Ignoring Radicalism

At the main Times Square New Year's festivities this past year, the last few minutes before the stroke of midnight were spent having Cee Lo Green, a hip-hop-ish singer of some repute, singing the song "Imagine," by John Lennon. All very well and good, although it was a mediocre-at-best performance and felt kind of random. But in singing Imagine, Mr. Green changed the line "Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion, too" to "Nothing to kill or die for, and all religions true." Now, the new version is in the first place deeply offensive to anyone who even remotely shares the convictions on this issue of John Lennon; Imagine is one of the most famous anti-religious songs, and changing that particular lyric in that particular way feels simply violative. Moreover, the new line is gibberish, even from a pro-religion perspective: different religions make differing factual claims about the world, which cannot all be true.