Record Companies and # 68 Atheisim

Cultural Artefacts

I got an email letting me know that someone had tagged a facebook picture of me outside Spillers records the Cardiff record shop where I had spent many happy hours as University student looking through their music stock in the 1970s.It made me think of the place LPs had in the cultural life, on  visiting a persons home LP records and books can often be used in analysing a person giving information on their interests and backgrounds.

The joy of vinyl

LP records alphabetically organised tended to be a preserve of the young male collector and I have recently returned to playing vinyl from my own collection (almost deliberately stored in a random  fashion) and I have revisited the fantastic music of many years ago. Couple of things I've noted are the creativity and passion that comes through even though the technology from both ends (recording and distribution) is way behind what we have to day. The other thing is the behaviour of the recording companies charging top price for records and not investing in their products and customers, they sowed the seeds for their demise with (for example) the use of second rate glue on the LP covers. The recorded music divisions of EMIs, CBSs and so on are suffering but my sympathy is diluted by their earlier short term greed.   Cultural products are a pleasure that sadly is disappearing from the living rooms of the world and a file collection on a hard disk (or flash memory) does not hold 'stories' in quite the same way.

# 68 Atheism

To continue with the themes around religion we'll look at the idea that  there's not a god, Atheism  is defined as the doctrine that there is no deity. Atheists say that human beings can create suitable moral codes to live by without the aid of Gods or religious scriptures.

Atheists reach their decision because they find insufficient evidence to support any religion and think that religion is nonsensical.
Some atheists  once had a religion but  have lost faith in it or they may live in a non-religious culture.  In other cases it could be that Religion doesn't interest them or doesn't seem relevant to their lives. When putting their case atheists can highlight that religions seem to have done a lot of harm in the world. or that the world is such a bad place that there can't be a God.
 
Atheists who are secularist  ( that's the principle of separation of government institutions) can be hostile to any special treatment given to organised religion by the state.

Somewhat surprisingly it is possible to be both atheist and religious most Buddhists manage it, as do some adherents of other religions such as Judaism and Christianity.

Atheists can be as moral or immoral as so called religious people and in practical terms atheists often follow the same moral code as they do but they arrive at their decisions as to what is good or bad without any help from the idea of God.

Atheists find their own answers to the question of what it means to be 'human' Nietzsche who is very much associated with atheism famously coined the phrase 'god is dead'.