So what is wrong with internet athiests?

TheHouseAlwaysWins

TheHouseAlwaysWins

Look, Ma! Two Heads!


Darkmatter2525 is an internet comedian who normally does anti-christian videos. but recently, he did a serious video on why he thought Christianity is against Western values. I think this bothered me on an artistic level because he argues that Middle Age Christian art is inferior to Roman and Greek art. I have taken 3 art classes and a Humanities class and I know several of these artpieces. There's a point in this video where he elaborates on his view, and he calls the Book of Kells along with other pieces from the period as childish compared to the "real" art of the Romans and Greeks (some pieces he posted belonged to other civilizations like the Hellenistics.)

The point in question is from 21 minutes in to about 23 minutes, in that 2 minute time range. I don't understand how someone can see the Book of Kells, and all the detail that's put into the patterns, and say it's childish. For a guy who prides himself on "reason" and "progress". The view he has on art is pretty surface level and ironically enough, despite claiming to be a leftist, is the same worldview that the NDSAP had on abstract "Degenerate" art in WW2. Which some people were killed over for creating. (repost from reddit)

KellsFol032vChristEnthroned.jpg

KellsFol292rIncipJohn.jpg
 
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Don't know who the guy is but most internet personalities buy into exagerating their adoption of identitites because otherwise they get no clicks. Just an extension of online tribalism, no place for nuance.
 
I did not watch that video, but IIRC middle ages christian art was mostly made by monks while roman and greek art was made by professional artists that made a living creating that art and studied for years to reach their level of expertise. It is not a good comparison because it is comparing the techniques from masters to people who never studied art and learned how to do it by themselves.
And yet, like TheHouseAlwaysWins says, it still shows a great degree of detail.
 
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To be honest those two paintings are pretty fucking ugly.
What I can distinguish looks like a third grade level of art quality and the rest is an edgy teenager who wants to fill the entire page with 'something' but doesn't know what so he just draws symbols and lines to fill up space.
 
Mr Fish said:
To be honest those two paintings are pretty fucking ugly.
What I can distinguish looks like a third grade level of art quality
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I don't see what you mean, a third grader normally wouldn't detail an artpiece in this way. The precision of the complex patterns are too high. A comparable type of art is the Islam art you see on mosques where God is represented abstractly in precise, intricate, geometric patterns. I think the Book of Kells and other similar artpieces are going for a similar idea/aesthetic. I took an art class and one of the important but subtle things they teach you later on is texture - the kind of patterns you put onto a painting or drawing. The texture behind the pages of the Book of Kells is immensely complex as every inch of it is laiden with geometric patterns and figures that bend and twist in abstractly.

To give you an idea of how complex the piece truly is, the Humanities class I studied in took multiple hours on one page of the Book of Kells because of how complex it is, if you zoom in, you see more patterns within the patterns present, and patterns underneath those. There are things like human faces and creatures that interwine with the patterns which all together is a singular whole artpiece. It is a masterpiece both in terms of texture and abstract art generally. It is beyond ironic and also selfish IMO that a person like Darkmatter is trying to say all the work that went into this masterpiece is nothing compared to his realistic Greco-Roman state-sponsored crafts, he is saying this in front of an audience of around 100k mostly impressionable people. I am all for opinions on art, but insulting the Book of Kells in that sort of way is like spitting on Beethoven and is against the sort of "logic" or "Reason" that these people pretend to represent.

and the rest is an edgy teenager who wants to fill the entire page with 'something' but doesn't know what so he just draws symbols and lines to fill up space.
Click to expand...

I don't know what you mean by this sentence.
 
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I've never been a fan of early Christian art, such as what they put on old books or Bibles. It's always rubbed me the wrong way. It's not that I can't appreciate the art is skillful, but I'm just not a fan of the style.
 
I think it has to do mostly with a sort of ego let me explain. While a lot of Athiest i'm sure aren't like this guy I think with today's way of thinking most Athiest seem to have this idea that they're intelligence is somehow way superior to those who follow a religion. They seem to think that because they don't believe in a deity that they exceed others.
 
Personally I figure that Aetheism is less abhorring worship of some higher being outright than replacing a given deity with prestigious "scientific" thinkers, notable philosophers, and various philosophical and scientific viewpoints.
 
What’s wrong with Internet atheism? Simple. They place too much importance on the rôle of religion in the world and generally ignore the ones that economics and classism play. I argue that individuals influence their religion far more than the opposite.

As for Christian art, I think that some works are impressively realistic considering the time periods, but quite a bit of ancient art is crude by modern standards. That doesn’t stop them from being charming though. I can appreciate Aztec and Egyptian artworks even if they’re relatively simplistic.
 
Religion has declined so much internet atheists are practically beating a dead horse. Even the Catholic church admits a lot of the Bible is horseshit when it comes to science which I am sure gets some people awfully butthurt.
 
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