Regular readers might know that one of my pet peeves is the way theists tend to attribute so much of what’s good to gOd and religion while excusing gOd and religion from any responsibility for anything bad.

To quote Oumkheyr once again, “I really believe that France is scared of Muslims, which is the motivation for this law, but people shouldn’t generalize as not all Muslims are the same. Yes, some have done terrible things, but it is done in the name of man, never in the name of God.”

If you happen to be an atheist yourself, I bet you can readily reel off a few similarly annoying examples of your own. (Praising gOd for saving one person in a plane crash but not blaming him for the terrible deaths of the other hundred people on the plane seems to be an especially popular example among my friends.)

One of the claims that I personally find especially annoying is that religion has inspired a lot of great art. Even if we overlook the problematic nature of that claim and simply take it at face value it still commits what I call the logical sin of misemphasis by failing to acknowledge that religion has also pre-empted and destroyed a lot of great art.

This is a point that I’ve made before but it was brought into sharp focus for me again several times this week when I wasn’t expecting it. The details bear repeating as they help counter the pro-religion argument we hear so much more frequently.

1) In the course of reading the first 165 pages of Daniel J. Boorstin’s mind-expanding book, The Creators, I encountered no fewer than six assaults by theists on the art of those who came before them.

—– On pages 89-90 I learned that “In 1215, according to the Arab chronicler Abd al Latif, Caliph Malek al Aazis Othman was offended by these monuments of idolatry [i.e., the Egyptian pyramids]. As a work of piety he assembled a large crew to destroy one of the smaller pyramids, the pyramid of Menkaure at Giza. After eight months’ labor, his crew made so little impression that he gave up. The mark of that hopeless effort is still visible in a small scar on the north slope of that pyramid.” Only the size of those magnificent structures saved them. How many smaller pieces over the centuries haven’t been as lucky?

—– On pages 124-125 I learned how one of the greatest creations of the Romans, Hadrian’s Pantheon – a temple dedicated to and apparently depicting all the Greco-Roman deities (128 CE) – was consecrated as a Christian church by Pope Boniface IV in 608 CE “after the pagan filth was removed… so that the commemoration of the saints would take place henceforth where not gods but demons were formerly worshipped.” Later (circa 1632), Pope Urban VIII stripped the bronze off the roof beams and used it to make 80 cannons, allegedly in the belief that it was better to use the metal to protect the Holy See than to keep the rain off silly old buildings.

—– On page 135 Boorstin describes how the Great Church in Constantinople (Hagia Sophia), built in 532 by Justinian, was assaulted no fewer than three times. First the Christian Iconoclasts championed by Emperor Leo III covered up its “diabolical” images in 726; then Christian Crusaders stripped it of its gold and silver pieces in 1204; and then even more radical changes were made when Muslims took over Constantinople in 1453 and converted the place into a mosque.

—– On page 162 Boorstin in passing shares the fact that medieval Muslim iconoclasts chipped away the Sphinx’s nose.

With some 550 pages left to go, I shudder to think what other examples remain to be discovered….

2) This morning I opened up my copy of Stefano Zuffi’s Dictionary of Painters: From A to Z. The very first artist listed is Pieter Aertsen, a 16th century Dutchman. Three examples of his work are provided. One of them is described this way: “The tranquil head of the ox and the partial but expressive figures of two shepherds are all that remain of the Adoration of the Shepherds, a large altarpiece painted by Aertsen for the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, and destroyed in 1566 during a violent iconoclastic campaign launched by the most outspoken radical Calvinist preachers…. These [painted] figures are so intense and real that they truly deserve to be described as the precursors of Dutch painting in the ‘golden age.’”

Wikipedia adds this: “Several of his best works, including altarpieces in various churches, were destroyed in the Netherlands’ religious wars.”

Clearly, no one has been absolutely safe from the destructive, art-hating wrath of theists – not even the fellow members of the same religion!

And of course the impulse among theists to ban or destroy the art and images of others hardly disappeared with the end of the Age of Religious Wars.

Here’s a recent example that’s humorous in its absurdity but quite sad when one stops and recalls the long, ignoble tradition it’s part of:

Foam Cleavage Cover-Up (The Age; Feb 25)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado: Puppet cleavage has been ruled out for advertising posters on bus shelters in Colorado Springs.

Lamar Advertising rejected posters for a touring production of the Broadway show Avenue Q because they show the cleavage of a fuzzy pink puppet.

Lamar account executive Jeff Moore told The Gazette of Colorado Springs that the company took a conservative approach in the area.

The city is known for its political conservatism and is home to the headquarters of conservative Christian groups.

The poster has been replaced by one showing the face of another puppet.

Avenue Q is a Tony-winning musical about New Yorkers, human and puppets, searching for life and love.

The show bills itself as “60 per cent adult situations and 40 per cent foam rubber” and features the adventures of puppets and humans in New York.

Praise Jesus for protecting us from diabolical puppet cleavage! We’ll never know exactly how many stuffed animal rapes were prevented as a result….

(For a bit more on this subject, see the entries I posted on Aug 6, 2008 and Jan 7, 2010.)