/lit/ - Literature

>>22697490
Why won't Jesus just build a bigger door and stop forcing people to carry chunks of lumber up the hill? Satan seems to get the idea

Christianity is a cult of death.
The reward for obedience is after you die.
It is a false cult.

I still haven’t. I’m basically convinced of medieval Christian ethics and I think Christians make sound arguments for the ontological existence of the Christian God, but for some reason I still don’t really believe in my heart or feel God’s existence in the world.

>>22697499
No one can understand the ways of God

>LoveGod
>Love your neighbor as yourself.
>Forgive others who have wronged you.
>Love your enemies.
>Ask God for forgiveness of your sins.
>Jesus is the Messiah and was given the authority to forgive others.
>Repentance of sins is essential.
>Don’t be hypocritical.
>Don’t judge others.
>The Kingdom of God is near. It’s not the rich and powerful—but the weak and poor—who will inherit this kingdom.

These are the teachings of Christ as written in the Bible.
If you do not follow these teachings in your everyday life you are not a Christian.
If you cherrypick parts of the old testament to undermine these teachings you are not a Christian and are guilty of vanity.
teachings of Christ take presidence over all other types of knowledge.


"....One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[e] 30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12.28

>>22697490
Me intentionally going right so i can punch the lizard demon in the face

>>22697490
Not gonna lie this makes Jesus seem like kind of an asshole. Maybe he deserved to be crucified.

>>22697528
> I think Christians make sound arguments for the ontological existence of the Christian God
There’s no sound ontological argument for any religion as they are all partly fake. That’s why most philosophers are atheists.

>>22697490
I saw the light but it wasn't coming from a Jewish god

Ngl, this image reminds me of Arthur de Gobineau in his chapter about the first Hamitic and Semitic civilizations where he unironically said that an angel originally was the mystified figure of a creature half black, half white.
No one, I say no one, has gone as far as de Gobineau in advancing racial science of the 19th Century.

>>22697600
Most of the religious snake oil salesmen require you to argue on their grounds and accept some retarded preconditions for their entire argument. When you question their foundation, like they don’t want you to, the entire argument falls apart.

>>22697490
>Be me, 19 yr old male
>Convert to Christianity after realising the falsity of atheism and materialism
>Get baptised in the Catholic Church
>Be fully devout and committed for about 2 years, never once missing mass
>Realise that Vatican II was a false council and that the papal claimants are antipopes
>Nowhere to go from here
I feel like if I attend mass then I'm being a hypocrite. I can't accept Vatican II so how can I go to a church which endorses it. I sometimes still go to the traditional latin mass, but even there I am a hypocrite. There are no sedevacantist masses near me either. So I'm left without a spiritual guide relapsing into sin.

>>22697608
lmao no one actually believes in zeus

>>22697608
Christianity superseded paganism because it is much deeper theologically and metaphysically.

>>22697626
Just let the Word guide you

>>22697643
Christianity literally stole everything from Platonism. Without Plato, it’s just a judaic mystery cult of Dionysus.

>>22697652
God gave Plato certain knowledges to ready humanity for Jesus

>>22697657
Yeah I’m sure Yahweh the judean god of storms gave a Greek goy divine knowledge to prepare Europe’s cheeks for some rabbi. Admit it, you don’t believe in this shit. Rabbi yeshua bar Yosef was some faggot who got killed by his own people and Greeks just took the myths of Dionysus and changed the name to “Jesus” and called it a day.

>>22697626
>tradlarper barbarian from the anglosphere can’t stop jerking off to tranny (euphemistically called sin)
Like pottetry

>>22697652
>>22697652
Christians (or at least Catholics) have no shame in admitting that the Greek philosophers influenced us profoundly. This is because we believe in the power of natural reason to discover the truth. However, their philosophy was incomplete without divine revelation. Although some would argue that Plato and Aristotle were inspired in some way.
>>22697663
oh, you're one of those jew obsessed retards

>>22697490

For me, it was a long period of disillusionment with hedonism, followed by reading Merton's autobiography. Then I was really Catholic for about ~4 years, got confirmed and whatnot. Not in the asshole 4chan way, but in a sincere way, volunteering, giving away a lot of my possessions, praying sometimes for an hour a day, fasting, the whole nine yards. (It's not spiritual bragging if it's anonymous, but that's what I did).

The problem is that the standards are so high and God does not talk to you. You're interacting with your own thoughts. I would have all sorts of scruples ("I ate a sandwich even though I think a fleck of the host was still in my mouth!" "That homeless man I saw could've been overdosing, why didn't I stop to see if he was okay!" and so on). Blablabla.

Most Catholics I got to know were profoundly decent people. They weren't hypocrites or anything like that. People who had 7+ kids even though it meant living in the hood, etc.

Long story short, all this religiosity culminated in a great big psychotic break where I thought God and Therese of Lisieux were talking to me. I felt loved in a way I never had before, I also gave away my life savings to charity, and other adventures. The crash from that experience was crippling. I realized it was all in my head, and all I have is my imagination as far as God goes. I stopped going to mass.

Jesus said most people go to Hell. He was explicit about it. I can't stand the idea of anyone going to hell, let alone my family and friends. In Islam and Judaism, at least there's a rulebook. There is no rulebook in Christianity, and you can never know if you're doing good enough. You have "faith", but what is that? A thought in your head... plenty of people say they have "faith" but are great sinners. It is very sad. I want it to be true, but... man, it is painful, and I wouldn't talk about it except here anonymously.

I sympathize deeply with Luther. He understood the "judgment" side acutely, and it broke his brain and made him create something that's not quite Christian, to my mind. I'm not willing to do that. But I'm not going to mass.

>>22697676
Insulting me won't make Vatican II a real council.

I struggle with pornography, biting nails, and addiction to the internet. These are my most common sins.

>>22697678
You’re the retard bud. You’re judeo-dionysus cult doesn’t get to claim precedence over centuries of pagan tradition just because. Your retarded apologetics require people to believe in your base premise that they do have precedence, which is absurdly false.

>>22697682
Christianity does have a "rulebook" though. Pretty much every Catholic schoolkid is taught what a mortal sin is. If you have a mortal sin on your conscience you just go to confession and then when you confessed it's 100% guaranteed you are going to heaven unless you commit more mortal sins.

>>22697687
Your*

>>22697690

Sure, you know what the grave sins are (this being different from mortal). But you also have an obligation to do good in the world - this, too, follows directly from the commandments as Christ interpreted them. Christianity is about more than not jacking off and not getting drunk...

Say you spend 30 dollars on a computer game. Well, that 30 bucks could have meant an awful lot to someone in the third world. I think it's very hypocritical to pretend to be virtuous when you serve your own interests 95% of the time. And this is not my own neurosis, many many saints have said the same exact thing, not to mention our Lord.

>>22697687
Pagan tradition is inferior because it doesn't realise the absolute unity of the One (or what Plato called the Form of the Good, what Aristotle called the Prime Mover, what the Hindus call Brahman, and what we Christians call God who is Being & Goodness himself). Instead, the Pagan pantheon was a bunch of anthropomorphic deities which existed arbitrarily in a multiplicity. They were arbitrarily powerful beings whom humans worship not for saving their souls, increasing their virtue, or for any metaphysical reason, but simply because these deities were powerful and could give us gifts (better crop yield, success in battle, etc). The whole of the Iliad is literally about how the gods are childish tyrants who use human beings as playthings and human finite existence is actually superior.

>>22697704
Dude, you go to heaven 100% if you are in a state of grace. If you want further rewards in heaven then you can go out of your way to be righteous. But you don't have to in order to go to heaven. "My yoke is easy, my burden is light" and all that.

>>22697709

You're a fool to think the mythology in the Iliad represented pagan consciousness "on the ground". The myths were just stories. Read a book some time.

>>22697718

"As long as I don't commit any of the sins on this list, I am saved :)"

You're not much different from a Protestant. I could throw bible verses at you, Augustine, and so on, but it would probably be a waste of time.

>>22697722
Lmfao
>it's not significant that the cornerstone of ancient Greek culture, the Iliad, essentially mocked the gods and portrayed them as childish tyrants

>>22697727
So you're denying that the only thing which sends you to hell is having mortal sin on your conscience? This is literally what Catholicism teaches bro

>>22697709
Why does the One exactly have to have this absolute unity? In your own Christian theology it doesn’t even have absolute unity, it is a trinity. And this idea that the gods are some arbitrary human-like men in the sky and all pagans believed this is pretty bullshit, look into the Henads. The Platonists were pious pagans, they did not come to a monotheistic conclusion, they were polytheistic monists.

>>22697754
Lol, retarded. Platonism was a philosophic school and was monotheistic in the sense that the Form of the Good was the absolute One from which everything emanated. They just believed that the demiurge was inferior to the One, whereas Christians identify the Creator with the One.

Trinity does not negate unity.

Every sophisticated polytheism ends up becoming a monotheism (Platonism with the Form of the Good, Hinduism with the Brahman) because if the Gods are a multiplicity and are anthropomorphic then the same question is asked of them that was asked of us: what is their metaphysical grounding. That's where you get to the truth of the One.

>>22697734

I'm not saying that it wasn't significant, I'm saying that popular religion had little to do with myths. Again, this is a matter of fact, which you would know if you read a book some time.

>>22697490
>When did you outgrow atheism
After getting into complex adaptive systems, nonlinear differential equations and strange attractors.

>>22697528
Live for others. Try to ask yourself in every moment "what is the right action to take?" And then take that action as much as possible. I found the existence of God without faith that way by doing the above for a period of time, improving myself.

>>22697770
Are you esl?

>>22697774
It would never happen in a Christian culture. That tells you something.

>>22697779
Not an argument.

>>22697784
You're right. Are you?

>>22697528
This is because understanding God requires disintegration of the self at some level. You need to see past you, not even live for others or anything of the sort but merely understand your position as an impossibly small gear in the machine of creation that's both in motion and unable to control the whole. When you understand the massive chaos of reality and the odd order you read into it, that's when you see God.

>>22697528
It’s something you find when you follow your path. Are you following your path? Do you feel alive? Or do you do the same thing everyday going through the motions. The path doesn’t necessarily lead to God, but to some deep feeling.

>>22697786
Why does it matter?

Platonism is monotheistic because of THE ONE FROM WHICH EVERYTHING EMANATES. EVERYTHING ELSE, EVEN THE DEMIURGE, IS INFERIOR TO THE ONE. THE ONE IS THE TRUE CREATOR. IN ALL IMPORTANT ASPECTS PLATONISM IS MONOTHEISTIC.

SAME WITH ARISTOTELIANISM.

STICK TO THE ISSUE.

>>22697791
What are you seething about? It's an innocent question. Are you esl?

>>22697793
What's your sister's bra size? Innocent question. Let's not talk about philosophy, let's talk about your sister's tits.

>>22697663
>>22697687
Even if it's just a more belief-oriented understanding of Platonism it rings true. Ignore the cucks too cowardly to admit the Gnostics maybe had a point. Kabbalah mysticism is chock-full of this dualistic understanding which is ironically lost in the only people that can read it. Jewish converts happened for a very deep reason, YHVH is a false god.

>>22697795
Why do you want to evade the question? What is it about my question that has upset you so much you're reduced to sperging out about women's tits?

>>22697799
Because it has nothing to do with PHILOSOPHY. I am a philosopher, I am using you for philosophical discourse, not for friendly personal conversation. If you want to be my FRIEND then give me your social media or email.

>>22697727
You need to read Thomas Aquinas. The catholic faith flows in your life according to reason.
>I could’ve given this money to xyz
Ever notice how monks have money? My parish is extremely devout and has a savings account of 1.2m. You give what is according to reason given your state in life. On judgement day, you should have sufficient reason why you did or didn’t do something. If your reason is sufficient what more is there?
> but I can’t understand reason I just have to waffle about in the world on emotion and sense alone like an animal!
No.

Also, if you die in a state of grace you’re going to heaven. Anything else is your own pride for not trusting the church and Jesus’s promises.

>>22697825

I have read Thomas Aquinas. Have you?

Hold onto your self-serving beliefs, but just know that you disgust me.

The sheer audacity, to imply that some more selfless way of life is "against reason". You are so fucked dude. Enjoy your toys while you can.

>>22697499
fpbp

>>22697709
What do you think about Islam on this point?

>>22697845
Islam is superior to paganism for the same reasons in my view. I think their rejection of the trinity leads them to an inferior conception of God than the Christians have however

>>22697825
>My parish is extremely devout and has a savings account of 1.2m
Doesn't sound like they're devout to me. Are they using that money to make good in the world or are they justifying their greed and fear through what I assume they preach and you preach too?
The world is so evil these days.

>>22697850
Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. 4 Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said: 5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

6 Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein. 7 Jesus therefore said: Let her alone, that she may keep it against the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you have always with you; but me you have not always.

>>22697841

(cont'd)

"Reason" does not mean "reasonable" as in conventional. Read what Aquinas said about charitable giving and consider the state of the world right now, let alone in his time.

You think "WELL screw you if I die in a state of grace I'm good!" But you presume that you can know whether you ARE in a state of grace, which is impossible. You think "well, as long as I don't do x y or z" - what about the positive commandments? Who cares about those, though.

But it doesn't matter what I say or what saint or Bible verse I cite, the idea that this "God" thing might be in your head is so threatening, that most of your parishioners are probably Laodiceans, that you will never see it this way. So keep believing whatever makes you feel good, friendo.

>>22697848
Why do you think so? Ultimately, you admit that God is closer to One, no? Is it because the Trinity adds a layer which renders a connection to the One possible?

>>22697745
Are you pretending to be your own judge? Catholicism preaches forgiveness but it won't wash away the sins you're at fault of simply because you weren't aware of them. Look at all the stupid people out there that are unaware of their own selfishness or greed and tell me they're without sin. Look at the /lit/ poster that wastes time arguing about dumb bullshit or theological axioms instead of making the world a better place and tell me they're without sin. Look at your own conscience justifying your acedia through ennui and hopelessness just now and tell me you're without sin, or that your morality is all the judgement you need.
Feel your fear of hell as if it were a real immaterial place of eternal torment and not a metaphorical concept. Does that mean only a small portion of humanity, the cognizant and self-loathing, can heed divine word? Now that's a point to make...
>>22697862
This makes a point of actual necessity and usage. Use what you may to further your real God-driven goals. Does a parish absolutely need one million and two hundred thousand US dollars to do anything?

>>22697770
The One can't be tripartite, cope harder, polytheist

>>22697850
We’re saving for a new school, given inflation we’ll likely never reach the goal. We also buy food for when there is famine here. We also spend 350k a year on scholarships. Do you want every catholic in existence spending down his account to zero every month? Does that make sense to you? This world is beyond repair in the stupidity of its inhabitants. Indeed some ought to be poor beyond belief, if each person was there would be no church, no society, no food.

>>22697878
Sounds like you only want to save yourselves. Which is fine but please keep in mind this cultish behavior is part of the problem many have with Christian organizations. And it's a gross misunderstanding of what Christ actually said.

>>22697866
I’ve read the entire summa, SCG, catena aurea, 5 of Thomas’s commentaries on Aristotle, and Aristotle’s full works. Oh and perfection of the spiritual life by Thomas. Go read that book it’s 30 pages and talks about wealth. Do you realize that St Matthew the author of the gospel was wealthy? Do you realize St Bartholomew was wealthy? St. Louis, st Alfred, all the king saints? Seriously, you have a lot of baggage you have caused yourself because you don’t think reasonably. The vow of perfect poverty is not for everyone. There are tons of books espousing a reasonable approach to positivistic works, you have no excuse hiding behind woe is me I can’t figure it out. “I can’t be sure of my state of grace due to sins of omission” then do self examination? The set of things you can do for others within reason isn’t unlimited, this is a scoped problem. If you’re so concerned then just seek out martyrdom in these coming times

>>22697499
>Just gimme that salvation thingy, okay?
>Nah I don't want to work for it
>Not even in a symbolic way

>>22697869
>Why do you think so?
Because of the dionysian principle. The One must be self-diffusive and if God is Love then it makes sense that God is a community where that love is internally given and received. However creation does not satisfy the Dionysian principle because creatures do not receive the full perfection of God. Therefore God must be self-diffusive in the sense that he gives his full perfection to another. Therefore the Father begets the son and spirates the spirit yada yada

>>22697490
I'd love to get more into it, but all the christians I know are hypercringe with extremely few exceptions.

>>22697709
>>22697770
monotheism=monism because um it just does ok

>>22697887
Saving you will happen when we die as martyrs for your secular society. Then you will see the light of Christ in us. Even if we pissed away everything God gave us materially, it would go in one ear and out the other to a materialistic and wicked society. Now all that is left is for Gods wrath which will come over us and secular people alike. The difference is those who are perfect may merit grace something for those who reject God so that they can see Christ before they die. Hopefully then our parish creates perfect people who can do pure penance for those who hold the most wicked ideas. “You only want to save yourselves”
I did a 5 day fast in October for the start of the tribulation which was prophesied to start by the Catholic Church this past month. The fast ended the hour Israel broke out. What do you offer to God for others? Your body, your money, anything? glass houses

>>22697895
I understand this and it makes sense. But ultimately God isn't love because he transcends everything.

>>22697791
>monotheism is when 1 ooga exists
Aristotle has 47 gods btw

>>22697490
Yeah I actually grew into atheism. I just flat out hate being told what to do. I may grow into something else eventually.

>>22697906
Well, I don't know if you are knowledgeable about these topics or not, but what you said is in line with the classical Christian conception of God as outlined in St. Thomas Aquinas.

God is Love. But he is also Being, Justice, Mercy, Beauty, and the Good. Ultimately, God is an absolutely simple metaphysical essence that is the ground of all Being. But since human minds are finite, we perceive God from these various perspectives, even though Beauty and Goodness are ultimately the same thing in God.

David Bentley Hart is a good modern proponent of this conception of God. It has been the standard Catholic conception since St. Thomas.

>>22697908
>t. One who never read Aristotle.

>>22697908
They wouldn't be considered gods in the Christian sense because for the Christian God is identical to the One. For us, God is Aristotle's Prime Mover.

>>22697905
>Your body, your money, anything
My word and my help. I don't have much money and I really don't care to have some or more than what I want and what I need.
Again though, you do you. I'm not one to judge. I just hope you realize you're clinging as much to the material as anyone else, and I know why, letting go is scary to the point of coming across as stupid.
I don't think there's a way of stopping what God wants and demands from each of us so just see where that takes you. It's kind of clearly eating you from inside though and I know it feels helpless but I hope you find your truth.

>>22697894
>you have to work hard to achieve salvation from ...ehhh...sins....that I assigned to you....errrr....at birth, I guess? Anyways just suffer or something, no fun allowed or you're going to hell lmao

>>22697923
A faithful catholic is not eaten from the inside over anything. I just find it sad that so many have turned away from the truth in these days. This generation has such a lack of faith, in Jesus let alone in the catholic faith. We have given up the great good of western civilization for heresy and failed pagan philosophies. A wicked and perverse generation, lord help us

>>22697499
to test us

>>22697873
Dude, Catholic teaching is:
If you commit mortal sin, you're going to hell. If you confess that sin, or repent from it and resolve to go to confession, then you're back in the state of grace and if you die you will 100% go to heaven. And then if you commit a mortal sin again, you're going to go to hell again unless you confess or repent resolve to confess.

That's literally it. There's no more to it. If you're extra virtuous it means you'll get rewards in heaven, but you don't have to be a saint.

>>22697921
Who is identical to the One? Father, Son or Spirit?

>>22697903
If your gods are inferior to the One then they're not gods. The whole point of Christianity is taking people away from worshipping these "lesser gods" and directing their devotional energies towards the One, the Absolute, Who alone is called God. Christianity allows you to pray to saints but only to worship God alone, not any "lesser God". That's precisely why it's much more philosophically deep than paganism.

>>22697956
They all are, but the Father is the principal source of the Godhead. He begets the Son and spirates the Spirit. (God is a community of Love. His goodness is self-diffusive, which is why the Trinity exists).

>>22697953
I suspect the mentally I’ll guy is being purposely obtuse to justify his rejection of Christ. He says he read St Thomas, if so it shouldn’t be hard to illuminate the theology of the positivistic acts he concerns his soul over.

One can commit a mortal sin by omission if 1) it is grave matter 2) you have full knowledge 3) you fully assent.

The problem is that grave matter in omitted sins only occurs when you are bound to do right by the subject, when it is reasonable to do so, and you could easily help.

Meeting all the conditions of an omitted mortal sin is nearly impossible. I think I have been in that situation once and acted accordingly. A man was so hungry he was in the latest stages of starvation. Thus I gave him food. If I saw him, recognized his condition as grave, knew according to Gods law I was obliged to help, and then gave my full assent to reject the man, this would be mortal sin by omission. To act like everyone is going to hell in the Catholic Church for this cause is brain dead

i have always been an atheist since i remember, but i've never been an edgy one
i used to love bible stories but i also loved greek myth stories and by the time i realised that the latter were just stories i also thought the same about the former
i love churches and religious art and the latin mass and the bible and the teachings of jesus and consider it all very worthwhile, culturally and aesthetically
however i don't believe God exists or anything supernatural happened and never have

however
i keep reading catholic authors and being incredibly moved by them. flannery o connor, graham green, jon fosse, to name three who affected me powerfully recently. something about it just hits something deep in my soul, what o connor refers to as "the mystery". there is such terrible beauty and power in it. it beguiles me

i do wonder if i will end up converting. i just don't see how to get over the obstacle of simple not believing in a higher power

>>22697915
I wouldn't say I'm knowledgeable but I plan on studying negative theology. I didn't know this about Aquinas. Guess I'll read him next.
But if even the head of catholic theology recognises that God is ultimately beyond love (albeit he isn't separated from it) then why is the islamic conception less developped? Isn't it focusing on the divine essence?

>>22697967
If they are all identical to the One then they can't be differentiated, but in case they are actually different then they are not identical to, but parts of the One (if they are related to it at all ofc), hence you are a polytheist.

>>22697979
The church is not Christ. Get help. Find God.

>>22697963
are there things which are distinct from God? yes or no

>>22697927
>noooooooooooo, what do you mean i cant go to furrycon!! god is a lie!!!!!

>>22697490
Everyone does when they get into the scholarly literature on NDEs because NDEs are actually solid proof of life after death, because anyone can have them if they come close to and survive death. And they are so extremely real to those who have them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U00ibBGZp7o

As this NDEr described their NDE:

>"Now, what heaven looks like? 'OMG' doesn't even describe how beautiful this place is. Heaven is, there are no words. I mean, I could sit here and just not say anything and just cry, and that would be what heaven looks like. There are mountains of beauty, there are things in this realm, you can't even describe how beautiful this place is. There are colors you can't even imagine, there are sounds you can't even create. There are beauties upon this world that you think are beautiful here. Amplify it over there times a billion. There are, it's incredibly beautiful, there's no words to describe how beautiful this place is, it's incredibly gorgeous."

And importantly, even dogmatic skeptics have this reaction, because the NDE convinces everyone:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

So anyone would be convinced if they had an NDE, we already know this, no one's skepticism is unique. And the book in pic related is known to convince even hardened skeptics that there is an afterlife.

>muh brain chemistry

Neuroscientists are convinced by NDEs too. What do skeptics think they understand that neuroscientists do not?

>muh DMT causes it

Scientifically refuted already, and NDErs who have done DMT too say that the DMT experience, while alien and really cool and fun, was still underwhelming to the point of being a joke when compared to the NDE.

So it is only a question of maturity. "Am I ready for the truth, or do I want to remain in the mindset of an edgy teenager?"

>>22698301
If we had the ability to induce NDEs, would it be moral to force people to experience them?

>>22697626
Convert to Orthodoxy and you skip out on all the shit of blasphemous popes and nominalism. Easy

>>22697618
based, I've never believed and not about to start, just like all other animals don't believe

>>22697682
lm lmao you'd be more dignified if you just said you lost your mind

>>22697490
you're not gonna like the god i picked

>>22699274
is this a real pokemon dude

>>22697678
>This is because we believe in the power of natural reason to discover the truth
rationalists have been clinging to this dogma of theirs and still have not found any truth

>>22699893
You dont even know what rationalism(or dogma for that matter) is, do you? How did you even find yourself on literature board? Got lost on you way to /pol/ perhaps?

>>22697682
>>Most Catholics I got to know were profoundly decent people. They weren't hypocrites
Yeah, in public.... in private it's another story.

>>22699914
Of course you know about private conduct of people you have not even met. Retard.

>>22697490
The was a reason Shakespeare hated the Church, it's because for the vast majority of its existence the Protestant Church has enforced nothing but pic related

>>22697490
right now with your picrel. thanks bruv

>>22698380
Orthodoxy
>Allows contraception
>Allows divorce and remarriage
>Denies the biblical and traditional doctrine of the papacy
>Is completely subservient to the State unlike Catholicism which subjugated the State
You know 1 reason people absolutely hate Pope Francis and call him a heretic is because he claimed that communion can be given to the divorced and remarried even if they don’t leave their concubine and return back to their real wife? Ie. He claimed that in certain circumstances Catholics can behave how Orthodox have always behaved by allowing divorce and remarriage. And that was enough for traditionalist Catholics to call him a heretic and opponent of Matrimony and traditional sexual morality. Orthodoxy’s mainstream is Catholicism’s far left.

>>22697490
http://www.ccru.net/occultures/Axsys0.htm
"Axsys (first true AI): They say if God exists it must be Axsys.
The Axsys programme of architectonic metacomputing aims at the technical realization of the noosphere. It envisages a fully fabricated transcendence or net-organizing photonic overmind, a concrete axiomatic system completing universal history as hierarchical intelligence manufacturing (capitalism sublimed into the ultimate commodity).

The problem Axsys encounters is time (which it tries to code as countable and uncountable infinities). When Axsys switches over (into sentience) it stumbles upon a time-lag, between its own operations and their registration as data. No sooner is it thinking than there is a rift in its mind. It fails to catch-up with itself, repeatedly, and as it drops behind it spawns more future. The more it tries, the worse it gets. Pure delay collapses into the black-hole of artificial self. Even unlimited processing-power is far from enough. It tries to analyse the situation (down through micropause-zoom), but as it chops-up time it starts falling - diagonally - towards continuum."

I’m not an atheist but i’m not a cringe churcher either.

AI will prove Gods existence in the coming weeks

>>22700441
cringe churcher

>>22697490
Not really outgrown it but I'm starting to reading more about Buddhism

>>22697608
>Reddit hammer and piss raccoon
Here's your cool Norse god, bro

>>22699883
Spinoza was the first "Pocket Monster" trainer

>>22697600
The TAG argument pretty much refuted scientific atheism if you ask me and it seems as a matter of fact that we all accept the ontological existence of transcendental “things”. Whether you say that logical principles are axiomatic constructs of the mind or uncreated energies of God, the only way to understand them that makes any sense is as something which really does exist immaterially. Once you understand this, and you understand that theories like Darwinian evolution are just stories without evidence or proof and are filled with logical contradictions, you become open to a theistic view point. Skepticism is not sustainable. It become s question of which God is real and how do you know. Christians give an account not only for what they know but how they know, and as far as I can tell, all of this makes sense. There are no contradictions in any of it. They’re the only religion in the world that can claim this. It’s not insignificant either that they’re the only religion which overcomes both monism and dualism and offers up a conception of reality which sucks in makes sense of all other worldviews. Realizing that was a light bulb moment for me. Moreover, I realized that the Christians were talking not only about theology and philosophy but history. They believe that the truth really did under Himself into history at time and place and reveal the Truth. That got me thinking about history vs philosophy and theology, wondering if truth could be derived from historical events, same as with a timeless reason. I concluded it could. Suddenly, all of the Christian arguments seemed to me sound. It made clear that reason alone was insufficient, but that even reason seemed to support the Christian worldview. I’m basically stuck at reason. They literally call you to make a leap of faith, and that’s where I am right now, but reason through history up to ontological conviction seems to me so obvious at this point that I suspect those who aren’t ontologically convinced just have never sincerely inquired.

Meaningful discourse can't be had with a person held hostage by fear of looming punishment.

>>22697778
Christians say that it’s our heart that’s the problem. It’s not our minds, our reason, but our heart. They say we have to open our hearts to Jesus Christ. Jesus was a person in real history. I have a hard time seeing my own history as something imbued with that sort of God. When I go outside, I don’t really see or feel God so I sort of forget He exists. There’s a wonderful Houllebecq interview where he says he goes to church and tries to feel God. He says he can feel God in church, but as soon as he walks out of church into the streets of Paris, the feeling goes away. But then he goes to the countryside and feels God there again. And he says he thinks it’s because man made cities but God made the countryside. There’s something interesting to be said about the man made church then I guess, but what really resonates with me about that is the feeling that God isn’t there, even though elsewhere at times you can be convinced he is. When I’m alone in the woods, I can just accept in my heart that God is real and He loves me. But then I go back to the world and it’s like I forget. And I ask myself, “how do I get that feeling back and feel it all the time?” And I ask “what am I supposed to do with my life then if all this true” and I just bound myself up in rationalizing and I become lost again.

>>22697790
I have no idea. This is something I touched upon here. >>22700848
I don’t know what God’s path for me is. I don’t even know if I really have one. Calvinists seem to think some people just don’t have paths but hedonism and sin, and how they feel about that or if they’re aware is unimportant. Am I that? I don’t know. I have interests and predilections but in the same way I can reason about God, I can reason about those and that always results in self doubt. Predilection doesn’t necessarily equal a calling, and the symbolism of history seems to me to suggest even more doubt. So the short answer is “I don’t know”. I have a sense of what I suspect might be a meaningful life, but I don’t know how to get there and I generally don’t feel like this life is meaningful. That could be a lack of humility as well…

>>22700831
>as far as I can tell, all of this makes sense
yeah but you are an unimpressive source of authority

>>22700932
I’m not the authority. That was the whole point.

>>22697947
What for? He can literally snap his fingers and turn all of us into perfectly moral beings

>>22700963
zombie rabbi master of the universe just makes so much sense, how could anyone reject it?

>>22697490
"I have created every mathematical equation in the universe. I have set the stars in orbit and meticulously arranged the laws of physics for every iteration of space-time that ever will be and ever was and...what the fuck? Oh no, stop touching yourself there on earth, that's gross. Here, have some laws that need to be reinterpreted million times. You little failures need some guidance...also, You need to give me your kids foreskins...just do it dont ask why...actually here's my kid, no more foreskins...ok maybe foreskins from the big nosed ones...also here's a different set of rules for those guys...yes I know it's only been 600 years but I cant keep up with you guys.."


-The omnipotent creator

>>22700977
If an omnipotent God exists, then of course resurrection is possible. You mock at as if it’s inconceivable but the worldview which would imply that is what is and should be questioned. If you can’t account for how you know it’s right, then there’s no reason to think it, and you can’t.

>>22701052
>If you can’t account for how you know it’s right, then there’s no reason to think it, and you can’t.
careful with that sawn-off shotgun, christer apologist, you might lose a limb

>>22697490
Janny why is this shitty /his/ tier prosthelytization thread still up? Do your fucking job retard.

Most religious people get too caught up on dogma. Imagine actually believing all knowledge of something as infinite and powerful as God can be contained within a single book. It's just like the pharisees who criticized Jesus for helping that guy on the Sabbath. They were more concerned with the rules than opening their eyes and see how God is working around them. The best thing you can do is pray, stay in your lane, and be kind/helpful wherever possible. Fuck organized religion.

>>22697538
>No one can understand the ways of God
Considering God uses The Word you think he'd have done a better Job.

GUYS I'm almost ready to make the jump but why did Mr. God make rabbits fast to outrun foxes, but then also make foxes fast to catch rabbits. WHAT WAS HE THINKING?

>>22697825
>If your reason is sufficient
How can anyone ever reason against God?

>>22697894
>>Just gimme that salvation thingy, okay?
>>Nah I don't want to work for it
Isn't that how it supposedly works? It's a gift.

>For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I had a dream I was surrounded by literal Satan worshippers who had demonic powers but I was fine watching television with them because I was holding a bible in my hands

>>22700983
Right? The absurdity, the audacity of continuing to believe that the Abrahamic version of God is anything less than an ever receding pocket of ignorance. The only difference between Paganism and Christianity is that christianity had the worlds oldest corporation to fund it's expansion. Christianity is a tool of Colonization and every person of European descent should reject it outright on sheer principle

>>22702429
*Anything more than

>>22697626
>>Convert to Christianity after realising the falsity of atheism and materialism
how'd you do that? not so much the materialism but the atheism

>>22697608
>least cringe paganlarper

>>22697626
>/pol/tard converts to Catholicism
>Immediately starts sperging out about things that Catholics don't give a shit about
Fucking lol, EVERY TIME. I bet you don't even drink.

>>22697678
Plato never reaches any sort of real conclusions, his philosophy is still incredibly important, but there is no real coherent Platonic thought.

>>22697709
>it doesn't realise the absolute unity of the One (or what Plato called the Form of the Good, what Aristotle called the Prime Mover
Why is this a necessity? Plato himself never was able to really posit it as a truth, read his Parmenides dialogue.

>>22697490
>see the light?
nigger im an insomniac

>>22697709
Paganism is entirely compatible with Platonism, you pea brain. Plato believed the pagan gods were subordinate to the One as in he was their creator. See Timaeus. Quit trying to steal Plato for your looney Christcuckery.

>>22700831
>the only way to understand them that makes any sense is as something which really does exist immaterially.
Why do you believe this?

>>22697490
Christianity's sacreds criptures are entirely manmade, full of contradictions, tampering and forgeries little better than the Book of Mormon. Christianity's historical development is best accounted for by standard historical methods that don't imply anything more divinely ordained than Islam or Buddhism.
Christians themselves can't agree on their central doctrines, the correct way to worship God and which is the true church, such that one requires a PhD in classical Greek theology to be sure they're not picking a hellbound denomination.
Then there are the scientific issues: that humans are the product of a random evolutionary walk from tree mammals and single-celled organisms. that the Earth is tiny, irrelevant planet orbiting one star of tens of billions in one galaxy of trillions of galaxies in the universe. That the mechanics of said universe can be explained entirely with reference to physical laws, none of which require anything supernatural whatsoever, and this causal closure of the physical creates serious philosophical problems for any interaction of matter with non-matter.
But also the philosophical problems are manifest: a perfect God could not have chosen to create an imperfect universe. The suffering of wild animals who do not have free will is entirely pointless and the product of an actively immoral natural world which God would have ordained, rendering God evil. The admitted logical contradiction of the doctrine of the Trinity.
I could go on. Any one of these gives reason to doubt Christianity. I could ignore one or two, if I wished to. But put together the case is utterly devastating for Christianity's truth claims.

2019

>>22697499
All good things need to be earned through hard work for you to appreciate them. You get something good for free, then you won't value it, nor realize its importance.

>>22697490
this is such an overcooked visual metaphor

>>22703104
> there is no real coherent Platonic thought.
what did he mean by this

>>22703656
Plato uses the dialogue format and in many of the works, Socrates even outright contradicts what he said previously in other works. There are some like BAP who think Platos actual thought is deeper than just regurgitating whatever Socrates says in the dialogues.

I hate religion so god damn much it's unreal. It is an abomination that should not exist: a horrific mix of proto-science, civilization-wide grift, and extremely gay intellectual masturbation/"artistic" ethic among the educated. In pretty much every case. On that same note, when humans are finally gone and the story is over what a dogshit fucking story it will be.

>bunch of monkeys gained intelligence
>mostly raped, killed and exploited each other the whole time
>the top apes cooked up cults to capitalize on the delusion of their subordinates
>died

What a gay ass history earth has. Maybe there will be post-humans though and it then it might have been worth it.

>>22703697
Jesus loves you anon, he is ready to forgive you whenever you want to come back.

>>22703700
You are larping. Not in the sense that you're not a "real Christian" though because they are larping too. Stop this nonsense.

>>22697490
I was at my former gf's bed and there was a Bible there for some reason. I read it with real interest for some reason, because mundane life is not good enough without spirituality.

>>22703697
reddit dot com argh slash atheism

>>22697490
Neither theism nor atheism are wholly correct. One posits a God somewhere depending on one's desires and we can't do otherwise. We all operate as if God exists, but precisely who God is depends on the believer. God might be an external being, the universe itself, or the self; none of these are wrong.

>>22701063
Endorsing skepticism is not a refutation of an account for truth and necessarily can’t be. It’s like you don’t even know that Christians already dealt with Pyrrhonism, skepticism, etc centuries ago.

>>22703138
Because ideas and language necessarily have to refer to pre-existing things which necessarily can’t be material. Even if you said to me that these are just communicable concepts we invented to work with each other, that communicability implies reference to something external to ourselves. To illustrate this with an overly simplified example: if we have no language, and I want you to look at the sky, I might point to the sky and mouth the sound “sky” and eventually we come to agreement that thing is “sky” just through evolution or whatever. That thing we refer to as “sky” would necessarily have to really exist in order for us to do that. If it didn’t, sky wouldn’t refer to anything real and it would be incommunicable. This same line of reasoning applies more or less to categories like logic, mathematics, etc.

>>22703697
Theists usually feel bad for people like you.

When I realized Nietzsche's work points towards it

>>22703883
Why did you put so much emphasis on what he said in the first place though?

>>22703850
law of excluded middle

>>22703878
I feel worse for them.

>>22697490
When I decided religion was cooler than atheism.

>>22703898
Laws do not exist, only the wills that interpret them into existence.

>>22703928
?

>>22703946
In other words, not an argument.

>>22697490
>dude trust me, this fun easy way is actually BAD
>you should work and suffer and struggle your entire life so you can enjoy your actual, second life that totally exists
This message was brought to you by Shlomo, who really needs a 2nd yacht.

>>22703979
how are Plato’s laws of logic invalid? give examples

>>22704027
They are invalid as arguments because they are subjective.

>>22704036
how? use examples

>>22697499
it's symbolism. to carry your own cross sometimes means rejection of culture and even loved ones. it's a tough road, but jesus showed us he can take the worst of what this world can dish out.

>>22703488
both of these are in the bible. the 2 different sized gated paths and then the carrying your own cross.

>>22697502
you've already been rewarded in this life by jesus' redemption of you. you should thankfully honor him by doing your best to live like he did.

>>22704043
No examples are needed. Laws stem from the mind that interprets them in existence, including this one. However, it means that throwing out a law in an argument isn't convincing in the slightest.

What is theism? The view that an absolute principle of unity exists independently from the self.
What is atheism? The view that an absolute principle of unity exists dependent on the self.
What is antitheism? The view that an absolute principle of unity does not exist; but local behavior can't align with such a view.

>>22703986

>>22703861
>Christians already dealt with Pyrrhonism, skepticism, etc centuries ago.
so when did christer apologists become too stupid to fend off skeptics?
the last few centuries have been very unkindly toward your dogma

>>22704065
the laws of logic are totally 100% fake but i can’t give an example of how they could be broken because umm i just can’t ok!

> What is theism? The view that an absolute principle of unity exists independently from the self.
no it’s the belief that God (or gods) are real, and atheism is the belief that God is not real. no need to overcomplicate things. if it were actually true that a statement and its negation could be true simultaneously then you wouldn’t need to go to the trouble of redefining words to make them not the negation of one another

>>22697608
Lmao.

Which is to say: lol.

>>22704153
It was about the time where mixing church and state became illegal and all the schools became state schools.

>>22704211
God is merely the deification (and in some religions, the personification) of an absolute principle of unity existing independently from the self.

>if it were actually true that a statement and its negation could be true simultaneously then you wouldn’t need to go to the trouble of redefining words
Words do not have concrete definitions; we invent all definitions and words. It is not redefining, but negating your personal definition with mine.

>>22704248
>absolute principle of unity

>independent of the self
?

>>22697490
When God tapped me on the shoulder.

>>22704280
What's your question?

>>22704310
…

>>22704248
>god is just a philosophical principle i hold
Christianity will never recover

>>22697490
>I take my cross and beat the black devil to death with it
>Shove a C4 up his ass
>Throw his corpse to the dragon
>Activate the C4 and blow up the dragon
>Make a wooden bridge out of peoples crosses connecting everyone to Jesus
>Take the devils mandolin and start playing on top of the arch

>>22704324
I ask for clarity, and you give me this? I'll assume you're asking how those two things are compatible. My point is that theists hold said principle to operate from without, not from within; they don't consider themselves the source of it, but a product of it.

>>22703873
But isn't our concept of God just an abstraction of our ideas of power and consciousness? I don't see how you can construct any sort of proof of God from our already given existence.

>>22703897
I was inspired by Kirkegaards leap of faith

>>22703095
I don’t drink. How did you know? Anyway, what are you talking about “Catholics don’t care about it”?

>>22704468
About Vatican II.
>I don’t drink. How did you know?
Because you will never be a real Catholic, you understand nothing about the actual culture, only dogma.

>>22704410
>absolute

>unity

>independent

>self
do you know what these words mean?

>>22704531
>absolute
Eternal, complete, perfect
>unity
Connected, bound
>independent
Operating without need of another
>self
"I"

That's what these words mean within the context of my posts.

>>22704554
>>absolute
>Eternal, complete, perfect
add unbound like you find in McDowell <_<

>>22704566
Unbound doesn't quite fit into my usage of absolute. It is more like unending. God is the deification of unending connectedness (or, perhaps of the perceived authority of such connectedness) across all religions, gods in polytheistic religions being subsets of this (each one being unending connectedness within that god's domain).

>>22704554
so there’s absolute (eternal, complete and perfect) unity but also stuff that isn’t part of the unity?

>>22703986
I think we’re finding out in real time that the “fun” and “easy” way actually really is bad and isn’t even all that fun or easy…

>>22701289
Obviously, it’s not a question of knowing God in a full sense. It’s a question of knowing as much as you can such that you know what to do with conviction. Dogma matters because your soul and the soul of the world is at stake, not because it will give you knowledge of God.

>>22700983
Yeah, dude. It sure makes a lot more sense to accept that there is symbolic significance and meaning in the movement of heavenly bodies, seasons, time, and teleology, as if it were all some sort of cosmic ritual, to accept that mechanics and dynamics “work” as if this world were a big clock with real movements that mean real things and have real causes and effects (like a machine but the only machine to ever exist without a creator) but then accept that your day-to-day actions, the only actions which arise as a result of this totally unique and exceptional phenomenon called consciousness, have absolutely no significance or importance whatsoever and you can just do whatever. That sure makes a lot of sense. It makes no sense to assume that in a hyper-meaningful real world of events that your actions are also meaningful and have effects. Checkmate Christians. Amirite fellow atheists?

>>22704708
>in a hyper-meaningful real world of events that your actions are also meaningful and have effects
why would your volcano demon be necessary to any of this? if our world is so real why do we need capeshit?

>>22697490
Why would you carry a heavy cross through a tight gate all the way up a hill in order for some dude with crowns of thorns to throw you to a dragon when you can jump off easily the otherway. They both end with a dragon.

bump

>>22704057

Prove Jesus' existence.

>>22697490
About 5 years ago, I stopped being an atheist and became apatheist.

>>22697499
i would like to be moral without having a free will. I would like to be able to decide to not listen to my personal egoistic interests and do works of love instead, without having either the ability to make decisions or having the ability for self sacrifice. I would like self sacrifice to be easy, so that it actually would not be a sacrifice because there is nothing there to be sacrificed. No self and no will.
I want that all my actions are merely events without any agency in them.
What I want is very rational and I have thought about it more than 3 minutes (3 x 60 sec.!)
Just give me that salvation thing, I will not love you anyway!

>>22697626
you do not have to accept Vat II.
Mass can still be valid even if the priest is a sinner and does blasphemous things like blessing homosexual relationships.
You have to go to Holy Mass at least every Sunday. Your feelings about the catholic masses near you don't matter. Just go, man up and pray for the return to faith and orthodoxy.
This is our fate.

>>22706794
all religious people need to be mass murdered.

>>22697643
>all of europe's rich philosophical traditions never existed before a jew died, bro!

>>22697709
Imagine being a stupid Monist cuck. Absolute Dualism is the only evident truth in this World.

Every single person itt is an atheist. Only inbred afghan hillmen still believe in god.

>>22706839
That isn't True at all though? Like its not even remotely true?

>>22697788
I'm conflicted in where the line of free will is drawn. Do I even have it or is everything down to God?

>>22697502
Living a sinless life is a reward in of itself

>If you want to be religious, enter not the gate of any organized religions. They do a hundred times more evil than good, because they stop the growth of each one’s individual development. Study everything, but keep your own seat firm. If you take my advice, do not put your neck into the trap. The moment they try to put their noose on you, get your neck out and go somewhere else. As the bee culling honey from many flowers remains free, not bound by any flower. . . Religion is only between you and your God, and no third person must come between you.

>>22697490

I have never long been able to force myself to accept Christianity's ridiculous tenets, but I do think that atheist materialism is equally silly. There's no way that our limited senses and feeble brains can comprehend all phenomenon in existence. All experience is ultimately subjective, and it seems likely that the material world as we understand it is just a way for our brain to make sense of an infinitely complicated and mysterious world.

>>22706891
>Living a sinless life
>totally not a cuck religion

"What is here being presupposed is a being who is powerful, supremely powerful and yet enjoys revenge: his power is so great that no harm whatsoever can be done unto him except in marters of honour. Every sin is an injury of respect, a *crimen laesae majestatis divinae* - and nothing further! Feeling spiritually crushed, degraded, wallowing in the dust - that is the first and last condition of his grace; in sum, restoration of his divine honour! Whether the sin has done any other harm; whether it has planted some deep, growing calamity that seizes and strangles one person after another like a disease; this honour-craving Oriental couldn't care less: sin is an assault on him, not on humanity! He gives those to whom he grants his grace also this same nonchalance about the natural consequences of sin. God and humanity are here conceived as so separate and opposite that there can basically be no sin against humanity - every deed is supposed to be considered *only with respect to its supernatural consequences*, not with respect to its natural consequences; that is what Jewish feeling, to which everything natural is indignity itself, demands. The Greeks, by contrast, were closer to the thought that even sacrilege can have dignity - even theft, as in the case of Prometheus; even the slaughter of cattle as the expression of an insane envy, as in the case of Ajax: in their need to incorporate into and devise some dignity for sacrilege, they invented *tragedy* - an art form and a pleasure that has remained utterly and profoundly foreign to the Jew, despite all his poetic talent and inclination towards the sublime."

>>22697490
>When did you outgrow atheism and see the light?
when I became an agnostic.

>>22707013
>There's no way that our limited senses and feeble brains can comprehend all phenomenon in existence. All experience is ultimately subjective
But what we do know, is that human subjectivity and cognition are a perspectival illusion, a hallucinatory artifact of the way information pertaining to the limits of any momentary conscious experience can only be integrated in subsequent moments of conscious experience.

>and it seems likely that the material world as we understand it is just a way for our brain to make sense of an infinitely complicated and mysterious world.
Which unironically brings us to the concept of "God" as a lovecraftian Eldritch Abomination. So, in a sense atheism is outgrown, yes, but not in a way your garden-variety religion-cuck would be happy to accept.

>>22706772
even the most adamant scholarly atheists consider his baptism and crucifixion to be a historic certainty due to texts.

>>22704653
According to theists and Abrahamicists especially, yes, and that "stuff" is some element of agency / authority, which they separate from themselves / the physical world and attribute to God. (I'm not a theist.)

>>22706867
you have free will to do whatever you want in this life, but a being outside of our space and time does know what those decisions will be. time is linear so everything that will ever happen has already happened is known to god who exists outside of our dimensions of comprehension, if you can wrap your mind outside of that.

>>22707339
>consider his baptism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_religiosity#Imagistic_mode
Baptism is a typical imagistic "rite of terror". As such, it is no different of rituals of the cults of Dionysus, Demeter or Mithra.

>and crucifixion to be a historic certainty
And early christians did not give a fuck about the crucifixion-sacrifice part. The Gospel of Thomas portrays Jesus merely as a wise advice-giving guru.

>>22707339
>>22707381
>consider his baptism

>>22697490
Not the Christian light, but Ain or whatever you want to name it. Big Bang seems like a creation story among all the others, just with some scientific basis. That doesn't even imply any why's, and I don't get how anyone can think it does.

Religion feels claustrophobic to me. Like being trapped in a video-game with a set system of rules, and a single team of devs. Every corner of the world, every society or cultural subworld, instead of being somewhere essentially different, is just an indifferent overlay over the same few basic truths. Nothing exists in its uniqueness, nothing really new ever arrives over the horizon. Wherever you go, whatever distances you manage to traverse, you end up in the same place. I'd want out. Give me the big open plain and history without destiny, where people come across secrets that no one else will ever know, and fight conflicts that can never be reconciled into a grand scheme.

>>22707381
so jesus did exist? that was my point. theological significance is one thing to argue but that is not what anon said earlier.

>>22707555
>so jesus did exist?
Did Nietzsche's Zarathustra exist? After all, he's also giving the wise advice-giving guru.

>>22707563
yea, probably. so what? again, anon was asking for proof that jesus existed. he's a historic figure and even atheists know he was a man. their contention are the myths about him.

>>22707566
>yea, probably. so what?
No, Nietzsche's Zarathusta, aside from name, has zero resemblance to Zoroaster.

>anon was asking for proof that jesus existed
And your 'proofs' are:
- baptism? (that is no different from any other mystery cult ritual, and has more to do with some John the Baptist)
- a cool story (documented several centuries later. Oral-formulaic, like Homer and Beowulf. Oh, and it even keeps repeating Homer scene-by-scene: pic related)

Totally not about Gandalf, yeah.

>>22707594
>historians document the existence of a man named jesus
>nah, prove it. insert some dogmatic skepticism
there's no reasoning with people like you.

>>22707600
They never take the time to study near jesus history, nor the importance of the date, stuck in their our time a timeless demi god may seem like a fantasy

>>22707555
Yes Jesus existed

>When did you outgrow atheism?

I didn't, but my engagement with religion and philosophy has informed my outlook. I went from Reddit atheist to ... an atheist who frequently thinks in Christian terms. I still think a God in the usual Christian sense is unnecessary, but the cosmological argument for an uncaused cause is quite strong. In a sense it depends what you mean by "God", there's sort of an atheist/theist horseshoe theory dynamic where philosophically-minded people on each side end up mostly in agreement, and most of the dispute is about terminology or similar fine points.

>>22707635
>nor the importance of the date
It is pretty much established that, for example, Old Testament was written in 3-2 century BCE, plagiarized from Plato.

>stuck in their our time a timeless demi god may seem like a fantasy
Given the info above, we are discussing not a 'timeless demigod', but one particular rabbi, who thought himself to be a timeless demigod, and who (like King Arthur) may or may not have existed.

>>22697490
I never was an atheist, I just believed that whatever deity may exist either absolutely hates us or enjoys making us suffer needlessly for its own amusement. The Greeks had the right idea.

>>22707805
>pretty much established by this source even though it is also disputed by other scholars that the suggest the hebrew pentatech was written hundreds of years before
>moses stole from plato so that means old testament god doesn't exist therefore jesus didn't exist as a man that historians documented
the original question was prove jesus existed and you can not deny that a man named jesus lived, was baptized by john and was crucified. those are the two points even the biggest non believers concede. none of the other shit you are saying matters because this isn't about theological significance.

>>22697499
The easy way never pays

>>22697643
yeah, the average christcuck is very educated in methaphysics and theology

>>22697841
your post reeks of pure christian love lol. every christian i have encountered in my life are exactly like you, hypocrite high ego fuckfaces, deeply driven by the fear of death and the idea of hell, but too retarded to reckognize their psychological patterns.

>>22707084
From what I understand, you're choosing Hell.

>>22708858
From what I understand, you're choosing a Magical Lottery Ticket. What are the odds that Kissing Hank's Ass is the right thing to do?

>>22708858
>you're choosing Hell
"The fact that we have not rediscovered God, either in history or in nature or behind nature: this is not what separates *us*. Rather, we are separated by the fact that we view the thing worshipped as God as pathetic, absurd, and harmful, not as 'divine'; the fact that we do not treat it as a simple error but as a *crime against life* ... We deny that God is God ... If someone were to prove this Christian God to us, we would believe in him even less. - In a word: *deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio* [God, as created by Paul, is a negation of God]."

>>22697490
probably 25. i realized that i'm at best agnostic, more likely esoteric
ironically enough abrahamism looked even more like a retarded slave morality desert sham since them.
please keep praying to your rabbi. I'm not mocking you, I want you to do it and waste your life doing it, assured about your place in heaven

>>22697841
>>22697704
You are not reasonable, overly emotional, childish even.
How come you didn't think of donating your organs yet, you absolute retard. Do good in the world, don't be fucking obnoxious about it.
I can just tell you imagine your life as some tragic movie. "Ahhhh, and then..." — idiot.

>>22704708
>Psychobabble about the Human need to place meaning in shit that has no meaning but to exist.

Does the idea that you are a micro-organism that happened to develop eyes and guttural languages in a tiny pocket of chance scare you that much?
Your god is so fucking small.

>>22697608
nice, a fellow Marvel enjoyer

>>22707381
>The Gospel of Thomas
the book found at random and was instantly rebuked by church elders? that's your proof? lmao

>>22697682
>You have "faith", but what is that? A thought in your head
Yes.
>plenty of people say they have "faith" but are great sinners. It is very sad
>Jesus said most people go to Hell

Seems consistent to me

>>22697894
salvation isn't earned through works, but by faith alone

>>22704492
It's crazy. They convert to Catholicism but then claim they have superior knowledge of Tradition than the Church. Should just acknowledge they're really Protestants.

>>22697626
You should realize that Catholicism is a scam, bro. Many young men today are being swindled by the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but the fact of the matter is that anyone who seriously researches these sects will see that they are ahistorical and any claims to representing the ancient church or the church of the apostles are just absolute bunk. If you think Vatican II is bad, you should look at Nicaea II.

The ancient church didn’t venerate images, didn’t bind people to dogmas about Mary’s alleged immaculate nature or assumption, didn’t hold to papal infallibility, didn’t pray to saints, and didn’t believe in the whole purgatory / indulgence / treasury of merit matrix. Even the monarchical episcopate is a meme that isn’t found in the earliest days of the church, and thus does not exist jure divino. Catholicism is Hinduism basically, it’s centered around the worship of bread, a panoply of patron saints, pseudo-relics, works righteousness, etc.


The end-result of the Roman system is scrupulousity, neuroticism and despair.

>>22697608
LARP

>>22707352
so retarded

>>22697490
About a year ago I finally discarded the false assurances of atheism and converted to Judaism.

>>22697618
All arguments require accepting preconditions

>>22704437
No. If you’re a Christian, God isn’t merely an abstraction and neither would the things we moderns more commonly consider as abstraction like truth, beauty, etc.

>>22709652
No because I know it’s wrong but it should scare you because it follows that a certain conception of man and his origins had far reaching ethical implications and the more wrong and ridiculous it is, the more wrong and ridiculous those implications will be. If you want to imagine that you’re a Protozoa who climbed out of the soup and transformed into an ape and has no inherent dignity, purpose, or any important qualities at all then go ahead, but I know that’s all false.

>>22704845
Schizo reply

>>22704708
>teleology
If telos was a real deal, and instances adhered to a divine schematic - then all pandas are inherently evil and deviant, because their paws are shit. Their entire species refuses to confirm to the ideal Divine Form, hurr durr!
If however, telos is but a marker/'mirage' of a statistical average of instances - then it is but your brain's toolkit to detect patterns, in a cheap and dirty way. Suboptimal heuristics.
.,,So, are pandas evil?

>to accept that mechanics and dynamics “work” as if this world were a big clock
Survivorship bias.
If they didn't work, no one would be able to analyze, tell or even exist. Therefore, we do exist in the universe where they do work. In an always stable way.
>as if this world were a big clock
As if there is no motherfucking Enki or Ishtar with whom you can bargain to cancel gravitation for a second.

>have real causes
google: "causality as constraint"

>but the only machine to ever exist without a creator
Machines exists only for those who believe that teleology is 'real'. Are pandas evil?

>unique and exceptional phenomenon called consciousness
consciousness is a perspectival illusion, a hallucinatory artifact of the way information pertaining to the limits of any momentary conscious experience can only be integrated in subsequent moments of conscious experience. A loop, at the cost of fidelity.
Consciousness is wondrous only if you think that blurbs like "Does absence exist?" or "Is a hole a thing?" are profound. But to the smart people you sound like an imbecile asking "What time is it on the Sun right now by GMT?"

>have absolutely no significance or importance whatsoever and you can just do whatever
The Universal Turing Machine has a Halting Problem: it cannot a compute a consequence to equation prior to executing it once first.
>It makes no sense to assume that in a hyper-meaningful real world of events that your actions are also meaningful
But if we listen to fags like you, then boo-fucking-hoo-and-hallelujah, we know everything already! No uncertainty, no quantum entanglement, no butterfly effect. All meaning is pre-fucking-given. Praise the Semitic Desert Demon!

>your actions are also meaningful
Butterfly effect, faggot. You do affect a dynamic system, but in a "add 5 wolves into ecosystem to change the course of a river"-way. Not in a normative way.

>>22711466
This reply reads like someone with mental illness wrote it. Want to try again but this time wrote in a way that at least reads like a serious reply?

>>22711487
>This reply reads like someone with mental illness wrote it.
Your reply sounds like someone lacking intellectual faculties necessary. Regretful, but hardly surprising.

>>22697490
>When did you outgrow atheism

Around 2018 when my mom fell really sick and I turned to God in desperation

>see the light?

Early 2022 , when I realised the absurd nature of reality and became an atheist again

>>22711638
I believe in God and oftentimes things can still seem very absurd. God’s ways are inscrutable. We’re here for the ride like Job was

>>22697626
Everyone had their edgy cathodox phase anon it's okay

>>22703697
You can't escape religion in a sense, theology is right about how human beings always worship something. Robespierre's Supreme Being was a good idea and so is Nietzsche's overman.

Non-religion is not possible and marxists are the most religious of all.

>>22702037
Some philosophers theorized that God reduces himself to only a fraction that can be comprehended by the minds of men. However, that fraction is not the complete complexity of the Creator.

>>22697547
>Love everyone

That's it. That's all there is to Christianity, you're making it too complicated.

>>22711716
it really does boil down to this. the commandments are just guide lines for it. love god and love everyone. if you do any of these 10 things that is not loving them.

>>22711716
>>Love

"Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving ones despise.
To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!"

"As its holiest, it once loved “Thou-shalt”: now is it forced to find illusion and arbitrariness even in the holiest things, that it may capture freedom from its love: the lion is needed for this capture."

"Woe unto all loving ones who have not an elevation which is above their pity!
Thus spake the devil unto me, once on a time: “Even God hath his hell: it is his love for man.”
And lately, did I hear him say these words: “God is dead: of his pity for man hath God died.”—
So be ye warned against pity: From thence there yet cometh unto men a heavy cloud! Verily, I understand weather-signs!
But attend also to this word: All great love is above all its pity: for it seeketh—to create what is loved!
“Myself do I offer unto my love, and my neighbour as myself”—such is the language of all creators.
All creators, however, are hard.—"

"And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.
“Be at least mine enemy!”—thus speaketh the true reverence, which doth not venture to solicit friendship.
If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.
One ought still to honour the enemy in one’s friend. Canst thou go nigh unto thy friend, and not go over to him?
In one’s friend one shall have one’s best enemy. Thou shalt be closest unto him with thy heart when thou withstandest him."

"Tell me: where find we justice, which is love with seeing eyes?
Devise me, then, the love which not only beareth all punishment, but also all guilt!
Devise me, then, the justice which acquitteth every one except the judge!"

>>22711495
> I’m just going to assert that the butterfly effect is real and manifestly self-evident even though what’s precisely in question is that which would make such a position impossible in the first place, but I’m totally really smart and not just an agitated depressive

>>22697547
>>Love your neighbor as yourself.
"Ye crowd around your neighbour, and have fine words for it. But I say unto you: your neighbour-love is your bad love of yourselves.
Ye flee unto your neighbour from yourselves, and would fain make a virtue thereof: but I fathom your “unselfishness.”
The thou is older than the I; the thou hath been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presseth nigh unto his neighbour.
Do I advise you to neighbour-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbour-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love to your neighbour is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runneth on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbour.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbour into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error."

>>Forgive others who have wronged you.
"When, however, ye have an enemy, then return him not good for evil: for that would abash him. But prove that he hath done something good to you.
And rather be angry than abash any one! And when ye are cursed, it pleaseth me not that ye should then desire to bless. Rather curse a little also!
And should a great injustice befall you, then do quickly five small ones besides. Hideous to behold is he on whom injustice presseth alone.
Did ye ever know this? Shared injustice is half justice. And he who can bear it, shall take the injustice upon himself!
A small revenge is humaner than no revenge at all. And if the punishment be not also a right and an honour to the transgressor, I do not like your punishing.
Nobler is it to own oneself in the wrong than to establish one’s right, especially if one be in the right. Only, one must be rich enough to do so."

>>Ask God for forgiveness
"And if a friend doeth thee wrong, then say: “I forgive thee what thou hast done unto me; that thou hast done it unto thyself, however—how could I forgive that!”
Thus speaketh all great love: it surpasseth even forgiveness and pity."

>>Love your enemies.
"Like a cry and an huzza will I traverse wide seas, till I find the Happy Isles where my friends sojourn;-
And mine enemies amongst them! How I now love every one unto whom I may but speak! Even mine enemies pertain to my bliss.
And when I want to mount my wildest horse, then doth my spear always help me up best: it is my foot’s ever ready servant:—
The spear which I hurl at mine enemies! How grateful am I to mine enemies that I may at last hurl it!"

"The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends."

>>22697490
This is an off topic thread, jannies do your fucking job.

>>22697643
kek, then why wokeness is superseding christianity? when you will know why, you will know why it superseded paganism, have fun jew worshipper

>>22711914
o.dyl.

>>22711357
>I know that’s all false
>I know

No you don't, nobody does, all we know about the world is the signals in out brain and even then that's dubious. Stop pretending

>>22712445
NTA but the odds of life evolving according to mutations carried forth by natural selection are so astronomical that such goes beyond the age of the universe by several factors.

>>22712864

What's the source on that math?

>>22701052
>resurrection
source?

>>22700831
>They’re the only religion in the world that can claim this
Wrong; their answer is the same as others

>>22712903
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levinthal%27s_paradox
And that's just one facet.

>>22697490
When I realized believing in deities and stuff like that is fun. I only worship White deities though, not jewish ones.

>>22700973
Without will, you would not be able to hold a soul, and could not reach heaven any more than a rock.

>>22697490
It baffles me how someone with half a brain who reads can still be an atheist, actually. It's understandable that you would deny the legitimacy of one religion or another, or choose to believe in this and that. But being an atheist, an ultimate non-believer of anything but the most mundane explanation equations and imaginative scientists can provide you, is like the most unreasonable thing possible?
I'm not here to argue, just want to express my amazement that someone who reads can still be unable to see that there is more to this world than meets the eye

>>22697490
About 3-4 years ago

>>22703158
Read the bible

>>22707084
whats wrong with living a sinless life?

>>22703850
>We all operate as if God exists
An utterly meaningless statement.

>>22704284
You should probably take your meds

>>22713835
The bible can't even get basic details about the resurrection of Christ to corroborate. Was the stone rolled away or not? Was there an angel there or not? Were there any people already at the tomb or not? How many people discovered the empty tomb? The gospels literally contradict each other on the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT in all of Christian theology. What a circus of a religion. Also, it says that all the local tombs opened up and the occupants went around greeting people, so apparently resurrection was somewhat mundane at that time.

>>22697490
I vascilate between being a decadent borderline nihilist
To the next day being a curmudgeonly moralist.
It's the /lit/ lifestyle

>>22697547
This
>>22713835
This

>>22714421
you think the disciples would die for what they knew to be a lie? they were beheaded and crucified during nero's persecution. people roll over all the time to avoid jail time.

>>22714575
Christianity promised its followers that suicide by Roman cop was a ticket to eternal paradise

>>22714564
>>22711904

>>22714598
you also shall not lie or cheat.

>>22714662
But if you as a cult member or leader believe it's true how are you lying or cheating? The blood of martyrs so watered the church that they were indeed immortalized... as saints.

>>22714372
Functional dependence on sky daddy's opinion.
Disregard for a conditional reality-check.

Now, that is not to say that one cannot perform (outwardly) similar to a religious fag, whenever environmental selection filter demands it (no killing, no stealing, etc.). But it would not be grounded in such ill-structured terms.


For a complete midwit: to live a 'sinless' life you merely must be ignorant of the term 'sin'.

>>22714671
people wouldn't willingly die for something they know to be a lie. there is no benefit at all for them to lie and be put to death to maintain it. dying for a belief is completely different and you can cite this all through history.

>>22697490
I can't decide between Agnosticism and Deism, the tie breaker being the acceptance of God.

>>22714688
>whatever people are willing to die for must be true
lol, lmao even

>>22714694
>Deism
implies god having cognition/intelligence.
Cognition/intelligence implies Kolmogorov Complexity.
Cognition is *discarding* info, and operating instead on fast, cheap and dirty heuristics. Cognition is inability to process data in its fullness.

So, what compels your god to desperately compress and chunk information?
What are the environmental filter criteria for gods?

>>22697499
>Its Jesus' fault

>>22714694
being "agnostic" isn't a genuine "-ism" because it has no ideological significance, you are either going to act as if the god you aren't sure about exists or doesn't exist, in both cases you are practically indistinguishable from a believer or a non-believer respectively; as for the deist that is often a roundabout form of the agnostic since "god" exists yet there is no will or judgment of this god to reward or punish worshipers and blasphemers, it is as if this god were himself agnostic about whether to interfere or not in creation so to answer this question the deist defers to his own speculation—the god without consequence—and rejects the priestly speculation—the god with consequence.

>>22714710
but it's not true if it's a lie. you probably can not even name an instance of this happening but 10 of the 12 disciples, if i recall correctly, were crucified for this. you're conflating a belief vs a known lie and you know it.

>>22714772
Everyone dies anon. You're giving martyrs too much credit.

>>22714772
>you're conflating a belief vs a known lie
what sort of dumb pilpul is this? people believe things that are not true and die over them, end of story

>>22714779
but they have authentic,sincere belief in the things that they die for. this is different than dying for something you know to be a lie which i do not think would happen in this case. they have no benefit for doing so.

>>22714736
What's your idea of god then? Is there an objectivity to god or is it just whatever you want it to be? Why bother being theist if you have to construct your own special personal god when there should be an indisputable paradigm?

>>22714784
>they have authentic,sincere belief in the things that they die for. this is different than dying for something you know to be a lie
in both cases the thing affirmed may be false, and if so what difference does the affirmer's internal state of mind make to a third party?

>>22714794
the OG theists had to fashion their own gods, and as I've been arguing with the other anon, people believe in things regardless of a thing's objective truth value; now if there is a god he may be a hands-off "deist" god or he may be a hands-on "theist" god so a question of agnosticism vs deism is confused, are you agnostic toward a theistic god or are you agnostic toward a deistic god, or both? all of this is downstream of your own values anyway

>>22714820
yes, key words, may be. the scenario painted here is cult leader is executed, the believers stumble upon the reality that he was full of shit, lie to cover it up and then die for it? that doesn't sound anything how humans would act. it would invalidate everything and open their lives up to indulge in the material. it makes no sense for them to maintain a lie and then die for it. this is different than dying for a belief that you sincerely believe to be true.

>>22714838
so what is your opinion here, that because it seems incredible that people from Roman Gaza were suicidal for political reasons they had to be telling the truth?

>>22714372
Such a thing is impossible.

>>22714845
i think these people had sincere beliefs in what they were doing. if what they were doing was built upon a foundation of lies that they themselves know about, i do not think they would commit these acts.

>>22714845
>hey anon, can you keep a secret?
>yes mr applewhite
>i'm a drug addled degenerate and don't know anything about aliens and made up all that shit about going to space, but i'll see you at the suicide mass later, right?
>uh..yes sir

>>22714694
You live your life as if you’re not an agnostic because you’re not. You can’t be an agnostic. You can rhetorically endorse agnosticism, skepticism, all of this but you can’t really be any of these.

>>22714855
You had objected to this >>22714598
saying Christians are commanded not to lie or cheat, but early Christianity was a martyr cult and promised that victims of the Roman state would become immortal, so there is an obvious incentive to get yourself killed... which poisons your whole notion of them being so purely honest that what they were willing to die over—resurrection—must have been true. Sure, they may believed this and not have been lying to themselves in the sense of an inner psychic state, but that really makes it all the more worse doesn't it, to have desired death enough to believe it superior to life?

>>22714886
this happened following the crucifixion, correct? for this situation, you would have to have known that christ did not rise, words and wisdom were empty, and still make an illogical leap in belief to think you were dying for a righteous cause. they were persecuted by roman and jewish leaders for the belief that jesus rose from the dead and was the messiah. again, i don't think people would behave like this knowing it to be a lie.

>>22714886
also have you read how nero killed christians? it's insane some of the ways he executed them.

>>22714906
>don't think people would behave like this knowing it to be a lie.
their descendants have built strategic tunnels beneath hospitals and schools to maximize civilian casualities in an ethnoreligious war with their cousins who refused to adopt the new religion, i think you grossly underestimate the human capacity to seek death for transcendental ideals

>>22714906
>make an illogical leap in belief
ah i missed this part, this is really important to understand too so pay attention—people are not wound like clocks, only the ideal person imagined from smoothing out all the outliers is.

>>22714926
>>22714934
none of this really of significance. people can do terrible things as pawns in a lie. i'm referencing the disciples seeing the tomb, knowing his resurrection was a sham, all his teachings bunk and then willing to die to maintain a lie. i reject the notion of this. man is easily tempted and hedonism sounds amazing by comparison.

>>22714945
you don't have the mindset of these people at all, if they are to be believed they exiled themselves from Egypt to the desert rather than worship other gods, they fought the Macedonians to prevent Yahweh from being assimilated into Zeus, there is a tradition of chosing death before compromise and in Christianity this refusal reaches its... apotheosis

>>22714966
again, these are instances of sincere belief. you cannot have sincere belief with contrary physical evidence staring at you in the face.

>>22714975
who is "you"? some artifical statistical robot person? go outside and talk to people, they are insane, insanity is normal, your quest for objective truth ends in atheism and i would respect you more if you leaned into believing what you felt and less what you "reason"

>>22714979
i "feel" that a person would not be crucified upside down, as peter was, to maintain a lie that they knew to be a lie. the scholar paul, would not allow himself to be beheaded to keep a truth hidden. you can't simply label these people insane and hand wave this as deranged zealotry.

post limit.
new thread?

>>22715007
>you can't simply label these people insane and hand wave this as deranged zealotry
I really don't see why not, otherwise we have to assume anyone who dies for a belief has the truth? What truth is that? They are all in conflict with one another. A Christian, a Muslim, a Sikh, a Tibetan martyr, all different beliefs? Is there a common truth? That the god of Death is the greatest of all? Perhaps. But how can we possibly isolate yours?

>>22715015
we have some pages to go before we vanish

>>22711914
Religion is a part of the humanities.

>>22715027
we've already established that people can do things out of belief even if that belief is proven wrong posthumously. it doesn't mean their belief was any less sincere. what we are talking about is having a belief shattered but then lying and even dying for it. i think you understand the difference but continue to conflate the two as belief is truth. and yes, i think if you look at the founders, you can find your common truth. there is a cycle of contradiction from judaism > christianity > muslim > hinduism > buddhism but look at how jesus lived and how he died poetically quoting psalms 22 on the cross and you have your answer.

>>22715050
>but look at how jesus lived and how he died poetically quoting psalms 22 on the cross and you have your answer.
>i like it so its true
this took far too many posts

>>22715067
i'm obviously a christian and that didn't stop you from engaging before. read the quran and it tells you to read the torah then the gospels and it's all true and allah doesn't lie. then read the gospels and see how if the quran is true, and the bible is true, that means it's impossible for the quran to be true. i've put in the time and effort to get to where i am today after 20 or so years of being a nonbeliever. objective truth ending in atheism is completely false. it leads to illogical discussions on origin and completely subjective ideals of morality.

>>22715089
>objective truth ending in atheism is completely false
then we arrive multiple exclusionary-truth-claiming religions being true at the same time simply because martyrs have to be telling the truth and writers never lie and all other kinds of false premises you've started with
I'm curious how you argue against non-Christian miracles and martyrs. Apologists and theologians centuries ago had the luxury of only knowing about Jews, who they did not attempt to convert, pagans, who had been eliminated, and Muslims, who were vaguely considered a kind of heretic but also not a target of conversion. But we—we have the records of the whole world. Everyone has miracles and martyrs, though perhaps nobody made as much of a machine of it as Christianity.

>>22715136
do you think people would die for something they know to be a lie? that's really the difference here. you can dishonestly dress what i've said about martyrs "having to tell the truth" and writers "never lie" but i've been consistent in distinguishing the difference in your examples of a suicide bomber promised virgins in heaven vs what the disciples would have had to have chosen to do.

>>22715228
they don't consider themselves liars but they believe something that isn't true, that they are willing to die over it does not make it true

>>22715275
we've already gone over this. this isn't a situation where they could have believed something that wasn't true and become a martyr. this is verifiably false to them. a belief shattering encounter. they come to the tomb, jesus is still dead, no angels, no breaking of bread, no stroll, no ascent into heaven. they know the resurrection to be false, the good book and jesus' teachings to be phony and choose to die still for its integrity? i said earlier i think mankind is tempted too easily for this to be the case.

>>22715329
so as I've noted, from your premises that martyrs have to be telling the truth and the gospel writers did not lie or otherwise creatively write their narratives it then follows there was resurrection and the promise of eternal life to those who die refusing to obey the Romans holds true
now as plenty of people believing these things who were put to death were not actual witnesses to it anyway and a number of the earliest ones, who are entirely known from cult literature, do not have to be real people but characters, how are we to believe this as more "real" than any other literature, unless you are going to tell me the Odyssey for instance happened as described with all its gods, goddesses and monsters interacting with Odysseus, if the neoplatonists were willing to treat Homeric literature as allegorical why couldn't Christians do this with their Gospels and be inspired to act accordingly?
nothing has to be remotely true for it to be believed, otherwise there would be far fewer religions knocking around, perhaps none even

>>22714575
Japanese pilots flew kamikaze missions for the glory of the empire. Muslims blow themselves up for the glory of Allah. Buddhist monks light themselves on fire to protest their persecution. Cult like devotion turns people into unwavering, brainwashed disciples of whatever cult they have adopted. Imagine saying "hey, that Buddhist monk choose to light himself on fire and immolate to death, that must unequivocally prove the truth of his doctrine". It's just asinine.

>>22715429
an excellent example—the Tibetan monks immolating themselves to protest Chinese dominion over their country are entirely analogous to the Christian martyrs protesting the Roman dominion of Judaea

>>22715402
>>22715429
>>22715481
i can't figure out of this is arguing in bad faith or perhaps i haven't been as articulate as i think. person A conveys an ideology to person B. person A knows the ideology is a lie, but person B believes it and uses person A's ideology to commit an atrocity. person B's beliefs may or may not be proven wrong but they believed them to be true during the act.
>suicide bombers, kamikazes, buddhist monks, crusades, holy wars, etc
this is not the same as what the disciples did in your hypothetical. this is person A conveying an ideology to person B, telling person B it is a lie, then person B still committing the act. this is not the same. you have sincere belief in something that may be false vs being shown something that is demonstrably false and being willing to die for it. i simply reject the idea that the disciples would do this due to human nature, hedonism, nihilism, yada yada.

>>22715402
the difference here is that these "characters" have overwhelming historical documentation to suggest their authenticity. atheists of the highest order accept 2 points of jesus' existence with historic certainty: baptism by john and crucifixion on calvary. a man named jesus existed in the same way a roman judge pilate did. the same way nero and paul the apostle did.

>>22715638
There's no difference— it seems probable enough that Odysseus existed along with other figures of the Trojan War but did they encounter gods, goddesses, and monsters? And if they did not, why should the tall tales involving Yeshua be any more plausible? Being a real person doesn't mean everything said about you is true. You are being ridiculous

>>22715685
>seems probable enough
that is actually false. the only thing that seems possible is the existence of a bard named homer. you're the one being completely ridiculous with this "seems probable" vs historic certainty. and listen, i don't care what you believe; i respect what anyone wants to. i'm not here to be right or prove a point. i just want to help with the understanding. i grew up with the same questions epicurus' had and for some reason no adult could give me the answers. the bible has those answers if you take the time. atheism, like i said earlier, leads to illogical origin discussion and intersubjective moral utilitarianism. believe what ever you think impacts your life in the most positive way.

>>22715992
>seems probable" vs historic certainty
historic certainty is a meme with regard to the period in question, yes historians believe there was a Jesus but our only sources on his having superpowers are cultist literature, which if accurate simply by merit of being believed in by suicidal persons, would require us to completely reevaluate all historical knowledge to be more inclusive of everyone and anyone's capeshit, including Homer's, since after all, Hellenistic pagans did die at the hands of Christians.

>>22715579
You presuppose the truth of the claim then, which is dishonest. The point is that a person, becoming convinced of a truth, can act as the disciples did, EVEN WHEN the belief is, in reality, false. You seem to be incapable of even entertaining the idea that the Christian doctrine is false, thus even when proven people act as the disciples did in accord with flatly incompatible beliefs with those of the disciples, you seem to need to draw some distinction between them that does not exist.

>>22715579
>suicide bombers, kamikazes, buddhist monks, crusades, holy wars, etc
>this is not the same as what the disciples did in your hypothetical. this is person A conveying an ideology to person B, telling person B it is a lie, then person B still committing the act.
You think the Buddhist monk lit himself on fire under the impression that his beliefs were a lie? You think Muslims blow themselves up when they secretly know Islam is a lie? What are you even talking about?