/lit/ - Literature

>>18524770
>>18524984
Gentlemen, you're confused, allow me to help.

Yes God created man in his own image, but you are too busy thinking like the philosophers. The Hebrews did not have the Greek penchant for metaphysical theorizing, and because they did not think in metaphysical terms, they did not believe that God's mere existence makes life "meaningful." This idea that God existing makes life meaningful, comes from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas; these philosophers say that since the universe is "created" then it must be created with cognizable purpose. Much like how if a carpenter makes a table, the table has purpose in upholding food and drink. The philosophers simply say that God is to man, as a carpenter is to a table.

The Hebrews never thought like this; they never thought that the world is like a machine; the Hebrews didn't have machines. They would have said rather that the opposite of a meaningless life is a holy life, a life which is a life spent in the service of God. Worship is the pattern through which God breathes his holiness upon a people who lack holiness. Each temple is a small version of the Garden of Eden, in which the Tree of Life (i.e. the Cross) is planted. The Eucharistic bread and wine is the fruit of this tree which is planted in our hearts.

So Christianity is not trying to get people to accomplish anything; the world is not a machine in which an outcome will please God, and the rest are failure modes. The world is a garden, a place of peace, and we are at our acme when we tend to it in a spirit of respect, see Genesis 2:15:
>And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

So what I say is not atheism, but rather disbelief in what we may term mankind's crusading impulse.

>>18246359
Martin Luther's "On the Bondage of the Will" is what actually kick-started western civilization. Western civilization is a thought-process based on doubt. If Luther had not doubted his own ability to save himself from hellfire with penance and good works, and had not re-interpreted Romans 1:17 in the tower at Wittenberg, then we would still be obsessing over works-righteousness no different than the Hindoos and and Muslims.

Without Luther, religion would have filtered humanity and you would be living in a mud hut, worshiping your Pope, no different than how the Hindoos worship their Brahmins and cows.

I am a mentally retarded manchild. it's time to blow myself up in the forest

>>17366056
That's actually the point, to give people doctrines where people actually are confronted with their insufficiency, their inability to measure up to the divine, or have a truly spiritual experience. Christ is the good shepherd because he tried his best to make people grow the fuck up instead of babbling useless shit and inhaling their own farts like Indian Brahmans. Far from being a flaw, one of the best things Christ ever said was that he alone is the way, that way people would have less opportunity for pseudo-spiritual wankery.

>>17221754
Horse shit. Look, fuck all your philosophy, all your politics, all your laws, all your morals. Marginal improvements in terms of justice will NOT lead to exponential growth of happiness, wealth or prosperity. If you want happy people, it doesn't matter one shit what they believe, it matters how much they get paid.

Why can't people get it through their thick fucking heads that you can't get something for nothing? Nobody is happy with moral-fagging philosophy, it helps no-one.

>>17034660
No, the problem with the texts is that they contain little spiritual insight, and are filled with the most spurious interpretations of things which are quite plainly evident in the gospel.

My especial dislike is for Pseudo-Dionysius, which I've read and find altogether tangential to scripture.

So I wrote that you can do no better than the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, or A Serious Call by William Law. These men speak the truth that a religious life is for everybody, that wisdom is common, and that there is nothing better for the soul than prayer.

What I most object to, when it comes to certain mystical writers, Pseudo-Dionysius in particular, is how Brahmanical their outlook is; as if they've reached some exalted state. Such a view of oneself, I think would set anyone very low in the kingdom of God.

>>16889950
>>16889970
>>16890012
Truth be told, no matter when you make life the subject of discussion, what you're about to say is a cope.
>Life is shit
Cope
>Life is good
Cope
>Life is fun
Cope
>Life is meaningless
Cope
>The industrial revolution has been a disaster for the human race
Cope
>The Jews poison life with money
Cope
>The capitalist class poison life with work
Cope

The list goes on, religious people just refuse to have their copes dictated to them by depressives who cope by hating life.

>>16804325
>>16804349
Not that poster, but what I'd say is that the "intellectuals" are really just what normal people call humanities professors. I mean sure, if we were precise and said humanities professors should be shot for being oxygen thieves who produce nothing of value, then that would a valid enough point.

But the truth of the matter is that rather than kill the entire humanities department, it is much easier and morally sound to just defund them and invest the money in STEM.

>>16637879
People like Tolle are not spiritual, they are underemployed. Otherwise I do not understand why one would turn "love God and your neighbour as yourself" into a whole paragraph with fancy words like "transcendence." It just adds nothing to the human experience to do so. He is just saying stuff that is older than the hills poorly.

>>16544154
I am a lawyer also and I violently dispute the notion that law has anything to do with morality or philosophy. Just because we get paid for this shit doesn't mean it's worth anything, it just means that people are fools.

>>16481130
Why? It's good that she's found someone. Stop acting like some fucking Indian subcaste gigolo; as if you will get laid by anonymous women on the internet.

>>16469509
This is such a midwit argument. If God always confirmed our moral ideas, then God should be eliminated from our moral ontology by Occam's Razor. If I have an argument of the form;
>Ordinary reason for morality arguing from, my emotions, self-interest, community, or any other rational warrant you can imagine
>God's reason for the same moral precept
>Therefore morality exists
Then I could discard God by Occam's Razor, since identities should not be multiplied unnecessarily, and since God doesn't add to the argument, God should be removed from it.

Obviously the Christian God should not be in our moral ontology whether we are Christians or not. You should take your thoughts on God from scripture rather than your own or Dostoevsky's mental fantasy about 19th century social ethics.

It is quite obvious that God intends not to give us moral rules, but to give us life, and life in abundance (John 10:10). The only reason God gives moral rules is because he wants us to live, and committing crimes can get you and other people killed (Leviticus 25:18 - 19).

So in closing, God's will is your salvation (John 3:16). God created everything for us and for our salvation (see the Apostles' Creed) and He wants to give us eternal life and to have us as friends in whom He can rejoice. He has called us out of nothingness to live with Him. The Christian creed is based on the commonsense idea that life is good and death is bad. There is no life so sick, criminal, broken or otherwise regarded as worthless and dishonorable by men, that is not of infinite value to God. In this God and mankind differ, since we accept assisted suicide, regular suicide, abortion and the death penalty very easily.

Now you can stop making cringe threads about how the end of religion is the end of morality, when in fact religion and morality only have a tangential connection insofar as God is pro-life.

>>16452850
Humanity going extinct is indifferent unless it kills me.

What is morally good? Only the love of God and your neighbor as yourself. What is to gain from morality? A wife, children and friends to enjoy the company thereof. Do I have a moral duty to the future? Either to end future suffering or perpetuate lives in the future? No, I am as ignorant of this moral concern of yours as I am ignorant of the moral concerns of vegans.

I would say that this is an example of a spook, but it's almost too cliché. It's just fucking tiresome.