Live Music: Can thousands of atheists have a religious experience at a Nine Inch Nails show?
VIDEO: Montage of 10 songs from Nine Inch Nails show at Rogers Arena on August 10, 2025
A caveat: I'm not a music reviewer nor am I an expert on rock music let alone specific genres such as grunge or alternative. I'm also not a musician of any kind, but I do love music and I know what I like.
That said, as with restaurant or museum show or theatre reviews, there's a very large element of subjectivity about art criticism.
Does that mean everyone's opinion matters? No! That's a dangerous trend we have seen creep into 21st-century culture, I think, ever since we became more sensitive to those who are underprivileged, struggling in our school systems, a noble goal to be sure. Yet as we became more sensitive and empathetic creating a better world for our most vulnerable, a side effect is an unfortunate notion most of the entire population has embraced, namely, that everyone's opinion matters. This has led to an increase in irrational questioning of authority, science denial, tiny-man syndrome, and the attempted murder of expertise.
During the pandemic across the world – especially among the anti-vaxxer trucker convoy mouth-breathing demographic here in Canada – there emerged a vocal community of people with uneducated views, ignorant ideas, bigoted notions, who are under the mistaken impression after decades of intellectual coddling that their ideas are as good as the facts of statisticians, the conclusions of scientists, and the opinions of trained experts.
English particle physics professor Brian Cox, who also presents popular science programs on the BBC, puts it well:
“The problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion and have others listen to it.
“The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense!”
All that is to say that if you like Nickelback and reality TV, your opinion on most matters is not interesting or much worth listening to. But that's just my opinion.
I was at the Nine Inch Nails show in Vancouver on Sunday (August 11, 2025) at Rogers Arena. The opening act was a German DJ who goes by Boyz Noise and with whom Trent Reznor has frequently collaborated in recent years.
'Twas an epic show, there's no denying it. From the set list to the performances to the light show, very experienced rock show-goers I was with agreed the boys put on a memorable one.
Before we went, I Googled to find a publicly shared image of a previous show as part of a social media post. I found one quickly that looked OK, and the person sharing it said: "A Nine Inch Nails show is like a religious experience for atheists."
I chuckled to myself but it stuck with me. Even if you are a staunch atheists, the notion of a religious experience should go beyond the divine or any notions of a god or the thousands of gods humans have created over the millennia.
So what is a religious experience? I asked ChatGPT, which spat out the two sentences in the following paraphrased paragraph after which I asked for a reference: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, so I'd say that's reasonable.
"A religious experience is a deeply felt, often transformative encounter or awareness that a person interprets as involving the divine, the sacred, or ultimate reality. It’s not just an intellectual belief – it’s an experience that feels personal, direct, and emotionally powerful."
Never mind the actual divine or sacred since they are self-referential and not helpful as god-centred words from traditional religion being used in a definition of "religious experience." But "ultimate reality" is interesting.
One doesn't experience beloved rock music such along with the poetry of songwriting in addition to artistic light shows surrounded by thousands of people who have lived lives with these songs as a soundtrack and come to an "intellectual" belief powerful enough to be called a religious experience. It's not a conclusion we arrive at after deduction or induction.
But when one does immerse oneself in a huge crowd, smell the sweat and feel the pushing of a middle-aged mosh pit, and hear a man whose voice we have heard for three decades singing lyrics we know by heart; when we feel the music we've known for more than half our lives such that it gives physical chills, I suppose that can be a transformative awareness of ultimate reality.
It certainly is emotionally powerful so maybe it was a religious experience after all.
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Paul J. Henderson
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