Steinmetz: Giver of Electricity to the World, and Freethinker in Matters of Religion

Charles P. Steinmetz [above right] stands with another freethinker, Thomas Edison [above left] and Elihu Thomson as one of the founding fathers of electricity. The devices and methods that Steinmetz developed are largely concerned with those parts of electricity that are hidden from the public eye, like the invention of generators that produce electricity as well as the transformers sitting powerfully quiet in their little houses outside generating stations. Few have wondered why the high-tension lines strung on tall steel towers are seldom damaged by lightning, but again we can thank Steinmetz for that. Without Steinmetzʼs work, electricity would be about half as useful as it is. Also, Dr. Steinmetzʼs tale of escape from Prussia, battle with polio, and rise to fame in the U.S. is a classic story of survival and success.

Toward the end of his life he was asked increasingly about his religious beliefs, and he even shared an extended conversation with noted Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan. More on that aspect of his life can be read below.

Key Points:

• One of the Pioneers of AC Power. Steinmetz figured out the mathematics involved in hysteresis. Hysteresis loops show the behavior of magnetism in materials. Understanding magnetism in iron cores was and is still key to design of motors, generators, ballasts and other electrical devices. Steinmetz figured out the great mystery that has stumped all the greats of the time (Thomson, Tesla, Westinghouse, Shallenberger, Edison).

• Became an icon as the star engineer of General Electric in the Alternating Current Age. Founder of the GE Research Lab (now GE Global Research).

• Distinguished Professor at Union College.

• Helped many researchers achieve success on numerous technologies without claiming credit or collecting many patents for himself.

• A believer in socialism, he thought that through automation in factories and in our personal lives (appliances) that we could eliminate the need for ‘serfs’ doing manual labor and that governments or companies could share the profits gained from automation to support the freed ‘slaves’ of feudal systems. Little did he know that increased profits from automation benefit stock share holders most of whom are already wealthy and unwilling to share that wealth, therefore the profits do not benefit the poor but have simply made the rich richer.

Steinmetz and the Ministers

Inevitably the reporters began to ask Steinmetz for his religious articles of faith. Steinmetz in his opinions never attacked anyone. He didnʼt care enough, and definite attack was a weapon which he never used. So the ministers welcomed his comments and never denounced him as an atheist. One liberal denominational magazine, the Unitarian Christian Register, even asked him to write two articles for it on his beliefs. These articles drew the inevitable line between scientific weighing of evidence and religious taking on authority but they did it in so conciliating a way that no one got angry. Steinmetz gave to religion that minute loophole which is all it needs to ask.

“There is,” said Steinmetz, “no evidence outside of science for God, immortality, and similar conceptions,and there is evidence against these conceptions in science, and science has justified its methods and conclusions by the work it has accomplished.

“But it is hard for man to get along without belief in these conceptions. We may get along without a God but not without immortality. Our self-conceit dislikes to place so little value on ourselves, our knowledge, our skill, experience—in short our Ego to concede that all this is merely a function of the biochemical process of life which will utterly cease and vanish with the disintegration of the protoplasm of the body by death.

“But all conclusions of science depend on our observation by means of the senses. Religion deals with the infinite which cannot be conceived by the senses. Also we reason by means of logic, whose rules are only thought to be true because of experience.

“This, the negative answer of science on the question whether there are conceptive entities of infinite character, as infinite in time and space, immortality of the Ego, God, etc., is not conclusive, and the question is as open as before.

“There can be no scientific foundation of religion, and belief must always remain the foundation of religion, while that of science is logical reasoning from facts, that is, sense conception. All that he can say is that the two, science and religion, are not necessarily incompatible, but are different and unrelated activities of the human mind.”

An Insulated Conversation

Steinmetzʼs tour of speech-making carried him to nearly every town of importance on the Pacific Coast, and everywhere he was greeted with the same enthusiasm. The papers ran almost verbatim stories of his addresses and editorial after editorial appeared in praise of the man who had made hydro-electric power, which in turn had made the Pacific Coast. They take their electricity very seriously out there. It largely replaces coal and the people are duly grateful to the men who make it possible.

On the train back to Chicago he had an interesting encounter. William Jennings Bryan was on board and asked to meet him. Steinmetz was sitting alone in his stateroom looking out of the window when Bryan entered. He at once recognized the familiar face of the pseudo-statesman with the light of fanaticism burning in his eyes. He greeted him warmly and Bryan immediately broached the matter nearest his heart—the only matter which really interested him. He was looking for sentimental loopholes in Steinmetzʼs disbelief.

Bryan in private with no others present to whom he could orate was very different from Bryan on the public platform. He deplored disbelief in his rather simple-minded God but he realized there was no use displaying his feelings when he had no audience which could be induced by appeals to emotion to sympathize with him. So the discussion was calm and reasonable. Steinmetz had nothing to lose by frankness and Bryan had nothing to gain by emphasis.

Steinmetz enjoyed hugely this meeting with the leader of all that was silly in religion and politics but for the life of him he couldnʼt develop any antagonism.

Bryan was so pleasant and conciliating. They talked for a long time, coming to no agreement on anything but discounting rather than opposing each otherʼs opinions because there was no one else there to hear them disagree.

Bryan asked most of the questions, presumably because Steinmetz realized that there was no use trying to get facts, the only things which interested him, out of a reservoir which contained nothing but sentiment. Bryan was not interested in facts and Steinmetz presumably had as large a stock of sentiment as any man.

Pleasantly and reasonably Steinmetz explained the position of the orthodox scientist. He granted that the inherent irrationality of human nature left some distant field for religion but disclaimed any desire to explore that field for himself. He advocated the study of the Bible by children, for he considered it a great book and one containing remarkably little religion.

Bryan listened politely enough, rocklike in his conviction that science was a fraud and revelation the only true knowledge. The two parted in a friendly state of mind, Steinmetz to return to his somewhat dusty test tubes and Bryan to continue tilling the sterile soil of rural faith.

This meeting with Bryan is a fitting last episode in the life of the enthusiastic little scientist. His useful work was almost over now and he could afford to smile indulgently at those human weaknesses which would have aroused him to fury in earlier years. So on parting he pressed warmly the hand of the Great Mogul of bucolic bigotry who was shortly to meet his Leipsig at Madison Square Garden and his Waterloo at Dayton, Tennessee.

The End

There isnʼt much more to fell. Steinmetzʼs life is nearly over now. He is fifty-eight and his body has decided to stop running. All considered, it did remarkably well to keep going so long. At least it nourished the brain during the vital years which bore such important scientific fruit. If it had been looking for excuses it could have found plenty. Every life process had to run in zigzags.

The Pacific Coast trip was the last effort the body was able to complete. On his return to Schenectady Steinmetz sank rapidly. He found it difficult to walk from the train to the taxi and when he reached home the doctor told him to stay in bed awhile and rest.
Perhaps he recognized the death sentence so gently pronounced. Probably he did not. At any rate he stayed quietly in his room, protesting now and then because he couldnʼt go to his laboratory, but devouring scientific literature as greedily as ever.

One morning about breakfast time Hayden went up to see him. Steinmetz was awake and cheerful but he seemed uncomfortable. Hayden told him to take his heart medicine. Heʼd bring him his breakfast presently.

“Keep still. Donʼt try to do anything.”

“All right,” said Steinmetz, settling himself back on the pillow. “Iʼll lie down.” Those were his last words.

Presently up came little Billy Hayden with the breakfast tray. He found Steinmetz lying as peacefully as ever, but dead. His heart had stopped. On his face was no sign of pain or surprise. He had died as naturally as an electric motor. The current was cut off. The motor lost momentum, ran slower, and stopped. That was all. Wonderfully soon the news reached the General Electric offices and the officials of the company came up in a body to pay their respects. Telegrams began to arrive from all over the country. Scientific societies, electrical companies, and plain individuals at home and abroad sent their last thanks to the man who had made their work so much easier to do.

The funeral was almost a state function. Steinmetzʼs name had penetrated to the most preoccupied minds and everyone high and low came to see him buried. How Steinmetz would have loved it all I The reporters. The lieutenant governor. The president and chairman of the company. Scientists and magnates in flocks. All genuinely sorry and genuinely worshipful as they carried the small, light coffin to the graveyard.

SOURCE: Loki: The Life of Charles Proteus Steinmetz by Jonathan Norton Leonard, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company Inc., 1932

See also,

• The Secular Saints of John Hopkins

• The Joy of Secularism

The Secular Saints of Johns Hopkins… and a case of “faith in medicine” healing a paralyzed woman

Johns Hopkins Hospital and University were the product of a great change in the direction of North American philanthropy. Throughout the nineteenth century, most giving by the wealthy had been religiously directed-to churches, seminaries, and other church-based charities. In 1867, however, the Baltimore merchant and financier Johns Hopkins-for reasons not totally known but certainly related to his being an adherent of the education-friendly Quaker sect-had drawn up a will bequeathing his then-vast fortune of $7 million (perhaps $300-$500 million in todayʼs purchasing power) to found a university and a hospital mandated to compare favorably with like institutions anywhere in the world. The Johns Hopkins institutions, created faithfully by trustees after the merchantʼs death in 1873, were secular and scientific and uncompromising in their commitment to excellence. They trained professors and scientists and doctors, not preachers.

In the late nineteenth century surgery began making spectacular progress under the double impact of the introduction of anesthesia and asepsis [keeping the surgical area and instruments relatively free of germs], that made it possible to surgeons to enter most cavities of the body and with the prospect of doing their patients more good than harm. From about the mid-1880s (appendectomies were first performed in 1886, and surgically sutured cures for hernias were first performed in 1887, saving numerous lives), surgery entered its first golden age. More than any other specialty, it became the driving force behind the transformation of hospitals from places for end-of-life care of the indigent into temples for the treatment of rich and poor alike.

Just take the case of a strangulated hernia before surgery could successfully treat it:

Natives in Central Africa suffer much oftener than Europeans from strangulated hernia, in which a portion of the intestines pokes out through the abdominal muscles and becomes blocked, so that it can no longer empty itself. It then becomes enormously inflated with gases which form, and this causes terrible pain. Then after several days of torture death takes place, unless the intestine can be got back through the rupture into the abdomen. Our ancestors were well acquainted with this terrible method of dying, but we no longer see it in Europe because every case is operated upon as soon as it is recognized…But in Africa this terrible death is quite common. There are few who have not as boys seen some man rolling in the sand of his hut and howling with agony until death came to release him. [Albert Schweitzer, On the Edge of the Primeval Forest (1961)]

Returning to the history of Johns Hopkins…When Harvey Cushing removed part of a diseased nerve from the thigh of a distinguished Johns Hopkins scientist, Simon Newcomb, the grateful patient hailed him as a miracle worker who had restored his ability to walk. “Prof. Newcomb believes himself to be entirely cured,” a newspaper reported, “and leaves his crutches at Johns Hopkins as a souvenir just as the poor cripples who are cured by miracles leave theirs at the shrine of St. ann de Beaupre.” When even scientists were said to leave their crutches at Johns Hopkins a new and powerful shrine was in the making.

Cushing also found a way to treat the extreme facial pain of trigeminal neuralgia, a condition that drove many of its victims to madness or suicide. In 1899 Cushing operated on a patient who complained that in the early stages of a spasm he could feel, “a devil twisting a red-hot corkscrew into the corner of the mouth,” and that was just the start of the suffering. Cushing completely eliminated the patientʼs pain by severing the connection between the brain and the trigeminal nerve, and he discovered a better place to sever the nerve on its way to the brain that cut the mortality rate of these operations from about 20% to near zero.

Harvey Cushing also became the first surgeon who could access the human brain at will and with the near certainty of doing more good than harm. He was able to relieve patients of torments that for many centuries had often been considered the product of demonic possession. In some cases he could literally make the lame walk and the blind see. The second patient on whom Cushing operated for trigeminal neuralgia told his surgeon that he felt “resurrected.” Cushing also began removing tumors from the brain that had caused pituitary disorders leading to severe distortions of growth, and became the worldʼs expert on the pituitary gland, previously a mysterious organ.

Meanwhile, Cushingʼs friend George Crile was making efforts to restore patients to life after their hearts had stopped beating, what he called “resurrecting” them. And the surgeons built on one anotherʼs advances.

As the gospel of the new scientific medicine spread, other philanthropists, such as the Baptist, John D. Rockefeller, began to give at least as much money to health causes as to religious ones.

Osler began to argue that medicine, a universal and borderless brotherhood, had done more than any other profession, including the church, to alleviate the ills of suffering humanity. Speaking in 1905 Osler said,

In little more than a century a united profession, working in many lands, has done more for the race than has ever before been accomplished by any other body of men. So great have been these gifts that we have almost lost our appreciation of them. Vaccination, sanitation, anaesthesia, antiseptic surgery, the new science of bacteriology, and the new art in therapeutics [one might add the discovery of necessary vitamins and minerals and treatments for their deficiences to the list] have effected a revolution in our civilisation.

At its best, Osler argued, medicine (or rather a faith in medicine) could even effect cures in the gray areas where mind and body interacted to create hysterical paralysis, neurasthenia, and like disorders. If patients had as much faith in their physicians as they did in their clergy, if they had faith in “Saint” Johns Hopkins Hospital, they would experience the same “cures” that “faith healers” offered. “I have had cases any one of which could have been worthy of a shrine or made the germ of a pilgrimage,” Osler wrote in his essay, “The Faith That Heals,” and went on to give an instance.

For more than ten years a girl lay paralysed in a New Jersey town. A devoted mother and loving sisters had worn out lives in her service. She had never been out of bed unless when lifted by one of her physicians…The new surrounding of a hospital, the positive assurance the she could get well with a few simple measures sufficed, and within a fortnight she walked round the hospital square. This is a type of modern miracle that makes one appreciate how readily well meaning people may be deceived as to the true nature of the cure effected at the shrine of a saint. Who could deny the miracle? And miracle it was, but not brought about by any supernatural means

Osler even suggested, “The less the clergy have to do with the bodily complaints of neurasthenic and hysterial persons the better for their peace of mind and for the reputation of the Cloth.”

Another example involved Oslerʼs ability to fascinate children:

[A child had severe whooping-cough and bronchitis, was unable to eat and unresponsive to parents and nurses. Recovery seemed unlikely. Osler walked in with his doctorʼs robes, and to the small child this man in the white robe fascinated him.] Osler sat down, peeled a peach, sugared it, and cut it in pieces. He then pressed it bit by bit with a fork into the entranced patient, telling him to eat it up, and that he would not be sick but would find it did him good as it was a most special fruit. The child ate. When leaving Osler patted the boyʼs father on the back and told him, “Iʼm sorry, Ernest, but I donʼt think I shall see the body again, thereʼs very little chance when theyʼre as bad as that.” Happily events turned out otherwise, and for the next forty days this constantly busy man [Osler] came to see the child, and for each of these forty days he put on his doctorʼs robes in the hall before going in to the sick room. After some two or three days, recovery began to be obvious and the small body always ate or drank and retained some nourishment which Osler gave him with his own hands. If the value of personal approach, the quick turning to effect of an accidental psychological advantage (in this case decor), the consideration and extra trouble required to meet the needs of an individual patient, were ever well illustrated, here it was in its finest flower. It would, I submit, be impossible to find a fairer example of healing as an art. [Patrick Mallan, “Billy O,” in Oxford Medicine, ed. Kenneth Dewhurst (London: Sandford, 1970, 94-99]

The great triumphs to come, in Oslerʼs view, would involve medicine actually being able to cure organic disorders, not just cut nerves to relieve excruciating pain, or remove tumors, or restart hearts (as mentioned earlier). Having witnessed the dawn of bacteriology, he could see, for example, that science would one day discover antibacterial agents that would cure tuberculosis or cholera or pneumonia.

In the 1890s experimental work in several centers discovered that patients suffering from cretinism and myxedema were suffering a thyroid deficiency, so they gave the patients thyroid extract, which came to be known as the first “miracle treatment” of an organic disorder. The unfortunate young victims of cretinism were formerly doomed to live in “hopeless imbecility” an “unspeakable affliction to their parents and to their relatives.” Before and after photos of the first patients “emphasized as words cannot the magical transformation which follows treatment.” Medical science was beginning to unravel the mysteries of the secretions of hormones from glands, raising the prospect of elevating organotherapy from quackery to serious therapy. Then Osler added, prophetically, “and as our knowledge of the pancreatic function and carbohydrate metabolism become more accurate we shall probably be able to place the treatment of diabetes on a sure foundation.”

In 1922 a substance was isolated from the pancreas that appeared to work in the treatment of diabetic animals, and it was administered to a diabetic human child with results that were immediate and spectacular-a “resurrection.”

SOURCE: The Making of Modern Medicine: Turning Points in the Treatment of Disease by Michael Bliss

The Joy Of Secularism

The Joy of Secularism includes an essay by one of my favorite writers, Frans de Waal, author of Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are; and, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved (Princeton Science Library). The story in the former of de Waal taking his baby with him to the zoo to see the bonobo chimpanzees, one of whom also was raising a baby of her own, was touching. She made eye contact with de Waal whom sheʼd come to know, and so she came up to the glass where de Waal was holding his baby who was looking into the ape enclosure, and she held up her own baby to the glass so that both babies could look into each othersʼ eyes. Then the bonobo mother looked into the eyes of de Waal.

Choice quotations from de Waalʼs chapter:

“I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing that stands between them and repulsive behavior.” [In response to claims by theistic moralists that there would be nothing to keep THEM from killing or raping whomever they pleased but for their belief in God, Jesus, the Bible, etc.]

de Waal summarizes the evidence for emotional linkages between primates, including empathy and consolation, other prosocial tendencies, abundance of examples of spontaneous helping, as well as cases of reciprocity and recognition of fairness/unfairness between primates.

He ends his essay with these words:

“Humans moved from a purely socially reinforced system to one with religious backing. A big step perhaps, but not big enough to claim morality as a religious invention. Without claiming other primates as moral beings, we may assert that the seeds for a moral order seem far older than our species. Empathy, sympathy, reciprocity, fairness, and other basic tendencies were built into humanityʼs moral order based on our primate psychology.”

I first encountered de Waal years ago, after heʼd authored the following lines:

“Forgiveness is not, as some people seem to believe, a mysterious and sublime idea that we owe to a few millennia of Judeo-Christianity. It did not originate in the minds of people and cannot therefore be appropriated by an ideology or a religion. The fact that monkeys, apes, and humans all engage in reconciliation behavior (stretching out a hand, smiling, kissing, embracing, and so on) means that it is probably over thirty million years old, preceding the evolutionary divergence of these primates… Reconciliation behavior [is] a shared heritage of the primate order…

“When social animals are involved… antagonists do more than estimate their chances of winning before they engage in a fight; they also take into account how much they need their opponent. The contested resource often is simply not worth putting a valuable relationship at risk. And if aggression does occur, both parties may hurry to repair the damage. Victory is rarely absolute among interdependent competitors, whether animal or human.”

— Frans de Waal, Peacemaking Among Primates

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Echoing de Waal, the wise words of philosopher, Mary Midgley, have also stuck with me over the years:

“Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them. The need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect:

‘Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection… Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.’
— (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)

“That, Darwin said, is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible.

“These systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt—though of course usually an unsuccessful one—to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most.

“If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we—being creatures subject to gravitation—could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwinʼs idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention.”

Mary Midgley, “Wickedness: An Open Debate,” The Philosopherʼs Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001

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My definition of morality (not de Waalʼs nor Midgleyʼs but owing something to both of their views)

Morality is an agreement that takes place between two or more people concerning where to draw the line in each othersʼ behavior(s).

It is also something we may argue about with ourselves, i.e., concerning where we ought best to draw those lines. We have great intelligence, including foresight that allows us to contemplate results of our actions.

But most importantly, being a member of a social species, we interact constantly via a wealth of signals from our faces, our bodies, our speech. So we have lots of data that goes into assessing our interactions with others. And we share similar pains when physically or mentally abused. We share similar pleasures, not just physical pleasures, but intellectual/mental ones too. Unless we are absolute hermits or serial killers, we much prefer interacting with fellow members of society, enjoying living among them, communicating with them, sharing stories, goods and services, rather than ostracizing ourselves (choosing to live as an absolute hermit) or risking being ostracized by others (choosing to live as a serial killer, or other type of person who attempts to impose what we all agree is quite a lot of harm on others merely at one personʼs whim).

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David Sloan Wilsonʼ chapter in The Joy of Secularism was also interesting.

He pointed out that “religion is a fuzzy set—everything that defines it also exists outside religion.”

He also points out that religious beliefs are not intrinsically “enchanting,” nor intrinsically “unenchanting.” There has been and probably will always be a “dull, bureaucratic, ham-fisted conformity-inducing side of religion, not to speak of the deception, backbiting, social climbing, and exploitation that can take place under its cloak,” his point being “that both religious and nonreligious cultural systems overlap to a large degree” when it comes to reasons to feel unenchanted. While secularism, like religion, also has its own peculiar enchantments. For instance whenever people get involved in a cause (whether religious or nonreligious), and there is much to do to advance that cause, enchantment arises.

He also cites the case of Myles Horton, a great social activist of the early twentieth century who was beaten up by racists and toughs and locked up by governors, and how he was raised a member of devout Calvinist community, but when he was young he had plenty of doubts about predestination and wondered if he believed “any of this.” His mother told him, “Donʼt bother about all that, thatʼs not important, thatʼs just preacherʼs talk. The only thing thatʼs important is that youʼve got to love your neighbor.” As Horton recalls, “She didnʼt say, ‘Love God,’ she said, ‘Love your neighbor, thatʼs all itʼs all about.’ … It was a good nondoctrinaire background [to my thoughts today], and it gave me a sense of what was right and what was wrong.”

Lastly, Wilson notes how science, like religion before it, continues to attract more rousing speakers and artists who are adorning science-based messages with the arts. Heʼs all in favor of seeing such a trend continue.

Wilson mentioned the case of Michael Dowd, an American Protestant minister who married Connie Barlow, a science writer and atheist, and together they tour the country in a van adorned with the bumper sticker image of a “Darwin fish” kissing a “Christian fish,” and Michael gives rousing Evangelical-style talks on Evolutionary Christianity, and why we should “Thank God for Evolution!” Michael communicates scientific information in a way that adds the enchantment associated with religion.

A more secular case of the same thing involves Baba Brinkmanʼs Rap Guide to Evolution, “a hip hop exploration of modern evolutionary biology.” [See poster below]

Wilson ended his essay with a personal tale about how he was invited to participate in an annual midwinter festival celebrating science and the arts in Ithica, New York, called, Light in Winter. He was paired with a musical group called Water Bear, consisting of a pianist, a violinist, a cellist, and an electric bassist. The lead member of the group, Mer Boel, had read Wilsonʼs book, Evolution for Everyone and composed music inspired by three themes: individual differences, social control, and expanding the circle of cooperation. The performance consisted of Wilsonʼs short explanation of each theme, followed by their performance while he stood on stage. For the individual difference piece, the musicians adopted shy and bold personalities in their playing style. For the social control piece, the cellist started to dominate the group by playing in Jimi Hendrix style until the electric bassist brought him back into line. For the cooperation piece, the audience was invited to join in a rhythmic chant along with the instruments. The combination of science lecture and artistic performance was followed by the audience snapping up all of Wilsonʼs books, which Wilson admitted seldom happens after his lectures.

Speaking of a scientific and secular understanding of humanity being mixed with the arts…

Thereʼs a series of popular videos titled, The Symphony of Science that mix music and auto-tuned lines from famous scientists!

Speaking of atheism and music, the most famous atheist composers in the past were Schubert, Brahms, Shostakovich, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Richard Strauss, Hector Berlioz, Béla Bartók, Frederick Delius, Michael Tippett. Also, atheist composer, Richard Rodgers, composed the music to “The Sound of Music.”

Someone on youtube dubbed this video of the burning of the enormous “Touchdown Jesus” statue (by lightning strike) with the music of atheist composer Berlioz (his “Pandemonium” from “The Damnation of Faust“).

Today thereʼs also Secular Chorale Music, composed by Francis Poulenc.

Not to mention the works of Ned Rorem, half of whose considerable output is for chorus and the church (I work with someone whose church choir sang some of his pieces), yet Rorem happens not to believe in God (and is gay). He has produced some of his richest and most deeply affecting music for massed voices, the best of it possessing an expressive urgency that transcends the categorization of being either sacred or profane. Click here to listen.

Peter Maxwell Davies is a British atheist (and openly gay) composer of avant-garde choral, vocal and instrumental works, not to mention also being Master of the Queenʼs Music.

Most recently a new chorale composer of rare talents has appeared—one of the most popular and performed composers of his generation, Eric Whitacre. The majority of his work makes no reference to religion or God, and he professes no particular religious affiliation. It appears that beautiful choral music for its own sake is what heʼs most interested in. His music is also so enchanting that it has inspired thousands from around the world to contribute their talents to performing his pieces, their voices strung together to produce videos in which two thousand people from numerous countries sing together as a virtual super choir! Click here. (One of Whitacreʼs works, “When David Heard,” while taken from the Bible, is far less about a deity or worship than it is about the emotions of a man who has lost his son, a work of devastating power.)

Also, in Britain a godless fellow named Robin Ince has created an annual Christmas show featuring a 20-piece orchestra, a choir, assorted atheist and agnostic comedians like Ricky Gervais and Phill Jupitus, and some scientists like Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh and Richard Dawkins. Itʼs called Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, and is now in its third or fourth year. Says Ince, “I think Christmas is good, itʼs nice to have some time for reflection.” Some people were annoyed when they heard heʼd produced a godless show at Christmas, thinking he just wanted to rant against the holiday but thatʼs not what Ince had in mind. “When we say weʼre having a Godless celebration, that means no god at all. Itʼs not about having a go at religion – itʼs going to be a proper celebration; of the Big Bang, of evolution theory and of comedy.” Click here for the 2010 show!

SEE ALSO The Damned Sing the Damnedest Songs, a youtube list of some contemporary agnostic/atheistic pop/rock/reggae/rap tunes.