Meaning, you consider your statements "godly." Okay.
What? And do your homework for you? (was that a fitting statement?)
Agreed.
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Musical Sounds: Moral or Amoral?
- Thread starter Luke2427
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I think it's pretty obvious that your knowledge is limited since you reject the definition given by the encyclopedia.
Webster says:
a : the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.
Maybe we'll keep going through experts until we find one almost as educated as you are on the subject.
Or you could just give us your definition and we could do away with Webster and Britannica and Wikepedia and just follow your knowledge- it being so extensive.
Parusing this thread it occurs to me that Larry and Aaron have not made a case for what they beleive. They've asked questions, put forth anecdotes, referred us to websites, but have not made even the slightest case for music being evil.
Their strategy has been nothing but aikido. They haven't even stated what music is evil in their estimation. The reason this thread has dragged on is because of their ambiguity. They offer no specifics and no concrete postion.
When you put to them logical arguments they don't even respond- or they respond with some unrelated question as if they were Plato and Socrates risen from the dead. Except the ancient philosophers actually did get around to making cases for what they believed.
So boys, tell us what you believe. Stop drive-by posting.
Start like this:
"I believe some music is immoral because...."
Then give us your reasons (1, 2, 3, etc...)
We will then address those reasons and point out the error of them or be convinced by them.
But your lack of specificity drags this on ad nauseum.
Have the courage to state your position clearly, bluntly, succinctly and submit it to the scrutiny of those looking on.
Otherwise, you are wasting your own time (which you have said is very limited already) and ours.
Their strategy has been nothing but aikido. They haven't even stated what music is evil in their estimation. The reason this thread has dragged on is because of their ambiguity. They offer no specifics and no concrete postion.
When you put to them logical arguments they don't even respond- or they respond with some unrelated question as if they were Plato and Socrates risen from the dead. Except the ancient philosophers actually did get around to making cases for what they believed.
So boys, tell us what you believe. Stop drive-by posting.
Start like this:
"I believe some music is immoral because...."
Then give us your reasons (1, 2, 3, etc...)
We will then address those reasons and point out the error of them or be convinced by them.
But your lack of specificity drags this on ad nauseum.
Have the courage to state your position clearly, bluntly, succinctly and submit it to the scrutiny of those looking on.
Otherwise, you are wasting your own time (which you have said is very limited already) and ours.
I didn't reject it. I said it was too vague, besides the dictionaries and encyclopedias will focus only on music theory. I have seen only one that actually mentioned the meaning of music.
Why do people who have no instruction in music theory like music? How do they perceive some sets of ordered sounds as music and others as not?
Music is the nonverbal, human communication of mood, demeanor or attitude with a set of tones existing in a specific harmonic relationship with one another arranged in a manner as to elicit a specific emotional response in the listener.
Trotter
<img src =/6412.jpg>
Aaron said:
I can almost agree completely with this, but the word "specific" trips it up. The author/composer/player may want to create a specific emotional response, but that falls to the listener. The same piece of music played for different audiences will have different responses, many of which were not the intention or aim of the composer.
What I call music and what someone else calls music may very well be different things. The same goes for everyone else in the world.
To try to pin some kind of morality on music itself is just plain silly (for want of a better word, or one that would be insulting). Is the sound of breaking glass sinful? How about a baby's cry? Static? Running water? Laughter? After all, if one is going to slap the label of sinful on sound you might as well label them all the same way because ::gasp:: they are all sounds.
I figured this would be another legalistic grandstand... and I was right.
If music is so evil why do you allow ANY of it within your church? Or in your life?
That the sound of music itself can convey sinister and evil feeling in the listener is well known. Watch any horror movie and you will realize that the most tense and scariest moments in the movie are created by the background music, not what you are actually watching. You see the girl walk into the room, nothing scary about that. But the background music causes you to feel tense and perhaps even afraid. The music, not the video causes you to feel something terrible is about to happen to her.
I have been playing guitar 40 years, no big deal, but I know about the famous tri-tone, the flatted fifth interval. This is commonly called the "devil's interval". There are many modern rock songs that incorporate this sound to give a sense of evil.
Here is a fellow demonstrating this interval in church. This interval has been understood for centuries and at one time was banned by the church.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gviCJw3BqfQ
Not true.
When you further consider the advent of harmony (in which there has been use of only the three chords of the tonic, dominant(5th) and subdominant (4th)) to harmonize all the 7 scale-notes in most of the folk melodies known, this further underscores that these three notes and their overtones were fundamental influences in the formation of the scale's notes. Even the names that evolved for them are perfect representations of their acoustic role, even though the names ('dominant' 'sub-dominant' & keynote/tonic) were also coined by people without acoustical knowledge.
Now either all this is the greatest coincidence on earth -- that is, people who knew nothing of acoustics coming up with scales reflecting all these acoustic properties purely by chance -- or else, in fact, the ear was already able to discern the sounds as distinct between harmonious or dissonant because the ear could hear these acoustic properties without consciously knowing they existed. http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm
Now either all this is the greatest coincidence on earth -- that is, people who knew nothing of acoustics coming up with scales reflecting all these acoustic properties purely by chance -- or else, in fact, the ear was already able to discern the sounds as distinct between harmonious or dissonant because the ear could hear these acoustic properties without consciously knowing they existed. http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm
That's not music.
That's not music either.
Nor this.
Again, not music.
It might help your case if you stuck to the subject of music, and you could do that better if you knew what music was, and how it differs from the noises you described.
Who said music was evil?
Once again, music is communication, a conscious, intelligent act. The Bible doesn't let you classify conscious, intelligent acts as amoral.
I don't have a problem with this definition.
I have agreed a dozen times or more and consistently since the very start of this thread that music affects the emotions.
So what?
So does the aroma of cinnamon.
So does chocolate.
My wife's birthday is this week and we drove a five hour round trip today to go to the nearest Indian restaurant because Chicken Curry and Dum Alu and especially Chicken Madras elicit certain emotional responses in us.
Is Indian food evil?
Is it good?
Or perhaps it simply has NO moral value- as is the case with music and a thousand other things that elicit emotional responses.
SO WHAT IF IT AFFECTS THE EMOTIONS, BOYS???? FOR THE THOUDSANDTH TIME.....
For thousandth time no one, that I know of, is denying that MUSIC AFFECTS THE EMOTIONS.
We can't get anywhere in this discussion because the "bad music people" keep regurgitating this, their only point.
What they don't seem to be able to do is answer this question-
SO WHAT???
There is not a single emotion that does not have it's place and is not wholesome in appropriate circumstances.
Fear is extraordinarily appropriate when considering the severity of God.
So music that is terrifying is appropriate in a Judgment House Drama and it is appropriate in a thousand other venues as well.
Consider this- Happiness is evil if it is the atmosphere of an evil deed.
Those who make a mock at sin are filled with happiness and Mary Poppins' zippity doo da music might be played as evil people bash innocent people across the head.
EVERY SINGLE EMOTION CAN BE GOOD AND EVIL DEPENDING ON ITS MOTIVE.
Peace is evil if it exists in a state where there should be no peace. There is no peace saith the Lord unto the wicked.
They cried peace, peace when there was no peace...
So is the case with EVERYTHING. Music, chocolate, cinnamon, color schemes, words, EVERYTHING.
But what is extrabiblical is this idea that ANY OF IT is sinful in and of itself.
Chocolate, music, fear, anger, happiness, peace and every thing else that is or affects the emotions is not in and of itself sinful.
To preach that any of it is, is to preach an extrabiblical doctrine.
Cinnamon is not an act, and there is no such thing as happy or sad cinnamon. Music is an act, and there is such a thing as happy or sad music.
If you want to discuss music, then discuss music—not food.
And for the thousandth time, music is an intelligent, premeditated ACT. It is an act of communication. It is, therefore, moral. You cannot escape that conclusion. Not biblically.
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Quit making up stories, rbell. I'll speak for myself.
Unfortunately, defining music as moral or immoral in an of itself (that is, divorced from the behavior of the singer/musician) is pretty tough to do. Primarily because Scripture doesn't give us a list of good or evil music genres.
So are food dishes, Aaron. So are color schemes.
These are things that affect the emotions.
What you have yet to do is, even make a point first of all, but secondly you have failed to show any emotion is sinful.
You've only thought it through to the part where you can prove music affects the emotions. You never thought past that. you never considered that all emotions are appropriate in certain settings.
You never considered that since that is true then all kinds of music that stir all kinds of emotions cannot be condemned since all kinds of emotions are appropriate in certain settings.
Prediction: You're about to quit like others have and for the same reasons. You're stumped. The only other option is for you to keep drive-by posting (short smart alec comments that ignore arguments) and performing debate Aikido (dodging arguments) to save face, or you could yield which would be the honorable thing to do.
It would work like this: I did not consider that emotion is not in and of itself sinful (only the motive of it is) and therefore I did not consider that music which stirs certain emotions cannot be condemned- especially when I do not have bible any where that condemns any kind of music regardless of what emotions it stirs- period.
This would be a bold and refreshing conclusion to this debate if you would just confess the above words.
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Escpecially since music IS the behavior of the performer. It IS human interaction.
It doesn't have to. It tells us what the manner of our interaction should be.
No they aren't. They're objects.
You're getting closer with this. A scheme is not an object, it is an idea—a thought, and it is moral.
So?
I wouldn't be so sure. rbell is still smarting from an exchange from a couple years back. But I'm just wondering where it is that my argument was anything like you're saying it is. Where have I said, music affects emotions, therefore music is sinful?
Not only is this a false statement, it's off topic.
It isn't true
Again, not my argument.
Go back and read my posts. I've tried to keep my wording at a fifth-grade reading level, so it shouldn't pose too much of a challenge for you, but I've been wrong before.
So what is the "manner of interaction" with a bass guitar?
I am not a musician, but wouldn't it be similar to the low notes on a harp.
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