/lit/ - Literature

Actually speaking personally. Due to some conspiracy stuff I've only managed to reluctantly accept the truth of Christianity. Its hardly comforting because the floodgates have been open. Under a materialist perspective one can simplify his existence to what is empirically observable and whatever some certain authorities disseminate. But once things begin to be taken on faith, one must also recognize the possibility of literally anything. The filter isn't one of possibility, plausibility or probability but rather relevance and level of abstraction. For instance I can filter out the tooth fairy because the trappings of such an entity have no real bearing on me. On the other hand I might become very paranoid about the possibility of curses and various other forms of spiritual attack. I must remain vigilant about not spiritually degrading myself either.

In my time as a materialist I always felt the most comforting affirmation was that I would eventually die and be resorbed into oblivion. Now most people are stupid and prefer immortality to oblivion but I always understood what a relief this would be as it would finally be the end of all turmoil and discomfit. Now I regrettably must assimilate the doctrine of eternal hellfire which I find myself morbidly reflecting on its implications. I try to reconcile the justice of how literally 10s of billions of people will be subject to condemnation of this sort based only on contingent factors of their existence such as geographic removal from the opportunity to hear the gospel. The conclusions I reach are mostly unfavorable to God. Naturally I figure out of these 10s of billions of souls God is playing spiritual cookie clicker with, I wonder why shouldn't I be numbered among them (especially being unable to reconcile my vision of god with the concept of love and justice) and then I can be given over to paroxysms and fits of terror imagining a malevolent God controlling our reality.

Even if you bypass these first two steps and like most Christians you have this attitude of "I have my salvation Jack" then you are still left to fret over the nature of what faith is and what might be required for salvation and under what epistemological scheme this might be realized. You can easily lose sleep over being in the wrong denomination and having the wrong religious understanding.

Religious revelation is actually the most confusing, frustrating and uncomfortable experiences a person can have in my honest opinion. The reason religion seems feeble-minded is because in most cases it is so unconsidered that it IS feeble minded. But religion is even more intellectually taxing than materialism.