May 17, 2011

"There is no music in this world beautiful or serene enough, that it would stop people from arguing in the comments under a youtube video."

The top-rated comment out of 7,624 comments under "Ave Maria."

Sample argumentative comments (which I'm making you click to see, because of rotten language):

"shut up u fuckin shit... making fun of this song and christianity i making a fool of your self... how? making fun of hail mary(just in latin) is like making fun of mother mary...shut the fuck up...may u rest in helll"
"Lol you're one of those really young and dumb Christians who doesn't even follow any of the religion's (stupid) rules, but just goes FUCK YEAH, I'M A FUCKING CHRISTIAN AND GOD FUCKING LOVES ME, I'M BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE AND GOD'S GONNA KICK YOUR ASS!"

44 comments:

rhhardin said...

Too much vibrato.

Shouting Thomas said...

Where in God's name do non-Christians get these strange ideas about the nature of Christianity?

Apparently, absolute ignorance about Christianity is quite widespread.

shiloh said...

277 dislikes lol

Sorta like Philadelphians booing Santa Claus! Or any Reps voting for gingrich. :-P

Anonymous said...

Ann, I beg to disagree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbN0g8-zbdY

coketown said...

Fuck you rhhardin! It's not ENOUGH vibrato!

(Joking!)

We can thank the New Atheists for the bitterness provoked by otherwise innocuous expressions of religiosity. They read Dawkins and suddenly they're martyrs for a cause. How about when they produce something even one-tenth as beautiful as Ave Maria or the Miserere, they can badmouth religion to their shriveled hearts' content.

Irene said...

youtube could use Nitecruzr.

Amartel said...

The worship of the no-god is a very aggressive religion. All the benefits of religion (you get to feel superior to and have contempt for non-believers) with none of the tedious and time-consuming worshipping and rule following.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

AvE A person who will kick your ass in more ways than one while singing La Bamba.

Ave is crack

traditionalguy said...

The greatest Hebrew prophet while speaking days before His offering of Himself on the cross said ..." In the last days, you will be hated by all for my name's sake". He was a very good prophet. He also said to his followers "by your patience possess your souls".

shiloh said...

My mom loves Andrea Bocelli!

carry on

shiloh said...

But even Andrea/Sarah had (475) dislikes.

and so it goes ...

bagoh20 said...

I advise against reading youtube comments. It is just depressing and will ruin any regard that you may have for our species.

edutcher said...

Sounds like J.

Ann Althouse said...

"I advise against reading youtube comments. It is just depressing and will ruin any regard that you may have for our species."

Oh, that kind of crap cheers me up sometimes!

Mary Martha said...

You know what makes that extra funny? The comments thread is fighting about religion... but the Schubert song that is sung there is NOT religious. It is the adaption of a German translation of part of an epic poem by Walter Scott.

Often it is performed using the words to the Hail Mary in Latin. However we live in a world where people can't seem to differentiate between Latin and German. And they are fighting about something that isn't really there.

The Dude said...

Needs more cowbell.

Larry J said...

On the subject of YouTube commenters, xkcd nails it. This one also applies.

The Drill SGT said...

Too much vibrato, whatever that is:

My favorite religious tune is:

Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

YoungHegelian said...

It really easy to think that religion is stupid if you never have to get your face into its finer products.

How many kids ever have to read Aquinas, or Augustine, or Calvin? How many even have read the Bible as opposed to just hearing bits of it preached at them?

They never hear Bach cantatas, or Monteverdi. Nor do they realise that the collected sacred works of Palestrina alone take up six feet of library shelf, not to mention the hundreds other Pre-Baroque composers.

As for the artwork, it's easy to strip that of its religious signifigance, and just see it as latter day pretty pictures. It actually takes quite an education in the subject to be able to decipher Renaissance religious art.

Every atheist should keep in mind the words of that noted 19th philosopher & atheist L. Feuerbach: "The best the old world had it gave to its God".

Methadras said...

Pie Jesu outshines Ave Maria in all respects, but that is just my opinion between the two. I like Ave Maria, but Pie Jesu is on another level when sung right.

Fred4Pres said...

Comments: can't live with them, can't live without them (unless you are Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, or Commentary).

Triangle Man said...

YouTube is the most fertile trolling ground currently available. The comments are the proof. YouTube is the Usenet of our time for the modern Kibologists.

Pastafarian said...

My ears and whiskers, there's an awful lot of "religion hells yeah" on this thread. Apparently atheists are ignorant (per Shouting), bitter martyr-complex shriveled-hearted louts incapable of appreciating or creating art (per Coke), aggressive, conceited, contemptuous hypocrites (per Amartel).

Cheese and crackers.

And this is just a few posts after the one about Richard Feynman, a man who, as I pointed out, was never anti-religious, never proselytizing his atheism; who was a man of great humor and wit and kindness; capable of seeing the beauty in mathematics and physics, who showed that beauty to many in ways that few could.

I'd point out to YoungHegelian that his quote can be taken the other way -- yes, the best the old world had, it gave to its God. That's true. But maybe they gave too much to their God.

It's true that the enlightenment was driven by great men who were almost universally devout; but this has less to do with some causative or even correlative relationship between religion and discovery in the fields of science and philosophy than it does with the thoroughness with which the religious persecuted the non-devout into nonexistence.

If so many millions of lives for hundreds of generations hadn't been wasted trying to literally square the circle during the dark ages after the sack of the library at Alexandria, flagellating themselves in monasteries and torturing men like Galileo, maybe we would have reached the moon about 300 years ago, and we'd now be working on Alpha Centauri instead of NASA's current mission of Muslim outreach.

I would point this out; but why bother? You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into.

Instead, let's just listen to the lady singing in German. It's a nice song. I think it's just the right amount of vibrato.

themightypuck said...

Ave Maria is OK for Aaron Sorkin and similar over the top types.

coketown said...

Apparently atheists are ignorant (per Shouting), bitter martyr-complex shriveled-hearted louts incapable of appreciating or creating art (per Coke), aggressive, conceited, contemptuous hypocrites (per Amartel)...If so many millions of lives for hundreds of generations hadn't been wasted...maybe we would have reached the moon about 300 years ago...I would point this out; but why bother? You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into."

What was it you were saying? About atheists not being bitter-hearted hypocrites with martyr complexes?

Loren Ibsen said...

"You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into."

Of course you can. Why is this saying suddenly so popular?

Revenant said...

Where in God's name do non-Christians get these strange ideas about the nature of Christianity?

Possibly from reading the comments left by the Christian commenters?

For example, after seeing a Christian tell you "shut the f*** up, may u rest in hell", a non-Christian might find themselves with the strange idea that Christians want them to shut up and burn in hell.

Apparently, absolute ignorance about Christianity is quite widespread.

Yeah. Weird. :)

Terry said...

" . . . How about when they produce something even one-tenth as beautiful as Ave Maria or the Miserere"

Howzabout Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four?
O'Brien's discourses on metaphysics while interrogating Winston Smith illuminate (if that is the proper word) the misery and loneliness of a Godless universe where Man is the only judge of Man.
If Orwell had lived longer I think he would have converted, most likely to Lutheranism.

Wince said...

Funny, now you mention it.

A few days I got email notice of a response to a comment I made below a YouTube movie clip three years ago that I had linked before on Althouse.

"Get the fucking quote correct before you post, jackass."

Jeez, I got the quote from the script, not the clip.

Tough audience.

Known Unknown said...

But we can all agree that the fucking Schubert version kicks the living shit out of the Gounod/Bach mash up, amirite?

SGT - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring is amazing.

Terry said...

"Possibly from reading the comments left by the Christian commenters?"

I see that you go right to the definitive source, Revenant.

Revenant said...

How about when they produce something even one-tenth as beautiful as Ave Maria or the Miserere, they can badmouth religion to their shriveled hearts' content.

The list of composers known to be either atheists or non-religious includes, but is not limited to, Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Wagner, and Paganini.

Terry said...

The only composer on your list, Revenant, who was unquestionably atheist, at least during part of his life, was Wagner.

Pastafarian said...

Coketown @ 7:56 -- I was pointing out that you apparently think it's acceptable to insult people based on their religion (or lack thereof).

Which I guess makes me a bitter hypocrite with a martyr complex. That's your point, right?

From where I sit, Coketown, it makes you a bigot. And a bit of a dick. And thankfully, an exception; as most of the religious people I know aren't bigots or dicks.

sbutler said...

"Mary Martha" nails it: this isn't the Catholic Ave Maria; it's the Ellens dritter Gesang.

YouTube commentators can't even be bothered to listen closely to the song before launching into an attack/defense.

sakredkow said...

If you read youtube comments, you get what you deserve.

Just leave 'em, don't read 'em.

Pastafarian said...

Terry, I think that Beethoven was a pantheist -- that he considered God to be the sum total of the physical laws of the universe, not an omnipotent entity.

Mozart rejected religion at the end of his life, but he was quite religious for most of it. But Strauss as well as Wagner were both certainly atheists.

Not that it really matters much to me; but I'm not the one making wild, sweeping claims about atheists being incapable of producing or appreciating art or beauty.

Revenant said...

The only composer on your list, Revenant, who was unquestionably atheist, at least during part of his life, was Wagner.

That's why I said "atheists or non-religious". We don't have a window into their private beliefs, and atheism was illegal when and where most of them lived. But we know they were non-religious and for the most part dismissive and/or contemptuous of Christianity.

Even if it was just Wagner, though, that would be enough to dismiss Coketown's silly bigotry.

Terry said...

Pastafarian wrote:
But Strauss as well as Wagner were both certainly atheists.
Well, they will have to burn then, won't they?
I'm joking, I'm joking . . .

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

E. M. Davis,

I clicked through just to see which setting it was, and really hoping it wasn't that transparently not-turn-of-the-17th-c. "Caccini" concoction (shiloh, that'd be the Andrea Bocelli one, unless he's also recorded the Schubert and/or the Bach/Gounod). But the posting kind of lost me right at the top, with (Opera).

Methradas,

Pie Jesu outshines Ave Maria in all respects, but that is just my opinion between the two. I like Ave Maria, but Pie Jesu is on another level when sung right.

Whose Pie Jesu? The Faure? Ya gotta understand that with any common liturgical text there are a zillion musical settings.

Toad Trend said...

@shouting

"Apparently, absolute ignorance about Christianity is quite widespread."

In most cases, it is ignorance at the root, whether it be religion, economics, or even manners, for that matter.

@shiloh

"Sorta like Philadelphians booing Santa Claus! Or any Reps voting for gingrich. :-P"

No disagreement there, Philly folks will NEVER live that one down.

Compare some of the comments we see on Youtube, or here for that matter, with the phenomenon known as 'beer goggles'.

If you asked the same people to comment on a given video or thread, and you are in the same room, you'd find the shrillness/abrasiveness to be muted. Anonymity allows people to say things they normally wouldn't say.

Youtube is especially bad because the demographic is young compared to a blog such as Althouse.

Timothy said...

Does it seem ironic to anyone else that there are debates about God or religion on Youtube? It's "You"tube. Talking about God shifts the focus off of YOU.

It's not "Thou"tube.

Tibore said...

Pfff... YouTube comments have degenerated into nothing more than guttertongued displays of ignorance. You get more out of overpass graffiti than you do out of a YouTube's comments section.

sonicfrog said...

My all time favorite YouTube comment:

i’m 25 years? old and i understand why you would say that, but give us a chance….seriously some of us are ok and besides we will inherit/destroy the world someday

Yes, I posted it!