/lit/ - Literature

not really

edgy fedora title

Can I ask you a question. What's the point?

>>6689499
how DARE you

>>6689499
>What's the point?
The sharp bit of the knife sticking in your kidney.

>>6689537
Atheist scum

>>6689486
No. Read the Bible instead instead of this Satanic propaganda.

CELESTIAL

>>6689542
>>6689544
Enjoy your unalterable celestial dictatorship, your celestial North Korea.

>>6689486
If you're religious or on the fence about religion, read it. If you're already enlightened (i.e., an atheist), no need, unless you want to strengthen your arguments for when you get into religious debates.

I don't understand who these books are for. A Christian isn't going to bother reading it (and if they do they will probably disagree with nearly everything said. And surely its not for atheists because whats the point in reading a book that states what you already believe in what you can't really gain anything from personally.

No. Read Schopenhauer on religion instead. He covers all of the same points and is both more eloquent and more concise.

>>6689558
some christians read it to get mad/shit on it

most of it are atheist fanboys that will uncritically lap up whatever serves their preferred conclusion and try to sound smart

a small minority is agnostics/people willing to listen to arguments from either side (lol)

>>6689556
Thanks I will
Enjoy eternal torture.

>>6689486
why is it that when criticizes this amorphous mass of individuals they call "religion", everyone cheers, but when someone tries to do the same with atheism (grouping it with communism, nihilism, etc) everybody gets buttblasted?
is it a meme?

>>6689616
But the opposite happens on here, because most of us are well-educated Christians who understand the great works of theology and the farce that is atheism. The only people who are seriously atheist are fools who worship at the altar of Scientism and aren't smart enough for Theology.

>>6689632
i really doubt the home of adult virgin males in their early thirties (4chan) is the home of religion

>>6689646
Whoa this is a Catholic board

THIS HEAVENLY CEAUSESCU'S ROMANIA

>>6689646
Calm down m8, half of /lit/ is agnostic or Christian.

No. Even as a full blown euphoric atheist its some fucking retarded shit where he implies religion is the major reason for wars in the middle east throughout history.

As if people were actually fighting in the middle ages for god.

fucking rofl its actually embarrassing. Could not even take hitchens none atheist shit writing seriously afterwards.

>>6689556
>Dictatorships are inherently bad

>>6689667
agnostics are even worse than Athiests tbh, they are too cowardly to get their feet wet and take an objective stance so they have to say "boo woo" and take the middle ground because they are too scared to offend anyone.

>>6689646
This is a very religious board. There is a long and respectable Christian literary tradition that forms part of the foundation of Western culture, after all. The increase in "Christposting" on here is our way of defending the Western tradition against Feminism, Scientism, and other ills of modern society.

>>6689682
It's more like we don't feel like arguing with either side continuously. I'd stand with the Christians over the loud mouth faggot atheists though.

>>6689486
being a jerk to morons is still being a jerk. by inspiring a generation of young people to be pricks towards one another, hitchens / dawkins / etc have perpetuated the issues they claim to hate.

if you need to read something from him, make it his final memoir instead (and be ready for tears, unless you're one of the above-mentioned pricks)

>>6689682
actually I'm an agnostic because it's technically correct. I will defend that position bravely like a big strong man. Also just so you know I offend both atheists and theists.

>>6689690
>The increase in "Christposting" on here is our way of defending the Western tradition against Feminism, Scientism, and other ills of modern society.
This doesn't represent my views. I'm not a feminist or new age fag but I don't use my faith as a reaction to them either.

I got into Christianity when I started researching Scholasticism.

>>6689704
>actually I'm an agnostic because it's technically correct

Oh, deary me. Another intellectually-dishonest prole who parrots Agnosticism as a middle-man/mutually-exclusive.

The madness never ends.

>>6689704
*tips fence*

>>6689486
Ye need a book to figger it out?

>>6689702
>be ready for tears, unless you're one of the above-mentioned pricks
Why? What happens?

>>6689749
dumbledore dies

>>6689690
Are feminists inherently anti-religious? I know religion has some history of being poor in it's treatment of women, but I know a number of Christian feminists who see the two schools of thought as being complementary to one another. I go to a Christian college, so my sample-size is going to be biased, but still.

>>6689749
He shits himself just before his heart gives out.

>>6689720
>>6689735
meme all you want. I'm tolerant of the beliefs of others, but if you wanna start talking objective, it's pretty simple. No one can or has or, I can only imagine, never will prove the existence of a God, or the lack there of.

>>6689486
>new atheism
>ever
read this instead: http://philpapers.org/archive/PIGNAA

>>6689486
I thought so when I was 20. Now it's woefully inadequate.

seems like a waste of time. why do you need a book to show the obvious? if your goal is to get some quick ammunition to get christards angry, then it serves a point, I guess.

Read it so that you can learn about the Opposition.

Threadly reminder.

>>6689681
If a superior form of governance exists, then I want to hear about it.

>>6689486

It's really the pinnacle of ignorance and arrogance, Hitchens claims are mostly hyperbolic, sensationalist, and are always uncited and lacking in any sort of logical coherency. Go read David Hume instead.

>>6689766

The thing is that feminism is based on Christianity ultimately. You don't find claims of female equality on a spiritual level, or in a qualified sense on a social level, in any civilizations other than Christian civilization. And matriarchal societies usually don't have as much of a sense of equality as much as they simply value the feminine over the masculine, rather than the other way around. Feminists just take Christian principles and take it a step further past what is reasonable. That, and the Medieval period saw allot of women( in comparison to any other time and place in the civilized world) wielding political and financial power, being renown as artists and writers, being involved in industry, ect, largely because of a feudal structure that treated bloodline sand family ties as much more important than gender. Without European Christian patriarchs from the 11th-18th century making sure their daughters were literate, educated, and even ambitious in their own ways, as opposed to just being house pets, you could have never had the emergence of feminism, which required the development of these qualities in women, which you don't find in any other setting.

>>6689486
hitchens best is in letters to a young contrarian and mortality. his criticisms of religion are often ill-conceived and misstated. also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNlSnSDfsT4

>>6690637
Dialogues on Natural Religion, yes.

I loved it.

no

if youre religious read about that sure

but if youre an atheist why would you read a book about it

so dumb

>>6689486
Before reading this book, I was a STEMfag and never really 'got' what the world of literature and letters was good for.

>>6689856
>No one can or has or, I can only imagine, never will prove the existence of a God, or the lack there of.


Everything that begins to exist has a cause;
The universe began to exist;

Therefore:

The universe has a cause.

>>6689486
Its not bad to get an atheist's perspective on religion but, for the most part he is just upset that nuns abused him by hitting him with rulers whenever he was being obnoxious. Which he didn't like so now he hates religion.

>>6690964
Really? Because I read the book and saw no mention of him going to a catholic school.
Troll harder.

>>6689632

>aren't gullible enough for Theology.

fify

>>6690882
Let's say the assumptions about the nature of time as it relates to the beginning of the universe aren't even a problem... "cause" is not the same word as "God"

is this worth reading?

>>6690967
>mfw atheists are THIS EASY to bait

looks like pleb atheism targeted at retarded american evangelists

Like >>6690840, the main use of this bok is how stupid it makes tippers look like.

>>6691126
>"Troll harder"
>Took the bait, yo.
Doofus

Worth what? What's it worth otherwise?

>>6690882
As Hume said, we do not know if that property holds for universes because we only have one universe to examine

>>6689486
>is this worth reading?
Read these first.

>>6689558
It's for teenagers who are angry at their upper-middle class parents that force them to church twice a year.

>>6690710
>mfw i own both of those books in the background

>>6689486
Fuck no. It's full of factual errors (Wycliffe was burned at the stake) and literalism (I'm going to disprove Christianity by proving that the feeding of the 5,000 was impossible! Checkmate, theists!)

Read Why I Am Not a Christian instead. There's plenty of non-euphoric atheist writing

>>6692117
>tfw Hitchens used to be a good writer before he became a neocon fedora-tipper
>tfw he defended Tunisia under Ben Ali because muh Islamists

>>6689558
In 2008, I was a teenager who had left my ultra-religious parents' home to strike it out on my own. Though it eventually worked out and I ended up going to college, for a while I was working two jobs while simultaneously not having enough money to rent an apartment.

I would sleep in my car near the local library branch at night, and would use it during the day since I didn't really have enough money to do much of anything else. I ended up coming across a copy of "god Is Not Great" in the stacks, and checked it out. (I would read in my car at night.) I had no idea who Hitchens was at the time.

I would actually say that the book went a long way in causing my eventual apostasy after having been brought up in the church. (My family was part of what could really only be described as a Christian cult, and I even spent a brief stint in one of that organization's "training centers," a big dingy building in Indianapolis that was once a hotel and where we slept 3 or 4 to a room. The rooms had bars on the windows to keep us from trying to jump out, and each morning at around 7:00AM they would play hymns and bible readings through the speakers in our rooms before we'd be herded out to prayer sessions.) With chapters in Hitchens' book with titles such as "Is Religion Child Abuse?" I can see why one might consider the book hyperbolic in the way it treats austere religion—that is, if you haven't lived it and seen in it action.

The book isn't Hitch's best, but at least for myself it led me to become more interested in doing more serious reading of philosophy, theology, and politics. My exposure to Hitchens also got me interested in debate, which in turn made me more interested in reading material which I could use in debate, which then eventually led into an interest in literature generally. I eventually moved out of my car, went to a community college, then got a few grants and scholarships to attend a university, where I studied political science as an undergraduate—a field which I became interested in as a result of my interest in debate, which I became involved in at least in part because of my exposure to Hitchens' book in the library that day.

>>6690683
I bought Mortality recently but haven't had a chance to read it yet.

To add to the thread: If I had to rank the Hitchens books I've read I'd rank them as follows:
>Arguably
>Letters to a Young Contrarian
>Hitch-22
>Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
>god Is Not Great
>Thomas Jefferson: Author of America
>Cyprus

Here's a picture of Hitchens punching Jesus.

>undergraduates

>>6693199
there's only 2 books mate. i own them too

>>6689736
this.
Hitch 22 and this are nice reads, but it seems to be preaching to the choir overall. 3.5/5

>>6693521
my man

Bamping for interest.

>>6689678
religion IS the major reason for wars...

and im a regular sufjan listening christian who knows that books like this are cancer

>>6689678
>Baboon attempting English.

No.

Read these instead.

>>6689704
>not knowing no that agnostic is a qualifier that can be used to modify any belief rather than a position in itself.
You can't be an adjective big boy you gotta be a noun. If you aren't theist/deist you're atheist by default