/lit/ - Literature

>>17866683
Interesting OP. I recently watched an interview of Houellebecq and he describes the same phenomenon.
https://youtu.be/AJI8YPopjgk
Minute 14:52
He makes EXACTLY the same argument as you. What do you think of his take?

>>17866712
I've honestly never read Houellebecq or listened to him at all really. I just know the name because of people shilling him here and calling him an 'incel' which is part of the reason I have had no interest in him.

I just watched the bit which you had minute-marked. I don't think that the idea that nature will bring you closer to God is that foreign or rare an idea, I never realized that this guy was so religious, I kind of expected him to be nihilist and 'edgy' since that seems to be the crowd which pushes him, but y'know they say never to judge a book by its cover. Maybe I'll try one of his books one of these days.

>>17866712
> writing is like cultivating parasites in your brain
I love that. Reading is kind of like that too. He gives great interviews.

>>17866683
Actually nature is probably one of the things most inconsistent with old ideas of god. The random processes that actually cause things like mountains to form, trees to grow and change and animals to get their features are very different to what people believed so if by "god" you mean a being that has nothing to do with Christianity then yeah I guess nature could bring you close to that

>>17866712
>>17866683
Believe me or not but I was thinking the same thing about 15 hours ago, because I had seen Houellebecq on /lit and wondered what he had to say in interviews.

>>17866812
>I don't think that the idea that nature will bring you closer to God is that foreign or rare an idea
Definitely. It’s even Biblical.
>For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse
I really couldn’t put it better than this verse or what Houllebecq said. When you spend time in cities, it makes you think of man. When you spend time in nature, it makes you think of God.

>>17867016
Just because being nature makes you think of god doesn't mean you have a good reason. People thought weather events were acts of god but in reality they are pretty much just random

>>17866917
>He gives great interviews.
Right? I love how he never gives meme answers. Despite having the reputation of a cynic, he always answers earnestly and sincerely.

>>17866683
Man, I lived and worked in a national park for five years and it did nothing to bring me to god. I was out hiking almost every day. Some people think differently, just fucking accept that and move on instead of trying to diagnose everybody.

>>17867023
>People thought weather events were acts of god but in reality they are pretty much just random
Saying weather events are random is a metaphysical statement you cannot possibly verify. You believe they are random, as much as a religious man believes they are not.

>>17867054
There are people who believe in God in cities too. He is pointing out general trends, not a formula.

>>17867066
What an absolutely retarded statement. Meteorologists are far more competent at predicting weather than people who see the after affects of what happened and say "god was smiting us with this hurricane" we don't need to have 100% prediction accuracy to say that we understand weather events aren't mediated by acts of god. I meant random in the sense that they are hard to predict and not done in accordance with a god interfering in order to smite or spare people he likes or dislikes

>>17867079
Does he have any empircal evidence to back that up? Because if he's just making a general trend based on his own experience then there's really no reason why I should take his word over the poster who said he hiked all the time and didn't get brought close to god

>>17867092
No one is saying God does things arbitrarily, but that there is an order to nature that points to an intelligent designer. That was OPs point, St. Paul’s point, and Houellebecq’s point.
I truly do not see how the fact we can predict weather events is incompatible with the idea of intelligent design. It’s quite the opposite, in fact.

>>17867079
I'm saying it's horseshit, there's no trend. People believe in god because they have a tendency towards religiosity, for whatever reason. If you do, you'll see god in the trees and sunset or whatever. I don't, and I can't. That doesn't detract from the majesty of nature, in my opinion. Whether it happened by chance or was built for us, its grandeur is undeniable.

>>17867137
I'm not even saying that there isn't an intelligent designer, I'm a christian myself, what I'm saying is that a lot of things that people used to think were intelligently designed in the sense that they were made like a watch (stuff like animals and plants) we know for a fact are actually made through natural selection and selection pressures. We know a lot of the diversity of nature is pretty much processes affecting each other that leads to diversity, obviously there could be an intelligence that set it all into motion and maybe they had a plan but that idea is so different to what people thought 2000 years ago when they said "nature is intelligent design"

>>17867160
>we know
it's the belief of a lot of Christians that, no, we actually don't. i see the natural world as a perfectly designed project that was necessarily abandoned to entropy.

>>17866935
Of course not. The "random" processes are proceeding according to laws described by physics. The only reason our science can have such predictive power is because of understanding of these laws. The sensible universe is blatantly coherent, as opposed to incoherent noise. Without this fundamental coherency, no scientific or technological advancement would be possible, as there would be no predictability.

>>17867174
Do you not believe in natural selection?

>>17867185
Right, and literally no one believed this until like 100-200 years ago

>>17867160
>idea is so different to what people thought 2000 years ago when they said "nature is intelligent design"

It really isn't. They got their intelligent design from seeing all the predictability in nature, from things like the movements of planets and stars.

Now we know more about the universe than they did, but we still can predict things. We did not find a truly random universe, where prediction and statistics would be impossible.

>>17867220
Not at all. The ancient greeks believed everything proceeded according to laws, same as us. We just have a higher resolution picture.

>>17867229
>We did not find a truly random universe, where prediction and statistics would be impossible.
Nicely put.

>>17867229
But that doesn't imply anything, a universe where statistics and prediction was impossible might never be able to form in the first place, hence there wouldn't be anything to observe. Also I know this is /lit/ but quantum mechanics does seem to make this argument a bit harder since quantum events seem to be inherently random

>>17867236
Yeah I guess if by nature you mean "just the stars" and decide not to include everything else the greeks thought of as nature (like pants, animals, trees, societies and cultures) which they did not believe just followed laws

That's the same way I feel but my uncle claims that seeing the grand canyons was what convinced him God wasn't real so your own biases might do more to determine how you view nature than we realise

>>17867273
Exactly, people just experience something for themselves and then project it on humanity like wow crazy how we all agree that nature makes you believe in god right?

>>17866812
>dismissing an author because of others trash opinions
ngmi

>>17867273
>seeing the grand canyons was what convinced him God wasn't real
Lol how

>>17866683
>My faith is, of course, first and foremost informed by the good book, but I fail to see how someone who may not be a reader could go out into the natural world and surmise that all of her beauty and perfection was simply an accident.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Mother nature is a brutal fucking bitch. And you're delusional retard if you think otherwise.


>“What are we to make of a creation in which the routine activity is for organisms to be tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue. Everyone reaching out to incorporate others who are edible to him. The mosquitoes bloating themselves on blood, the maggots, the killer-bees attacking with a fury and a demonism, sharks continuing to tear and swallow while their own innards are being torn out—not to mention the daily dismemberment and slaughter in “natural” accidents of all types: an earthquake buries alive 70 thousand bodies in Peru, automobiles make a pyramid heap of over 50 thousand a year in the U.S. alone, a tidal wave washes over a quarter of a million in the Indian Ocean. Creation is a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. The soberest conclusion that we could make about what has actually been taking place on the planet for about three billion years is that it is being turned into a vast pit of fertilizer. But the sun distracts our attention, always baking the blood dry, making things grow over it, and with its warmth giving the hope that comes with the organism’s comfort and expansiveness. “Questo sol m’arde, e questo m’inna-more,” as Michelangelo put it.”

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

>>17867347
> cant possibly be simply an accident
>Random tsunamis and earthquakes destroy shit all the time for no reason lol

>>17867289
I don't know my mom and I always agree that if we were there we would have seen a very different picture.

>>17867289
because the grand canyon evinces a density of thought that is greater than our cut-up trading card understanding of God; the real will always defeat the fantastical.

>>17866683
Yes I feel my best in the mountains too

>>17867367
That's not the point.

>>17867144
>there's no trend
Not if you don’t have eyeballs or ears

>>17867409
what's the point?

>>17867347
I have noticed it is always ugly and weak biological trash such as yourself having the most resentful attitude towards nature.

>>17867480
You don't even know what he looks like, it's always retards like you that have no good arguments so you make up some figment in your head and then argue based on your imagination lmao

>>17867504
he writes like an ugly person therefore he is ugly. Nigger

>>17867511
>literally is living inside his own head
You should just imagine yourself happy if you're so deep inside your own ass, instead of imaging people as ugly

>>17867504
I am too well-versed in matters of physiognomy to require his image to know his vague appearance. You are a person, though closer to cattle in spirit, who grew up in an environment where one of the most important dogmas was not seeing patterns and correlations in humans and only sticking to using your intelligence to analyze lifeless objects.

>>17867567
>cattle in spirit
Not him, but why do you insult cows? Did you know Jesus was, in all likelihood, based on the story of a cow? I would sooner cry for a cow than a Jew.

>>17867567
You actually couldn't be farther from the truth, I just finished my bachelor's of psychology literally all I did for the past 3 years was seeing patterns and correlations in humans lol

>>17867099
>>17867144
There are a greater percentage of atheists living in cities than in rural areas.

>>17867625
Could just be access to education from scientific institutes though, as opposed to the view of the city scape. Seems far more likely to me

>>17867634
But there's also greater access to religious institutions in cities. There is a higher concentration of congregations, churches, temples, mosques, yeshivas, catholic schools, theological institutes, all that stuff.

>>17866683
Of course it is, look at the night sky when you're in a city and compare it to the night sky you see when you're on a camping trip.
Only one of these can be described as divine.

>>17868139
>Night sky in the city
Kek, these people have never even seen a star in their lives. Cities are literally indefensible.

>>17866935
fedora

>>17866935
>The random processes that actually cause things like mountains to form, trees to grow and change and animals to get their features
He has created the heavens without any pillars, that you see and has set on the earth firm mountains, lest it should shake with you. And He has scattered therein moving (living) creatures of all kinds. And We send down water (rain) from the sky, and We cause (plants) of every goodly kind to grow therein.[32:10]
He makes the night to go in the day and makes the day to go in the night. And He has subjected the sun and the moon. Each running (on a fixed course) for an appointed term. Verily, He is the All-Mighty, the Oft-Forgiving.”[39:5]

>>17867099
>>17867144

Do you have a source on that?

Source?

A source. I need a source.

Sorry, I mean I need a source that explicitly states your argument. This is just tangential to the discussion.

No, you can't make inferences and observations from the sources you've gathered. Any additional comments from you MUST be a subset of the information from the sources you've gathered. You can't make normative statements from empirical evidence.

Do you have a degree in that field? A college degree? In that field? Then your arguments are invalid. No, it doesn't matter how close those data points are correlated. Correlation does not equal causation.

Correlation does not equal causation.

CORRELATION. DOES. NOT. EQUAL. CAUSATION.

>>17868139
Deez nutz can be described as divine

>>17868201
gottem

>>17866935
...everything is random bro... science and shit...

>>17868178
Are you done embarrassing yourself?

>>17866683
Monotheism (and its variations like marxism or new atheism) directly confronts nature or any sort of chaos or complexity by reducing everything to simple answers based on what’s written in some holy book.
>>17867185
There is no coherence in our understanding of the universe. There is no solid foundation, no theory of everything and whenever we try to dig deeper we just get buried in more questions. This is true for any science, but it’s extremely obvious with physics because both quantum physics and cosmology are extremely incoherent.
>>17868175
>the sun and the moon. Each running (on a fixed course)
That’s obviously not true. Case in point.

>>17866683
I think you’ve got the key anon. It sounds crazy but satan doesn’t want you to interact with life directly anymore. That’s why screens and TV correlate with mass atheism

>>17866683
That may very well be one of the reasons.

>but I fail to see how someone who may not be a reader could go out into the natural world and surmise that all of her beauty and perfection was simply an accident.

Nearly took the words right out of this religious buddy I knew in college. He told me once that civilizations both ancient and today don't just take a look at nature and assume "Did some random guy build all this?" It was the elaborate beauty of nature that impelled them to believe greater and higher forces are out there.
It got me to thinking then that perhaps the same effect takes place when we are disconnected from nature. In the heart of a city walled in by skyscrapers we see only what we have created and not what nature has to offer. I believe those are some of the first steps to atheism, if not the first then let it be an essential phase at some point in the process.

>>17866683
I'm an atheist who loves nature.

>>17866683
Good insight, I think there is something to living your life more integrated with nature.

>>17869429
>Monotheism (and its variations like marxism or new atheism) directly confronts nature or any sort of chaos or complexity by reducing everything to simple answers based on what’s written in some holy book.
This. Monotheism, or even monism in general, is a product of the reductionism of cities. Humans are reduced to one-dimensional beings by the nature of city-life, and are compelled by such to believe in the monad. Interaction with the plurality of nature gives one a direct and far more real experience of the actual world, thereby causing a tendency for polytheism of various sorts.

Compare:
Buddha (constantly wandering through nature alone) to the Brahmins who composed the Upanishads (living in sheltered cities constantly speculating).
Augustine/Aquinas (all urbanites) to the older Greeks like Homer who composed the Iliad (constantly traveling and wandering to different places)

Basically it goes beyond just what's written in the Holy Book. It's actual a direct experience of reality which influences their tendency to reduce all life to one dimension (the Monad) in opposition to a plurality. City life and extreme agriculturalism are directly responsible for the tendency to switch to monistic views.

>>17867597
Ah of course, I am sure you had fun memorizing perspectives of hundreds of braindead Jews who PRed each other into relevance so half-brained gentiles like yourself learn their bullshit during their meme education. And no, the one token German magician is not enough. As far as using a more biological approach to psychology goes, people get Nobels stripped for suggesting genetic racial differences in intelligence. You WILL tell your patients to meditate and become trannies like a good boy.

>>17869783
One of the most zealous Muslim population lives in Dagestan and Chechnya, both are very rural.

>My relationship with God
Which one?

Also, monotheism is primarily an urban phenomenon as well, as are many instances in polytheism. In fact, the first cities were probably religious centers built around the worship of gods like Enlil

>>17870763
>As far as using a more biological approach to psychology goes, people get Nobels stripped for suggesting genetic racial differences in intelligence.
Because that’s mostly bullshit and /pol/tards like you mostly believe it because you have nothing else going on in your life to be proud of

>>17866683
>but I fail to see how someone who may not be a reader could go out into the natural world and surmise that all of her beauty and perfection was simply an accident.
Im a christian, but you must understand that there is a unique beauty to that. To the atheist, the ‘randomness’ of nature’s glory does not detract from nature, but rather adds to its splendor.

>>17870827
bait

>muh nature
>muh beauty
>muh perfection
>muh accident

There are barely any people who believe the world is entirely and accident. Also, many natural systems are dynamic, so even if they would have nothing random in them, they could still produce randomness. Your version of nature is a hopelessly outdated one that was abandoned completely over the course of the 19th and the 20th century. It’s the view of nature as a system in perfect equilibrium, which we know to be a complete fantasy

>>17866683
>Is it possible that atheism is more prevalent in modern cities because of a lack of exposure to the natural world?
In part
And because of media programming

Werner Heisenberg said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

People in cities especially, born and raised in institutionalized education and institutionalized media, can only act and observe within the house-of-mirrors nightmare that is the reality that they sit idly in and it's easier to shut it out with coping mechanisms.There is no tradition, no spirituality, no blood memory, no heritage. Only globohomo.

>>17871046
>but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.
Which?

>>17871046
>Werner Heisenberg said, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
Source?

>>17871050
>Which?
God.

>>17871053
“Der erste Trunk aus dem Becher der Naturwissenschaft macht atheistisch, aber auf dem Grund des Bechers wartet Gott.” The source “cited in Ulrich Hildebrand: ‘Das Universum – Hinweis auf Gott?’, in ‘Ethos. Die Zeitschrift für die ganze Familie,’ Berneck, Schweiz: Schwengeler Verlag AG, No. 10, Oktober 1988, p. 10.
It's been attributed to Heisenberg. I have not made up my mind whether or not it's been falsely attributed, because Heisenberg wrote extensively on this topic and it's possible that he did say this. However, even if he did or not, he likely be echoing the words of Francis Bacon in 1601.

>>17871127
It's falsely attributed because that quote is totally retarded for a 20th century scientist.

>>17871134
Oh yeah it's such a retarded thought that the same scientist would foster an eleven page paper essentially on the premise after first giving a speech on it in Munich after receiving the 1973 Guardini prize of the Catholic Academy in Bavaria. It's so unrealistic to quote him. A guy who thinks that, living in nature, observing the continual, repeated, direct experiences that are the workings of God and thereby renews his trust in him, would never at all think or say a statement like that that could be collected 15 or so years after the fact.

>>17871127
>>Which?
>God.
Again, which one? There are quite a bit to choose from. Do I burn my incense for Ahura Mazda, or do I give a feast to Marduk, so that he will bless me?

>>17871352
"What god, named God, that a 20th century Lutheran German Scientist would be referring to, do you think? How are you on /lit/ if you can't (or don't) even read?"
That's what I would respond with if I didn't know that this was 2010 fedora bait.

>>17867092
>clouds
>50% chance of rain
So THIS is the power of science.

>>17871250
Yes he never would have said something like this because scientist know the the strong presence of uncertainty and to determine the limits of sciences and attributing those limits to something as a certain answer is genuinely retarded.

>>17866683
No. Our overlords want us to believe in their words. So they must destroy the past and replace it with "science" or whatever else. Nature does help. But a belief in God isn't contingent on it.

>>17871443
If you're impersonating some stuttering, mumbling idiot now's the time to give me the sauce because I don't know who it is. Nevertheless. If you genuinely think that Werner there is talking about "the limits of sciences" and then "attributing those limits to something as a certain answer", you might need to re-evaluate your life. And maybe learn how to speak English.

>>17866812
>listening to 4channel
ngmi

>>17871475
If you genuinely don't think that Werner there is talking about "the limits of sciences" and then "attributing those limits to something as a certain answer", you might need to re-evaluate your life

>>17867347
Imagine being scared of squirrels and thinking there's a God who made such fearsome beasts just to torture you.

>>17871509
Now imagine the neck of a Zebra in the jaws of a Lion and it will take 20 minutes to the Zebra to die. Imagine the pain of Zebra and compare it with the pleasure of the hungry Lion.
Like Schopenhauer said something like a predator have to become a living grave of hundreds of animals in order to survive.

>>17871490
Amazing argument I'm metaphysically flattened, I've become so thin by the flattening I've become trapped in the second dimension I'm so shocked that I almost even forgot that your original position was that Werner never said that at all

>>17871534
You're so keen on saying that HE FUCKING DID SAY THAT. Even if did, it's retarded.
>metaphysically
Metaphysical age is over bro. Heidegger and Wittgenstein put this vague shit into trash 100 years ago.

>>17866683
I read a lot. Like A LOT. I like Nature, and I'm still an atheist.

I think that knowing that everything came by "accidentally" is even more impressive than thinking a supernatural being did it.

Imagine you're walking in a forest and see a bench. Nice, a comfortable place to sit and relax.

Now imagine you find a root of a tree that's shaped like a bench. You might think a gardener tended it to obtain this result, but it's unlikely. How cool is that that (sorry for the repetition) something like this happened for the sum of a lot of little things (different mineral composition of the soil, wind that pushes the tree to grow in a certain direction eccetera).

At least, that's how I see the world

>>17871548
In this moment, I am euphoric...I kneel...

>>17871575

>>17866683
>>17866812

This will get buried in the idiotic word slinging that goes in during most theism/atheism discussions online, but this is an actual philosophy book about what you are describing.

>>17870827
Haven't posted on /pol/ in months, keep dilating though fag.