Popular ambassadors of freethought.

freethinkers are always happy to discover like minds engaged in free inquiry in an otherwise unthinking society. But there's nothing quite as vindicating as those occasions when famous people have the audacity to raise their voices and speak freely about their aversion to organized religion.

As a journalist, interviewing as many as one hundred musicians every year, I'm always amazed at the number of artists who do just that. In a country where more than 70 percent of the people consider themselves Christian, the number of freethinking musicians seems to level the playing field. In fact, artists might be the freethought movement's greatest ambassadors simply because they are able to communicate freethinking to the masses as few others can.

Take for instance Sean Danielsen, frontman for the band Smile Empty Soul (Lava Records)--a well recognized band with a song on the Spiderman 2 soundtrack. In an interview I conducted earlier this year Danielsen told me that his antipathy toward religion would likely continue to surface on the band's future albums as it does on the current self-titled album. "Religion is just such a big bad part of my life that it's going to come out," he said.

And it's easy to understand why religion has had such an effect on the artist. According to the biography on the band's website (www.smileemptysoul.com/bio.html), at the age of seven Danielsen's "very religious" mother and stepfather took him to live in an abandoned summer camp in Maine. Isolated for three years in what he described as "the middle of the forest," Danielsen now freely expresses his displeasure with organized religion and the effect it has on people like his parents:

   I'm definitely against all organized
   religion just because, when you really
   look at it, organized religion has
   caused most of the death in the history
   of this planet. Most of the wars were
   fought over organized religion. And if
   people would just give that shit up
   it would solve a lot of problems in
   this world.

Lyrically, the group's current album, which has sold more than 350,000 copies, is laden with critiques of religion. Take for instance the lyrics of "Every Sunday":

   I don't want your religions
   and I don't need your sympathy
   and I don't want a part of all
      your hatred
   no matter how much you yell at me
   I still say
   You're the ones that kill your babies
   You're the ones that luck your kids
   You're the ones that throw each
      other away
   you're the ones sitting in church
      every Sunday.

One of the group's music videos, "Nowhere Kids," which was yanked off the air by MTV, takes on sexual abuse by the clergy. "It starts with a scene of a perfect suburban family standing in front of their house," explained Danielsen. "Their priest is there. The video is real dark. Later on in the video the dad pretty much beats the son and the priest molests the little boy. And because people don't want to see shit like that right now, we get our video yanked."

Danielsen and his band Smile Empty Soul, however, are anything but alone in their discontent with religion.

The veteran punk-metal rock band, Boy Sets Fire (Wind-up Records), also tackles organized religion on its current album, Tomorrow Come Today. Songs like "Bathory's Sainthood" attack blind dogmatism:

   Genuflect away the sins that
      we've known
   sure one percent rules, but heaven's made
      of gold ...
   do we really want, do we really need a
      bastard messiah
   wrapped up in the dream of patriotic clean
      white-washed desire ...
   and what gives us the right to feel with remorse
      for a god they created
   a god for the poor, for Bathory we're bleeding out
      the devil hides in angelic shrouds.

Another song from the album Last Year's Nest lambastes wishful thinking. "It's just about hope and its ability to basically heal what's going on in our country," explained vocalist Nathan Gray, "and that wishes are bullshit, something you can throw around without responsibility. If you're hoping for something, you have to make it happen."

One of the more profound and best-known freethinking artists, Ani Difranco, has recently released a beautiful album, Educated Guess, comprised of penetrating, often deeply rational lyricism. One of its better songs, "Animal," takes time to briefly step on the toes of Christianity:

   Ask any ecosystem
   harm here is harm there
   and aggression begets aggression
   it's a very simple lesson
   that long preceded any king of heaven.

But Difranco is anything but coy about her thoughts on hardcore Bible thumpers. In her poem "Literal," featured in the CD booklet, she gracefully takes on religious literalists:

   When they said he could walk on water
   what it sounds like to me
   is he could float like a butterfly
   and sting like a bee
   literal people are scary, man
   literal people scare me
   out there trying to rid the world
   of its poetry
   while getting it wrong fundamentally
   down at the church of "look,
   it sez right here, see!"

Yet of all the freethinking popular artists currently making waves in the music industry, none compare to the kind of overt iconoclasm of Bad Religion.

After twenty years in the industry, thirteen full-length releases, and more than two million records sold, Bad Religion is likely the best-selling, openly atheistic rock band in American history and is renowned as one of the best punk bands ever. Bad Religion's latest album, The Empire Strikes First, features the band's most transparent ode to atheism, appropriately entitled "Atheist Peace." Though the song runs just three seconds shy of two minutes, the lyrics, sung by Greg Graffin, are as brazenly poignant as the song is blazingly fast:

   Tell me what we're fighting for
   no progress ever came from war
   only a false sense of increase
   and the world won't wait
   for the truth upon a plate
   but we're ready now to feast on an atheist peace.

Bass guitarist lay Bentley told me that the song is Graffin's way of showing how people without religion are often above the frays resulting from religious conflicts. Bentley adds:

   I think that Greg's concept of "Atheist Peace" is
   basically just saying, "Look, a lot of today's problems
   are being sparked by religion;" and that's true
   in America and it's true in the Middle East. There's
   a lot of issues that are coming up because of religious
   ideology. And I think what Greg is saying is,
   "Look at me, I don't have those problems. I don't
   feel oppressed by another religion and I don't feel
   like I have to defend my faith."

Graffin, an avowed atheist, recently received his doctorate from Cornell University. Bentley says Graffin's denunciation of religion stems from the studies he conducted for his thesis, which, according to Bentley, focuses on religion and its effect on the evolution of humankind. "Graffin's pretty much being straightforward about his feelings," said Bentley.

Expressing himself fully, Graffin offers an even bolder diatribe, on traditional notions of God's beneficence in "God's Love":

   Tell me! Tell me; where is the love?
   In a careless creation
   When there's no "above"
   There's no justice
   Just a cause and a cure
   And a bounty of suffering
   It seems we all endure
   And what I'm frightened of
   Is that they call it "God's love."

Other songs like "The Quickening" and "Live Again--The Fall of Man" are replete with rational appeals for science and reason over faith.

When it comes to spreading the word of reason, many of us are probably inclined to give all the credit to academic intellectuals, scientists, and philosophers. But we should also realize the vital role artists play in exposing the public to the liberty of freethought. Artists have the ability to speak to people at a level of intimacy often unattainable by scholars. And bands like Smile Empty Soul and Bad Religion doesn't have a monopoly on poetry and art; freethinkers, liberated from religious dogma, are often the world's best creators.

Jeff Nall lives in Central Florida. He has written for various publications including Z-Magazine, Clamor, Liberty, Freethought Today, Toward Freedom, Impact Press, and Utne (web-watch).