/lit/ - Literature

ur not gonna get anything more than room temp iq posts from these retards. otw i commend u for asking the right questions in your studies and making well thought posts

>>22606638
Morality is for humans, Zeus is good because that's his nature not because of anything he "does". The myths are allegorical, most people didn't believe Zeus was literally, physically raping people.

>>22606638
I think this is what Nietzsche talks about where the violent nature of the “blond beast” turns inward, and so the formerly most savage, power-hungry barbarian becomes obsessed instead with the extremes of power over himself and his own nature.

But it’s also probably more to do with the stage of development than any supposed essential nature of a particular culture - all major civilzations became conscious moralizers eventually, and the Greeks very famously condemned the idea that their gods could have been evil (unless you are reading Plato esoterically).

>>22606705
>most people didn't believe Zeus was literally, physically raping people.
Does it matter? What matters is that there were stories of Zeus mercilessly raping and killing — allegorically or not — and despite this, the Greeks still worshiped him as king of the gods.

>>22606638
The pagan world had a far more innocent view of things. There was no neurotic split between good and evil or intent and action. All was one; the nature of a being was a constant and a quantum of power rather than a moral paradigm. In Prometheus Bound, there is a line somewhere where one of the visiting deities says to Prometheus, chained to the rock, that despite his chains, Prometheus remains a god, purely due to his attitude i.e. nature (I'm paraphrasing); to me, nothing better expresses the Greek view of the world than this.

Do you want an interesting contrast in reading? Read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and then Beyond Good and Evil. These books were published in the same year, yet they contain completely opposite value structures and historical views.

The honest to God truth is that the enlightenment myth, which is really nothing more than a rebellion against the Christian account, has convinced everyone of the inherent goodness of man in a historical context. This is where the noble savage myth comes from, this is where the Western affinity for primitive third world people comes from, this is where the demand for a benevolent God (validates the inherent goodness of man) comes from, and it’s where all utopian thinking comes from. 100% of it comes from the enlightenment and it’s really nothing more than a negation of Christian belief.

there's an obvious culprit imho in the great open possibility that it opened for even more advanced mass herding moral systems, when it's not just the state as it exists with its human laws that can compels your behavior or maybe the code of your ancestors, but even divine beings constantly judging your moral behavior towards other humans(this is the key development) and binding you even for the life after the terrestrial one
not that there wasn't some of this with the ancients as well but it's with abrahamic systems that this seems to really kick off significantly, "God" as a panoptikon enforcer of moral terror hyper-preoccupied with how puny humans treat each other

>>22607841
>and it’s really nothing more than a negation of Christian belief.
Which is ironic, considering it was born out of an epistemological view of the world that itself emerged out of that belief. Where else can philosophy and science go under the scrutiny of a tyrannical monotheistic church besides the innocent striving to find unity and sameness in everything? It was this striving that inadvertently created the enlightenment age and its utopian thinking. Humans are animals, not gods; their biological imperative to survive will trump all gospel at the end of the day, no matter how you educate or condition them. Ultimately, the monotheistic view is incongruous with the nuance of evolutionary life.

>>22607873
A known take but I still think it merits truth for certain kinds of people.
>>22607841
Same as anon above, though this view is only possible from a Christian paradigm and such isn’t explanatory but excusing.
>>22607800
It does matter, the amount of faith people had in the gods during the classical period is interesting. Certain writers were very much atheist and were not prosecuted for this fact. This is very contrasting to the strong dogmatic belief of Christianity, one that if worked out would have God need to be benevolent to keep its frame of thought coherent.
The Greeks saw the gods as a force of nature (compatible with empiricism and so atheism) or allegorical. None necessitates a contradictory ideal a single entity would come to have.
Abraham God is inconsistent and therefore hard to accept as real, or respect without mental gymnastics the human minds needs for incoherency to be bearable.
And the end of the day though, it is a question of belief and belief is separate from evidence, it’s futile trying to proof God.

If God is wholly good, what is there even to fear from him? How can you be "God-fearing"?

>>22606638
I have no recs but ancient literature that says that god transcends the existence/nonexistence dichotomy because he is required as a cause of that dichotomy, which makes it seem obvious that he would transcend morals as well. or would he not? Since he neither does nor doesn't exist. Its all very confusing and interesting. I agree with you that, in a world where god exists and is deathless and all powerful at the very least his morals would be different from ours. His nature would be so different from ours how could his morals not follow suit?

>>22607918
People fear good things they don't understand all the time.

>>22606638
People of the past understood that cruelty is a virtue for the ruler/master and there was an honored distinction between classes. It's christianity that brought the whole, everyone is equal and being poor is actually good mentaility. Also pantheonic religions can more accurately assign the myriad of human fancies to the different gods so they become more 'specialized'. Zeus is power, so everything that is powerful belongs to him, such as beautiful women, wealth, respec, wrathfulness etc.

In Martyrdom of Man Reade posits that even during the times of Christ religious thinking was acquiring a theatrical tint, a belief accepted as belief as not self-evident truth and hence forever terrorized by internal doubt. He contrasts it to prehistoric men who must've seen GODS everywhere, every instance of rain or lightning was to them real, palpable fury of gods, every ferocious animal a personal agent of wordly god, every sickness and pain cleaely inspired by daemonic influence etc. Such men never needed a Bible, or myths, they didn't believe, they knew gods, intimately. A Christian man creates God as a form of psychological sublimation, aligns and ultimately mechanizes God to be a cog in his system of ethics, morality, law. He no longer needs God to explain the world, he uses God to integrate his designs of the world. Christian God is thus effectively a slave to Man, having no purpose and existence outside that which benefits people.

>>22607910
You’re implying that science necessarily has to develop and find expression somewhere. It doesn’t. In fact, the Christian worldview implies exactly to expect that to be the case is the fundamental mistake. Science sought to use Greek philosophy to negate both Christian and Classical religion and it did it by inverting both, and directing the will outward. That there is a will, that it should be directed, indeed that it must be directed, and directed specifically elsewhere other than the traditional orientation, is taken simply as a given by enlightenment thinkers. If one really accepted the epistemological framework that you think led to science, one could only include that scientific endeavor was at best a delusion and at worst a demonic impulse let loose. Remember. It wasn’t the medieval church that gave rise to science arose after Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and other Eastern ideas were smuggled into the West and used to do the orthodox Roman-Christian account.

>>22607911
That makes no sense to say it’s only possible from a Christian paradigm. It doesn’t even logically follow. The Christian paradigm necessitates the view that man is fallen. There is no conceivable alternative that allows one to remain a Christian. To deny this would be to deny the Christian account entirely.

>>22608457
>If one really accepted the epistemological framework that you think led to science, one could only include that scientific endeavor was at best a delusion
Well, it is, in a sense. Science is applied epistemology, nothing more.

>>22608459
> The Christian paradigm necessitates the view that man is fallen.
And so in rebellion man has become good.
A duality that is not found in nature or other cultures for that matter. Only in a Christian paradigm can such a stark opposition posit any meaning.

>>22606705
By late antiquity, yes. The gods predated their myths, and the state religions were a synthesis of hundreds of family cults. Zeus began somewhere as one family's dead grandpa. The religion of antiquity would have been as alien to them as it is to us.

>>22609249
That's all wrong, Zeus is reconstructed in proto indo-European and I doubt some grandpa was named sky father while having similarities with dieties from all over the world. That's just secular revisionism.

>>22609265
Yeah, no sorry. The sky daddy cult grew out of the synthesis of the family cult.

>>22606638
>I've been thinking lately on why so many modern people demand that God be "good" in order for his existence to be justified and properly worshipped
Because for a century Christian theologians and propagandists said that the Christian deity was the source of all that was good in the world, that everything that relates to him is good, and that you can only be good via him, duh. People aren't engaging with brother father sneedopolis's doorstopper treatise "On Punishments", they're engaging with the lived reality of how Christianity exists today.

The fact that this board constantly has people bewildered that non-Christians, who lack the Christian deity, can go a day without committing rape and murder is a demonstration of this.

>>22609296
It would have to predate 5000BC, so while your theory is demonstrably incorrect (We're not talking about Judaism here) it doesn't even matter because past a certain point (roughly 4900BC) belief in the Gods becomes so fixed and complex that we have to assume that they actually believed what they believed.

>>22609296
Show that opinion up your arse, faggot.

>>22607910
>Humans are animals, not gods; their biological imperative to survive will trump all gospel at the end of the day, no matter how you educate or condition them.
What is this, then? https://www.catholic.org/saints/martyr.php

>>22609507
That's what survival looks like in a world that believes in martyrdom as the road to immortality. Why else would an animal choose to kill itself? You honestly think animals give a shit about anything other than survival?

>>22609516
Why do you think they thought that martyrdom was the road to immortality?

>>22609535
>catholic.org

>>22609552
Christians never believed martyrdom was the road to immortality. I think you just don't know as much about it as you think you do.

>>22608457
>Science sought to use Greek philosophy to negate both Christian and Classical religion and it did it by inverting both
Science began with the rejection of Classical philosophy, and with it, all of the Scholastic theology that Roman Catholics had made by seeking for rational explanations of church dogma through Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. Francis Bacon's rejection of the use of logical deduction in the natural sciences and proposal for the use of induction is what allowed the natural sciences to adopt a radically different method from the one every single monk and lawyer had been using till then.

>>22609578
>Christians never believed martyrdom was the road to immortality
Are you serious? It's a well known fact Christians thought martyrs went to heaven.

>>22609516
>You honestly think animals give a shit about anything other than survival?
The survival of its community, for one

>>22609601
Community is an extension of self as far as the animal brain is concerned.

>>22609587
It's never been believed to be the path to immortality. That's where you're confused. This is the official teaching of the church in regards to martyrdom:
>Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. The martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by charity. He bears witness to the truth of the faith and of Christian doctrine. He endures death through an act of fortitude. "Let me become the food of the beasts, through whom it will be given me to reach God." [Catechism of the Catholic Church par. 2473]
The only way to immortality as far as Christians are concerned is Jesus Christ himself; the martyr would have been saved regardless of their martyrdom, because there is nothing a man can do to earn salvation, rather it is bestowed upon him by grace. Jesus was quite clear when he said he was "the way, the truth, and the life".

>>22609618
Heaven is a promise of immortality to the animal brain. If martyrdom was believed to be a test of faith and sent the martyr to heaven, then it was also implicitly believed to be a path to immortality.

>>22609624
It wasn't seen as a test of faith, it was seen as a "witness given to the truth of the faith". It wasn't meant to prove your faith to God or to yourself, but to show other Christians and non-believers that there was a man who's faith was so strong that they gave up their life to "bear witness" to the "truth of the faith". This makes a big difference, because then these people weren't seeking martyrdom for immortality, because really the most bland and boring peasant was granted that for simply doing what Paul commanded them to do in Romans 10:9-10. They went the extra mile to further the interests of their religion or what they saw as their people, but judging by what you said to other anon, this doesn't make a difference to you, because "community is an extension of self as far as the animal brain is concerned".

>>22609657
You seem to be making a semantic argument. Whether it was *literally* or *explicitly* believed to make someone immortal isn't the point. Christians believe in immortality in the form of heaven and believe they will go there if they maintain the faith, even if that leads to an early death. The existence of Christian martyrs, therefore, does not refute what was written here >>22607910, because Christian martyrs are still just animals doing things ultimately for their own survival.

>>22606638
>Faustian man
First of all, what the fuck are you talking about here?

The modern attitudes towards god comes from the fact that he's dead. No one fears him anymore. No even christoids. That's why his ethics matter. No one would care about a tyrannical god being evil if they had to fear him for their lives.

>>22609249
Bullshit

>>22609682
People still are a little afraid of him. One rarely hears people say things like "Fuck you, God!"
And if one does so, it makes others uneasy.