The Quran is an inimitable book?

termina
Posts: 54
Joined: 2010-03-02
User is offlineOffline
The Quran is an inimitable book?

hello

The Quran itself claims to be absolutely inimitable (and unsurpassable) in arabic language.

 

muslim shcolars have listed all things which make Quran inimitalbe by any human:

*the inimitable beauty of its verses (with rhymes, rythmes) which charm the ear of the listeners.

*Powerfull emotionnal effects  some arab even wondered if
the Quranic verses were 'magic'.

* perfect choice of word according to the context, in a superhuman manner.

* remarkable eloquence


Concerning these points, it's not a subjective sensation to arab, because throughout history, arabic-speaking people felt that.

Even arabs at the time of the prophet Muhammad.


 History reports many attempts by arabic poets to imitate the Quran, which they failed; until now.

 

Does this rationally prove that the Quran is surely supernatural in origin?

If this not, so are (or were) there authors in the worlds who also wrote books that  nobody manages to imitate until now?

 

 

 


Anonymouse
atheist
Posts: 1687
Joined: 2008-05-04
User is offlineOffline
termina wrote:helloSalaam

termina wrote:
hello

Salaam Aleikum

termina wrote:
Concerning these points, it's not a subjective sensation to arab,

It's not ?

termina wrote:
because throughout history, arabic-speaking people felt that.

All of them ? And would that be before or after they got indoctrinated into islam ?

termina wrote:
Does this rationally prove that the Quran is surely supernatural in origin?

No.

termina wrote:
If this not, so are (or were) there authors in the worlds who also wrote books that  nobody manages to imitate until now?

Dr. Suess.

 

 

 


 


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
Those assessments are all

Those assessments are all intrinsically subjective, and could apply to any major work of literature.

Those claims and assessments are all exactly of the kind that one would expect from a person deeply into any religion about their particular Holy Book. 

They would be all but impossible to prove, and any attempt to prove would have to use a set of test subjects who all were native speakers of the language but were not already familiar with the status of Mohammed and Islam.

I bet they haven't run any proper tests like that, even if you could find such a group. And how would you select or write another text of comparable nature to test it against??

It really makes no sense.

Alternatively, perhaps you could do brain scans on Muslims reading the Quran and compare them with various believers of other faiths, of comparable fervour, while reading their holy books.

From what I've read of various translations, it is tediously repetitive and boring.

Another empty claim, like all the rubbish about 'science' in the Quran.

Every major work of literature is inimitable in some sense.

This only seems to be further demonstration that Moslems are incredibly naive, or ignorant, or both, at least with regard to anything to do with Islam.

 

 

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
The fucking Koran

 

Read it, loathed it. If you want something well written go for Shakespeare. He kicks the arse of god, allah, mohammed and whatever other grandstanding dipshit claims to offer celestial poetry for the masses.

Not only is the koran badly written, it's a hog-wallow of tedious, repetitive, threatening, plagiarism that is variously the product of insane assumption and moronic stupidity.

If you have a period of life you want to waste on it, why not visit this link.

 

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm

 

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
Atheistextremist

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

Read it, loathed it. If you want something well written go for Shakespeare. He kicks the arse of god, allah, mohammed and whatever other grandstanding dipshit claims to offer celestial poetry for the masses.

Not only is the koran badly written, it's a hog-wallow of tedious, repetitive, threatening, plagiarism that is variously the product of insane assumption and moronic stupidity.

If you have a period of life you want to waste on it, why not visit this link.

 

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/index.htm

 

Shakespeare kept coming to my mind - I was close to mentioning him....

Knocks both the Bible and the Quran into the trash for real insight and powerful language.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


kidvelvet
atheist
kidvelvet's picture
Posts: 162
Joined: 2010-01-15
User is offlineOffline
Holy Books

I couldn't agree more with Bob and AE.  Most holy books seem to be "overly written" and become repetitive and boring.  They remind me of the same style of writing of Nathanial Hawthorn.  Overly verbose writing that seems to be written for the sake of writing words without saying very much.  Then again, if the Scarlet Letter was written with the same storyline with about half of the pages.

Dolt:"Evolution is just a theory."
Me:"Yes, so is light and gravity. Pardon me while I flash this strobe while dropping a bowling ball on your head. This shouldn't bother you; after all, these are just theories."


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
 now, everyone, in all

 

now, everyone, in all fairness it's a bit ridiculous to judge a work by its translation.  muslims unanimously agree that any translation of the quran falls woefully short not just in meaning but in beauty.  i once worked with an egyptian muslim, fluent in english, who told me that the quran in english was literally like a totally different book.

it's also unfair to judge the quality of a literary work by a completely different cultural and chronological standard.  we also have to remember that ancient literature--be it the quran, the hebrew bible, homer, the epic of gilgamesh, the upanishads, etc.--was primarily transmitted orally, so repetition was the norm.  also, in semitic languages--hebrew and arabic in particular--repetition serves a sort of musical function, which is why one often sees both jews and muslims swaying when they read their holy books in the original.  this is considered aesthetically essential.  the quran, like much of the hebrew bible, is a book that is meant to be chanted aloud, not read silently.

there's another good reason why the quran is considered unsurpassed in arabic literature: the quran basically started arabic literature.  classical arabic is based on the quran.

i for one cannot attest to this beauty firsthand, as i am not conversant in arabic at all.  i have read the quran twice, in two different translations (n.j. dawood and abdullah yusuf ali), and both times found it dry and difficult to finish.  i basically forced myself to do it so i could speak from a position of knowledge when addressing islam. 

is there anyone here, preferably an atheist, with a sufficient knowledge of classical arabic to read and comprehend the quran in the original?  that person's judgment would be interesting.

 

 

as a side-note, i have to say, as a person who is very conversant in english literature in all its phases, that i find a good portion of shakespeare's oeuvre (and i've read nearly all of it) rather mediocre.  of the "3 giants" of english literature, chaucer is the one i consider head-and-shoulders above the rest.

 

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
Mmmmm

iwbiek wrote:

I for one cannot attest to this beauty firsthand, as i am not conversant in arabic at all.  i have read the quran twice, in two different translations (n.j. dawood and abdullah yusuf ali), and both times found it dry and difficult to finish.  i basically forced myself to do it so i could speak from a position of knowledge when addressing islam. 

is there anyone here, preferably an atheist, with a sufficient knowledge of classical arabic to read and comprehend the quran in the original?  that person's judgment would be interesting.

As a side-note, i have to say, as a person who is very conversant in english literature in all its phases, that i find a good portion of shakespeare's oeuvre (and i've read nearly all of it) rather mediocre.  of the "3 giants" of english literature, chaucer is the one i consider head-and-shoulders above the rest.

 

My mum speaks and reads Arabic - I'll ask her opinion. The fact is that the prose of the Koran is a constant barrage of grandstanding and threats. I know there's repetition in things like Homer with the wine dark sea and slim swift ships and whatnot but Homer is better than the Koran. I don't think the interpretation is a good excuse. In Arabic I'm sure it sounds like a man strangling on a toffee apple. P'raps it's too subjective to consider.

I'm an English lit major myself and while I agree Chaucer is considered right up there with Shakespeare, personally I find his relentless digressions, cross character quotations and trudging framework do my head in. For me, WS has high moments that Chaucer does not approach, even if both use language in an increasingly inaccessible manner given the constraints of modern vocab.

Who's your third giant? Milton? I like Dickens, too, though in a different way. His best is very good to me though it's not all great. My favourite religious poet is definitely Omar Khayyam tho' you could argue his religious belief was oblique. There's no reason why good religious poetry should not argue against an onerous priest cult.

He wrote in Persian, not Arabic but he manages to get his point across succinctly and with a modicum of beauty. 

 

  Rubaiyyat

 

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain - This Life flies:
One thing is certain and the rest is lies;
The Flower that once is blown for ever dies.

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.

The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep
They told their fellows, and to Sleep return'd.

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell:"

We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help--for It
As impotently moves as you or I.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread---and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness you're Paradise now!

Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;
To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

 

Omar Khayyam  (1048–1131 AD)

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Atheistextremist wrote:In

Atheistextremist wrote:

In Arabic I'm sure it sounds like a man strangling on a toffee apple. P'raps it's too subjective to consider.

 

perhaps.  to be honest, i have a few recordings of the quran being chanted and even though i don't understand a word of it i find it extremely beautiful.  i also like jewish cantors and old recordings of popular yiddish music, so go figure.  btw, i'm as gentile as the day is long, with a ravenous appetite for pork.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

I'm an English lit major myself and while I agree Chaucer is considered right up there with Shakespeare, personally I find his relentless digressions, cross character quotations and trudging framework do my head in. For me, WS has high moments that Chaucer does not approach, even if both use language in an increasingly inaccessible manner given the constraints of modern vocab.

 

well, not all of chaucer is golden, just like not all of shakespeare is golden.  i had the privelege in college of taking a course each on both authors, under a prof who was a harvard valedictorian and spent his grad studies handling first folios.  for the chaucer course we read the entire canterbury tales out loud in the original middle english and it was fabulous.  i definitely preferred that course.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

Who's your third giant? Milton? I like Dickens, too, though in a different way. His best is very good to me though it's not all great.

 

i think milton is standard, but to be honest he puts me to sleep.  i love donald sutherland's rant on milton in animal house.  it's so dead on.  i love john donne and william blake.  the metaphysicals are nice too.

i'm not a fan of dickens.  it shows that he was paid by the word.  i am a huge fan of the 19th century english novel in general, however.  hardy and george eliot are my favorites.  the mill on the floss is one of the best novels i've ever read, even though the heroine frustrated the hell out of me.  i also like trollope.

i have to say, though, i'm much more into american lit, particularly the school of the mot juste.  hemingway in my opinion is the gold standard in writing as a craft.  steinbeck and flannery o'connor are two other of my all-time favorites.  i love semi-autobiographical and journalistic novels.  bukowski is brilliant.  so is hunter s. thompson, but to a lesser extent.  i enjoyed dos passos's USA trilogy, though it was dreadfully slow at times and IMO could have been compressed into a single really good book.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

My favourite religious poet is definitely Omar Khayyam tho' you could argue his religious belief was oblique. There's no reason why good religious poetry should not argue against an onerous priest cult.

 

khayyam is good, certainly.  as far as other oblique "spiritual" writers go, i'm also fan of khalil gibran, though i know it's cliche.  i love rumi.  but my favorite "religious" poetry (though the label "poetry" is perhaps a bit arbitrary here) comes from the taoist masters.  i love chuang tzu, particularly thomas merton's anthology the way of chuang tzu.  also, the lieh tzu is extremely entertaining.  i also love the zen-influenced haiku of basho, particularly his half prose, half verse narrow road to the deep north.  charles bukowski always raves about the chinese poet li po, and i have a couple cheap penguin anthologies of him and his contemporaries on my shelf, i just haven't gotten to them yet.  that might be something to do with the rest of my sunday...

jesus, i get so caught up in history and religion and politics and philosophy on here, i forgot how much i enjoy discussing literature...

 

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
I hear echoes of a couple of

I hear echoes of a couple of Shakespeare's famous passages in that passage from the Ruby Hat. Much more insightful than that tedious religious crap.

To assess the Quran, you pretty much have to discount the opinion of a Moslem, just as you can't give too much weight to a Christian's opinion of the Bible, they have too much emotional investment in the texts.

Dawkins regards parts of the Bible as great literature. I think he overstates it, myself, but it is very subjective and personal.

There are passages in some translations of the Bible, such as the KJV, which are truly poetic and have become part of our culture, but we should credit the translators at least as much if not more for that.

 

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
Music is another aspect, and

Music is another aspect, and the rhythms and cadences of chants and even hymns can certainly have an appeal of its own, independent of the verbal content. I quite enjoyed listening to some choral singing, which was almost certainly religious, in the famous King's College, Cambridge, in the UK, when I was there in 2000. There are quite a few religious pieces which I enjoy as pure music.

I was sorry that my concern about getting back to LAX in time to catch my plane home meant I couldn't quite hang around long enough to listen to a live performance of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake.

 

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
iwbiek wrote:now,

iwbiek wrote:

now, everyone, in all fairness it's a bit ridiculous to judge a work by its translation.  muslims unanimously agree that any translation of the quran falls woefully short not just in meaning but in beauty.  i once worked with an egyptian muslim, fluent in english, who told me that the quran in english was literally like a totally different book.

I was going to say this, too. I've heard that in Arabic, it truly is an exquisitely, beautifully written book. I suspect translating anything from Arabic to English is difficult, and oftentimes poetry is nearly impossible to translate properly. So much of poetry's beauty is dependent on the nature of the specific language in which it's written.

Obviously, that doesn't make the Quran TRUE, but it could certainly explain why it's been apparently even more persuasive than the bible (iow, anyone who comes in contact with it seems to be not just a believer, but an intensely devout one).


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:iwbiek

smartypants wrote:

iwbiek wrote:

now, everyone, in all fairness it's a bit ridiculous to judge a work by its translation.  muslims unanimously agree that any translation of the quran falls woefully short not just in meaning but in beauty.  i once worked with an egyptian muslim, fluent in english, who told me that the quran in english was literally like a totally different book.

I was going to say this, too. I've heard that in Arabic, it truly is an exquisitely, beautifully written book. I suspect translating anything from Arabic to English is difficult, and oftentimes poetry is nearly impossible to translate properly. So much of poetry's beauty is dependent on the nature of the specific language in which it's written.

Obviously, that doesn't make the Quran TRUE, but it could certainly explain why it's been apparently even more persuasive than the bible (iow, anyone who comes in contact with it seems to be not just a believer, but an intensely devout one).

 

see, this is what irritates me on the atheist side.  because of the ideology behind these books--or often an ideology that highjacked these books--atheists like to denigrate them as awful in general and totally without worth.  i think that's just plain obtuse.  most of the holy books of the world attained that status over time, to one degree or another. 

even the quran had an evolution, though a much shorter one than most others.  for example, if one looks at the earlier mecca suras, one can see muhammad thought of himself as a prophet exclusively to the arabs, or perhaps even exclusively to the meccans, with no political role and no real desire to question the validity of either judaism or christianity, with the focus often on moses.  in contrast, the later medina suras are obviously influenced by muhammad's clashes with the jews of yathrib, in which he asserts his role as the seal of the prophets who trumps all other revelations, with the focus shifting to abraham, in order to cast islam as actually preceding judaism and christianity.  this just shows that holy books had to earn the respect of their hearers, and there are far too many stories of arabs and even a persian being converted by the sheer beauty of the recited quran in far too many sources for all of them to be mere inventions, the most prominent such conversion being umar, the second caliph.

the fact of the matter is, we in the west have never really had a chanted holy book.  there are christian chants of course, and scripture is used in sung masses, but the fact of the matter is that literary criticism teaches us that the new testament was not designed as the torah and the psalms were.  the gospels, the epistles, and even the apocalypse are books meant to be read and studied, not listened to in rapture.  they are meant to appeal to the cerebrum.  while there are plenty charismatics who go into raptures when the bible is read, it's not the same as the almost trance-like state induced by a proper recitation of the quran or the torah.  thus, it's hard for those of culturally european descent to relate to.

personally, i'm not a fan of the new testament, though the acts, particularly the portions detailing paul's journeys, is a fine example of epic literature.  the hebrew bible as a whole, however, is undoubtably one of the treasures of the world's poetic literature, and IMO it's precisely the murder and incest and infanticide and child sacrifice that make it a great work.  it has what the quran lacks: pure, unadulterated, ugly human nature, usually delivered without commentary and, in the words of nick cave, "written in bile and puke."  this also makes it one of the wellsprings of human thought.  without the hebrew bible, there would be no kierkegaard, no spinoza, no kafka, no chaim potok.  we can revile the horror of the hebrew bible because it's written in ourselves, and even had it never been written i venture to say its atrocities, its prejudices, its superstitions would still exist.  it confronts us with our true faces. 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
OK, so the Koran is

OK, so the Koran is inimitable. Lot of stuff is inimitable.

 

Isaac Asimov's ability to explain scientific concepts without forcing people to do math should, in my estimation, be considered a literary standard. Or Zeno's ability to show how even logical thought can be full of shit. How about Tommy Makem's ability to describe a brutal murder/suicide (William Bloat) and slam the British all while being humorous? The thing is that those things are IMO actually good.

 

What about the movies made by Ed Wood?

 

Seriously, things can be inimitable and bad at the same time. So inimitability is not a guarantee of merit.

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

 

Seriously, things can be inimitable and bad at the same time. So inimitability is not a guarantee of merit.

 

 

i don't think anyone is saying it is, at least not in a universal sense.  in a literary sense, i think it is.

as for "bad," it depends on what you mean.  if you mean morally bad, then just about any work with literary merit can be argued to be morally "bad."  i'm a tommy makem fan myself, but the old irish ballads like "boulavogue," "o donnell aboo," "tipperary far away," etc., etc. glorify drunkeness, violence, murder, and perhaps even misogyny (see "courtin' in the kitchen" and "bungle rye" ).  by the commonly held standards of human decency, charles bukowski is out the door.  so's hemingway.  ditto steinbeck, dos passos, john fante, hunter s. thompson, knut hamsun, kerouac, burroughs, ginsberg, chaucer, shakespeare, hardy, byron, homer, ovid, petronius, plautus, euripides, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

if you mean "bad" as in pushing a certain agenda you happen not to agree with, then fair enough.  there's very little anyone can say to that. 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
Ah, you may have missed my

Ah, you may have missed my point. Lots of stuff has artistic merit and is still bad. However, when I say that something is bad, I do not mean that I am passing a moral judgment so much as it may not be all that good.

 

How about Will Wheaton's portrayal of Wesley Crusher? That was a total Mary Sue in my book. It was still a working character. IMO there is little chance that anyone will ever make a Mary Sue that is good. Therefore it is inimitable and bad and has artistic merit.

 

But as far as the Koran goes, calling it inimitable just attaches the property of being inimitable to it. It does not say that it is good. It does not say that it is the only thing which is inimitable. It does not say that being inimitable is automatically good. All that it says is that nobody has ever managed to do quite what it does.

 

You already hit some of my favorites BTW. Burroughs for example. The Ballad of Spare Ass Annie is just frightening. Even so, I will mention that other great works exist that are probably not very good.

 

According to imdb.com, John Carpenter is working on a remake of They Live. If he has any balls, he will cast Keanu Reeves in the Roddy Piper role. Granted, the whole sunglasses motif would be a travesty done that way but it would be balls to do it anyway.

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
have to disagree

iwbiek wrote:

the fact of the matter is, we in the west have never really had a chanted holy book.  there are christian chants of course, and scripture is used in sung masses, but the fact of the matter is that literary criticism teaches us that the new testament was not designed as the torah and the psalms were.  the gospels, the epistles, and even the apocalypse are books meant to be read and studied, not listened to in rapture.  they are meant to appeal to the cerebrum.  while there are plenty charismatics who go into raptures when the bible is read, it's not the same as the almost trance-like state induced by a proper recitation of the quran or the torah.  thus, it's hard for those of culturally european descent to relate to.

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells. 

yes, I know that most of the church goers in the middle ages could not speak church latin and therefore could not literally understand the liturgy.  That is not the point.  The point was to be impressive and convince those ignorant followers that you were truly communicating with god through the medium of this mystical language.  And the trance-like state of the congregation was a significant part of the mysticism.

I used to sing in a college choir.  We would practice in our acoustically designed choir room, and then go sing in one of the older stone churches.  They were not gothic in that particular part of the world, but late 19th century.  Even then, the music of the 16th-19th centuries sounds right in those old stone churches like it never sounded in the practice rooms or more modern churches.

The modern liturgy - stately catholic or holy roller - does not sound the same in those old churches.  It doesn't roll.  But trance states are attained in the holy roller churches.  The only way you can get yourself worked up enough to "speak in tongues" and generally make a fool of yourself is to get into the program - as it were.  I went to Foursquare Gospel for a few years.  It's all self-hypnosis and it takes a good preacher to work up the congregation to that point.  The call and response rhythm is very emotionally appealing - unless you can see through the manipulation and self-justification that is essential to the whole theatrics.

I agree most scripture is not amenable to the chant - old or new testament.  But you can get up some pretty spectacular response from your congregation by repeating certain verses with the old preacher bounce.  You need to realize the whole point is to get the congregation stirred up.  It is a trance, just in a more active iteration.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote: Well, I have to

cj wrote:

 

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

of course i'm aware of that.  i pass a gothic cathedral on the way to work every morning.  my friend was married there.  my whole point is, the liturgy is not a holy book, nor does all of christianity identify with a chanted liturgy, in the way all muslims and jews identify with their scriptures.  most of the west views the chanted liturgy today as quaint: something to buy on cd and put it in the changer with pure moods, while nearly all jews and muslims still identify profoundly with the recitation of their scriptures.  also, the example of "holy rollers" doesn't correspond completely, since charismatic low-church protestant emotionalism is based on ecstatic utterances, not recitation of the holy world.  of course, this has parallels in both judaism and islam as well, but in those cases, just as in christianity, those movements tend to be on the fringe.

perhaps a medieval christian lucky enough to reside in a city with a cathedral and regular masses would have been able to identify in some degree with the transported muslim or jew, i don't know, but my whole point is that most of us raised in the christian cultural atmosphere of amero-european west cannot relate to this.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
hey iwb

iwbiek wrote:

Atheistextremist wrote:

In Arabic I'm sure it sounds like a man strangling on a toffee apple. P'raps it's too subjective to consider.

 

perhaps.  to be honest, i have a few recordings of the quran being chanted and even though i don't understand a word of it i find it extremely beautiful.  i also like jewish cantors and old recordings of popular yiddish music, so go figure.  btw, i'm as gentile as the day is long, with a ravenous appetite for pork.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

I'm an English lit major myself and while I agree Chaucer is considered right up there with Shakespeare, personally I find his relentless digressions, cross character quotations and trudging framework do my head in. For me, WS has high moments that Chaucer does not approach, even if both use language in an increasingly inaccessible manner given the constraints of modern vocab.

 

well, not all of chaucer is golden, just like not all of shakespeare is golden.  i had the privelege in college of taking a course each on both authors, under a prof who was a harvard valedictorian and spent his grad studies handling first folios.  for the chaucer course we read the entire canterbury tales out loud in the original middle english and it was fabulous.  i definitely preferred that course.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

Who's your third giant? Milton? I like Dickens, too, though in a different way. His best is very good to me though it's not all great.

 

i think milton is standard, but to be honest he puts me to sleep.  i love donald sutherland's rant on milton in animal house.  it's so dead on.  i love john donne and william blake.  the metaphysicals are nice too.

i'm not a fan of dickens.  it shows that he was paid by the word.  i am a huge fan of the 19th century english novel in general, however.  hardy and george eliot are my favorites.  the mill on the floss is one of the best novels i've ever read, even though the heroine frustrated the hell out of me.  i also like trollope.

i have to say, though, i'm much more into american lit, particularly the school of the mot juste.  hemingway in my opinion is the gold standard in writing as a craft.  steinbeck and flannery o'connor are two other of my all-time favorites.  i love semi-autobiographical and journalistic novels.  bukowski is brilliant.  so is hunter s. thompson, but to a lesser extent.  i enjoyed dos passos's USA trilogy, though it was dreadfully slow at times and IMO could have been compressed into a single really good book.

 

Atheistextremist wrote:

My favourite religious poet is definitely Omar Khayyam tho' you could argue his religious belief was oblique. There's no reason why good religious poetry should not argue against an onerous priest cult.

 

khayyam is good, certainly.  as far as other oblique "spiritual" writers go, i'm also fan of khalil gibran, though i know it's cliche.  i love rumi.  but my favorite "religious" poetry (though the label "poetry" is perhaps a bit arbitrary here) comes from the taoist masters.  i love chuang tzu, particularly thomas merton's anthology the way of chuang tzu.  also, the lieh tzu is extremely entertaining.  i also love the zen-influenced haiku of basho, particularly his half prose, half verse narrow road to the deep north.  charles bukowski always raves about the chinese poet li po, and i have a couple cheap penguin anthologies of him and his contemporaries on my shelf, i just haven't gotten to them yet.  that might be something to do with the rest of my sunday...

jesus, i get so caught up in history and religion and politics and philosophy on here, i forgot how much i enjoy discussing literature...

 

I agree wholeheartedly on American contemporary. Hemingway is great. I love Steinbeck, too. Fond of Graham Greene. I loved Kerouac's original scroll of On The Road. I did enjoy Potok's The Chosen when I was younger. Elsewhere there's J P Satre's evocative Paris writing. I also like more popular one-offs. I really liked Shipping News - but could not get into anything else of Proulx's. I like Kylie Tennant's Tiburon. It's not a pinnacle of literature but it's strong. And Tennant was only 19 when she wrote it.  

Let's agree to differ on the Koran. I've heard it chanted and never found it beautiful - and we'd agree such things are subjective. Then there's the content. What if truth is beauty? It's hard to discount this - for me anyway. The constant threats of burning. I do agree that the shorter phrases make the thing more appealing lyrically than the convolutions of the bible but....hell. It's as beautiful as reading the verse of a psycho who intends to kill you.

It's a tough one. I can't imagine that it's utterly impossible to weave a goodly portion of the alleged beauty of the Koran into English. I must confess to a strong hatred of Islam and I wouldn't want to pretend that this does not bust my judgment. I also wonder at what expense we bought these 2 bastions of bile and puke. The pyre at Alexandria for a start and the Catholic Church's 2000 years of winnowing. I can't not think these books cost the world more than they gave, in literature and in culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Atheistextremist wrote: I

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

I can't not think these books cost the world more than they gave, in literature and in culture.

 

 

one can also say this about humans in general, though, can't they?

hence my argument for the greatness of the hebrew bible, and torah in particular: it confronts us with what we really are.  it's kind of like stephen king's novel cell (yes, for all my martin buber and umberto eco and chuang tzu, i frequently resort to stephen king)--the pulse strips away all the accreted layers of human thought and social conditioning to reveal the core: murder.

hence the greatness of dostoyevsky as well.  if only, to paraphrase kerouac, he weren't such a bad writer.

 

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
 and on a related note:

 

and on a related note:


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
Lol

 

 

Yeah - I agree - King does write very well - far better than he needs to. You could say bad things about all humans but I hate to think so much ancient writing has been destroyed to prop up the obvious fabrications in these 2 particular books.

Humans. We're a pea-brained lot of big, silly monkeys.

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Atheistextremist wrote:  I

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

 

I hate to think so much ancient writing has been destroyed to prop up the obvious fabrications in these 2 particular books.

 

 

in all fairness, though, you can't blame that on the writers of the hebrew bible or on the jews who came after them.  it's the christians who have a history of book-burning.  the israelites apparently only enjoyed killing their neighbors, with sporadic bouts of sculpture-smashing (if one takes joshua, samuel, kings, and chronicles at face value, which is highly dubious--more than likely much of it is what the jews in the babylonian captivity wish their ancestors had had the ability and the cojones to do).

as for the new testament, i've already expressed my antipathy toward that book.  it's entertaining and thought-provoking at times, especially the gospels and acts, but IMO is vastly inferior to the hebrew bible in almost every respect, especially literary quality.  the pauline epistles are really bad midrash and revelation is REEEEAAALLY bad pseudopigrapha.  revelation really is utter crap and generations of theologians have oftened wondered quite openly how the hell it ever made it into the canon (it's not in several of the oldest extant manuscripts).  even calvin hated it.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
Those Holy books convey a

Those Holy books convey a very warped and in may cases flat out wrong 'understanding' of human nature that has ultimately helped perpetuate many of the 'evils' they try to show us about ourselves.

And they label as sins and evils many aspects of our behaviour that are of no harm, and some which are positively beneficiai, especially around sex and reproduction.

They mostly just mirror and enshrine many primitive atavistic beliefs and practices which should have been winnowed out as society progressed, insofar as it could with those millstones  around our collective necks.

 

Codified ignorance, with the occasional flash of poetry...

 

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
No for sure

 

I don't blame the original authors at all - though it's hard to know what is original and unpolished. Ultimately, I just rue the whole stupid business. Imagine if the christians and muslims really were in charge. Which modern books would they destroy? Plenty, that's for certain.

 

 

 

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:Well, I have to

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
iwbiek wrote: and on a

iwbiek wrote:

 

and on a related note:

I want to have the Onion's baby.


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:cj

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.

Sounds plausible.  I'm sure if you were the one doing the chanting, you would need to practice in your own cathedral to get pitch, rhythm, and tonality just right for that unique space.  I feel for Bach, who, I've been told, was moved on from church to church with a new acoustic space and new organ each time he went.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:smartypants

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.

Sounds plausible.  I'm sure if you were the one doing the chanting, you would need to practice in your own cathedral to get pitch, rhythm, and tonality just right for that unique space.  I feel for Bach, who, I've been told, was moved on from church to church with a new acoustic space and new organ each time he went.

I'd imagine that unless the volume of the nave was significantly different, it wouldn't have changed sound dissipation times all that much, since the materials of construction were more or less the same (stone and glass). Palestrina was magical, but my heart goes with Gabrieli since, by dividing his choir at the Baslica San Marco in Venice into three distinct sections, he essentially invented stereophonic sound (or whatever you'd call it, "triphonic" ). Boring stuff, I apologize, but acoustics is my area.


Abu Lahab
Superfan
Abu Lahab's picture
Posts: 628
Joined: 2008-02-29
User is offlineOffline
><><><><><><><

I have an intense dislike for any argument that is based in 'inaccurate translation'.

 

Can a language be interpreted and translated or not?

 

Yeah, it can, and the quran is a plagiarized pile of utter crap.

 

Religion of peace, my fucking arse. [rolls_eyes]

How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:cj

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.

Sounds plausible.  I'm sure if you were the one doing the chanting, you would need to practice in your own cathedral to get pitch, rhythm, and tonality just right for that unique space.  I feel for Bach, who, I've been told, was moved on from church to church with a new acoustic space and new organ each time he went.

I'd imagine that unless the volume of the nave was significantly different, it wouldn't have changed sound dissipation times all that much, since the materials of construction were more or less the same (stone and glass). Palestrina was magical, but my heart goes with Gabrieli since, by dividing his choir at the Baslica San Marco in Venice into three distinct sections, he essentially invented stereophonic sound (or whatever you'd call it, "triphonic" ). Boring stuff, I apologize, but acoustics is my area.

No, no, no, not boring at all.  My familiarity with acoustics is as a performer/audience member.  Like any art critic, I know what I like but I often don't know why.  My experience is there is a great deal of difference in volume, including ceiling height.  Thinking about it, the length of the nave or church seating area would also make a difference as the sound bounced from "pillar to post" as it were, right?

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:smartypants

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.

Sounds plausible.  I'm sure if you were the one doing the chanting, you would need to practice in your own cathedral to get pitch, rhythm, and tonality just right for that unique space.  I feel for Bach, who, I've been told, was moved on from church to church with a new acoustic space and new organ each time he went.

I'd imagine that unless the volume of the nave was significantly different, it wouldn't have changed sound dissipation times all that much, since the materials of construction were more or less the same (stone and glass). Palestrina was magical, but my heart goes with Gabrieli since, by dividing his choir at the Baslica San Marco in Venice into three distinct sections, he essentially invented stereophonic sound (or whatever you'd call it, "triphonic" ). Boring stuff, I apologize, but acoustics is my area.

No, no, no, not boring at all.  My familiarity with acoustics is as a performer/audience member.  Like any art critic, I know what I like but I often don't know why.  My experience is there is a great deal of difference in volume, including ceiling height.  Thinking about it, the length of the nave or church seating area would also make a difference as the sound bounced from "pillar to post" as it were, right?

I am nerd enough to have estimated by timing that the reverb time in King's College Chapel was about 2 seconds, which suited that style of choral singing, I think.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
BobSpence1 wrote:I am nerd

BobSpence1 wrote:

I am nerd enough to have estimated by timing that the reverb time in King's College Chapel was about 2 seconds, which suited that style of choral singing, I think.

I may be nerdy, but not when it comes to computation - unless I have access to a spreadsheet or FORTRAN.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
BobSpence1 wrote:cj

BobSpence1 wrote:

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:

Well, I have to disagree.  If you know about the acoustics of the gothic cathedrals, you would know that they were specifically designed to chant the liturgy.  blah-blah blah-blah-blah blah-bah is rolled to allow the sound to reverberate through the stone chapels.  The pace of the chant is to maximize the effects of the echos and make the text clear without modern day mikes and acoustic shells.

You sort of put the cart before the horse here. Architects knew virtually nothing about acoustics outside of trial and error until Wallace Clement Sabine started studying the absorptive property of various materials in preparation for Boston Symphony Hall shortly before the turn of the 20th century. Rather, it was the composers, Palestrina, Gabrieli, and the pipe organ composers, who wrote music specifically for the 3 to 3.5 seconds of resonance in a cathedral. Bach and Mozart wrote for halls with about 2 to 2.5, the Romantics around 1.5 to 2.

Sounds plausible.  I'm sure if you were the one doing the chanting, you would need to practice in your own cathedral to get pitch, rhythm, and tonality just right for that unique space.  I feel for Bach, who, I've been told, was moved on from church to church with a new acoustic space and new organ each time he went.

I'd imagine that unless the volume of the nave was significantly different, it wouldn't have changed sound dissipation times all that much, since the materials of construction were more or less the same (stone and glass). Palestrina was magical, but my heart goes with Gabrieli since, by dividing his choir at the Baslica San Marco in Venice into three distinct sections, he essentially invented stereophonic sound (or whatever you'd call it, "triphonic" ). Boring stuff, I apologize, but acoustics is my area.

No, no, no, not boring at all.  My familiarity with acoustics is as a performer/audience member.  Like any art critic, I know what I like but I often don't know why.  My experience is there is a great deal of difference in volume, including ceiling height.  Thinking about it, the length of the nave or church seating area would also make a difference as the sound bounced from "pillar to post" as it were, right?

I am nerd enough to have estimated by timing that the reverb time in King's College Chapel was about 2 seconds, which suited that style of choral singing, I think.

A single, loud hand clap is the best easy way to do it, since it gives you a sharp, well-defined sound to determine the dissipation.


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:No, no, no, not

cj wrote:

No, no, no, not boring at all.  My familiarity with acoustics is as a performer/audience member.  Like any art critic, I know what I like but I often don't know why.  My experience is there is a great deal of difference in volume, including ceiling height.  Thinking about it, the length of the nave or church seating area would also make a difference as the sound bounced from "pillar to post" as it were, right?

You're not alone. They say there are about as many opinions about acoustics as there are acousticians. That's changing within the past few decades due to technology. Hearing binaurally on the horizontal, audiences are much more influenced by sound reflecting off the side walls than they are by that reflected vertically from the ceiling, which is mostly purely second-hand reverberation. More than the arrangement of pillars or things like that would be the surfaces, materials, and construction techniques, (the shapes of) decorative elements on those surfaces, and the shape and dimensions of the overall enclosure. The real difference would be between the main body of the space and outside the rows of piers, where the sound would be more muted and distant.


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:You're not

smartypants wrote:

You're not alone. They say there are about as many opinions about acoustics as there are acousticians. That's changing within the past few decades due to technology. Hearing binaurally on the horizontal, audiences are much more influenced by sound reflecting off the side walls than they are by that reflected vertically from the ceiling, which is mostly purely second-hand reverberation. More than the arrangement of pillars or things like that would be the surfaces, materials, and construction techniques, (the shapes of) decorative elements on those surfaces, and the shape and dimensions of the overall enclosure. The real difference would be between the main body of the space and outside the rows of piers, where the sound would be more muted and distant.

Some of that would have to be individual differences in hearing acuity.  I once worked where my hearing was tested every 5 years.  From the response of the technician, my hearing is abnormally acute.  I don't know the test numbers, sorry.  If the acoustician has any difference at all between right and left or just a slight miss in the upper or lower registers, they may have a very different opinion than another.  I'm sure technology is removing that particular anomaly.

I am trying to focus on experiences I have had in stone buildings without acoustic tile on any surface.  It is much harder to do than I thought.  One of the buildings I performed in was made of dressed lava - complete with little bubbles in the stone.  Another was sandstone.  I haven't been able to visit one of the gothics in person, so I haven't had the experience of limestone that is glued into the equivalent of one solid piece.  I can't remember exactly which building it was, but in one of them, there was a distinct echo from the ceiling - it wasn't no 150 feet tall, but about 20.  The director added a choral shell and that seemed to change the sound dissipation enough to remove the obvious echo.  We had to adjust the tempo just a little to disguise the last little bit.

There is an older concert hall here in Portland that is used extensively.  Where you sit in the audience can give you a pleasant experience or intense wah-wah's of echoes that give me a ferocious headache.  It is obvious to me that the 1920's acoustician was out on strike the week that building was designed. 

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
BobSpence1 wrote:Those Holy

BobSpence1 wrote:

Those Holy books convey a very warped and in may cases flat out wrong 'understanding' of human nature that has ultimately helped perpetuate many of the 'evils' they try to show us about ourselves.

And they label as sins and evils many aspects of our behaviour that are of no harm, and some which are positively beneficiai, especially around sex and reproduction.

They mostly just mirror and enshrine many primitive atavistic beliefs and practices which should have been winnowed out as society progressed, insofar as it could with those millstones  around our collective necks.

 

Codified ignorance, with the occasional flash of poetry...

 

 

i'm sorry, i have to call human nature again.  the very fact that these books were composed by humans and accepted by enormous communities of humans speaks volumes.  the average human does not have either your my views, bob.  we are anomalies.

yes, they're fucking flawed, they're warped, they're schizophrenic, and so is our species.  we haven't adapted our nature to these books--these books reflect us, and i fear always will.  we can piss and moan about being taken in by these books, but ultimately we take ourselves in.  we can malign them, prove them wrong, even burn them and eradicate them from the face of the earth; at least as many will arise to take their places.  i don't guarantee much, but i damn near guarantee that.

the life of the average human is ignorance with the occasional flash of poetry.

i have to say hari seldon would agree with me.

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:One of the

cj wrote:
One of the buildings I performed in was made of dressed lava - complete with little bubbles in the stone.

THIS. IS. AWESOME.

cj wrote:
There is an older concert hall here in Portland that is used extensively.  Where you sit in the audience can give you a pleasant experience or intense wah-wah's of echoes that give me a ferocious headache.  It is obvious to me that the 1920's acoustician was out on strike the week that building was designed. 

Yeah, the 20s through to the mid-50s were a tough time for concert halls, mostly because it took some time for our understanding of acoustics to catch up with stylistic changes. What's the name of this hall?


Answers in Gene...
High Level Donor
Answers in Gene Simmons's picture
Posts: 4214
Joined: 2008-11-11
User is offlineOffline
Personally, I would be quite

Personally, I would be quite skeptical of the idea that older buildings were designed to have specific resonances. Remember that the cathedrals of Europe often took decades to build and that there are certain features that are common to certain types and sizes of buildings.

 

The flying buttress comes to mind. Those are found on buildings that are quite tall compared to the building's actual foot print. The reason appears to modern analysis as being related to the wind load that such buildings had to withstand.

 

Past that, what artistic features that could be designed in were probably not primarily based in causing specific resonances either. For example, many cathedrals were designed so that the orientation of the building was based primarily on an east west line so that the rising sun would shine through well placed stained glass on Easter morning. Then the side knaves were designed to match up to the measurements of an idealized cross.

 

If other features such as the placement of choir lofts and support columns happened to make really effective pockets of additional resonances, that would probably also have to do with mathematical placements of those features. So if a specific architect decided that a feature such as the interior height to width ratio should be the golden ratio, then that is what it is and any resonances that occur are a pleasant secondary effect of a choice that was made so that the building was visually impressive.

NoMoreCrazyPeople wrote:
Never ever did I say enything about free, I said "free."

=


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:cj

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:
One of the buildings I performed in was made of dressed lava - complete with little bubbles in the stone.

THIS. IS. AWESOME.

Not unusual in Hawaii - I lived there for four years while I was studying music.

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:
There is an older concert hall here in Portland that is used extensively.  Where you sit in the audience can give you a pleasant experience or intense wah-wah's of echoes that give me a ferocious headache.  It is obvious to me that the 1920's acoustician was out on strike the week that building was designed. 

Yeah, the 20s through to the mid-50s were a tough time for concert halls, mostly because it took some time for our understanding of acoustics to catch up with stylistic changes. What's the name of this hall?

The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall built in 1928.  It's the balconies......

The ground level is fine, the balconies are atrocious.  http://www.pcpa.com/events/asch.php

I have yet to have a bad experience at the Keller built in 1917 - balconies or not:

Hm, might it be because the balconies overhang the ground level so much at the Schnitzer?

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Personally, I would be quite skeptical of the idea that older buildings were designed to have specific resonances. Remember that the cathedrals of Europe often took decades to build and that there are certain features that are common to certain types and sizes of buildings.

 

I think I agree with Smarty in that the music and chant was designed for the building, not the other way around.  The goal of creating the building as they did was to increase the mystery of the priests - the acoustic properties were not a goal of the building design.

edit: I was curious at one point and did some reading on gothic cathedral building and design.  The architects did what worked.  They had no idea why it worked or how it worked, but it worked.  They had ample evidence of what didn't work- many of the cathedrals have had extensive repair and renovation - sometimes even before they were completed.  We have accounts of entire towers, wings, and domes collapsing and having to be restored.  I did not intend to imply the architects actually understood what they were doing.  They just did what they knew how to do.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


smartypants
Superfan
smartypants's picture
Posts: 597
Joined: 2009-03-20
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:We have accounts of

cj wrote:
We have accounts of entire towers, wings, and domes collapsing and having to be restored.  I did not intend to imply the architects actually understood what they were doing.  They just did what they knew how to do.

Yes, and luckily for them, the architects were long dead by the time their buildings fell down, so they never had to take responsibility.


cj
atheistRational VIP!
cj's picture
Posts: 3330
Joined: 2007-01-05
User is offlineOffline
smartypants wrote:cj

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:
We have accounts of entire towers, wings, and domes collapsing and having to be restored.  I did not intend to imply the architects actually understood what they were doing.  They just did what they knew how to do.

Yes, and luckily for them, the architects were long dead by the time their buildings fell down, so they never had to take responsibility.

Very often, but not always.  Sometimes the building would fall long before completion of the structure.  Those that were lucky were already dead when the building fell.  Sometimes. the architect was killed in the collapse.  A very scary business to be in, I thought.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


Atheistextremist
atheist
Atheistextremist's picture
Posts: 5134
Joined: 2009-09-17
User is offlineOffline
Hey guys

 

 

Are mosques built with similar regard for acoustics?


kidvelvet
atheist
kidvelvet's picture
Posts: 162
Joined: 2010-01-15
User is offlineOffline
cj wrote:smartypants

cj wrote:

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:
One of the buildings I performed in was made of dressed lava - complete with little bubbles in the stone.

THIS. IS. AWESOME.

Not unusual in Hawaii - I lived there for four years while I was studying music.

smartypants wrote:

cj wrote:
There is an older concert hall here in Portland that is used extensively.  Where you sit in the audience can give you a pleasant experience or intense wah-wah's of echoes that give me a ferocious headache.  It is obvious to me that the 1920's acoustician was out on strike the week that building was designed. 

Yeah, the 20s through to the mid-50s were a tough time for concert halls, mostly because it took some time for our understanding of acoustics to catch up with stylistic changes. What's the name of this hall?

The Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall built in 1928.  It's the balconies......

The ground level is fine, the balconies are atrocious.  http://www.pcpa.com/events/asch.php

I have yet to have a bad experience at the Keller built in 1917 - balconies or not:

Hm, might it be because the balconies overhang the ground level so much at the Schnitzer?

I think part of the reason for the Schnitz being so bad from the balconies is that it was originally designed as a movie theater (The Paramount).  The accoustics would need to be different for a monophonic movie versus a live concert.  The Keller was designed with live stage performances in mind.

Just my thought...still remember seeing Blazer games at The Paramount over closed circuit.  It still amazes me how much Broadway has changed even since the early 80s.

Dolt:"Evolution is just a theory."
Me:"Yes, so is light and gravity. Pardon me while I flash this strobe while dropping a bowling ball on your head. This shouldn't bother you; after all, these are just theories."


Jeffrick
High Level DonorRational VIP!SuperfanGold Member
Jeffrick's picture
Posts: 2446
Joined: 2008-03-25
User is offlineOffline
Hell YEEEEEESSSSS!!!!

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

 

Are mosques built with similar regard for acoustics?

 

 

 

          In the name of the prophet,  all such designs for religious buildings  were engineered for accoustic's.  Those rounded domes at the top would be perfect echoing chambers for the  mind-numbing chants (hypnosis/ brainwashing) involved in creating a true believer.

"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."

VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"

If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?


BobSpence
High Level DonorRational VIP!ScientistWebsite Admin
BobSpence's picture
Posts: 5939
Joined: 2006-02-14
User is offlineOffline
iwbiek wrote:BobSpence1

iwbiek wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

Those Holy books convey a very warped and in may cases flat out wrong 'understanding' of human nature that has ultimately helped perpetuate many of the 'evils' they try to show us about ourselves.

And they label as sins and evils many aspects of our behaviour that are of no harm, and some which are positively beneficiai, especially around sex and reproduction.

They mostly just mirror and enshrine many primitive atavistic beliefs and practices which should have been winnowed out as society progressed, insofar as it could with those millstones  around our collective necks.

 

Codified ignorance, with the occasional flash of poetry...

 

 

i'm sorry, i have to call human nature again.  the very fact that these books were composed by humans and accepted by enormous communities of humans speaks volumes.  the average human does not have either your my views, bob.  we are anomalies.

yes, they're fucking flawed, they're warped, they're schizophrenic, and so is our species.  we haven't adapted our nature to these books--these books reflect us, and i fear always will.  we can piss and moan about being taken in by these books, but ultimately we take ourselves in.  we can malign them, prove them wrong, even burn them and eradicate them from the face of the earth; at least as many will arise to take their places.  i don't guarantee much, but i damn near guarantee that.

the life of the average human is ignorance with the occasional flash of poetry.

i have to say hari seldon would agree with me.

 

That actually is not all that different to what I have been saying, or at least meaning.

Of course they reflect us, they enshrine and reinforce many of our more primitive, intuitive beliefs, that is why they work as well as they do. And that is why they are such a problem, and why it so hard to counter them.

They are collections of memes, trapping people into some potentially harmful modes of thinking.

That doesn't mean it is not worth trying to provide a counter to them, which is effectively throwing a life-line to those other anomalies who find they cannot accept the nonsense in them, and who may therefore think they are alone, even insane.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


iwbiek
atheistSuperfan
iwbiek's picture
Posts: 4298
Joined: 2008-03-23
User is offlineOffline
Jeffrick

Jeffrick wrote:

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

 

Are mosques built with similar regard for acoustics?

 

 

 

          In the name of the prophet,  all such designs for religious buildings  were engineered for accoustic's.  Those rounded domes at the top would be perfect echoing chambers for the  mind-numbing chants (hypnosis/ brainwashing) involved in creating a true believer.

 

actually, most of those domes are either copied from eastern orthodox designs (compare the domes of st. basil's with those of the taj mahal, for example, though technically the latter is a mausoleum), or else orthodox churches that have been outright coopted (like hagia sophia, which was copied to build the blue mosque).

 

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson