The Atheist's songbook

Call the NSPCC:

Give Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life.
The author of The God Delusion is helping to launch Britain’s first summer retreat for non-believers, where children will have lessons in evolution and sing along to John Lennon’s Imagine.

That'll have them flocking to the seminaries.
This raises the question: why are there so few atheistic (as distinct from Satanic) songs?
Dar Williams' After All, Josh Ritter's Thin Blue Flame and Jolie Holland's Periphery Waltz (from the greatest album ever made)  are great songs - infintely more so than Imagine -  but not exactly singalongs, though Mark Erelli's Kingdom Come, from the Darwin song project, is catchier.
But there aren't that many more, are there? The Atheist's Songbook is a thin thing compared to God's.
What am I missing?

Comments

[Bull Fax]

The answer to your question is simple, I think. Music is a powerful propaganda medium. Western societies, who for the most part of the last century have stuck to Christian values and some sort of symbiosis with the church and simply did not promote/suppress atheist music.

The revolution of the 60th changed this somewhat. John Lennon's music however is probably the most singable and melodic of the bunch; not to mention his poetic genius.

It's similar to the way you could not compile a modern songs Christian song book in Eastern Europe up to the fall of the wall. The atheist regimes there of course lacked the subtlety of the Western democracy in shaping public views.

An analogue of Lennon's image in the East would be this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj3pd-a-js8&feature=related

[marksany]

Most religious songs are songs to be sung to god, in order to worship him.

Atheists don't have the same imperative.

[Trooper Thompson]

Atheist song book? Sounds like a Monty Python sketch. Obviously the atheists, with their barren, materialist mentality, lack inspiration.

[Wesley Allison]

There's not much point to singing about not believing something. There are plenty of great songs about believing in something other than God-- life, freedom, love (songs that atheists would be happy to sing), but they aren't inherently atheistic.

[Payday Cash Advance]

Song on not believing? What's this. Great songs will come out if you can believe on something. Believe yourself atleast

[reason]

Always look on the bright side of death?

And what is wrong with Imagine?

[reason]

All things dull and ugly? Monty Python has heeps of them if you think about it.

[reason]

A quick google and i find this:
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Count5/agnostic_atheist_antitheist_anthems__a_non_believers_songbook

[reason]

Tom Lehrer?
(The vatican rag?)

(Most of these are paradies of course - but what is wrong with that?)

[Nick Cohen]

George Gershwin - It Ain't Necessarily So Lyrics
Album: Porgy & Bess-Hlts

It ain't necessarily so
It ain't necessarily so
The t'ings dat yo' li'ble
To read in de Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.

Li'l David was small, but oh my !
Li'l David was small, but oh my !
He fought Big Goliath
Who lay down an' dieth !
Li'l David was small, but oh my !

Wadoo, zim bam boddle-oo,
Hoodle ah da wa da,
Scatty wah !
Oh yeah !...

Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale,
Fo' he made his home in
Dat fish's abdomen.
Oh Jonah, he lived in de whale.

Li'l Moses was found in a stream.
Li'l Moses was found in a stream.
He floated on water
Till Ol' Pharaoh's daughter,
She fished him, she said, from dat stream.

Wadoo ...

Well, it ain't necessarily so
Well, it ain't necessarily so
Dey tells all you chillun
De debble's a villun,
But it ain't necessarily so !

To get into Hebben
Don' snap for a sebben !
Live clean ! Don' have no fault !
Oh, I takes dat gospel
Whenever it's pos'ble,
But wid a grain of salt.

Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,
Methus'lah lived nine hundred years,
But who calls dat livin'
When no gal will give in
To no man what's nine hundred years ?

I'm preachin' dis sermon to show,
It ain't nece-ain't nece
Ain't nece-ain't nece
Ain't necessarily ... so !

[ortega]

99,99% of the songs you hear today are atheistics, just as almost all the songs some centuries ago were religious, no matter their lyrics.

[Brigada Flores Magon]

Hey, 'barren materialist mentality', eh? Beats religious thought police gunning down young women in my book.

[Shuggy]

"And what is wrong with Imagine?"

Ah, but where to begin? I have a certain amount of sympathy for Mark Chapman...

[Shuggy]

Seriously - the answer is confidence. Blues, Soul and Rock and Roll form the basis of the music most of us listen to and all of these from their inception were essentially about rebellion against the church but not in the dessicated way Dawkins goes about it. It's not cerebral - it's about the pursuit and celebration of what is earthy and sensual. That this was irreligious in practice is something most didn't (quite literally) feel the need to make a song and dance about. You don't sing songs about what you don't believe - you sing them about what you want, or what you need, or what you've lost, or what you've got. Sex, in other words.

[ejh]

Joe Hill: The Preacher And The Slave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave#Lyrics_and_style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eaG1FQTrjs

[ejh]

More recently, Chumbawamba's lovely "Look No Strings".

[georges]

Oh - Abba!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jun/30/bjorn-ulvaeus-religion-schools?showallcomments=true

[Martin]

Anyone who has followed "Rab Hines's" obsessive Bruno dirt at Call It Anything has seen that "Hines's" sole purpose is to spoil the name of a well-known German trumpeter.

CIA is not about jazz. For "Hines", it's about terror, libel, and involving music lovers in his stalking activities. Anyone supporting "Hines" risks a visit from the authorities all-too-soon.

"Hines" is an unemployed, mentally ill person from New Jersey masquerading himself as a jazz fan. Though nobody knows his real name, his voice can be heard at Bruno's Alert Blog. Well-known is his IP address under which "Hines" spammed literally hundreds (!) of jazz blogs with pedophile comments.

For more, simply google "Rab Hines Alert Blog". It's the very first Google entry.

[rolex daytona]

And a lot of it reflects a switch from bank deposits to securities; foreigners “other investments” in the UK, http://www.watchgy.com/ mostly bank deposits, fell by £143.2bn in Q1. And of course there’s no guarantee such buying will continue.
http://www.watchgy.com/tag-heuer-c-24.html
http://www.watchgy.com/rolex-submariner-c-8.html