/lit/ - Literature

Im right there with you

>>7203275
>2015
>theism

>>7203275
I don't know man, I'm an agnostic but I still feel immense amount of joy just walking down a street sometimes, not in a spiritual way maybe, but definitely in an aesthetic or philosophical appreciation. I don't think your feelings of wonder are necessarily limited to your religion.

>>7203907
Why does that happen? I can be walking across campus and I get a pang of immense happiness. It's great, but still strange.

>>7203275
Shitposting is against the rules

>>7203665
>Not understanding authentic faith that accepts its own irrationality

>>7204049
>but muh science and reason

>>7203275
I used to feel this way until I realized it was my own fault for putting my faith in something that the modern world has made untenable. Maybe you should try not being a fucking Christian, OP. There are better ways to program yourself now.

Nobody gives a shit about your personal schizo relationship with Dog.

>>7204044
So stop

>people literally still believe in magic
Why

>>7204354
This, tbh.

Really. I don't think religion is bad or wrong in principal, but our modern society can only pervert and destroy religious ideology.

read chesterton ya dummy :^)

>and God is very real to me

what does that even mean? Do you just mean in your head, or are you literally seeing God out there somewhere like he's real?

>>7204049
>Faith is irrational
Wtf this meme has got to go

>>7204558
It's the song that never ends.

>>7204566
Because they had to for the first 15 or so years of their lives and they don't want to admit how deeply fallible they and their families can be.

>>7204039
>>7203907
this is what makes life worth it.

>depressed as fuck
>shit mood for a week
>not even drugs or funny tv shows cheer me up
>walking places is miserable
>suddenly, everything feels in place
>the whole world, life and everything seem simple
>i understand how to live a happy life
>the world around me is beautiful
>get home
>shit mood again, make some ramen noodle and shitpost

>>7204665
So you think faith is rational then?

>>7204727

everytime

What is going on? There must be something to our random spurts of joy that can be taken with us throughout normal life

>>7203275
bro we arent meant for this world. just endure it and enjoy it.

>>7204566
Existence is far more absurd than magic.

>>7204354

> Relying on the the modern world rater than the transcendental


Enjoy your meaningless shallow relativism.

>>7205021
If you believe in magic then you believe magic is part of existence. Or do you not believe in magic?

>>7205026
>untenable
I know that's a big boy word but it means that I could no longer in good conscience have faith in the God of the Bible because I had seen enough to decide he was an aberration of my own brain. I'm sure you have fun dressing up in you crusader costume and shouting about relativism but I didn't just "chicken out" of Christianity.

>>7204859

Under an atheistic worldview it's just random chemicals firing off in your head.

Your happiness and your sense self of self are just illusions.

Memes aside, most contemporary Western Christians are bad faith LARPErs and the rest has legitimate mental illness.

>>7203275
Similar situation here. I'm pretty seriously involved in a mystery school (mysticism) while at the same time I'm studying a science of the mind at a prestigious research university.

I appreciate the exactness of mathematics, logic, and the scientific method. But at the same time I feel like I can't mention so much of what is important to me and what actually guides my interest here, even in personal conversation. It's like the very mention of the spiritual or religious is taboo.

>tfw can't bring myself to believe
>tfw can't take the leap to faith

>>7204354
Yeah, being a fedora seems like so much fun. Truly fedoras have enriched the world, and have given us the Western Civilization you take for granted.

>>7205033

> aberration of my own brain

Enlightened by your own intelligence I see.

I didn't imply you chickened out I implied (assuming you've not just fallen for the science vs faith false dicothemy) you've placed your faith or in other words trust in something even more arbitrary untenable and superficial than what is described in the bible.

>>7205033
God is very much real, although I agree with you that you have aberrations in your brain. And it very much does sound like you chickened out of meeting your Creator.

Why, I wonder? Do you think He hates you?

>>7203907
>>7204039
Because you stop thinking and you're "in" the present. As soon as you realize this in that moment the moment is gone.

>>7205073

Take some baby step fam

Live the life one day at a time rather than forcing it upon yourself. Give the holy spirit the opportunity to inspire you

Reading recommendations:

Kierkegaard
Simone Weil
Chesterton
C.S Lewis

Parties are spiritual experiences for me. One minute im playing flip cup sloshed af the next im being reminded about what nietzche said about the dyonisian mode, how man forgets himself in the throng and enters dancing into the original mysterious unity of nature

Feels rapturous man

>>7205081
We're a recent phenomenon. Considering the way powerful people have generally ignored the law when it suits them, I have a hard time believing they were all born-again true believers.

>>7205085
I don't have have my faith in anything in particular really. I'm exploring different approaches to viewing the world and seeing what works as undogmatically as possible. I'm pretty familiar with the limits of empiricism, but it really bugs me how this is the first thing religious people go for when you say you don't believe what they do. My own father still doesn't have anything except saying that I'm "too rational," despite lengthy explanations of the limits or empiricism and how it doesn't have anything to do with my lack of faith.

>>7205089
Does God hate me? Do I really have to be so fedora as to say that I obviously don't think he's a real thing?

>>7205115
Yes, you can tell yourself that there is no God, and go through your life never thinking about Him at all.

You are free to do so.

>>7205222
>never thinking about him at all
Kill yourself. I thought about little else until I was 23. It's time to think about other things now.

Christianity is the most passive-aggressive religion, so I shouldn't be surprised by your tone. All that guilt-tripping, "forgiveness," really gets to you, huh? Pro-tip: your forgiveness doesn't mean shit if nobody fears you. It's just a way to make yourself feel more powerful by acting powerful.

>>7204049
>lying to yourself
>lying to yourself about lying to yourself

>>7203275
books that feel like that picture?

>>7205239
Yes, say anything you want about God, while you're yet alive here on earth.

>>7205263
Which God, anon? I hear Bael and Ashur are fun guys. Maybe I'll go see how they make me feel.

>>7205276
Last time I checked, YHWH sent fire from heaven when the 450 priests of Ba'al could not, and all of them had their throats slit down by the river.

You seem like a loser.

Pick Ba'al.

>>7205297
I dunno fam, maybe the priests of Ba'al had, I peeked at the promised land or nutted on the ground and were being punished by the more powerful deity. Any number of reasons a god might turn his back on a lifelong servant.

I'm cursed to forever be a skeptical agnostic. I've had a few intense, spiritual experiences that I cannot explain, but I cannot draw any definitive conclusion from them. However, I'm more partial to a Buddhist or Theosophical cosmology than a Theistic one.

>>7205325
As I stated, you seem like a loser. Pick the losing deity, and lose.

You like science, right? You like reason? You like pleasurable activities, and a way to get rid of unwanted babies, yes?

Then you are already worshiping Ba'al.

>>7205375
>science and reason
>ba'al
Where on earth did this come from?

>pleasurable activities
Yeah that's why people are allowed to drink in the Bible and how in the Torah women were allowed to leave their husbands for not servicing them sexually frequently enough, because God hates pleasure.

>a way to get rid of unwanted babies
Who said God opposes abortion? In the Levitical laws there's a ceremony where a woman suspected of adultery is given a concoction of bitter herbs that will cause a miscarriage if the pregnancy is a product of adultery. Of course, to me this looks like a bit of a witch-trial and I happen to oppose abortion on non-biblical grounds.

It's almost like you're a troll who's never read the Bible.

>>7204675
>implying religion is purely cultural, without a biological basis
>implying you do not have a religious mind

>>7205487
Yes, it has a biological basis and my mind probably isn't much less susceptible to religion than most other people. If you think there's a strong biological basis for choosing Christianity over Islam, then I can't help you, and being susceptible to something isn't the same as embracing it.

The biological aspects that drive religious zeal can be satisfied in other way.

Sorry OP but I will have to disagree with you and say that you haven't given your dilemma that much thought.

First of all, now with all this techno-totality we Christians are in the actual position to be able to be 100% pure Christians. In the 13th century many people were Christians just because they were born into the religion, especially the plebs who didn't have the means to read theology. Us in the 21rst century on the other hand become Christian on our own act of suspension of the regular Totality, which is anything but religions. We are in a historical position to be true christians not out of habit or tradition, but pure Choice based on a leap of faith.

As far as technological progress is concerned, it does not make any value statements or about the structure of the Absolute Reality. The only thing they tell us is about material rough matter and it's physical laws.

Philosophical development has mostly relied on systems that had God in it up until the late 19th century. Anything past that is mostly part of the death of Grand Theory and deals with particularistic subjects/themes that don't do much as an argument against God. When our favoirte post-structuralist enter the game with the renewal of Grand Theory, they indeed talk much about biblical themes as seen in Zizek and Derrida. In the 20th century religion was still under question would it survive into the 21rst century, now that question for the 22nd century is non-existant, it will do so for sure.

>>7205436
What do you think Ba'al is the god of? A geographical area? No, people who worship human reason and potential worship Ba'al whether they know it or not.

Not drink, drunk. Not have a wife, have a hundred mistresses. Not experiment, take massive amounts of chemicals. Not eat to live, but live to eat.

That's Asheroth.

And when the inevitable unborn babies are created, well, throw them into Molech's arms, and he will kill them for you.

Scientism.
Hedonism.
Abortion on demand.

People who advocate these, worship Ba'al.

>>7205504
The "bias" would be that Jesus rose from the dead, and Mohammad did not, and in fact denied that Jesus did, some 600 years after the fact.

>>7203665

>>7205708
>implying I advocate these things
Dad, get off 4chan. We've been over this a thousand times. I'm not going off on some self-destructive rampage just because I'm not a Christian.

While we're building scarecrows, I bet you think "that which is not forbidden is permitted," too. That's the excuse plenty of Christians use not to engage in ethical questioning beyond what's in the scriptures, because that could tie their hands from doing god's will.

Yes, we have a name for this. It is called cognitive dissonance. Your infantile belief in an invisible sky fairy is incompatible with your belief in science. So make up your mind. I recommend the philosophical works of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.