One of the more challenging albums I’ve bought downloaded for free lately has been Saul Williams’s The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (produced by T. Reznor). So I’ll take this Music Monday opportunity to post a song from it, a cover of “Sunday Bloody Sunday”:

The original by U2, of course, is a reference to “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland, an oft-cited conflict in arguments about religion since the lines of battle were drawn along Protestant vs. Catholic lines, not unlike the Sunni vs. Shiite polarization in modern Iraq (and perhaps Lebanon now, sigh).

The sensible position (NB: fellow nontheist Quaker), of course, is that people will always find reasons to kill each other, and that religion therefore is simply one excuse among many. But that’s rather faint praise – if we can rid ourselves of something that creates artificial divisions among people and gives them more excuses for violence, that’s no small thing.

In any case, the band’s own interpretation of the song (at least in this interview with the drummer) is that the song is about bitterness and hate in general, not really the Irish/Catholic vs. Anglo/Protestant violence specifically. So Saul’s video above is fitting, taking the song wholly out of the 1972 Bloody Sunday context and making it about a homeless person in the city.

Which is where atheism/humanism gets most interesting for me, actually – moving beyond debates about otherworldliness, ideally by winning them, and getting more engaged in this-worldly pleasures and problems.

In that spirit, here’s a song (”Break,” NSFW) that’s not really about religion so far as I can tell:

More Saul: Religious themes do abound in this poem about his preacher father, and here is an interview about the above album, where he makes the hilariously fascinating comparison between modern day MCs and Baptist preachers like his father freestyling on the pulpit about God.