{"id":12921,"date":"2017-08-14T16:55:59","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T20:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/?p=12921"},"modified":"2017-08-14T16:55:59","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T20:55:59","slug":"dialogue-w-friendly-atheist-3-music-longing-mysticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/2017\/08\/dialogue-w-friendly-atheist-3-music-longing-mysticism.html","title":{"rendered":"Dialogue w Friendly Atheist #3: Music, Longing, & Mysticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"WagnerRing2\"<\/p>\n

Br\u00fcnnhilde<\/em> (1910), by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons<\/a>]<\/p>\n

*****<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is from a private correspondence with a very friendly and fair-minded atheist, who goes by the nickname,\u00a0\u201cComrade Carrot-Blog Vegetarian.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0He has agreed that it would be made public. Unlike the vast majority of\u00a0atheists I have met online, he is actually curious about my spiritual journey and Christian viewpoint, minus any hint of condescension or the usual atheist views of Christians (that we are ignorant, anti-science, given to following a myth-like God akin to leprechauns, irrational, pretentious and bigoted, etc.). Bottom line: it\u2019s great discussion within a friendship that has constructive value. This is what it\u2019s about: simply talking and listening to each other. It\u2019s entirely possible: at least with the right kind of person on both sides. His words will be indented.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

See previous\u00a0installments:<\/p>\n

Dialogue with a Friendly Atheist #1: My Pagan \/ Occultic Period<\/a>\u00a0(8-3-17)<\/p>\n

Dialogue w Friendly Atheist #2: Music, Longing, & Mysticism <\/a>(8-7-17)<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

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I actually have read The Everlasting Man<\/em>, though I was about 20 at the time, and probably read it like a 20 year old. I had a Chesterton\/Wodehouse phase around then. I owe it to myself to read it again. I quite like Chesterton as a writer \u2014 he\u2019s\u00a0a wizard with the English language and I\u2019ll be lucky to die half as fluent as he was.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Very cool. You discovered him a lot earlier than I did.<\/div>\n
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Regarding your first set of questions,\u00a0I do want to first highlight the distinction (at least here, where it\u2019s relevant) between the aesthetic experience and the experience of\u00a0sehnsucht<\/em>, the former being a form of transcendent\u00a0experience, and the latter\u00a0being the torturous notion that one should<\/em>\u00a0be having such an experience, but isn\u2019t.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Good and interesting distinction, but there is a big overlap or common ground there, it seems to me.<\/div>\n
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Most of my aesthetic experiences are indeed triggered by the class of things you\u00a0mention. Music is the most common (mostly because of relative amount of time I\u2019m exposed to it), but nature is\u00a0definitely\u00a0among them. I had quite a profound experience at the top of Stone Mountain\u00a0in Georgia, gazing into the distance as a few faint skyscrapers from Atlanta and Buckhead rose out of an endless sea of forest. I recall I was the only one there (wife included) whose experience\u00a0wasn\u2019t being mediated by the black mirror of a cell phone screen. Dozens of people going to such effort to capture experiences that they aren\u2019t actually having! We as a people really ought to be\u00a0having a conversation about that.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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I often think on vacation about that very distinction: enjoying the thing itself, as opposed to capturing it in a photograph. I love nature photographs (don\u2019t get me wrong), but I also want to fully experience the thing as it is happening. We just drove to Alaska, so I had ample opportunity. I enjoyed the scenery; wife and daughter took pictures. But I want to see the pictures, too. I think it\u2019s a \u201cboth\/and\u201d scenario.<\/div>\n
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Stories are another frequent source. I once played an indie game called To The Moon<\/em>, which is a game about coming to terms with the past. While it would take too long to set up the context of\u00a0this event in the story, there\u2019s a point in the game when you find yourself watching, helplessly, as a man\u2019s memories are systematically altered to erase every trace of his meeting and falling in\u00a0love with his formerly terminal but now departed wife\u2026under the assumption that he would prefer to die having never\u00a0known her, than to die having known her, suffered with her, and lost her. The\u00a0aesthetic experience of despair is something one doesn\u2019t exactly come across very often.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It\u2019s always better to have loved. I follow the philosophy that is the opposite of the one being critiqued in the Simon and Garfunkel song,\u00a0I am a Rock<\/i>. We just watched a film last night (Collateral Beauty<\/i>), whose title reflects something like this. I won\u2019t give it away, in case you haven\u2019t seen it. It\u2019s an excellent movie about grief and overcoming it. We watched\u00a0Arrival\u00a0<\/i>before that, which also had fascinating elements somewhat of this nature.<\/div>\n
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I\u2019m not sure that I have a precise explanation for what underwrites the experience on an atheistic view, though I think I have a sense of the experience itself. Thats not because there aren\u2019t\u00a0several good ones, or that I\u2019m unfamiliar with them, but because I\u2019m not sure which ones I find most convincing. I\u2019ll get to that topic in a moment.<\/div>\n
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The general \u201cformula\u201d for these higher-order experiences seems to be that they are constituted of a network of more mundane experiences which contrast (but ultimately resolve) each\u00a0other, such\u00a0that the properties of the network as a whole are qualitatively different than the properties of any of its parts. In this sense, it\u2019s something more like an experience of an experience.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Self-consciously analyzing one\u2019s own experience . . .<\/div>\n
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As an\u00a0aside, that\u2019s generally the reason that analytical scrutiny of the experience, as we\u2019re having it, quickly robs us of the experience. By focusing too intently on the properties of any component of\u00a0the network, we cause it to appear unbalanced and unresolved (when in fact it is\u00a0neither).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Well, that\u2019s true too!<\/div>\n
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The wandering mind experiences pure joy, but then it says \u201clook, it\u2019s me, experiencing joy\u201d, and then\u00a0takes stock of the reasons for which joy has\u00a0occurred, and considers any possible defeaters to the notion. All of a sudden, the joy is gone.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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And in the Christian view, of course there is the diabolical counter-force, that works against our feeling joy or happiness for too long of a time. Devil or no, existing cynicism usually takes care of that by itself.<\/div>\n
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Presented with such a network of ostensibly contrasting\u00a0experiences, our attention is arrested and we\u2019re put into a state of deep reflection, detached from the self, as if confronted with some intractable moral dilemma that threatens to uproot our\u00a0entire understanding of the world. For reasons I mentioned in my previous letter, this puts us directly into dialogue with the emotions or ideas contained in those experiences. The tension of this\u00a0contrast is immediately brought to resolution, which brings us a certain sense of emotional and intellectual relief, and then immediately the resolution yields again to tension, brought on by the\u00a0contrast. This push\/pull induces a sort of euphoria which accompanies the intense emotional reflection. The end result is an experience that is\u00a0conventionally\u00a0pleasing, and profound, and then\u00a0intellectually pleasing, because it is profound.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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You have clearly thought about these issues in great depth. I am really enjoying your analysis. I can\u2019t reply all that much to a lot of this, since I haven\u2019t reflected upon these issues in anywhere near the depth that you have. So I\u2019m mostly sitting here being the curious student! If we\u2019re strictly talking about aesthetics, I have studied that topic very little, if at all (but have always wanted to). I think the closest would have been a Humanities class in college.<\/div>\n
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Back to what underwrites these experiences, the central debate is whether the crucial or defining aesthetic properties are properties of the experience itself, or properties of the object that\u00a0prompts\u00a0the experience. Are they grounded in the experience, or grounded in the object? If I were to play what I think to be the best hand, I would say that the crucial<\/em>\u00a0properties are in the\u00a0object, but that our experience of the aesthetic value of the object or event is not identical to the value of the aesthetic experience. In other words, in talking about an aesthetic event, the\u00a0\u201cfullness\u201d of the event can\u2019t be explained simply by appeal either to the object or the experience. So, when I have an aesthetic experience upon observing a magnificent work of art, I am<\/em>\u00a0appreciating aesthetic value contained in facts about the work of art. But the reason that experience<\/em>\u00a0is aesthetically valuable has as much to do with the meaning imparted by the experience, which\u00a0is, in part, a function of what the object represents, what emotions are being felt, the\u00a0significance\u00a0of those emotions to us as people, and the cultural and historical context that informs the way\u00a0we engage with the these concepts.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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That makes total sense to me.<\/div>\n
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My experiences with\u00a0sehnsucht<\/em>\u00a0(at least Lewis\u2019 conception by which it intrinsically points toward its own resolution) are about as fleeting as my experiences with hunger and thirst. I have them all the time, just not for long.\u00a0When I long for\u00a0transcendence, food, or water, I generally know where to find each, in all cases because I haven\u2019t become encumbered with the sorts of\u00a0conditions that would render them elusive.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When I was looking through the Arthur Rackham \u201cclassic\u201d illustrations connected with Wagner\u2019s\u00a0Ring<\/i>, for a photo for the second online installment of our dialogue<\/a>, I had an experience of\u00a0sehnsucht<\/i>. And simultaneously with the experience itself, I had a realization that I had experienced these feelings much more in the past than I do now (and was sad that this was the case, and wondered why it\u00a0was<\/i>). And I felt the intensity and wonder of the past experience: exactly what it\u00a0felt\u00a0<\/i>like at the time. All of this happened in just a few moments. Time seemed to be suspended (or transcended).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It was a sort of \u201cdouble-sehnsucht<\/i>\u201d with an additional dose of extra melancholy or regret or sense of loss. The glorious Rackham images took me back to the imagination-world and sound-world of Norse mythology and Wagner. It\u2019s some sort of very deep consciousness that these things represent (in my hypothesis). In my Christian worldview I naturally tend to think that perhaps it may be a foretaste of heaven. The myths and the music evoke something presently unattainable, yet nevertheless we feel it is attainable in some possible world. And we Christians say that that \u201cworld\u201d is heaven.<\/p>\n

I think it could also be a romanticizing of the past, or what we have been taught (through various filters) to\u00a0think<\/i>\u00a0of as the past: particularly the idealized Christian Middle Ages of the fairy tale world and the various myths.<\/p>\n

I suppose atheists could just as easily interpret it as visions of paradise or utopia or what-not, which are not likely attainable but at least thinkable of what conceivably\u00a0could<\/i>\u00a0be: admirable goals to strive for and at least partially achieve.<\/p>\n

As for a transcendence of time, there is an aspect in Catholic theology of the Mass being such a suspension. We believe that Jesus\u2019 death on the cross is literally made present. It\u2019s not a mere remembrance, or a \u201cre-sacrifice\u201d (as Protestant critics caricature it to be). It\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0the death on the cross\u00a0made present<\/i>\u00a0in a miraculous fashion. In some research I have done regarding the Jewish Passover, I learned that Judaism also has a similar concept regarding that feast. Jews feel that they are present at the original Passover (or that it is made present to them). Thus, there was much tie-in to Christian views of Jesus\u2019 death as the sacrificial Lamb (the Last Supper itself being a Passover meal).<\/p>\n

Talk about intense experiences! I was privileged to be able to visit the actual spot where Jesus was crucified, in Jerusalem, in 2014. That was an amazing feeling indeed, and\u00a0my wife captured it far better than I did<\/a>, in the way in which she both\u00a0experienced<\/i>\u00a0it and could\u00a0describe<\/i>\u00a0it. I thought it was the best part of my book that I wrote about our pilgrimage there. We sat in our hotel room in Jerusalem at night, and I \u201cinterviewed\u201d my wife and another woman who was with us, \u201cdrawing out\u201d of them the feelings, so I could get them down on paper. They both told me that I did this, so it\u2019s not just my description. They needed a bit of \u201cencouragement\u201d to be able to fully describe such deeply personal and moving experiences.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m rambling all over the place, but at least I came up with a few thoughts to offer. :-)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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I have, however, experienced entire sets of very obscure (and sometimes\u00a0slightly\u00a0perverse) examples of\u00a0sehnsucht\u00a0that don\u2019t, at least ostensibly, conform to Lewis\u2019 conception. I could write a book\u2019s\u00a0worth of these. When I was in my late teens, I observed my father reconnect, in person, with a friend he hadn\u2019t talked to in about 20 years. His entire personality reverted to an earlier state (a\u00a0state of youth), as if dormant for that entire time and waiting to resurface under the conditions he experienced back then. I recall longing to know, first hand rather than historically, what my\u00a0father was like when he was around my age, and realizing that I never will.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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That\u2019s really fascinating, and different . . .<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ve longed for disaster \u2013 something catastrophic that rips the world apart, and strips us of our\u00a0pretensions\u00a0and our\u00a0intense\u00a0commitment\u00a0to utter trivialities. I\u2019ve never wanted that, I\u2019ve just longed for it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Even more different still!<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ve longed to experience my past in the same way I experience the present or the future \u2013 to experience\u00a0memories as events, and to experience them without having to place them in the broader context of my life, or of other events similarly-situated in time.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Have you actually ever\u00a0pulled it off<\/i>, for a fleeting moment?<\/div>\n
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I suppose we can discuss your deconversion at some point (if you want), but I don\u2019t think now is the time, when we are having such a fruitful exchange regarding areas where we are largely in agreement, or at least equally fascinated by (in instances where we haven\u2019t figured it out).\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve been moving away from analyzing deconversions\u00a0already, anyway. It offends most people, and they usually don\u2019t understand my intentions and motivations for examining them. It\u2019s just not worth the trouble. I\u2019d much rather talk with atheists about competing interpretations of Scripture (alleged \u201ccontradictions\u201d). That\u2019s something objective that can be talked about, without the \u201cpersonal\u201d element. So, e.g., if someone says a reason why they rejected Christianity was because the Bible teaches that the earth was flat, I point out that it does no such thing, so that this was a mistaken impression. That gets it off of the person himself or herself and onto the objective texts of the Bible.<\/div>\n
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Regarding my \u201ceven though\/because\u201d distinction, I think I\u2019ll kick that a few letters down the road (feel free to bring it up again), as it\u2019s a dense topic and we have quite a few going already. But,\u00a0in preview, I\u2019ve heard it said that \u201catheism is the best practice of theism\u201d, and while that (in any literal sense) is patently ridiculous, there\u2019s a sense in which it\u2019s quite a profound mystical\u00a0notion\u00a0and I have some real sympathies with it. More specifically though, something about the experiences I\u2019ve had, my status as an \u201coutsider\u201d to the Christian conversation, or the fact that I\u2019m\u00a0not engaging Christianity in the tumultuous context of a Christian community has given me a certain appreciation for Christianity and a freedom to explore it that I can\u2019t imagine I would have\u00a0otherwise had. That\u2019s not to diminish, by the way, the experience of any Christian \u2013 this is merely my own experience speaking.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Is it sort of like a divorced couple being able to appreciate aspects of each other, away from the commitment and intensity and constant togetherness that marriage requires? That makes psychological sense to me. Most atheists active online seem too active hating (and constantly misrepresenting) Christianity to be able to never even approach such a \u201cdistant appreciation\u201d sort of outlook. I\u2019m not surprised at all that you have it, since it goes along with your thoughtful and tolerant approach.<\/div>\n
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You\u2019ve given me a quite a bit to listen to, some new to me and some I\u2019d loved listening to in the past but nearly forgot about. I made a list for this weekend, when I get some time, to hunt some of this down and\u00a0listen.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Fun! Alright! I\u2019d be interested to hear about what you thought.<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ve always loved<\/em>\u00a0the Beach Boys. I saw them on their 50th reunion tour in Chicago on an early date with my now wife. I\u2019ll probably hang on to that experience forever.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I also saw them during that 2012 tour. We saw Brian Wilson in Ann Arbor in 1999: which is considered the first concert in his new trend of touring, and was even part of the recent biographical movie. I had seen the Beach Boys also in 1977 and 1978 (the former with Brian, the latter without). I consider\u00a0Pet Sounds\u00a0<\/i>the greatest pop \/ rock album of all time and recently had fun putting together the most plausible (and best-sounding) original version of\u00a0Smile<\/i>. I\u2019ve done similarly, off and on, with Dylan and The Band\u2019s\u00a0Basement Tapes<\/i>. I visited \u201cBig Pink\u201d near Woodstock, New York, where it was recorded, in 1992. I was at a gas station and asked a guy where the house was, and he said, \u201cI\u00a0live<\/i>\u00a0there.\u201d !!! So he led me back to it and there it was!<\/div>\n
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I was stoked to see\u00a0you mention Stockhausen. Nobody ever<\/em>\u00a0mentions Stockhausen! He is among, if not the<\/em>\u00a0greatest experimentalists of all time in my estimation, and entire genres of music owe, if not their existence,\u00a0their popularity to his work.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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It was interesting. I didn\u2019t particularly\u00a0like<\/i>\u00a0it (too abstract for my tastes), but he does seem to have this influence on what came later.<\/div>\n
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Kraftwerk puts on a fantastic show \u2013 the visual imagery is expertly done, and probably the entire reason there\u2019s a Blue Man Group today. People still go crazy for\u00a0them. I have Min-Max, Kraftwerk, and Autobahn as well as several remixes in my general purpose library and the reception is completely unreal, every\u00a0time.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Alright! I saw them in Detroit in 1981: literally at the very moment that their music (via\u00a0Computer World<\/i>) had an influence on the coming hip-hop and the electronic music scene in Detroit. Recently, I started discovering (through You Tube) related bands like Neu, Can, Ultravox, and Yellow Magic Orchestra. I was really into New Wave and post-punk, back in 1977-1983 or so.<\/div>\n
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Your review of the Sergeant Pepper<\/em> remix reminded me to ask: How did you get into writing? You\u2019re quite good at it, but you haven\u2019t mentioned anything about your background that would explain why\u00a0that is.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Thanks very much. I like your writing a lot, too. Not much in my background would have suggested that I would end up as a professional writer. I hated grammar (and generally, English classes) in school. I was a good student, and was on my junior high school newspaper. But my majors were avocational music (high school) and sociology \/ psychology (college). I probably did a few decent term papers in college.<\/div>\n
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Basically, I started writing as an aspect of my interest in apologetics and evangelism, with little handout tracts at first. None of those were particularly notable at all, in retrospect. In the mid-80s, a good friend and I started producing \u201ccomic tracts\u201d in the format of Jack Chick\u2019s anti-Catholic screeds. But I did mostly research rather than producing extended pieces of straight writing.<\/p>\n

That seems to have commenced with my Catholic conversion in 1990. I immediately wrote an account of my conversion (which was published in a book that sold over half a million copies), and then treatises about Catholic doctrines that Protestants don\u2019t accept. These treatises (which became my first book: also officially published, but way later: in 2003), and a few articles in magazines constituted my first major writing efforts, from age 32 onwards.<\/p>\n

The next big development in my \u201cwriting career\u201d was the Internet, which I joined in 1996. Since then, I have literally written constantly: almost on a daily basis (my website began in 1997 and received an award in the Catholic literary \/ apologetics world the next year). And I\u2019ve written all kinds of things: besides apologetics and theology, I\u2019ve done political analyses, musical stuff, satire, polemical as well as ecumenical material, analyses of comparative religion, and of atheism, the relationship of science and religion (philosophy of science), philosophy of religion, Church history, some sociological works, travelogues, sports pieces, Christmas poems; you name it!<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to think that my style has been influenced by the great English Christian writers (Wesley, Lewis, Chesterton, and Newman, above all: I have compiled quotation books for all of them except for Lewis [copyright issues] ). Along these lines, I even compiled my own New Testament, which was drawn from six public domain versions: all produced in England. The idea was to update Elizabethan King James English to a majestic 19th century British English. Hence I call it\u00a0Victorian King James Version<\/a><\/i>. No one cares about it, but it was a great joy for me to compile: combining my love of the Bible and \u201chigh English\u201d styles.<\/p>\n

People usually love or hate my writing. There is very little in-between. But I write very fast (it just flows, if I know about the topic at all), a lot, and never get writer\u2019s block. I\u2019m told that all of these traits are fairly unusual, so I accept that these are God\u2019s gifts to me, for use in my work. I don\u2019t find it difficult at all. I often think of the comparison to composers: some (e.g., Beethoven) struggled tremendously in composing; others (e.g., Mozart) knocked off complex compositions almost as easily as breathing.The amount of labor involved seems to have no direct relation to quality or the final product; it\u2019s just differences in how they work.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also often thought about full-time apologetics being a lot like the struggle of artists to be able to do for a living what they were\u00a0meant<\/i>\u00a0to do, despite all kinds of opposition. Schubert is the most obvious analogy. Nothing in his life suggested that he would have any success as a composer. He heard very few of his own orchestral works performed in his own lifetime. Beethoven, who lived in the same city (Vienna) only became aware of him right before he died. Yet his circle of friends believed in him. He followed his \u201cmuse\u201d (and I would say, gift and calling from God), and we can be thankful that he did. He had to suffer terribly in order to do it.<\/p>\n

Artists, musicians, poets, writers, Catholic apologists (in the overlapping sense of being a writer and finding it tough to make a living), go through this. I\u2019ve paid my dues a million times over. But I was finally able to settle into full-time apologetics in 2001 at age 43. I\u2019m blessed to be able to do what I love (and what I believe God called me to way back in 1981). That gives me the time to devote to answering a wonderful letter like this, on a Monday afternoon. :-) I can\u2019t think of any work I\u2019d rather do, and to me it\u2019s almost not even\u00a0work<\/i>, because I love writing and communicating so much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Well, I was just dumbfounded reading through your wife\u2019s account of her experiences. This is a notion seated directly in the middle of a topic I\u2019ve been studying for years, yet I\u2019ve never come\u00a0across before; I feel a bit like a kid in a candy shop. So, the puzzle is this: Most art forms like film, painting,\u00a0sculpture, and literature are almost universally today considered representational\u00a0art forms. As such, while there\u2019s lots of debate about how to interpret the work, it\u2019s true of the work that it\u2019s some kind of an imitation of some aspect or feature of the physical world. Music is\u00a0generally considered sui generis<\/em> among the arts, and while there are some representational theories of music, they don\u2019t involve the claim that music imitates entire objects in the way it would\u00a0need to in order to act as a conduit for visual imagery.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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Yes: the task is to figure out how music can be transformed into imagery. I think it\u2019s either through association, as I alluded to earlier (from TV and movies: soundtracks often have thematic elements: think of, e.g., western soundtracks or music regarding the ocean), or it is something far deeper and more mystical: that the beautiful harmonies and blends in music actually are directly related to the Beautiful as a notion or idea or experience already in our psyche or soul, and is then somehow \u201cco-opted\u201d by our inner sense of beauty \/ order \/ ideals, and makes us feel good, and in my wife\u2019s experience, incorporates \u201cinduced\u201d visual elements as well.<\/p>\n

Thanks for another great letter!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Br\u00fcnnhilde (1910), by Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) [public domain \/ Wikimedia Commons] ***** This is from a private correspondence with a very friendly and fair-minded atheist, who goes by the nickname,\u00a0\u201cComrade Carrot-Blog Vegetarian.\u201d\u00a0He has agreed that it would be made public. Unlike the vast majority of\u00a0atheists I have met online, he is actually curious about my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2331,"featured_media":12925,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,44,725],"tags":[3504,4175,4170,4169,2363,9,4176,4184,734,4182,1501,4177,4178,4179,4174,4173,4180,3505,728,690,735,4185,3090,731,1183,4183,3506,4181],"class_list":["post-12921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism-agnosticism","category-personal-page","category-romantic-imaginative-theology","tag-aesthetic-argument-for-god","tag-aesthetics-music","tag-argument-from-desire","tag-argument-from-longing","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-evangelicalism","tag-experiencing-music","tag-gustav-mahler","tag-longing-for-heaven","tag-mahler","tag-music-2","tag-music-god","tag-music-heaven","tag-music-longing","tag-music-mysticism","tag-music-spirituality","tag-musical-aesthetics","tag-myth-as-truth","tag-nature-mysticism","tag-protestant-reformation","tag-richard-wagner","tag-romantic-music","tag-romanticism","tag-sehnsucht","tag-surprised-by-truth","tag-the-ring","tag-true-myth","tag-wagner"],"yoast_head":"\nDialogue w Friendly Atheist #3: Music, Longing, & Mysticism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Continuing dialogue on the wonders of listening to music: especially classical, & the painful longing for something "beyond" like God and heaven.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davearmstrong\/2017\/08\/dialogue-w-friendly-atheist-3-music-longing-mysticism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dialogue w Friendly Atheist #3: Music, Longing, & Mysticism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continuing dialogue on the wonders of listening to music: especially classical, & the painful longing for something "beyond" like God and heaven.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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Dave\u2019s apologetics and writing apostolate was the subject of a feature article in the May 2002 issue of \\\"Envoy Magazine.\\\" He served as the staff moderator at the Internet discussion forum for The Coming Home Network, from 2007-2010. Dave has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated Catholic radio shows, including \\\"Catholic Answers Live\\\" (twice), \\\"Faith and Family Live\\\" (Steve Wood), \\\"Kresta in the Afternoon,\\\" \\\"Son Rise Morning Show,\\\" \\\"Catholic Connection\\\" (Teresa Tomeo), and \\\"The Catholics Next Door.\\\" His large and popular website, \\\"Biblical Evidence for Catholicism,\\\" was online from March 1997 to March 2007, and received the 1998 Catholic Website of the Year award from \\\"Envoy Magazine.\\\" His blog of the same name (now transferred to Patheos), begun in February 2004, contains more than 1,500 papers, at least 500 debates or dialogues, and over 50 distinct \\\"index\\\" web pages. Unsolicited correspondence has indicated many hundreds of conversions (or returns) to the Catholic faith as a result, by God's grace, of these writings. Dave's conversion story was published in the bestselling book \\\"Surprised by Truth\\\" (edited by Patrick Madrid; San Diego: Basilica Press, 1994). Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \\\"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\\\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \\\"The Catholic Verses\\\" (2004), \\\"The One-Minute Apologist\\\" (2007), \\\"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\\\" (2009), \\\"The Quotable Newman\\\" (editor: 2012), and \\\"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\\\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \\\"The New Catholic Answer Bible\\\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \\\"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. 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Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. 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Formerly a campus missionary, as a Protestant, Dave was received into the Catholic Church in February 1991, by the late, well-known catechist and theologian, Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave\u2019s articles have appeared in many influential Catholic periodicals, including \"This Rock\" (now called \"Catholic Answers Magazine\"), \"Envoy Magazine\" (Patrick Madrid), \"The Catholic Answer,\" \"The Coming Home Journal,\" \"Gilbert Magazine\" (American Chesterton Society), and \"The Latin Mass.\" He also writes a featured column for every issue of \"The Michigan Catholic\": published by the archdiocese of Detroit, and was editor for most of the apologetics tracts published by the St. Paul Street Evangelization apostolate. Dave\u2019s apologetics and writing apostolate was the subject of a feature article in the May 2002 issue of \"Envoy Magazine.\" He served as the staff moderator at the Internet discussion forum for The Coming Home Network, from 2007-2010. Dave has been interviewed on many nationally syndicated Catholic radio shows, including \"Catholic Answers Live\" (twice), \"Faith and Family Live\" (Steve Wood), \"Kresta in the Afternoon,\" \"Son Rise Morning Show,\" \"Catholic Connection\" (Teresa Tomeo), and \"The Catholics Next Door.\" His large and popular website, \"Biblical Evidence for Catholicism,\" was online from March 1997 to March 2007, and received the 1998 Catholic Website of the Year award from \"Envoy Magazine.\" His blog of the same name (now transferred to Patheos), begun in February 2004, contains more than 1,500 papers, at least 500 debates or dialogues, and over 50 distinct \"index\" web pages. Unsolicited correspondence has indicated many hundreds of conversions (or returns) to the Catholic faith as a result, by God's grace, of these writings. Dave's conversion story was published in the bestselling book \"Surprised by Truth\" (edited by Patrick Madrid; San Diego: Basilica Press, 1994). Sophia Institute Press has published six of his books: \"A Biblical Defense of Catholicism\" (Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J., 1996 \/ 2003), \"The Catholic Verses\" (2004), \"The One-Minute Apologist\" (2007), \"Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths\" (2009), \"The Quotable Newman\" (editor: 2012), and \"Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical\" (2015). He is co-author (with Dr. Paul Thigpen) of the inserts for \"The New Catholic Answer Bible\" (Our Sunday Visitor: 2005), and editor for \"The Wisdom of Mr. Chesterton: The Very Best Quotes, Quips, and Cracks from the Pen of G. K. Chesterton\" (Saint Benedict Press \/ TAN Books: 2009). \"100 Biblical Arguments Against Sola Scriptura\" was published by Catholic Answers in May 2012. His \"Quotable Wesley\" compilation was published by (Protestant \/ Wesleyan publisher) Beacon Hill Press in April 2014. Several of his 49 books are bestsellers in their field. Dave maintains a popular personal Facebook page, a Facebook author page, and has a Twitter account as well. He offers almost all of his books in e-book form on his own Biblical Catholicism site (http:\/\/biblicalcatholicism.com\/), at a permanent deep discount: only $2.99 for ePub, mobi, and AZW, and $1.99 for PDF. His writing has been enthusiastically endorsed or recommended by many leading Catholic apologists, authors, and priests, including Dr. Scott Hahn, Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, Marcus Grodi, Patrick Madrid, Steve Ray, Tim Staples, Devin Rose, Mike Aquilina, Al Kresta, Karl Keating, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Brandon Vogt, Marcellino D'Ambrosio, and Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J. Dave has been happily married to his wife Judy since October 1984. 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