Atheist of the Day: Brian Eno

Photo from digi nikki

You may not know who Brian Eno is, but you've probably heard his sound: he's a recording artist (initially the keyboardist for Roxy Music) and a very influential record producer. He's probably most famous for his work with Talking Heads and U2. He also produced Paul Simon's latest album, Surprise. He's known for his minimalism and deeply textured musical soundscapes.

He's a also a well-documented atheist. From an unpublished magazine interview:

Well, I'm an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call the last illusion. The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. That's the last illusion. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that knows what's going on but that the planets know what's going on. Astrology is part of the last illusion. The obsession with health is part of the last illusion, the idea that there's that if only we could spend time on it and sit down and stop being unreasonable with each other we'd all find that there was a structure and a solution underlying plan to it all, for most people the short answer to that is God.

And from the BBC's collective interactive magazine:

“I’m actually an evangelical atheist, but there is something I recognise about religion: that it gives people a chance to surrender. And I think part of what happens to people when they come into this show is that they practice this feeling of surrendering.”