artists the world over may try to speak to the secular, the divine, and/or the numinous, without even trying to cross those boundaries.

[The Grand Nudger]

 In fact, I would argue that that is the reason we got Trump. 

IDK if it's accurate to blame our current situation on some liberal utopia that never was.  No one was shoving anything down their throats.  Amusingly enough, they popularized that phrase in politics as a way to villainize their political opposition and jab at gay people.  They lost their shit when they could no longer shove their disgusting peeners down everyone else's throats. That's their existential dilemma. That's their great fucking replacement.

They're still doing it - now they say "trans for everyone" and no one asks president grandpa what the fuck he thinks he means by that. Spins absurd tales about schools taking little boys and returning girls. That's about as close to "they're chopping off the dicks" as it can get..and, ofc, as before, it's not happening, but they'll blame their own feckless unamerican perfidy on anything and anyone other than themselves.

[Belacqua]

Religion is the antithesis of critical thought.

Does this statement apply to all religious people of all time everywhere? Or are you thinking of some specific subset. 

Because obviously there have been many brilliant religious people who have written critically and well, about ideas within their own religion, as well as about materialist consumerist society.

For example, Kitaro Nishida believed in God, and wrote perceptive, deeply learned books about how the concepts of Zen Buddhism illuminate certain concepts from Heidegger's work. Do you feel that Nishida's religion made him unable to practice critical thought?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nothing is wrong until you got to the bolded bit.

Not only have religious/spiritual people made tremendous and beneficial scientific advances, in many cases they have done so because of their religious beliefs, not in spite of them. Science aside, breathtakingly moving achievements in painting, sculpture, literature, and music have often been the products of religious beliefs. 

Boru

This is a double edged sword. People have been massacred for centuries because of religion. Religion is the antithesis of critical thought. It's because of religion that we have a convicted rapist, felon and terrorist for president. Teaching people to believe something regardless of facts and evidence is not only stupid; it's dangerous.

It can be dangerous, no argument there. I'm just making the point that religious individuals can and do make valuable contributions to the arts and sciences. The implied point is that forcing people to abandon religion, per the OP, is a tremendously bad idea. It smacks of a secular Inquisition.

Boru

[arewethereyet]

I am not so much a fan of art that is religious in nature, but I can appreciate the talent. This goes for sculptures, paintings, music, etc.