/lit/ - Literature

>>4387271
>There's less crime per capita today than in all of history.

What? In what country? I think there was less crime here in England in the victorian age, not that long ago at all.

>>4387267
>This view is entirely, irrevocably, and patently insane and cruel.

It isn't. The way is narrow. Relatively few make it to heaven. God is just. If our sins weren't so great and offensive to God then he'd have no need to send any of us to Hell.

>>4387257
I've thought about this and I can only conclude that I haven't. The fact that I'm becoming more Christian is evidence to me that God must still have mercy towards me, because it would have been VERY easy for me to remain in the dark about his existence and everything concerning Him. I was born in a liberal household, without religion, in the modern age that is full of blasphemy towards God. That I even have come to take God seriously in this godless age is itself a miracle.

>>4387253
> In this day and age it's unneeded.

In this day and age it is needed SORELY. It is needed sorely in every day and age. The Truth is the truth in all ages, and it is always needed.

>But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

>>4387228
> if a person is atheist and moral

An atheist cannot be completely moral, he can only have the rudiments of morality like refraining from stealing. True morality consists of this:

37 Jesus said unto him, “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’

40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Those commandments are heavens above an atheists vague concept that it's wrong to steal. The reason why "Thou shalt not steal" of the Ten Commandments is more moral than an atheists vague concept that stealing is wrong, is because in the former the person acknowledges that the Law is from God and that it is God's Law that he is submitting to, something that the atheist does not acknowledge. Obedience to God is the foundation of all morality. The morality of atheists is but "castles in the air", they are laws unto themselves. It's nice that the laws that they give to themselves some times match up with God's law, but that does not excuse them from eating of the tree of good & evil and thinking that they have knowledge of good and evil in the first place, thinking that they are equal to God.

>>4387228
>Plato's Cave, Colossians 2:8. Stop implying that I am only seeing shadows.

OK, I will stop implying it, but only so I can state it outright - you are only seeing shadows.

>>4387231
see: >>4386714 and >>4386715 and >>4386719
also >>4386900

>>4387221
and this post too >>4383974


This is how I explain it. Imagine seeing your wife flirting with a moron that would abuse and leave her if he ever got her hands on her. You are jealous because A. your wife rightfully ought to love you and not be flirting with other men, B. your wife is best off loving you who care for her and not a man who doesn't care for her at all. This is why God is a "jealous god", because we owe Him our love (because He's our creator), and so when he sees us loving false "gods" instead of Him He is rightfully indignant. See, God wants us to love Him, "the gods" do not care whether you love them, they just want to make a transaction with you (like child sacrifice in exchange for a good crop yield). God wants your heart, in the same way that a man wants his wife's heart. And so when God sees men flirting with deities that don't really give a shit about them it "upsets" Him (of course, God being "jealous" and "upset" are anthropomorphisms, but they do express a theological truth - that our hearts rightfully belong to God and not to idols).

>>4387205
>"I'm right because I'm right"

No, I'm saying that I am right because I follow the right authority, named here: >>4387136
I believe in that authority on faith, to see how I explain that see here, >>4386714 and here >>4386806

>>4387202
read this post that I made earlier >>4381631

The difference between the Abrahamic God and the gods of the Hindus is great.
The greatest sin in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has always been idolatry - the worship of false gods.

The first of the Ten Commandments is "thou shalt have no other gods before Me".
There is a philosophical/theological difference between the Abrahamic God and the pagan gods of the Hindus, the ancient Greeks/Romans, the Aztecs/Incans, the Norsemen, the Egyptians and the Canaanites around at the time of Abraham.

This is the main difference - the pagan gods are many, the "Abrahamic" God is one. God is the creator of the Universe. "The gods" are merely aspects of creation. Worshipping God is worshipping the creator and the lawgiver. Worshipping "the gods" is worshipping a part of creation. God is divine, the divine is God.

"The gods" merely are divine, some of them have beards, some have them have four arms, some of them have animal heads, and they all have divinity. Divinity is just an attribute that they have and that they happen to share. In God divinity is not something that can be divided or shared, because that would imply that it could be diluted.

The gods are like superhumans, they are humans in the sense that they have passions/moods/personalities, and they are super in that they have more power than humans. God is not human, he does not have passions or moods, his will does not change.

The very concept of "God" is different to the pagan "gods". "God" is not one god among many, philosophically or theologically. He is not like Zeus in that he is merely the strongest or most powerful of the gods. No, he is divinity itself, he is godliness. Nothing is god except he. When Moses asked God what his name was he answered, "I AM THAT I AM". He is being itself, he is the thing that says "I am". God is not one being among many, he is the very "thing" (he is not a thing) which makes being or thing-ing possible. Everything that has existence depends upon God for that existence. Nobody depends upon "the gods" for their very existence, "the gods" just inhabit a "higher plane" of existence, they are stronger and have a broader influence.

The reason why God hates the worship of other gods is because the worship of "gods" is the worship of nature, of creation. When a pagan looks at a statue of Venus, for example, and in his spirit bows to it as divine - that's an insult to God, it's applying the substance of God (divinity) to something that is not divine (nature, in this case the nature of femininity/fertility as embodied by Venus). We are part of creation, Venus is part of creation, Ares is part of creation, etc. For us to worship Venus or any other god as divine means that one part of creation is worshipping another part of creation, which is disordered/dysfunctional, as its proper for creation to worship its creator.

>>4387202
>Um what? established by whom?
see: >>4387136

>So if you don't need God to have a basic sense of morality, THEN WHY DO WE NEED HIM?

You can have a morality without God in the sense that you can drive a car without really knowing anything about engines or mechanics. Morality rests on God, there is no morality without God. Those that claim to have morality without God do not know what they are talking about. They are like a person that drives a car and says that he's doing it without an engine in the car, because the person is totally ignorant of what an engine is and how it makes a car run.

>Or maybe being an atheist and being immoral are not correlated.

There are atheists that are "more moral", more decent, than people who claim to be religious / godly. However, that does not make atheism moral. They are moral DESPITE their atheism, not because of it.

>I don't believe in witchcraft because it has literally never done anything.

How would you not what has gone on and what has not gone on in matters of spirit when you don't even acknowledge that spirit exists?


>I'm really inclined now to go talk to my Muslim friends, thank you. Allah will show me the way.

So be it, may God help your soul.

>>4387194
Well, demons aren't really "little dudes", that's just how they portrayed anthropomorphically in art.
If you want to know what they really are then read Summa Theologica.

>>4387188
True. Postmodernism is too big a beast for this timid soul to do battle with. Which is why I invoked the name of Aristotle - he's the knight I'm calling to my defence against this beast.

>>4387163
>How do you cope with the fact that your religion doesn't even remotely transcend the other religions that are, as you would believe, patently false?

They don't in a material sense. I don't care if Islam spread across the entire earth and Christianity was reduced to a tiny chapel on an hill in France. Christianity would still be infinitely more glorious than Islam because it is the Truth. You're thinking in a materialist way.

>(Let me guess, these really scary invisible and intangible demon dudes go around and trick millions of people all the time into thinking their god is real)

Yep.

>>4387179
>>4387176
Yeah, this is the cowardly postmodernist response. "It's language! Language is getting in our way because language is a bunch of chaotic symbols without rhyme or reason!"
Read Aristotle.

>>4387167
>I'm so confused as to how this religious thing works.

Seek and you shall find. Your confused as to where to start? If you get a little voice in your head saying, "maybe I should start with this book" or "maybe I should start by talking to this person", then follow that voice.

>>4387149
>it's well established that human society and language are formed by internal biological structures, and little comes from memetics.

Yeah, and it's well established that those biological structures were formed by God.

> Most people haven't encountered the Christian god, and most similarly don't believe in stealing.

Yeah, because if they didn't stop people from stealing their civilization would have died out. You can have a partial morality that is ignorant of God. I'm not saying that atheists are in practice completely immoral, I'm just saying that atheism itself is immoral. Atheists aren't always atheists in practice, for example, some times they behave according to morals, and insofar as they do that they are theists because morality presupposes God.

>If you're not murdering witches, you are literally violating God's law

Thank you rabbi, I'll bear that in mind the next time I see a witch.

> and can't accept that witchcraft does literally nothing and no one should give a shit

The reason why you think witchcraft does nothing is because you are a dogmatic materialist that doesn't believe in spirit. If you believed in spirit you'd know that witchcraft is more dangerous than murder and rape, becuse the latter kills and harms the body but the formers kills and harms the soul.

>Explain to me how idol worship is in any way bad

Because it makes a mockery of God. Idolatry is to God what adultery is to your wife - fornication.

>explain to me how Catholicism isn't insanely intertwined with idol worship, explain to me how Christian communion isn't idol worship.

because we worship the true God, not an idol.
God is not an idol, he is not a statue or a thing in nature. He is above nature altogether, and so cannot be represented by a statue or image except allegorically. When the pagans worship a statue they literally believe the statue itself is a divine.

>When I said a skydude, I meant your god. What makes worshipping your god any different from another god

You claim to have been a Christian but this is the most basic thing about the Christian religion - that is antagonistic to paganism because pagan is the worship of mundane idols as though they were divine, while Christianity is the worship of the real God.

>>4387151
>. So you have to do the work to establish their authority or the debate ends here with you being wrong, again.

It's not me that has established their authority, it is God. Take it up with Him.

>>4387153
>There aren't any absolutes

That's an absolute statement. You contradict yourself straight away.

>"Only a sith deals in absolutes!"

>>4387137
> Morals are just vague concepts that break under the scrutiny of individual circumstance.

Read Plato or Aristotle.

>>4387129
See, the verses of Scripture in this post >>4386871

It's because most people do not fear God (though God is not a "skydaddy" you ignorant heretic).
And
>The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.

>>4387130
> I'm right by my own authority

Not by my authority, by the authority of the prophets, the saints, the martyrs, the Church and Christ. Their authority. Yes, I do appeal to authority, but you should know that these are the authorities that I appeal to.

>>4387123
> Morality is a genetic concept, even if it has the capacity to fail.

Nonsense. There is no such thing as a "genetic concept". Concepts don't reside in genes, they reside in the intellect.

>You know those African preachers who do AIDS healings and kill witches? They are closer to actual doctrine than you.

Well I think you can make a case that witches are not to be burned because you are to give all vengeance to God. Still, like I said, I'm not totally against it. I mean, if their is a witch in your community that refuses to give up her occult practices then it is a danger to the immortal souls of everyone in that community. If you don't kill it, you have to banish it - but that means putting it in the hands of other poor souls. So I can see why the practice of burning witches became popular.
As for AIDS healings, that's not something I know about.

>First off, "pagan idolatry" is meaningless to an atheist

And that's exactly what I was talking about when I said that atheists/materialists don't really know what evil is. Idolatry is the ultimate evil. If you don't shiver at the idea of idolatry it's because you don't know what evil is.

> first off, establish what makes "worship" of a woman any different from worship of a skydude creator of all or Thor.

Nothing, they are the same thing. Worshipping a skydude or Thor are abomintions.

>>4387111
> You're repeating ad nauseum "you're just too stupid, you don't understand, you can't see the whole picture, etc"

Well what more can I say? Blessed are you if you believe. That's all I can say.