/lit/ - Literature

Unfortunately Socrates' works no longer exist.

bumping for interest

>>3633672

Are you saying that the atheists are so intellectually bankrupt that they haven't produce any important works since Socrates?

Reminds me of the Testament of Jean Mesier, a Catholic priest who left a atheist, anti-clerical and anti-religious manifesto after his death.

Here's the link: www.gutenberg.org/files/17607/17607-h/17607-h.htm#link2H_4_0017

And no he doesn't really agree with you about the decadence thing. He thinks religions are a weakness. A soft spot easily corrupted by evil doers. I tend to agree.

Read Plato Bitch

seriously though, for obvious reasons, people with that kind of belief system tend not to place very much emphasis on their atheism so it's a bit hard to say. and in particular those who share your belief that religion is important for the functioning of society tend to be VERY circumspect about that belief, for the obvious reason that if religion is important to prevent society descending into chaos, you don't want to say that god doesn't exist in such a form that the mass of people can understand it. Further information on this topic can be found in the works of [b]Leo STrauss/[b]

>>3633746

> And no he doesn't really agree with you about the decadence thing. He thinks religions are a weakness. A soft spot easily corrupted by evil doers. I tend to agree.

Well, I also agree with you. My point is that the majority of humanity are not capable of deriving their own purposes and need a greater than life purpose to adhere to, be it Sovietism, American exceptionalism, imperialism or religion; otherwise they spiral into decadence.

read some hume maybe

>>3633767
yeah seriously read Leo Strauss

also Schmitt, and Hobbes and Spinoza and Machiavelli for interest

The big bang is as absurd as saying the universe was created out of nothing by God. Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time with atheist literature. Pic related.

>>3633652
Anything by the founding fathers and most of the political writers of the time period

while not atheists per se they were largely secular

>>3633720
I don't think it has to do with being "intellectually bankrupt" so much as it has to do with "I don't want to get fucking executed by these religious nutballs."

>>3633794

I am agnostic myself (that's what I meant when I used the word atheism, and I really have no problem with the existence if a God, I just have no good reason to believe that He have sent us any messages).

>>3633793
lol

>>3633820
Wow man! You totally dismissed everything I posted by typing "lol" and saging!

You should read Al-Ma'arri.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Maʿarri

The Arabs had some real ballsy atheists and agnostics, even during Muhammad's time.

>>3633793
The big bang is a theory based on empirical evidence, though, whereas creationism is based on God told his favourite children so. You're not actually uneducated enough to not understand CBMR, are you?

>>3633793
>>3633829
What do you want him to do? Sit down and explain matter-energy conversion to you because you didn't bother to pay attention in science class?

>>3633842
TBBT is flaunted as if it disproves all creation stories, but in the end, where did the mass of condsensed particles itself come from? TBBT is just another page in history, not "creation". There is something before TBBT. Something or nothing.

>>3633812

What about the contemporary/modern world? The most famous atheists have been people like Dawkins, yuck.

>>3633849
I'm aware of that, but it's another step towards creation. To say it's 'absurd' is pretty telling.

>>3633847
Sorry, but a few scientific calculations cannot and do not explain the entire universe. I love science, but it has only explained 0.00001% of things in the universe thus far.

>>3633849
> where did the particles come from
They were precipitated from the very high energy fields which pervaded the early universe. There's no mystery here.

>>3633854
Absurd as in absurdism, you pleb.

>>3633855
They can and do, regularly.

> science knows very little
How do *you* know?

>>3633856
> very high energy fields which pervaded the early universe.

And what caused that?

>>3633767

Most people don't have a purpose in life, religious or otherwise and I don't see why that is a bad thing. There is little sense and little purpose. You just try to keep on marching and taking the opportunity to enjoy yourself when you can. There's little else one can realistically strive for.

And I don't see why the lack of religion would lead to decadence? And what decadence would that be?

>>3633859
Because science is chasing an elusive carrot on a stick that will always, always pull itself an inch away for every inch gained on it.

>>3633858
The Big Bang, as far as we know.

>>3633857
Thinking human knowledge progressing into the realm of the origins of the universe to be meaningless is pretty telling too, pleb.

>>3633849
>where did the mass of condsensed particles itself come from?

matter-energy conversion

>>3633862
Yeah, and do you know what the evidence for the big bang theory is? It is purely based on the observation that "the universe appears to be expanding outward from a central point". What if it was expanding inward to a central point before, and this is a second part of its cycle? What if it was truly somehow made out of nothing instead? TBBT is a weak theory.

>>3633859
Do what I did. Don't reply to him.

Glad to see a "please recommend pre-modern atheist literature" thread has now turned into a debate over the validity of the big bang theory.

>>3633875
You are running around the question I'm asking: where did the mass of condensed particles that created the big bang originate from? I know what matter-energy conversion is and that is as irrelevant of an answer as randomly telling me what day of the week it is.

>>3633862
what caused the big bang? even if we could figure that out, what caused that cause?

what was the "first cause" if you will?

>>3633868
>It will never explain this one question
>therefore it's okay for me to be ignorant about the rest of it
Science is about finding the best possible answer, eliminating the verifiably wrong ones. The earth is not 6000 years old, so forth.

>>3633868
Science has done pretty well for itself, chasing its various 'carrots' over millennia and has improved human lives immensely, more than doubling the life expectancy, more than halving child mortality, cured thousands of diseases, and taken us to the Moon.

There is always more to find out, but that's what science does best. Meanwhile, the competitor philosophies of the various religions have been eroded away into laughable fairy-tale status.

>>3633886
It's a theory for a reason. It is the whole fucking universe and it is based on observations made from a telescope. We're little monkeys with plastic and glass, and we think we understand the whole universe. What's that? Your butt is tingling, isn't it? You've gotten so into defending this flawless theory that you shittled a little from eating too many bananas. Go no, and wipe your ass, little monkey man.

>>3633888
Since time was created at the Big Bang, using words like 'before' or 'cause' is nonsensical.

>>3633881
I'm sorry you're too dense to realize that energy can be converted into matter, which would explain the source of these mysterious particles which puzzle you so much.

>>3633880
It's a 'weak theory', perhaps, but it's the best we have given the available evidence.

However much scientists *want* TBBT to be true, there are not so presumptious to accept things on 'faith', rather like the irrational religious.

>>3633891
I was an atheist for the majority of my life, referring to religions as "fairy tales" as just like you do. I've made all the same arguments you did before, but now I am religious. You are not thinking scientifically in your defense of TBBT. You are defending it because it is the center of your own religion, atheism. You are defending it without logic even when I state how flawed TBBT is, just as a Christian would act without logic when they are attacked. You are the same as them. You are an atheist, not a scientist.

>>3633899
That is irrelevant. I know that energy can be converted into matter. I know that water can be converted into ice.

>>3633881
So, now you understand.

The particles came from the precipitated energy, and the energy came from the Big Bang.

> originate from
Just say 'originate', that's tautologous.

>>3633866

> Most people don't have a purpose in life, religious or otherwise and I don't see why that is a bad thing.

Not necessarily a bad thing. I just prefer big healthy societies producing shit and making other societies shit in their pants (USSR, USA in its good days, etc.).

> And I don't see why the lack of religion would lead to decadence? And what decadence would that be?

Not lack of religion, lack of purpose. Sovietism fit the bill, but it ha many problems that it crumbled under its own weight and ceased to exist.

>>3633894
Congratulations, you're using the same exact argument creationists use. Hell, you even seem to be lumping the big bang theory and evolution together like they do.

>"The human eye is too complex to have just randomly happened."
>"Evolution is just a theory."

>>3633913
Yes, I know of this conversion process, but what caused the conversion in the first place? The unmoved mover. For every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Something had to have "flicked" this conversion off to a start.

>>3633895
I didn't use the word 'before', and that doesn't render 'cause' nonsensical.

>>3633906
I'm not 'defending' anything; if the scientific community were to turn around tomorrow and say TBBT is all bullshit.... *and here is the evidence*, then I'd gladly drop it like a stone.

I'm open to new ideas, something which the religious are certainly not.

>>3633926
yeah but the point is that no scientific theory can be regarded as a sure and certain explanation for the facts of existence because literally all scientific theories are provisional

>Since time was created at the Big Bang

Time was created when we made clocks, and when we decided to use the passing of the sun as a scale. There is no time, only space, and comparing the speed of one thing moving around in space compared to the actions of another object's moment in space.

>>3633906

Which religion?

>>3633895
>causal order is directly connected to temporal order
Your ignorance is showing

>>3633932
They're not sure and certain, that's the fucking point. They're the best possible answer come to with supporting evidence. When new evidence is found, they change.

>>3633757
>Read Plato Bitch
Maybe not a good idea other than the most political dialogues (Apology, Republic, Statesman, Laws) are of any value to a discussion of theism/atheism; what's more, they lack value save for the political implications of religion. At any rate, Aristotle's ethical and metaphysical writings would be more relevant.
>>3633672
>Unfortunately Socrates' works no longer exist.
Nor did they ever, in fact he was vehemently opposed to written language and record thought.

OP, I'd recommend following the discourse from the 16th to 18th century, from Copernicus to Kant, then reading Marx and Nietzsche to get caught up to the past century:
>An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume, especially chapter 10 'Of Miracles'
>The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, specifically the section entitled 'Critique of Rational Theology'
>On the Genealogy of Morality and/or Daybreak by Friedrich Nietzsche
>Theological-Political Treatise and Ethics by Baruch Spinoza
>The German Ideology by Karl Marx
>The System of Nature by Baron d'Holbach
>Dissertation in the Form of Paradoxes Against the Aristotelians by Pierre Gassendi
>Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies by Nicolaus Copernicus
>Harmonies of the World by Johannes Kepler
>Letters of Sunspots by Galileo Galilei
The last 3 are not necessarily atheists, but their brief astronomical writings introduce the most prevalent arguments for atheism (dis-)belief to the early modern era.

>>3633906
>I know that water can be converted into ice.

BUT WHERE DID THE ICE COME FROM? EXPLAIN THAT.

>>3633925
Yes, it does. For something to have a 'cause', the time dimension must be present since the 'effect' must *come after* the 'cause' in time.

>>3633924
The fundamental particles precipitated from the energy fields because that is what happens when those energy fields gradually lose energy. When the young universe was expanding this finite field of energy had to lose energy since a finite amount is expanding in the spatial dimensions.

Asking 'then where did the energy come from' is the next logical step, but since time was created at TBBT, asking things like 'cause' or 'from where', or 'what came before' is irrelevant since there was, and could never be, a 'before'.

>>3633929
I am a Buddhist Nihilistic Satanist Christian: in other words, a deist practicing perennial philosophy, or the notion that when you remove all the contradictions between all religions, a truth remains. Quickly now! Tell me what this sounds like from your psychology textbook, or tell me what Richard Dawkins would say in reaction to this!

>>3633939
bro the big bang threw a bunch of rocks out into tha universe and a few of thes rocks peed out water okay? stop arguing about science when ur rong.

>ctrl+f
>Age of Reason
>0 of 0

Seriously, no age of reason, considered to be the old gateway to Deism, which usually leads straight to Atheism.

Lol @ stemies clinging to the dogmatic theory of the big bang.
Virtually none of the contemporary philosophers pay attention to the subject-matter.
There are still discussions and polemic of whether Time is real, and if the External world had a First Cause at all.

>>3633932
True.

But you're putting a negative connotation on this 'provisional'. Our reality is based on these provisional laws and rules, and nothing yet observed in 40,000+ years of human science has broken these 'provisional' laws.

If this provisionality is literally *all there was, is, and could be*, then why speculate about things which necessarily inhabit some place outside these laws?

>>3633950
>Buddhist Nihilistic Satanist Christian
Oh how I want this the be the actual poster

>>3633950
>I am a Buddhist Nihilistic Satanist Christian

Dude, you got to tone it down. Even the freshman philosophers here will see through this.

>>3633967
You clearly are not very versed in one of the 4 schools I am part of if you think I am trolling. I'll give you a hint though: Satan never left Jesus when Jesus exited the desert.

are STEMfags really this fucking retarded or are they epic rusemen?

>>3633983
Like I said, TBBT is their equivalent of God, so they feel threatened when someone points out how flawed and uncertain the theory really is.

>>3633978
if you're not trolling, you're just a massive pretentious dumbasss

>>3633987
>troll says something
>don't take the bait
>let it end here
>someone else takes the bait

Jesus Christ, man. Now he's going to reply and you or someone even dumber is going to feed him again.

>>3633757
>>3633784

>Leo Strauss

Could you please write a sentence or two about why you're suggesting him?

>>3633987
> just a massive pretentious dumbasss

Go school yourself in theology and religious studies, Buddhism, and Milton and then try to say I am pretentious. I speak of ideas that you are not educated in, so it is natural for you to think me pretentious.

>>3633997
I am not a troll. Some people understand the world. They don't have mere theories. They KNOW. I AM. Now shake and cry in your sleep tonight like you always do, weakling.

>>3634007
>theology and religious studies, Buddhism, and Milton

lol

>>3634012
The first reaction for a suicide jumper (unexpected, not watched as they jump) is laughter. People laugh when fights break out, people laugh in the midst of crying often after losing a loved one. Women always laughed in their fits of "hysteria" in the old sense of the term.

The origin of laughter is fear. You laugh because you are afraid that you are wrong and in the dark.

>>3634004
He is hugely concerned with the implications of atheism and faith, especially the political and ethical of implications of same, and the way in which religion can inform those, and especially the way in which religion shapes our ideas of right and of the fundamental foundation and purpose of society. And he also writes a lot of analysis of authors with an eye towards their views on those topics. He may or may not be an atheist (the question is tendentious) but I think the things he writes about are going to be of massive interest to someone like the OP.

>>3634024
No I'm pretty much just laughing at you

seriously, "Buddhism, and Milton". Milton is what really brings it over the top.

>>3634037
You do not know much about Milton historically then, and you do not realize the true message of Paradise Lost. There is a message in it that you will not find in any wikipedia article, just as there is no wikipedia article that will teach you faith.

>"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." -SATAN from Paradise Lost.

>>3634045
lol yes the message that Milton somehow put into it about how awesome Satan was, despite the fact that he was a devout evangelical protestant?

>>3633983
On 4chan, you best believe they are, most aren't even actual STEM majors, just trolls playing the cold, rational, vulcan-like all the time scientists from pop culture.

In reality, STEM folks tend to be like everyone else, except the ability to correct the media given perceptions on things like the LHC, or laser assisted Fusion.

>>3634054
>devout evangelical protestant?

That is where you are wrong. There are groups and concepts alluded to cleverly throughout much of Milton's work that would have gotten him burned at the stake if the average minister was as educated as Milton was, and as well-versed in certain esoterica. And its not about how "awesome" Satan is, but how necessary he is.

>>3634068
hmmm yes Milton's passionate and well-known support for the evangelical protestant regime of Cromwell and the Parliamentarians aside, clearly he was a heretic esotericist satanist

tell me more

>>3634068
Completely ignores the fact that Evangelicism only came about almost a hundered years after Milton.

I think what you mean is Anglican Protestant.

>>3634084
puritan would be the most accurate term, but frankly i am not concerned over using the term that was used for a group of people in 1750 rather than the one that was used for the same group of people in 1650

(Dissenters was another word i considered)

>>3634077
Mister buddhist satanist teenager over here is a whackjob, but he isn't wrong about the depth of Milton's frame of reference. I wouldn't pigeonhole him into having a 'true message' or similar bullshit, but he certainly wasn't a puritan.

>>3634093
He was an intelligent, erudite, intellectual Puritan with a wide range of knowledge and contacts and an extraordinarily wide horizon, but he was still religiously, intellectually, politically, and socially a Puritan.

>>3634093
That much is true. I think it's mostly people forgetting that Satan's infamous rule in hell, and how awful goodness was points are literally Satan rationalizing being put in prison.

>>3634077
He wasn't a Satanist, as in a Satan worshiper. I call myself a Satanist but I do not worship Satan, and I don't associate myself with any other modern groups that call themselves "Satanists". I am a neo-Satanist, I guess. I appreciate Satan's existence; the reason he was created and designed to fall was a noble one.

I'll give you a hint. One last chance at paradise.

I will not do the Great Work for you, but I will leave you a trail of breadcrumbs. A certain Hermes...which Hermes? The one that is less than four, but more than two. The stone the builders rejected, which stone is that? It isn't Jesus. It's a different stone. One that the philosopher sought. Under the stone was a crushed rose.

>>3634113
lol look at you posting like I've never heard of Hermes Trismegistus

it's not so much the things you believe as the way that you describe that belief and talk about it that's funny. esotericism is cool and all this hermetic stuff is interesting, but there's just no reason to call yourself a Nihilist Buddhist Satanist Christian. that's just a ridiculous load of wank. and going on about your Secret Knowledge. that's what is pretentious.

>>3634093
>teenager

You are precisely right. No, I am an adult, but a child in mind, teenager in mind.

>An ancient master said, “Monks, do not have deluded notions. Heaven is heaven, earth is earth. Mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers. Monks are monks and lay practitioners are lay practitioners.” And yet another master said, “Thirty years ago, before I had studied Zen, I saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers. And then later, when I had more intimate knowledge, I came to see mountains not as mountains and rivers not as rivers. But now that I have attained the substance, I again see mountains just as mountains, and rivers just as rivers.”

You are fighting against yourself, and don't accept yourself for who you are. You are trying to pin yourself down as something, freeze yourself. But yourself is a flowing river. You can't be a river and then say "I am not a river". Well, you can. But then you will live a painful existence.

>>3634120
> there's just no reason to call yourself a Nihilist Buddhist Satanist Christian

Yes there is. For chaos. Beautiful, beautiful chaos is what makes the stars twinkle in the sky and in your mind.

Reminds me of the Basque "linguist" who thinks everything but the Indo-European family is directly related to Basque, and that Indo-European is the invention of Dominican Monks. You know because the Dominican Order has time travel.

>>3634127
yeah, that's exactly the shit I'm talking about

>>3634130
I am as much of a part of you as I am me. Stop hating me and you will learn to love yourself.

>>3634134
I don't hate you I just think you're pretty ridiculous

>>3634139
Life is ridiculous! It is so absurd to be anything at all.

>>3634127
Don't let them get you down, friend. Haphazard stacking of idiosyncratic and contradictory labels in a sketching manner that embodies a higher post-truth is delicious and worthwhile.

>>3633838

>Al-Maʿarri taught that religion was a "fable invented by the ancients",[7] worthless except for those who exploit the credulous masses.[7]

It amazes me that all these edgy atheists of the Dawkins -tier generations all hungrily leap upon those very same words as though they were the first to think of them, as though they are the first people in history to ever be 'free' to think such things and know it and yet over 1000 years ago and few even know of his name...

>>3633891

Yes - and many of those most famous scientific advances were made by religious figures and devout believers.

It's wrong to think of religion and science as incompatible because although throughout history there has been conflict, throughout history also you find many figures who whilst 'religious' and subscribing to particular dogma were quite capable of advancing science at the same time.

I just hate the false dichotomy that it's an EITHER-OR situation between science and religion.

>>3634274

Those ideas existed further back in Mekka during Muhammad's time. Read the translation if the following verses: http://quran.com/search?q=أساطير

>>3634287

Are you religious?

>>3634288
>>3634274

They even had rebellious atheist teenagers back in Muhammad's time.

> But one who says to his parents, "Uff to you; do you promise me that I will be brought forth [from the earth] when generations before me have already passed on [into oblivion]?" while they call to Allah for help [and to their son], "Woe to you! Believe! Indeed, the promise of Allah is truth." But he says, "This is not but legends of the former people"

http://quran.com/46/17

All you have to do is read Hume's work on religion and a survey of the philosophy of science and you've basically exhausted, and then outstripped, the New Atheist's intellectual resources.

>The unquestioned authority of the vedas; the belief in a world-creator; the quest for purification through ritual bathings; the arrogant division into castes; the practice of mortification to atone for sin; - these five are the marks of the crass stupidity of witless men.
- 7th century famouse Buddhist logician/monk

>Don't believe in them - when you're dead, you're dead. All their talk of Karman is nonsense. One of the materialists said, 'If a man went north of the Ganges and murdered, and tortured, and stole, and plundered and set buildings on fire, he would make no bad Karman. If another man went south of the Ganges and gave in charity, and helped the weak and healed the sick, he would make no good Karman. You live as a combination of the four elements, but when you die, everything is finished. So borrow money and live as happily as you can, for when you're dead, they can't pursue you
- Carvakan(ancient indian materialist)

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shramana
Basically the ancient Indian "religion"/movement is based on rejection of Gods/caste system/rituals/etc. Surviving today into Jainism/Buddhism