/lit/ - Literature

They're stories you complete retard. Read Campbell and stop asking your retard questions

>>13570665

>>13570668
Stories that are supposed to show what kind of person God is. What is wrong with critiquing the philosophy behind these stories? The message behind Job is that your creator ultimately can do whatever he wants to you. I don't agree with this.

no this place is just overrun by literal shills
just report them and don't participate in their spam

>>13570673
>Stories that are supposed to show what kind of person God is
That's God post-Jesus, Old Testament God is not someone you wanted to fuck with.

>>13570665
>It seems like the popular opinion here is that Christians are more high IQ than atheists
This is not the popular opinion, I assure you
>>13570668
Agreed, the entire bible is a story/allegory, and not historical fact

>>13570665
They were (mostly) acts of rectification. Man has sin in his heart and so needs to be taught the error of his ways. God of the Old Testament willingly admits to his jealousy and wrath, but when His people are confronted with the manifestations of His truth and miracles and still turn their necks, what is he to do? You are not good for turning from the truth and engaging in carnal, covetous, gluttonous, prideful behavior. God does not admit to killing Job's family for no reason either, He does it to demonstrate the abiding faith His people ought to have in him. Job falters but returns to the fold and is rewarded for doing so.

>>13570680
I agree that it's just a story. I don't agree with the messages these stories are trying to convey, though. What do you think?
>>13570678
Revelations proves that post-Jesus God is wrathful too.

>>13570685
What did Job do to deserve what God did to him? It was unfair.

>dying by God's hand is bad
Pleb take, only an atheist faggot would be scared of that.

>>13570687
I think it's possible/likely some form of god inspired these texts to guide humanity in the right direction, some parts of the bible seem excellent/revolutionary, but it also appears large portions were made to convince the lowest common denominator to behave morally.

>>13570685
>, He does it to demonstrate the abiding faith His people ought to have in him. Job falters but returns to the fold and is rewarded for doing so.
I think this is the key to Job. Our human reason is flawed and what we identify as unjust is not always so, we can be mistaken, but if we always act with a disposition of faith and goodwill no matter how much we may feel we are wronged, then we can save ourselves. This is very important because we can't see all the wrong in us most of the time, and we fall into pride, into hate and criticisms, into not believing in the basic wonder of the world around us, that is always right there if you just try to look at it, but that is faith, no logical reasoning will bring you there, you will only experience it if you try and believe. Many of us suffer for seemingly no reason, but to curse existence only makes you into a curse yourself, there is always some faint meaning available to anyone who tries to see it in the world and believes it's there.

Im not even Christian(im confused on the issue) but that is how I see that parable.

>>13570665
God has a hidden fourth face, and it is pure evil.

take the Jung pill.

>>13570704
Expand? I'm interested in this. Didn't Jung say he knew that god existed?

>>13570665
>acting as if the creator of all is beholden to the same standards as His creation
He should be worshipped because He is your creator and God and asks this of you. He comprehends more than you ever will and knows you more than you do.
Finding the "right" religion is a matter of faith so there's no foolproof manner of logically deducing it. Christianity is simply more complete and consistent than any other.
Humans don't default to Hell, they chose it.
No action is truly finite, and you can always repent. People go to Hell because they don't repent.
Murder is always wrong, especially child murder. No, God ending the life of a person isn't murder.
>>13570696
Part of the "point" of the Book of Job is that nothing God does is unfair and it always has a purpose. God sent hardships to Job to test his faith and he (mostly) passed.

>>13570673
>The message behind Job is that your creator ultimately can do whatever he wants to you. I don't agree with this.
Is this really all you get out of Job?

>>13570707
But did his family deserve to violently die to test his fate? They had nothing to do with his faith. How did humans choose hell? No rational person would choose eternal torture, and if someone did choose eternal torture, they would be mentally ill. Mentally ill people deserve compassion and treatment, not eternal torture.

>>13570710
No, it's supposed to prove that you need to be loyal to God. God proves this by doing whatever he wants to Job.

>>13570706
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_to_Job

God sent Jesus to pay for God's sins. Only poseurs will deny this.

>>13570665
LITERALISM VS ALLEGORY

The books of the Bible are from numerous authors spanning centuries; it contains varying conceptions of God according to the enlightenment of its fallible mortal authors, its a record of what those people of that day and age believed, its not absolute religious truth, but it can contain wisdom and truth.

>>13570730
Why believe in a Christian God if you admit that the Bible is liable to human error?

>>13570665
Gnosticism is the only true interpretation

>>13570730
>see? it's an allegory for how scared of God you should be

>>13570715
Why worry about his family? Death isn't a terrible thing. Christ himself and most of the Apostles died violent deaths as well.
I didn't mean to say that people consciously and actively choose Hell, you possibly autistic or underaged retard. By continuing to live in sin and refusing to repent, you unknowingly "choose" Hell. It's the fault of the sinner.

>>13570725
Job is about sacrifice.

>>13570753
Eternal punishment for finite actions is wrong. Especially for people who are supposedly unknowingly choosing hell.

>>13570737
The existence of God isn't dependent on the Bible being infallible.

>>13570763
Why do you believe in the existence of God?

>>13570678
>Old Testament God is not someone you wanted to fuck with
Nor be on good terms with, apparently.

>>13570766
Because I experience God

>>13570673
>Stories that are supposed to show what kind of person God is.
If you think the stories of the Bible are meant to display or explore the character of God, you're retarded.
>The message behind Job is that your creator ultimately can do whatever he wants to you. I don't agree with this.
There is a lot to Job just like there is a lot to any holy text. Like any holy text, the best way to interpret the story is internally. Use it as a tool to explore yourself. The point of the story is not "God is a big meanie because he breaks my arbitrary moral rules" or "God rocks because he upholds my arbitrary moral rules". Are you maybe starting to see why your take is retarded? You're asking the wrong questions.

>>13570759
How is it wrong? Since it seems I have to be even more precise in my language to get through to you, every individual knowingly sins. They may deny that there is a Hell, but they know when they commit immoral acts. They are fully culpable even if they reject the reality of the consequences.
God does not will that anyone goes to Hell, the sinners reject God first and they end up in Hell because they continued to reject God til their dying day.

>>13570772
In what way?

>>13570783
The punishment is disproportionate.
>>13570777
>Christianity prides itself on objective morality
>Looks to bible to see what is moral or immoral
>Dude its just arbitrary moral rules lmao

>>13570759
All morality is ultimately pointless and arbitrary and is unconsciously designed to suit the subject's personal goals. This whole debate is a complete waste of time. Nobody cares what some autist on a panini weaving forum thinks about the "morality" of the Biblical God's actions based on his own made up set of rules. Instead of wasting precious internet data and ATP moving your fingers to type out these retarded statements, why not try and get something actually valuable out of the text? Or failing that just go read something you actually enjoy? These ancient civilizations left their greatest literary treasures behind for us to contemplate and you retards waste time talking about whether or not you would get a beer with the deity in question, really burns your bum.

>>13570793
>>Christianity prides itself on objective morality
>Looks to bible to see what is moral or immoral
>Dude its just arbitrary moral rules lmao
Who said I was a Christian? You've divided the entire world up into two sides and you can't imagine of other points of view outside of your retarded little box.
>“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”
-Campbell
Yes I'm dickriding Campbell in this thread because he is the perfect antidote for mentalities like yours. Read him.

>>13570784
(Not the same anon)
In a metaphysical way. We have metaphysical sense, allowing us to experience things beyond physical senses. It's apart of the human condition and has been well documented throughout history; thought with the rise of Enlightement, empiricism, and materialism, it's been heavily dismissed despite being real lived experiences to people.

Perhaps the human conditions has degenerated so much in modern man that they no longer retain these metaphysical senses anymore. Like generations of people being born without ears no longer able to hear sound, thus dismissing music ever even existing. That's why these discussions fall apart between theists and atheists as these experiences are unintelligible; it becomes an epistemological problem.

>>13570806
I've said in this thread that I don't take the bible as historical facts though? I'm questioning the philosophy behind these stories. What is wrong with that? You've been trying to belittle me this entire time, I don't get it.

>>13570665
>>Kills Job's family for no reason (God admits this)
God not only admits this, he reveals it to you to a purpose.

You're just too much of a midwit to accept that your opinions and your judgments against God aren't valid.

>>13570814
Well, why not critique God? How do we know that God is good?

>>13570813
> I'm questioning the philosophy behind these stories. What is wrong with that?
You're talking about MORAL philosophy which is pointless. What basis do you draw your moral judgments from? And also, why does it matter? The point of Job is not what God is entitled to do to a human being - if God were real in the way that we picture him, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to do, because you couldn't stop him. All your whining about moral rules would make exactly 0 difference.
Job isn't real and was never real - he is pretty clearly a character. The story is just that - a story meant to teach the reader something. There is a ton to Job, more than can be explained in a 4chan thread and you would get the most out of it by reading and contemplating it yourself. But you focus on the lowest hanging fruit possible. Are the actions of God in Job morally justifiable? Who fucking cares?By one point of view they are, by another they aren't. Why does it matter?
>You've been trying to belittle me this entire time, I don't get it.
Sorry if I've come off that way, I'm just using 4chan bant which comes off as harsh and I'm also very frustrated with how many people share your exact mentality and don't profit from the reading they do because they have no idea how to interpret a religious text and they've been trained to be moralizers. You're interpreting the text in such a way that the writers of it and their contemporaries would probably view as ridiculous and which also lets you draw almost nothing of value from the text. It's like talking about how some random OT figure is bad because he killed a guy and our teachers today say that is bad bad

>>13570820
>How do we know that God is good?
because God revealed this in Genesis and because it is confirmed by the ontological argument. read Aristotle and Aquinas.

>>13570825
Good reply. I started this thread so that I could challenge my own opinions based on my reading of Job. I'll look more into biblical stories without a moralistic lens. However, I don't think that looking into the morality of stories in the bible is low hanging fruit.
>>13570726
Pointed out that Jung did this, with some interesting insights.

>>13570668
Either God's Love is or it is not (not-is). If Love is divided from his Being then we must say that it is not God's essence; his Being is instead becoming some eternal Third-Form.

Here we see that not only is God wrong - Job begins to lament creation and injustice - but he does not even understand how to demonstrate his immutable sovereignty. All that was necessary was to lift him up before completely destroying him, this would demonstrate both power and the sundering of good belief into evil. This inability shows that God is even lesser than a minor heathen god, and in complete opposition to a god like Prometheus who demonstrates Good in opposition to Evil in that moment of the greatest collision of forces - great foresight before other gods and the eternal strength of his essence.
Job and his God live in cursory times of wealth, within laws of certain victory where it is easy to demonstrate grace. God should have instead lost in his bet with Satan and then been forced to demonstrate his reconciliation with a cursed man. The real question, how does God restore piety to a man who has lost everything? For prosperity and righteousness have not truly been wiped away unless piety disappears with it. This would be the true test, and God's death is the consequence of his refusal to ask this question.
Yet our original problem remains: this idea of God is impossibly weak and overly concerned with petty troubles which the truly omnipotent would respond to with disdain and reserve. The two-faced god may be powerful, but only in his particular essence; the god who appears only within the moral ordering of materials has not only lost his sovereignty in heaven, but on earth as well.

Freed of all essence, God's Being can only be his own theological nihilism.

>>13570832
>I am Good
>You have to trust me
Sounds like something the devil would do. he wouldn't have to state this if it was the essence of the Logos.

>>13570841
>Good reply. I started this thread so that I could challenge my own opinions based on my reading of Job. I'll look more into biblical stories without a moralistic lens. However, I don't think that looking into the morality of stories in the bible is low hanging fruit.
Fair enough. Thanks for hearing me and I apologize again for how I came across. Best of luck in your reading.

Is there anything more retarded than an idiot completely missing the fact that stories are not objective truths and meant to portray a message and meaning. If you can't use the basis of the fundamental ability of reasoning and imagination then you are honestly not even a human at all.

kys OP. you are literally worthless to our grand progress.

>>13570851
He didn't state it directly, but rather by his effects. He created the world, and it was good. He sent his son Jesus Christ, with whom he was well pleased. God is good. There is evidence.

I always thought Goda bet with the devil was more a formal thing so that the reader knows that Jobs friends are in the wrong to accuse Job that his situation is Gods punishment for his sins.

>>13570863
>Stories that are supposed to show what kind of person God is. What is wrong with critiquing the philosophy behind these stories? The message behind Job is that your creator ultimately can do whatever he wants to you. I don't agree with this.

>>13570863
Pseud. Why are you so aggressive?

>>13570864
Why does He allow them if He is Good?

>>13570863
>progress
Yikes.

>>13570825
>is a Moral God moral or not
>WHO FUCKING CARES
So THIS is the power of NeoJudaism...

>>13570825
>they've been trained to be moralizers
This is literally the fault of Christianity, you fraudster.

>>13570665
>Kills Job's family for no reason
He didn't.

>>13570793
>the punishment is disproportionate
Then accept God

>>13570919
>Give me your money or ill kill you
>Accept god or face eternal torture

The idea is that God is out of your control and you should merely accept the fact that God can and will do anything to you. God is nature, destiny, fate, universe etc. The less time you spend thinking about how to appease an unstoppable force the more time you can spend doing something productive. That is the idea of the stories why God is so terrible. It is easier to accept life as it is if you merely accept that there is a force above you.

>>13570927
>drink this water or die
>proceeds to die

>>13570929
>The less time you spend thinking about how to appease an unstoppable force the more time you can spend doing something productive

Last time I checked, one of the most productive things a person could do is build a house i.e. a means to fight against the :unstoppable force" of nature.

>>13570941
Jesus told us to build a house

>>13570941
I really want to build a house, actually I want to build a gigantic temple out of extremely hard rocks laid precisely without mortar like the pyramids of egypt and certain other megaltihs.

I want to build a church out of wood and paint it wihite, but I also want to build some enormous stone thing, and I will almost definitely never do either

>>13570941
Your cuckshed isn't unstoppable.
As a burger you should know this.

>>13570929

>>13570929
The Eternal Eleventh-Hour Wagie

>>13570984
Have Sex: The Religion

>>13570966
I'm not American.

>>13570958
Why build a protection against the unstoppable to worship the unstoppable?

>>13571007
the church would be to help people in our time, and the stone immensity would be a lasting testament to the future humans that live after everything we have made is gone when we end, and they need some symbol of the sacred to guide them

I think the only reason we exist is to fight the ceaseless Empedoclean combat of strife and love, and that is itself an adherence to the unstoppable.

>>13571007
Yes you are.

>>13570886
>blaming God for man's failures
the absolute state of interlocutors