/lit/ - Literature

>>16597903
For me I just was enamored that everything I was coming upon in philosophy was what Christianity was already saying and my moment was then but I just started using what I found in Christianity in debates and it's sorta sealed it.

>>16597903
Amazing. It felt like 'letting go?' As in, you had reasons you didn't believe in god, and then suddenly you just... let go of them?
Wow. Just incredible.

>>16598329
what a strange thing to mock someone for.
that is the central leap though. You believe that you are your own master versus giving up that idea, and finding your place as a servant of your Lord. There are no reasons not to believe in God, there is only a kind of vanity that arises out of our human nature. If you are arguing then you do not understand.

>>16598445
Wow, awesome! He's so divine that he obliterates the very concept of arguing! In a burst of angelic light, he cleanses us of any and all critical thought!

>>16597903
I went through some intense suffering over the past few months and one night had a sudden feeling of "I guess I've always really been a Christian." Almost felt like God was reaching out to me. I'm still on the fence but have a whole new understanding of why people are religious, it goes much deeper than "hurr durr why would you believe in a sky daddy without proof." Used to be a fedora-tipping atheist myself. In your father's case I don't think there's any logical argument you can use to convince him, religion runs more on personal experience. Maybe he should take a visit to a church, mosque, etc?
>>16598500
*tips*

>>16598519
I only restated what he said. Did I misrepresent his claims? If my post seemed mocking, it's likely because I was paraphrasing a retard.

>>16598562

>>16598519
>i went through some intense suffering
>and now i suddenly believe in god
SHOCKER!

solitude and silence will often bring one to God
moments of quiet contemplation, hikes alone in the woods and up mountains, watching the waves on the surface of a lake, seeing the stars at night, witnessing trees fall in the woods, etc...
a great quote from Growth of the Soil that resonated with me is
>He never read a book but often thought about God; it was unavoidable, a matter of simplicity and awe. The starry sky, the soughing of the forest, the solitude, the big snow, the majesty of the earth and what was above the earth filled him with a deep devoutness many times a day.
there's a CS Lewis quote which I can't find right now that said something summed up like
>God is easier to hide from than to find, you can hide by avoiding moments of silence and contemplation, by chasing worldly distractions it becomes difficult to find God

>>16598329
>>16598500
>>16598562

>>16598634
this is good advice, God willing. My father likes hiking but he isn't finding the time lately.

>>16597903
Mother's parents were a Pastor and church wife, father's parents were Jews. Neither mom nor dad were very religious, was raised secular, told to figure it out myself if I wanted to, didn't care enough to for a long time. Read a whole lotta literary modernism and started thinking more about god. Started going to temple with Pop. Read the bible as a kid, started to take a closer look when I was older. Started reading mysticism and theology as well, Jewish and Catholic. One night had the most terrifying nightmare I ever had, convinced it was a message, started taking Judaism really seriously, been pious and studious ever since.

>>16598711
Also growing up spending all my time in the woods and the mountains of the Northeast I became increasingly convinced of "God's creation" and that no environment could be so beautiful by random.

>>16598694
>even an actual retard can see through the bible
based

Depression nullified my pride to the point that I started praying daily and my life got progressively better since then.

>>16598792
wow, you're the third person in this thread to discover god immediately following intense hardship. cool coincidence

>>16598820
depression isn't just one intense moment of hardship, numbnuts
you also ignored him bringing up that it was his pride falling which allowed him to start praying, clearly a more key part to his finding God than just the hardships of depression

>>16598820
Your point being?

>>16598840
sure is weird how people just suddenly become receptive to god when theyre miserable. bettet not read too deep into that

>>16598840
this, suffering only brought me to god because it made me drop my "i don't need god, i am too strong for that, i am my own master" pride
not the depression anon btw

>>16598854
sure is weird how people in this thread, and outside of 4chan in the real world, have been receptive to god even when they're not miserable or recently suffered a trauma. "bettet" not read too deep into that though or it may ruin your strawman

>>16597903
Whenever I think of my Christian religion, I also think of this quote from TE Lawrence, and I think about Wittgenstein. The point of religion I think, is to get out of thinking altogether, God is that in which no contradictions are able to exist, because the name of God refers to no-thing. The goal of religion is to replace "whys" with faith and this is the release of which you speak:
>In the very outset, at the first meeting with them, was found a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation, and repellent in its unsympathetic form. Semites had no half-tones in their register of vision. They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings. They knew only truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades.

>This people was black and white, not only in vision, but by inmost furnishing: black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistents seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. With cool head and tranquil judgement, imperturbably unconscious of the flight, they oscillated from asymptote to asymptote.

>They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. There was so little Arab art in Asia that they could almost be said to have had no art, though their classes were liberal patrons, and had encouraged whatever talents in architecture, or ceramics, or other handicraft their neighbours and helots displayed. Nor did they handle great industries: they had no organizations of mind or body. They invented no systems of philosophy, no complex mythologies. They steered their course between the idols of the tribe and of the cave. The least morbid of peoples, they had accepted the gift of Life unquestioningly, as axiomatic. To them it was a thing inevitable, entailed on man, a usufruct, beyond control. Suicide was a thing impossible, and death no grief.

- Excerpted from 7 Pillars of Wisdom, Chapter 3

Consider and juxtapose this idea with those of Wittgenstein, it's only 20 minutes
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgy3WCT0UU

>>16598949
beautifully said anon

>>16598949
>The point of religion I think, is to get out of thinking altogether
Well-said.

>>16598610
>>16598500
>>16598329
>>16598562

>>16598964
Perhaps you are being mocking, but when I read Wittgenstein, I realized that the only reason why you have philosophical thoughts is because of a mistaken use of language.

All you have to know is that words do not always refer to things (which we can notate as ¬W T). If you understand this, then you've stumbled on a powerful skeptical antinomy that renders philosophy into little more than a minor help to lexicographers as Bertrand Russell said.

Belief in God seems to be a form of this same antinomy when rightly considered, since God can only be described as negations in apophatic theology.

>>16599007
I should have said that I cannot tell if you're being mocking or not, so further clarification was needed.

>>16599011
I am being mocking. Even if you know that sustaining your belief requires you to think less and suppress your ability to reason, you probably shouldn't admit that.

>>16599037
My ability to reason is perfectly intact (as is yours) but the one thing that marks philosophical debate is an attempt to speak about what cannot be spoken.

We ought to use reason in a practical sense of course, but philosophy is based on a confusion. In order to be interested in it, you have to think that words refer to things. Words don't refer to things, words are just sounds that we ascribe meanings to. If you understand this, then you cannot philosophically debate any longer, because it is impossible to imagine words meaning anything outside of the confines of ordinary life. As Wittgenstein said, "whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent."

All you are doing in asserting your right to philosophize is asserting your right to make noise, but it's not rational noise anymore than it would be rational for me to try to prove God. Your reason is as constrained as my reason.

Just watch the video, and you'll realize how truly constrained your reasoning ability really is.
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgy3WCT0UU

>>16599037
Even the idea that I can "suppress my ability to reason" is a rhetorical confusion of language. Reason is an innate quality; I have it in full even when I'm not reasoning.

>>16598949
it bears pointing out, and I certainly contemplate this a fair amount, that as practitioners of semitic religion, we understand it that when God gave His instruction, He did so through words. Currently, and you learn all the time and it changes all the time, but currently, upon inspiration from iranian sufis, I do try very much not to -give- any of my own words when I pray. Earlier I would pray, and simultaneously think of what I thought the words meant. Now I try to have what one of the iranians called "an obliterated heart", which I take to mean obliterated by awe, and brought also thereby to silence. I try to make it so that the divine revelation that I am reciting is clearly and cleanly written into me, with no mixing or interpretation of my own, just exactly as it is. I guess "to see it" in Ludwigian terms (as I understand the video at least). But it is still words, although words from God.

>>16599155
That's interesting, I don't understand Islamic theology to comment on most of that, but I can say that you make me re-consider the value of prayer with words. We have our own version; what we call the contemplative tradition. I haven't been able to get into it, but in engineering there is a concept known as lateral thinking, where one discipline inspires people in another area that is not obviously related to it. Perhaps you've given me something similar to think about.

>>16598329
>>16598500
>>16598562
>>16598610
>>16598820
>>16598854
>>16598964
Have you noticed that this thread asked for people to relay their religious journeys and didn't ask for the half-baked witticisms of a fat fedora tipping neckbeard who escaped reddit?

>>16598500
The new testament teaches to be as sharp as a serpent. If you reread the New Testament with the intention of learning then you will understand why people remain Christian after a philosophical journey.

>>16599353
At least the other people who have engaged me here can muster an argument. You can post your whole soijak folder, I'm going to keep pointing out the similarities between everyone's "journeys."
Everyone here has outright stated that they were only able to start believing in a time of personal tragedy, and that it required them to stop thinking.
It's damning, and I'm going to keep pointing it out regardless of how upset it makes you.

>>16600687
>Everyone here has outright stated that they were only able to start believing in a time of personal tragedy
That's just simply not true.
>>16598711
>>16598732
Right here this guy is talking about being inspired by nature to seek religious enlightenment. Don't see what's so tragic here.

>>16600725
>One night had the most terrifying nightmare I ever had, convinced it was a message, started taking Judaism really seriously
Are you sure that's an example you want to include

>>16597903


BELIEF IS INHERENT & INTRINSIC; IT CANNOT BE LEARNT, NOR ACQUIRED; IF YOU WERE BORN VOID OF THE FIRE OF SOFIA NO PHYSICAL POWER WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE YOU BELIEVE; FIRELESS INDIVIDUALS CAN BELIEVE ONLY BY EXTRINSIC LIGHT, RECEIVING IT BY SPECIAL DIVINE GRACE.

>>16601015
plotinuscrying.png