Can I still be an atheist and appreciate gospel music,

religious architecture, and religious paintings?

Absolutely. I mean,

when you think of all the bad, bad things religion has done, and the sort of things we critique online, and

through this YouTube channel,

we talk about all the bad things religion has done,

but when it comes to their expressions of arts and music and architecture,

those are some of the high points of religion. That's some of the good stuff they've done. And I think, "Absolutely, we can appreciate what it is."

And we can appreciate it as art,

and music, and--

You don't have to necessarily

like why it was created. You don't have to

buy into the purpose for why it was created,

but you can look at a painting and say, "Wow! That's beautiful"

without saying, "I now believe in Christ."

You could still appreciate it for what it's worth.

You know, it's as much history as anything else.

And, you know, hundreds of years ago, if you were an artist,

the people who paid your wages, who commissioned your work, were the religious leaders of their time.

So, of course that's what they did. That's how they expressed their talents.

And so, to me, the fact that where their money was coming from, the subject matter of their paintings or music...

Irrelevant.

You can sing it, you can like it.

You know, I was in choir in high school. I remember we sang some religious

old ancient, like, religious music, too. And it was beautiful music.

It didn't matter what-- that it was religious cuz this wasn't about preaching.

It was about appreciating the sort of thing that--

that they composed way back when. So, yeah, you can appreciate this stuff. In fact, if you ever go to Europe, if you ever go overseas,

a lot of the big things that you've got to see, a lot of the big tourist attractions

are some of those ancient churches. If you ever go to India,

one of the things you have to see as you're traveling across that--

that subcontinent are all the beautiful temples that were built hundreds, thousands of years ago. If you ever go to Greece,

you know, you can appreciate the Parthenon that was built as, you know, an homage to the goddess Athena,

even if you don't buy into Greek mythology.

You can appreciate the works for what they are, and how long they've been around,

and the sort of history that's taken place there,

without having to be religious to appreciate them.

My name is Hemant Mehta and I write for FriendlyAtheist.com

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