Some odd thoughts on music and materialism

In years past, when I was quite young, I briefly entertained thoughts of atheism. I could never embrace full-fledged atheism, and agnosticism was not satisfying on a number of levels, but I guess I lived as if I were a deist. Oddly, one of quite a few factors that restrained me from embracing atheism was my love of music.

It all boils down to the identity that we embrace. If I am, as a materialist would affirm, the end result of, over eons, collisions of blind natural forces, then by what, if anything, am I imbued with value and meaning? By what standard can I call anything beautiful in a universe impersonal and driven by nothing but implacable natural laws? Coltrane should mean nothing more than the noise of a boulder falling into a crevasse. Bach should carry no more weight than the croaking of a frog. How do I reconcile a deep love for music when those that create what I perceive to be beauty are, in the final analysis and after all the superficial romanticism is stripped away, no more than puppets of meats? Materialism, atheism, is so reductionist that the only meaning available is that which aids in the propagation of the species, and even the urge to survival is a less than satisfying absolute.

Beauty becomes utilitarian. Beauty – music – becomes, at best, defense mechanism that perhaps serves to protect us from harsh truths implied by a reality where God is dead and the universe is all that is.

Only One who transcends the created order is able to lend meaning to our creative efforts. It is the fact that we, though desperately fallen and rebellious creatures, were purposefully created in the image of our Creator that lends foundation for our creativity.

It is without a measure of irony that one of my favorite composers/artists, Brian Eno, is an atheist.