/lit/ - Literature

>>18423765
All the greatest writers are Christian because their word was blessed by God.

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people

>why are these soulless golems so underrepresented in literature
Who knows?

>>18423765
Atheists fail to grasp what is essential in life.

Big brain stuff.
"Good and evil is entirely subjective."
"Don't kill us or we'll punish you."
"Free will is an illusion."
"Some neurochemistry is destined to inflict suffering and must likewise suffer."

>>18423765
Writers of great literature address the human condition and it's something atheists consider irrelevant compared to documenting the behavior of matter.

>>18423765
Religion appeals to personalities on the emotional spectrum, which is linked to a more vivid imagination, predisposition to move and be moved by words etc.

>>18423765
Feeble strawmanning here anon

>>18423765
>atheist

Bro, I hope you realize that when you're writing a book, you need to believe in the book... If atheists don't want to believe, they're not going to believe.

>Believe in God all day
>Go to write book
>Believe in the book
>"I believe this is real so I care a lot"

>Don't believe in god
>Go to write book
>Don't believe in book
>"This isn't real so I don't care"

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people
Nice bait OP

>>18423882
>strawmanning
You have no idea what this actually is do you? How can OP be strawmanning his own opinion you retard

>>18423874
cont. Not to mention there were simply far more religious people than atheists in the time most of our memorable literature was written. It’s no rocket science

>>18423892
>see pic
>fuck that's a long greentext
>skip to the end to see if there's a tl;dr
>some whore rambling about incels
>close pic

>>18423765
Good bait.

>>18423765
It's a christcuck larping as an atheist for (you).
Was Mark Twain a based christian?
Was Nabokov?

>>18423765
nice bait

>>18423923
>Was Mark Twain a based christian?
No but he was a shit author

>Was Nabokov?
Literally who?

>>18423765
>objectively better critical thinking skills
Okay, that's enough trolling for you, go to sleep.

>>18423798
>their word was blessed by God.
Absolute heresy

>>18423818
>soulless
What?! G*D forgot to put His Breath into humans??? And still these humans exist? Damn...We got a problem here...

>>18423865
>great literature address the human condition and it's something atheists consider irrelevant
kek

>>18423931
Did you lose your way from /tv/?

>>18423892
>Believe in God all day
>>Go to write book
>>Believe in the book
>>"I believe this is real so I care a lot"
Absolute heresy


>Don't believe in god
>Go to write book
>Don't believe in book
>"This isn't real so I don't care"
retard take

>>18423963
>G*D
Fuck off ADL. It's 7:24 in the morning

>>18423765
>[Richard] earnestly reproached Malwida [von Meysenbug] for not having her ward baptised. This was not right, he said, not everyone could fashion his religion for himself, and particularly in childhood one must have a feeling of cohesion. Nor should one be left to choose: rather it should be possible to say, You have been christened, you belong through baptism to Christ, now unite yourself once more with him through Holy Communion. Christening and Communion are indispensable, he said. No amount of knowledge can ever approach the effect of the latter. People who evade religion have a terrible shallowness, and are unable to feel anything in a religious spirit. (Cosima's Diary entry for 12 December 1873)

>>18423978
>It's 7:24 in the morning
Not in my country
>>G*D
>Fuck off ADL
I agree, fuck off ADL. That said, I use the * instead of O simply because I like the aesthetic of it. And for trolling, of course. Porco dio :D

>>18423984
>supporting pedobaptism
*sigh* ngmi

>>18424264
Ya fuckin cheeky cunt

>>18424278
Huh?

>>18424284
What exactly confuses you?

>>18424281
>cheeky cunt
I had to google this. Why do you think about this stuff all day? Seriously, why?

>>18424315
How fucking new are you?
>mfw the troll becomes the trolled

>>18424311
Are you pushing the stereotype of "Priests are Pedos"?

Everyone born in the West after roughly 1780 is an atheist, even if they are a devout Christian on the outside. Actual religiosity is incompatible with modern psyche. Current Pope of Rome is an atheist.

>>18424332
>How fucking new are you?
New enough to not think about trans all day, I guess. I will always be new, btw
>>18424337
>Are you pushing the stereotype of "Priests are Pedos"?
Holy fucking Jesus...
1)It's not a stereotype 2)This has literally nothing to do with what I wrote, you don't even know one single word of Greek? Come on dude. I've never even studied Greek in my life, but at least I understand what "cardiomegaly" or "Chrysostomos" mean.

>>18423765
Who bullied you this time bucko?

>>18424347
>Current Pope of Rome is an atheist.
I wish. I truly do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvG3zE_E_5U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRvk1VNC52g

Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat:
Ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum:
Christus Filius tuus,
qui, regressus ab inferis, humano generi serenus illuxit,
et tecum vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum.
Resp. Amen.

>>18423765
Because atheists make a tiny percentage of the general human population in general.

>>18424365
What exactly did you find when you searched Cheeky Cunt?
What browser are you using? Because your viewing experience can differ greatly based on what your using

>>18424394
>What browser are you using?
Chrome
>What exactly did you find when you searched Cheeky Cunt?
pic

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people
Objectively incorrect. Most atheists (not all) are just as blindly obedient to their dogma as fundamentalist Christians.

Atheism in general is a very midwit-tier belief. Most atheists (the “religion is just fairytales for adults. You believe in fairies” type atheists) have no understanding of theology or philosophy.
They have no concept of metaphysics.
They have no clue that there are elements of the human experience that cannot be addressed through scientific means. They don’t know anything about the Mind-body problem.
They have not considered any of these things.

Great authors and philosophers, being intelligent people who have spent a lot of time contemplating human existence, are aware of the fact that they cannot know everything.

The reason most of them are spiritual in some capacity is because the existence of something that transcends the physical world—whatever that may be—is a sound logical conclusion.

Not everyone will reach the same conclusion, but most people who mock religion and religious people have never contemplated any of these things. Their belief is “I can’t see it, therefore it does not exist.” Which is pure brainletism.

>>18424420
My fucking sides holy shit.
Urban Dictionary is out here doing some quality trolling right now

>>18423765
Terrible bait

>>18424461
Based

>>18424461
kek, imagine believing this, and posting a gigabrain chad at your own wrong opinion.

Have a nice day you all.

>>18424557
Crikey! We’ve got a live one here boys! a midwit! What a whopper!

>>18424791

>>18424557
>>>/r/atheism

>>18423894
>OP
>his own opinion

Oh please, come on now

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people

>>18423765
Atheism is easy to rationalize your way to, but really hard to practice.
Most atheists still engage in theism, making theist assumptions to inform their thought or, worse, using these assumptions even while denying them.

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people
This makes zero sense, you all think there is no God yet there absolutely is.
>>18423798
FPBP, blessed.

>>18423958
Not him but that's not necessarily heretical, saying they're divinely inspired and their word is doctrine would be heretical. Giving glory to God for one's skill rather than proudly proclaiming one's merits is the foundation of humility and has been prevalent in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches for centuries if not millennia. Scripture even speaks of God's grace bestowing gifts to believers. Who is to say that creating beautiful, thought provoking art isn't a gift from God?

Atheism is the intellectual equivalent of the other party in the debate not showing up for the night and the remaining party going on a monologue in place of the actual debate.

>>18423765
>As an atheist

>ctrl+f "critical"
At least anons called OP out.

>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people
Religious people reproduce more, have more stable marriages, and are generally happier, and built every stable and high civilization of the past. Atheism has brought us degeneracy, relativism, materialism and modern $cience

>>18425654
A look at the islamic and hindhu world or modern africa disproves this.

>>18425679
They are objectively better than modern Western civilization. Anything else is atheist cope

Actually the opposite.
There isn't a single good writer who was a Christian fundamentalist like the 4chan zoomer LARPERS pretend to be.

>>18423765
I'd be more inclined to agree with atheists if they didn't argue so much around the ethical and moral domain (which I believe the same applies for theists from the other camp). I've had many wonderful conversations with atheists arguing from the temporal, spatial, and epistemological perspective; "how does a view of eternity and immortality found itself in a perishable world" and "how does one know God" are better questions than "muh persecution" "muh rational human faculties". If you acknowledge that theism is irrational, then why try to argue with theists using rationalism? All that does is build up argument with no conversation, which is why I always recommend atheists look into mystical theology.
Here are some works that I think, with a wider readership, could increase inter-faith dialogue rather than polemics, and are works that atheists won't find too disagreeable;
>athens and jerusalem by shestov
this work, written by the king of despair, compares rationalism and revelation in a historical and philosophical context
it really made me question my views and how most people view/define God
>tears and saints by cioran
early writing from the prince of despair, focusing on the contradictory and asetical lives of saints from an not so christian perspective
>klages' essay 'on love as eros and as passion'
although klages was a "pagan", his hatred of the notion of human immortality presents a beautiful and readable understanding of how zealous devotion can be conspumtive and distract from one's understanding of their role in the cosmos
>mircea eliade's the sacred and profane, myth of the eternal return, and myth and reality
famous works in secular comparative religion, these deal with the spatial and temporal themes of how differing beliefs view eternity, time, and sacred places
>kierkegaard's fear and trembling and sickness unto death
obviously
>the novels of charles williams
magical realism that explains the more misunderstood facets of christian mysticism in an enjoyable way
any fan of borges will enjoy williams
t. christian

>>18423765
Best writers were Greeks and Indians (pagans ergo atheists) and Shakespeare (atheist)

>>18426034
>If you acknowledge that theism is irrational
very, very few Christians will own up to this

>>18426281
>and Shakespeare (atheist)
Orwell cope.
>Indians
Come on. Apply yourself.

>>18426322
I don't know what Orwell said but the fact is clear from his texts
>Come on. Apply yourself
What did he mean by this

>>18426309
The actual argument would be to conclude to at least "weak" theism from the basis of rationalism in the philosophical meaning: the principle of reason.
Unless you mean rational as in finding things clever, in that case there is no discussion.

>>18426309
Ration and theology only coincide to the extent that theology is the human experience of God, and rationalism is as human as it gets sometimes. At the end of the day the most important questions are usually answered with "don't know, it's a mystery", which often holds a relative quality of comfort or discomfort to different people. From an external view, the asetical struggle is one of the most contradictory acts, to a casual viewer it's a renunciation of normalcy in the extreme.

>>18426395
What is clear from his texts is that he is Christian. The autistic debate is whether he was Catholic which is probable but we'll never know unless unexpected new material comes up.

>>18426437
Religion is conspicuously absent from Shakespeare, especially when compared to his contemporaries, nor does he dare mention atheism (for fear of persecution, natch)

>>18423798
Couldn't have said it any better

>>18426497
A number of questions of the day during the Elizabethan religious repression are found in his texts.
Shakespeare never meant to be a writer of religious subjects anyway, which doesn't make him atheist. If anything there is more of it that you would expect from a sometimes semi-decadent playwright.
Moliere didn't talk much about Jesus either: do you also consider him atheist?
The idea that him not mentioning atheism is a proof of his atheism is so retarded I won't dwell on it.

>>18426281
Shakespeare was not an atheist and was probably catholic (also, if he is Edward de Vere he was extremely religious)

I'm gonna be a contrarian and say this is rather weak bait.

>>18425696
As one example, I think it's safe to say Tolstoy was pretty "fundamentalist".

>>18425071
where can i read more about this chad?

>>18425062
>This makes zero sense, you all think there is no God yet there absolutely is.
whoa...absolutely destroyed 'em...

>>18425654
>if I coomm inside wymen I more smarter
kys

>>18426829
>Tolstoy was pretty "fundamentalist".
kek, literally excommunicated by Pobedonoschev for heresy.

Read a fucking book

>>18423765
It’s because atheists have no soul

>>18428313

>>18423963

>>18423765
>Atheists have objectively better critical thinking skills than religious people so it is very strange that almost all the greatest authors were devout Christians.
Aside from one point of contention, absolutely not. You can't say you're smarter than someone because you were handed different beliefs and you use it to inflate your self-worth.

>>18428313
Loving God, btw

>>18423765
>I guess we have Bertrand Russell but the guy was honestly a huge sperg.
camus, cioran, nietzsche, epicurus, schopie, dfw, sartre, kierkegaard, james joyce, and pretty much any japanese writer
at least spend more than 5 minutes thinking about the shit you post
go back to /tv/ and stop making bait threads
>>18424381
>t.
it has nothing to do with muh critical thinking, the percentage of atheist writers it's roughly the same as in the general population, at their time

>>18423765
normally I would call this a shitty bait but given how many tradcath zoomers you’ve managed to lure I’d say you did a pretty good job

>>18423765
looks like there's a lot of samefagging christfags ITT as usual lately, but you obviously asked for it with that bullshit "objectively better critical thinking" comment. I'm gonna assume you made this post in good faith instead of the shitty bait it is and give you an actual answer.

one reason is because universities were founded by the religious organizations, most notably the Catholic Church. And so the educated elite (the only people who can afford to write a lot of shit and get good at it) had come from a biased religious background. Another reason should be obvious to you: it's better to not go against the grain in a world dominated by organized religion.
the other major reason, which is the most significant, is that we really didn't know jackshit about the universe until VERY recently and atheism wasn't popular at all even among the smartest thinkers. It wasn't until the age of Enlightenment that Deism (which is basically atheism lite) became the new popular thing among the elites. still, you can find atheists in many great works of literature throughout history, including Epicurus and Xuanxue writers

>>18430454
>atheism wasn't popular at all even among the smartest thinkers.
There was a reason for that and it's not because they thought God was needed to explain lightning

>>18430493
> There was a reason for that
and I already explained it, most educational institutions already had a religious bias from the get go.

>>18430502
Yes that was because most educated people understood the necessity of God because metaphysics was a part of the curriculum before the enlightenment massively dumbed everyone down

>>18430506
> most educated people understood the necessity of God
in other words, most educated people were brainwashed by the Church.
> the enlightenment massively dumbed everyone down
do you live in a western democracy? you can thank the enlightenment for that. Don't like it? fuck off to China or some backwards middle eastern shithole.

>>18430516
>>in other words, most educated people were brainwashed by the Church.
Euphoric. Have you actually engaged with these thinkers you consider brainwashed because you wouldn't be able to refute any of their arguments, what does that make you?

>do you live in a western democracy?
Unfortunately. Fuck Liberalism. Huge mistake.

>>18428151
This, but unironically.

>>18430529
>Euphoric
you've beaten that horse to death. tradfags are the new fedora atheists
> Have you actually engaged with these thinkers
yes, and I have huge respect for many of them, but no respect towards retards like you who make no argument at all and expect me to reply with one.
> Unfortunately. Fuck Liberalism
aren't you a free man? go take a one way plane trip to a middle eastern shithole of your choice, and stay there. You'll love their amazing savage cultures untainted by muh liberalism. Put your money where your mouth is faggot. I know you won't, cause you love all the comforts that atheist thinkers have brought you

>>18430580
>I am retarded unironically
glad you're honest with yourself

>>18430601
>atheist thinkers
Contradiction. You can be one or the other, not both.

>>18430607
I bet you thought that reddit tier comeback was very epic and based

>>18430609
Read Bulgakov

>>18430613
eat a dick

>>18430617
>Hasn't read Solovyov, Berdyaev, Bulgakov or Florensky
>Still thinks his atheism is a justified position
Oh no no no no

>>18430630
I'm not even an atheist, I'm agnostic leaning deist. and that quote is absolute cope faggotry with no logical basis

>>18423765

Athiests dislike creation
Seems obvious don't you think

>>18430637
>I'm agnostic leaning deist
"retard" is shorter and has the same meaning

>>18423765
>why atheists are so underrepresented among great writers
Atheists have a lot of representation though? Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, All the communist writers, Stirner, every Jap writer, etc.

What are you talking about? Is your question rather, "why is the topic of atheism not brought up more"? If that is the case, it's also the reason not a lot of people talk about the afterlife. Because it's scary.

>>18430665
>Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, All the communist writers, Stirner, every Jap writer, etc.
You haven't named a single great writer there. Sartre is objectively garbage, if you think the shit he churned out counts as "great writing" then get your taste checked. Stirner is a fucking meme at best. Jap writers aren't generally atheistic, the best Japanese novel is Silence by a Catholic.

>Is your question rather, "why is the topic of atheism not brought up more"?
No it's why can't atheists produce good literature and your answer has just pointed out that the cream of the atheist crop are 4th rate at best when compared to the best of theist writers. You're putting Stirner up against Dostoyevsky? Really? Ok bud.

>>18430670
Well these are just the few I could name off the top of my head, but the point is still there. They exist.
>you haven't named a single great writer there.
Sure, expand in detail for each one without resorting to arguments against the person or ad-hominems.
>Jap writers aren't generally atheistic
Yet they are still atheists, are they not?
>Japanese novel is Silence by a Catholic.
What does this prove? There is probably a book about a Jap Muslim. And what of it?
>why can't atheists produce good literature and your answer has just pointed out that the cream of the atheist crop are 4th rate at best when compared to the best of theist writers
Well then perhaps, according to your logic and outlook, atheists are not as good as writers as theists because they lack the critical thinking to construct a good story.
>Stirner up against Dostoyevsky? Really? Ok bud.
Well no, you can't really compare the two. And I'm more surprised you even constructed this line of text as how irrelevant it is. I won't compare someone like Seneca with William Burroughs, Mishima with Marcus Aurelius, and such as they're uncomparable. They aren't even writing in the same line of thought or intent.

>>18423765
Atheism was illegal for most of civilization's existence so obviously you will end up with a very minority of atheist writers who wouldn't confess their actual beliefs. You can still tell that a few were probably atheist or flirted with atheism.
The biggest example is Epicurus who's philosophy helped debunk all the religious schizophrenic gibberish despite Christcucks trying to refute it for centuries.

>>18423765
Most atheists just worship either the government, some megacorp, or actual politicians

>>18430665
>All the communist writers
You know historical materialism is a bunch of bullshit right.

>>18430702
/thread

>>18430604
>no argument
I win then

>>18430768
>makes low effort shitpost
>expects an argument in return
yep, you're unironically clinically retarded

>>18430630
>>18430648
>>18430607
You don't have to be an atheist to see that this is pure rhetoric with no foundation and no capacity to convince someone who isn't already emotionally invested in theism. Be serious.

Here are a few, rather symbolic, atheist authors:

Isaac Asimov

Christopher Hitchens

Ayn Rand

Now, what do they have in common ?
Their conception of atheism is born of a sense of superiority, hostility and a deep seated cowardice.

Let me address them in order
These are all manifestly clever authors, clever enough, in fact, to know that they are cherry picking and not probing the real question of God in a truly deep fashion. They speak against the christian church's conception (or rather, filtered image for the masses) of God, which is why their position gained so much following. The simplistic idea of big-man-in-the-sky God is obviously flawed and thanks to the very obnoxious Christian way of indoctrination, easily uprooted especially in the minds of those who are fed up with it. An example of this is George Carlin. It is no mystery, then, to find out that many people have changed their religious affiliation soon after reading these authors. They present themselves as above this conception and have a grand old time playing with people's beliefs. But it does not end here. They see that these people, these 'dumb believers', are part of a kind of brotherhood they can never join and so seek to divide them by aggressively publicizing their ideas. They would go around and around, talking and effectively engaging in propaganda trying to convince the faithful, particularly the young, to abandon their traditions and join some imaginary greater cause or brotherhood of trust in science or what have you that is as rootless in reason and poor of logical grounding as the one they criticize, with the added difference that it also has no bearing upon the spirit and thus does not tackle the fundamental questions that religion seeks to answer. To follow their immature, "rebellious" position far into adulthood amounts to an absence of development of the spirit.

So much for their sense of superiority and hostility.

>>18432154

But what of the cowardice ?
The cowardice is the most backwards part of their own thought process, inasmuch as it is the consequence of intellectual fear. They do not dare to honestly ask themselves the question "Does God exist ?" "Does the most universal, unifying principle of creation manifest itself in everything that has ever been, is and will be ?" Because obviously they do not know and to admit the possibility of ignorance, present or future, to class any question as logically unanswerable is to them the same as heresy. Their view of existence does not admit of eternally unanswerable questions, because they strike in them the deepest existential fear. You can only answer such questions intuitively, according to your own belief. Such a position amounts to faith and requires a great deal of courage, both in the negative and the positive.

Thus, they are not true atheists because they do not answer these deep questions negatively, they simply dismiss them. When hard pressed to answer in fundamental terms, they evade or wave away the question as irrational. They understand, but would never admit, that all arguments both for and against faith in God are irrational, because such an admission would degrade the whole sum of their thoughts to that category they so despise: faith.

From an intellectual and spiritual point of view, their thoughts are poison. If you adopt them, they will leave you stranded, weak because you did not strengthen your mind by forcing it to grapple with the heaviest question there is, "Does God exist ?". You are not supposed to answer it in a final fashion, but it is essential that you struggle to find the answer. If you do not, you will be left alone, certain that everything can be known, including the (non)existence of God until in time you will be forced to face this notion and you will have to seek your own answer, because their answer is useless. It does not stem from a deep rooted sense of faith.

Ultimately, this is also the reason atheist writers, the vast majority of them, are mediocre. They do not admit the existence of the eternally unknown, they are incapable of that final leap of faith that distinguishes a true visionary mind. To find a courageous atheist, one that truly rejects the idea of God in reason and in faith, who, so to speak, puts his whole self on the line and trusts his intuition as to the negative answer to the question of God, is almost impossible. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Zizek are the only authentic atheists that I can name.


In short OP, the common sort of atheists cannot be great writers because they are not in touch with their spirit.

>>18430702
>>18430749
That doesn't explain the lack of prevalence of Atheist writers in the last 100 years from around the world.

>>18423765

>>18424337
>>18424284
He's larping as an Anabaptist.

>>18424278
>>18424311
You will never live on a farm.
You will never marry a pure swiss-german peasant waifu in a bonnet.
You will never raise a barn.
You will never speak PA Dutch.
You will never learn the esoterica of hexes.
You will never confess your faith in Christ as the spirit moves you in your neighbor's sitting room.
You will never hitch a buggy.
You will never be Amish.

>>18430702
>Atheism was illegal for most of civilization's existence
Perhaps in antiquity. Not in the west for centuries.
>debunk
Top kek. Epicurus is some of the worst example you could pick. He and his school were "deboonked" even before Christianity. The only resurgence of it was from Gassendi and his clique, who were "Christcucks".

>>18432707
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheist_authors
>Neruda
>Chekhov
>Camus
>Asimov
>Breton
>Bukowski
>Kafka
>Lovecraft
>George Bernard Shaw