Faith and the Arts: Filling the God-shaped hole? I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.‘ For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important. - Salman Rushdie

Faith and the Arts More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry. - Matthew Arnold

The Second Commandment You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. - Exodus 20.4

Islamic Art

Seven Types of Atheism A closer winter tunnel- David Hockney (2006)

Faith- A Definition Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see - Hebrews 11.1

Faith and the Arts That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge- Biographia Literaria The Fountain- Marcel Duchamp (1917)

Art and Truth Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth- at least the truth that is given us to understand - Pablo Picasso

Art and Imagination

The Ontological Argument Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence there is no doubt that there exists a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

The Sea of Faith

The Sea of Faith The movement from an understanding of religion centred on dogmatic belief to one centred in spirituality and ethical activity may seem irresistible. Why do people then resist it so strongly? Because it is coupled with the admission, at last, that religion is entirely human, made by us for ourselves. This admission is now inescapable, and the next stage in the development of religious thought that will have to be based upon it, but it need no more imply any reduction in our sense of the ultimate importance of religion in our lives than does the corresponding admission in the case of art.

Religious Experience

Artistic Experience I do not disbelieve in absolute beauty any more than I disbelieve in absolute truth. On the contrary, I gladly suppose that the proposition- this object must either be beautiful or not beautiful- is absolutely true. Only, can we recognise it? Certainly, at moments we believe we can...Every now and then the beauty, the bald miracle, the ‘significant’ form...of a picture, a poem or a piece of music, springs from an unexpected quarter and lays us flat...When we have picked ourselves up we begin to suppose that such a state of mind must have been caused by something of which the...value was absolute. ‘This’, we say, ‘is absolute beauty’. Perhaps it is. - Clive Bell- Art

Signifiers and Signifieds cat

The Transcendental Signified God

meanings v Meaning

Conclusion