/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10726170]

What will finally convince me to succumb to spirituality? The Bible isn't doing it for me. I have this idea in my head that spirituality basically means giving up. Instead of coming up with good arguments, you just throw your hands up and say "God said so, or something!" or other meaningless mumbo-jumbo.

[Anonymous No.10726179]

Start with a piece of religious text that isn't total garbage. Or find a God that's actually worth worshiping.

[Anonymous No.10726186]

>>10726179
I'm open to recommendations.

[Anonymous No.10726191]

>Instead of coming up with good arguments, you just throw your hands up and say "God said so, or something!" or other meaningless mumbo-jumbo.

Isn't that the case for any argument though? Just replace God with, "because I hold this value highest, a priori."

[Anonymous No.10726210]

>>10726186
If you have christian heritage and are open to going back to that faith, I'd recommend reading up on the philokalia,

[Anonymous No.10726213]

Augustine did it for me

[Anonymous No.10726234]

>>10726170
There are no scientific based arguments that really pull any weight for either side. This is because a universe without a god is required to be self-sufficient, while a universe created by a competent god is created self-sufficient.

There are some decent texts, but I would suggest you talk to a religious leader in the realm of whatever religion it is you want to follow.

In addition to this, I would read first the texts that teach behavior. As you brought up the Bible: the book of James deals a lot with how a christian should act. I would start there, and if you have any questions seek those out individually.

Also no, it's not giving up. It is just believing something. A christian is still responsible to live and learn.

[Anonymous No.10726241]

>>10726210
>>10726179
>the bible is garbage
>read the philokalia
so this is the power of orthodoxy

[Anonymous No.10726260]

>>10726170
Get into mysticism (Meister Eckhart etc.) or pseudo-religious idealistic pantheism (Schleiermacher, Novalis etc.)

[Anonymous No.10726261]

Why do you want to succumb to spirituality?

[Anonymous No.10726290]

>>10726261
I just want to know why so many people fall for it when it seems so obviously bullshit to me.

[Anonymous No.10726555]

>>10726290
Perhaps youve lost the sense of the absolute strangeness of [our] situation? Pity. Ignorance is your ally, not the enemy.

[Anonymous No.10726575]

>>10726170
Skepticism did it for me.

[Anonymous No.10727048]

>>10726555
The "absolute strangeness of our situation" is a copout.

[Anonymous No.10727099]

>>10726170
A lobotomy should do the trick

[Anonymous No.10727116]

>>10727048
You could say that but it doesn't change the fact that anything at all exists in any way fampai.

[Anonymous No.10727123]

>>10726170
Watch The Believer with Ryan Gosling. That is exactly what it is.

[Anonymous No.10727279]

>>10726170
The Death of Ivan Ilyich

[Anonymous No.10727322]

Boethius Consolation of Philosophy

[Anonymous No.10727330]

>>10726213
Yes, read Confessions

[Anonymous No.10727356]

>>10726170
This is literally what Pascal's wager is about.

Also religion IS about giving up. At some point you need to give up because only God can control everything

[Anonymous No.10727445]

>>10726170
Pretty funny how they pretend what you are saying makes sense to them. There is spirituality at the end of it, but its not their lunatic visions. Keep fighting no matter what they say! Ethically that means don't give up for what they believe.

[Anonymous No.10727821]

>>10726170
Your understanding of spirituality will always be lacking until you have a religious or mystical experience yourself. It's not likely you'll understand the spiritual perspective as an outsider. I'm not going to derail the thread with you-know-what but there are pretty consistent techniques to reliably produce religious experiences that have been used by humans for thousands of years.

[Anonymous No.10727839]

>>10726170
http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html

https://vivaguadalupe.org/news/ten-amazing-facts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_Medical_Bureau#Notable_cases

first one is most important to be honest

[Anonymous No.10728262]

>>10726213
More like, Disgustin'.

[Anonymous No.10728269]

>>10726170
I think that spirituality begins with an experience with the divine, not rational arguments. If you're looking to be convinced into believing god then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

[J.H. !!qQSAq9UmKww No.10728349]

>a man thinks the house next door is empty, yet he has heard others say someone supposedly lives there----a very kind, old gentleman, who they all say is full of love and that one should get to know
>this man has lived here for years and always thought the house was empty.

OP, how would you approach this?

>SITUATION A: full of doubt, disbelief, and anger----the man goes to the neighbor's house and bangs loudly on the front door, yelling "I DEMAND you show yourself to me! Let me in to prove you exist now!"
>SITUATION B: full of curiosity, yearning for knowledge---the man goes to the neighbor's house and knocks gently, wanting to meet the man he has heard so much about. Because he knocked---because he knocked and earnestly wanted to enter, the door was opened, and into the Kingdom he went.

If your approach is SITUATION A, do you think God would want to reveal Himself to you? You approach him like a poacher, wanting to hunt down an animal, wanting "proof". As we can camouflage ourselves from the wild animals, God's camouflage then is transcendental, and no matter how much you hunt for him like a poacher, his camouflage will cause his form to be hidden from your sight.

[Anonymous No.10728382]

>>10726170
Read the upanishads, the dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita. Thank me later.

[Anonymous No.10728403]

>>10726170
>spirituality basically means giving up. Instead of coming up with good arguments
I'm sorry you feel that way. Is there any part of Christianity which you're struggling with? Is it God as a whole, or perhaps the validity of Christ, or of scripture?
Just for a general overview, I suggest following what I did.
I started with apologetics and worked from there.
Try Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, then perhaps move onto Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis, then after that, read The Screwtape Letters if you catch yourself starting to believe, if not, just go straight to some Christology. Preferably The Case For Christ.

[Anonymous No.10728627]

>>10726290
>I just want to know why so many people fall for it I just want to know why so many people fall for it
Death is scary, a world without explicit morality or meaning is scary, a world based around struggle with no reward seems unfair. And spirituality appears to be a beneficial evolutionary trait that can be triggered by stimulating brain areas. There, that's why.

[Anonymous No.10728652]

>>10728627
>Death is scary

The only thing I don't fear is oblivion. By contrast, there is a tangible anxiety on the underside of every conscious moment that I constantly have to suppress, though I think we all do it quite automatically. If I had some assurance that death would cause the cessation of experience then I would kill myself that very instant because there's literally no downside.

[Anonymous No.10728658]

>>10728652
>oblivion
Do you have any reason to assume there is such a thing?

[Anonymous No.10728671]

>>10728658
no and I don't. I said as much. I also kind of said if I did then I would promptly kill myself.

[Anonymous No.10728688]

>>10728671
Misquoted you, I meant is there any reason for you to assume that anything happens besides the machine that produces your consciousness shutting off. I.e. any reason for you assume that there is anything but oblivion.

[Anonymous No.10728690]

Giving up?

No it teaches us how to be stronger.

[Anonymous No.10728705]

Its just one of infinitely many alternatives.

[Anonymous No.10728707]

>>10726170
Ashtavakra Gita
Advaita bodha Deepika

[Anonymous No.10728708]

>>10728705
meant for

>>10728688

[Anonymous No.10728716]

>>10728708
>infinitely many alternatives
There might be infinite possible alternatives, but they are not all equally likely to be accurate.

At least if you assume that the things we do observe are more likely to be true than things we do not observe. What is your stance on this?

[Anonymous No.10728723]

>>10728716
relevancy. Brainlet Russel's teapot may exist its just we have no good reason to care. If we can abstract the idea of a being that apprehends our entire reality or the idea of some kind of immaterial soul, we can obviously say these concepts are more relevant than some hypothetical contrivance.

[Anonymous No.10728732]

>>10726170

You do you come here if you have never read some philosophy and have no idea what spirituality is?
This fedora attitude toward anything spiritual is typical of people who just follow the "muh atheism" narrative, which implies one of more of the following:

>god does not exists
>religion is harmful and the cause of war
>the meaning of life is what you make it to be
>science disproves religion
>the soul does not exist
>there is no such thing as life after death
>morality does not exist OR it exist only in the of political association/social contract

And so on.
Now if you can't see how poorly put are these opinions, you are doomed to be a brainlet for life.
God is not only grugg's skyfather version of it: philosophy has declined the concept in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. Same for the soul. Same for versions of life after death.
At the same time, a poor conception of science and its fields of interest, as well as a poor conception of religion as a cultural manifestation, are the result of relying too much on narratives that come from television, movies and so on.

If you want to discuss about these things, please try to engage with complex thoughts about them - i.e. read philosophy. Otherwise, do not bother have an opinion on it, because nobody who has the slightest preparation on any of these things will ever take you seriously.

[Anonymous No.10728740]

>>10728723
>if an immaterial soul exists then this set of possibilities X becomes more relevant

Yes. But why do you assume an immaterial soul exists?

And even if we assume an immaterial soul exists, I would argue the difference of likelihoods is still so insignificant as to be pointless to consider. There is no reason to assume anything happens with that immaterial soul after your death even if we assume it exists.

[Anonymous No.10728772]

>>10728740
No, whether or not an immaterial self exists is the relevant question.

[Anonymous No.10728777]

>>10726170

When ideas are too big to fit into your head, you must substitute detailed and nuanced descriptions with a framework of generalizations that you can work with.

Spirituality is a framework that substitutes a detailed description of everything that’s going on in the universe and your relationship with all the moving and static pieces.

Being spiritual is being able to use this mental framework to center yourself and balance your priorities and desires.

If your understanding of the universe isn’t based on a biblical explanation, you can not find spirituality through the bible.

[Anonymous No.10728791]

>>10726170
Why wouldn't the non-superstitious study of reality interest you more? There's so much I don't know about reality and I have fun reading in order to find out. As for the study of religion, Freuds Totem And Taboo examines superstition in a readable, fairly empirical sort of way.

There's definitely a lot of truth about the psyche in folk stories and fairytales. You needn't believe them to find them interesting, you know
>>10728732
>fedora attitude
Not an argument. Stop dismissing atheism because /pol/ told you to. The Christfaggotry on this board is really astounding

[Anonymous No.10728792]

I feel like spirituality will get easier once we get closer to death. It's too early to convert yet, I want to live carelessly and do a lot of degenerate stuff. It's not like you'll feel good about restraining yourself afterwards, I still regret not taking the chance to have awkward adolescent sex years after. Maybe consider Christianity in your 50s.

[Anonymous No.10728805]

>>10728772
Self or soul however you want to call it. You must have some reasons to give the idea so much consideration as to include it in your life decisions? Why do you think it is likely to exist?

[Anonymous No.10728819]

>>10726170
I've only given up in the sense that I started believing in Nerd Rapture—a technological singularity leading to 2010 (sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) type re-beginning ot an Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" type re-beginning. I don't have a fucking clue what will happen to this universe. I suppose it will eventually die out after being rejuvenated several [citation needed] times.
This entire spiritualism thing is a farce. Humans are rationalizing beings who act first and decide why they act later. I love and hate being a fucking monkey.
If I didn't believe in Nerd Rapture being highly likely, I would probably pull a homegrown terrorist act unlike anything the world has ever seen.
After I work as a properly functioning adult for +20 years, I plan on working in any field of tech I believe can help us on our way towards infinity.

Roast me if you like.

[Anonymous No.10728889]

>>10726170
>I have this idea in my head that spirituality basically means giving up. Instead of coming up with good arguments, you just throw your hands up and say "God said so..."
That's kind of true, but Christians see this as surrenduring to God and putting your faith in him.

[Anonymous No.10729166]

>>10728269
This

[Anonymous No.10730291]

>>10728652
Maybe you don't know yourself and especially your fears not well enough. You say, that death and obliteration doesn't make you tremble in terror, is a good sign that you never experience real fear of dying. i somehow believe that you can soften and maybe even subdue this fear, but only if you had the chance of facing in its terror.

[Anonymous No.10730427]

>>10727048
It's definitely not, you'll probably think differently when you have to raise a child and review the nature of your ideas while imparting your wisdom

[Anonymous No.10730451]

>>10726170

The only thing to do is to change your »tendencies«, going from bad tendencies to good tendencies. First you must know what happens in »your world«, which as usual for the dhamma is what you experience. It turns out that you change your tendencies mostly by stopping to associate yourself with people who have the bad tendencies, and you begin to associate yourself with people who have the good tendencies. The concrete advises are at the end.

Once you know what happens in your life, you identify the tendencies which are bad, the ones which are good ; then you refrain from doing again the acts [actions, talks and thinking] which are deemed bad and you pursue the acts which are called good [it turns out that you do not know which tendencies are good since your remain a »normal people«, so you just follow the guidelines of the buddha on what are the good actions ]. It turns out that the principal, if not the only one, source which leads you away from nibanna is mental and not physical. [such as when athletes claim that the limit of their effort is the mind and not the body]

As usual , The beginning is, first, to stop going on the opposite of the path. SO that means to stop caring about what you have always been caring about in all the years you can remember living [since you are not at the stage of nibbanna, you know that whatever you did so far during the few decades of your life has been mediocre at best, if not totally pathetic and stupid. You must be sincere about your skills [you have none since you are miserable] and about the goal you want to reach. So far The only good thing about you, your behavior, your life is that you dislike some of your life and want to reach nibbanna and you have few hours of practice which are not effective according to you].

The usual objects of worry are about comfort, entertainment, the fear of missing out on pleasures and the worry being a good person as thought by people who do not care one bit about reaching a state where they are no longer unhappy once and for all [that is to say that there is nothing else to do after reaching this state of non-unhapinness and there is no dissipation of this new state ever].


The fear about missing out on pleasures is mental and is fed easily by other people who claim that »it would be a pity not to experience this ''happiness''« that is the experience when, let's say, you enjoy a yogurt or be on a cruise with a person you love, or Parachuting and so on.

The worry about comfort and a few other objects of habits is called »biological« by the same persons above, but it is not. It remains mental and you learn later on about managing them [ex: you learn tummo to stop being cold, instead of working to get money, then going shopping, then spending the money on cloths to get you warm, then washing the cloths because they stink, so you need other cloths while the last ones dry and then storing them].

[Anonymous No.10730452]

>>10726170
>What will finally convince me to succumb to spirituality?
Trying to force it seems pointless, if religious teachings don't speak to you maybe that's because they aren't for you.

[Anonymous No.10730461]

>>10730451
Then the morality from those same toxic people. They claim that you must worry about money, worry about getting a house, worry about attending such event, worry about listening to the people they admire, worry about opinions, worry about who is here and who is not here, worry about the news and so on [it never ends with these people]. This part is also obviously mental.

So far all those worries are fed by living, and worse, listening to those people have bad habits. The first step is then to identify those people, typically by what they claim and what they do [since you do not have access to what they think] and to stay away from them as much as you can. [ex: your friends bugs you off with going to the cinema to watch a movie? you do not follow them, otherwise you would become absorbed in the movie and experience the emotions that the actors try to make you feel. Perhaps if you were skillful at attending to the senses, you could go, but it turns out that once you are good at it, you would not want to go]

Once you stop cognizing about all those objects fed by those people, there is not much to do in your daily life. All those intellectual activities that so many people praise are exactly what must not be pursued. The daily life will be about getting the money that a few people demand from you, to carry out the tasks that a few people demand from you, and more intimately, it will be about food and cleaning the body and the house, sometimes talking to a person who wants to know more about the dhamma.

Far fewer speculations will be generated once this life is led. Once most speculations disappear, you stay on the level of the »body« to know »what you experience« which really means »to know what happens through the 5 usual senses«. The first step is to relax the body, then the mano and the citta. When the speculations appear, you know they appear and when they do not disappear at once, you follow the sutta by recalling that their pursuit is bad and you go back to the body and its relaxation to make them disappear and know that they disappeared by this way. Do this as long as the mind is not relaxed. It turns out that the most natural and the only relevant way to analyze the body is through the »elements«:

find what is soft and hard
find what is dry and wet
find what is cold and warm
find what is airy

[Anonymous No.10730467]

>>10730461
Beforehand, the explicit advices are as usual:

with other people: do not lie, do not create stories and drama, settle disputes even if, from the point of view of you and other normal people, you appear to be losing
do not eat too much, especially too much meat
do not ejaculate semen
to not sleep too much, so as soon you as you are awake you start knowing what happens until the moment you fall asleep
do not become upset even when the sensual experience is not pleasant and never succumb to the sensual experience when it is pleasant
change the postures if you want to : go from being sit, to standing up, to walking, to laying in bed [on the back or on the right side] and when you are bored with that, you can clean the house and keep continuing to know what happens.

Knowing what happens is the basis, the beginning. Once you know what happens, you begin to reject whatever leads you to bad acts and you steer towards the good acts.

Once the mind is relaxed and pliant, you either dive into the jhanas and leave them and or you turn your mano and citta to the discourses, especially the most important sequence to recall at any experience: whatever is experienced about the senses is anicca, what is anicca is dukkha, what is dukkha is anatta [NOT what is anicca is anatta].

Let's recall that Nibbanna is the only experience that is anatta and not anicca and not dukkha.

Let's recall that anatta has nothing to do with ''self'' and the specualtions that people put bedhing this word. The atta is not a concept, not an idea, not an opinion, not a belief, not a speculation, not a fantasy, not a dream, not a thought, not a theory, not an observation, not an operation, not a reasoning, not a game, not an information, not an illusion, not a vision, not an hallucination, not a chimera, not a mirage, not a lie, not a ghost, not a fiction, not a simulation, not a charm; atta is and always will be first and foremost about the experience of ''I''', of ''mine'', of ''me'' which projects, it turns out, whatever experiences them towards the opposite of the goal. For instance, the ''me'' in ''I, mine, me'' is not an idea, it is an experience and perhaps you even have a few records of it, typically when you said, without thinking, the word ''me'' when acting with and talking to other normal people. [same situation with '''I'' and ''my''].

The next natural step is to stop worrying about the actions and goods remaining from the old daily life with normal people, which are, let's recall, »about getting the money that a few people demand from you, to carry out the tasks that a few people demand from you, and more intimately, it will be about food and cleaning the body and the house«. Having a house and taking care of it is a burden, finding food is burden, storing food is a burden; so it is the ideal time to become a bhikkhu and continue to attend what happens in your world.

[Anonymous No.10730503]

Baghavad Gita (or the whole Mahabharata if you're willing to read one of the longest epics)
The Presocratics
Plato
Aristotle
The Upanishads

[Anonymous No.10730536]

>wanting to succumb

lol.

and the easiest way would be to take a heroic dose of psychedelics.

[Anonymous No.10730814]

>>10728792
>I want to live carelessly and do a lot of degenerate stuff
This makes no sense at all. To be religious in the sense that you seem to describe it would mean to believe that “degenerate stuff” is meaningless and can never be a source of fulfilment. What you’re basically saying is “in the future I’ll probably commit to a belief system that will consider my past actions pointless and shallow - but I want to be pointless and shallow until then.”

[Anonymous No.10730850]

>>10727048
how so? a copout to what?

[Anonymous No.10730865]

>>10730503
>no vedas
>no puranas
lol typical internet pseud
>>10730814
he sees pleasure as the highest meaning because he’s unattractive and never had a chance to be draped in pussy, attractive people don’t even have these kinds of values

[Anonymous No.10730888]

God is real faggot

[Anonymous No.10730908]

>>10726210
>philokalia
Reading this now and it's very interesting.

>There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is in accordance with nature. Without anger
a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy. When Job felt this
anger he reviled his enemies, calling them ‘dishonorable men of no repute, lacking everything good, whom I
would not consider fit to live with the dogs that guard my flocks’ (cf. Job 30:1, 4. LXX). He who wishes to
acquire the anger that is in accordance with nature must uproot all self-will, until he establishes within himself
the state natural to the intellect.

[Anonymous No.10731770]

>>10727821
>a religious or mystical experience
Fuck off. Just because the chemicals in your brain decided to go wacko doesn't mean anything supernatural is going on.

[Anonymous No.10731782]

>>10728403
>Try Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, then perhaps move onto Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis, then after that, read The Screwtape Letters if you catch yourself starting to believe, if not, just go straight to some Christology. Preferably The Case For Christ.
These are all terrible books.

[Anonymous No.10731811]

>>10731770
>Just because the chemicals in your brain decided to go wacko doesn't mean anything supernatural is going on.
You misunderstand my fedora friend. A religious or mystical experience does not imply that anything supernatural happened. It means that the subjective perspective experienced something seemingly beyond their grasp that can be interpreted in a religious framework.

[Anonymous No.10731837]

>>10728732
That's cool and all but do you have any arguments?

[Anonymous No.10731851]

>>10731770
Nobody said anything about the supernatural you absolute brainlet

[Anonymous No.10731862]

>>10726170
The ancients were not that clever.

The 'virgin birth' myth is nothing but copy-pasted straight from the Persian myth of Zoroaster's virgin birth. The Bible is a semi-literate mishmash of non-original myths, stories, and hearsay from various stone-age middle-eastern societies.

To think that one should lead one's life, or indeed, lead entire nations, by this nonsense is, truly, the greatest travesty of all time.

[Anonymous No.10731869]

>>10728723
>literally my feels say so, the argument

[Anonymous No.10731873]

>>10731862
>The 'virgin birth' myth is nothing but copy-pasted straight from the Persian myth of Zoroaster's virgin birth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x6aOBqc9d0

The idea that because there are superficial similarities in two different myths means one had to be copied or they're connected in any way is dumb and far too prevalent.

[Anonymous No.10731978]

>>10731873
The medium of knowledge at the time was if someone remembered something, or through stories, legends, myths etc. passed down by ancestors. How could there not be reasonable suspicion for connections between the two?

Also how have billions of people misinterpreted a literary device? The Holy Spirit figuratively inseminates Mary, a sign of the beginning of her spiritual life. Are people just morons?

[Anonymous No.10732208]

>>10731978
>How could there not be reasonable suspicion for connections between the two
Because it only appears that way on the most superficial level. It's like saying that because Jurassic Park and Land Before Time are both about Dinosaurs that one had to inspire the other. It's not a very good argument because when you start digging a bit deeper you can see they're actually very different. The problem is people try to paint the stories with the broadest brush possible to try and simplify them to the point where they can say "Look, see, it's clearly based on this!" but it never holds water when you actually look at the historical facts.

[Anonymous No.10732242]

>>10726170
if you are reading the bible expecting to read "now, this is why you should believe in god: [...]" you are doing it wrong. Reading the bible properly requires faith, its a bad option for people with prejudice against christianity. Either start with some fiction that might open your mind, and go building from there.

If you want actual arguments go read Summa contra Gentiles.

[Anonymous No.10732347]

>>10728805
Its not likely but I don't feel its especially unlikely either.

[Anonymous No.10732368]

>>10731862
thats a myth itself you uneducated mong

[Anonymous No.10732388]

>>10730814
>What you’re basically saying is “in the future I’ll probably commit to a belief system that will consider my past actions pointless and shallow - but I want to be pointless and shallow until then.
Sounds like a good plan, honestly.

[Anonymous No.10732410]

>>10728269
How do you know if your divine experience isn't just a hallucination or an illusion from your brain? If its just faith how do you know in what to believe? What is divine and what is not?

[Anonymous No.10732417]

>>10732410
How do you know you're not just a brain in a jar being fed sensory information like the Matrix?

[Anonymous No.10732439]

>>10728349
This argument could be used for anything. If something is completely unpercievable in the phisical world, what is left of it to exist? A dog is a dog because it occupies space and has the visual form of a dog. There must be, then infinite gods, if it is not necessary for them to occupy physical space nor interact with the real world. If he exists in a transcendental world, does a god exist in his world too, that can not be seen? Like a God's God? If not, then why? If there's no real parameter to say if something exists or not based on physical senses, which are our only door to the real world outside our brains?

[Anonymous No.10732455]

>>10732439
Are you arguing that people other than yourself cannot have consciousness because consciousness is impossible to perceive, and indeed doesn't even exist in a physical way?

[Anonymous No.10732476]

>>10732455
Yes, that is a valid argument.

[Anonymous No.10732480]

>>10732417
You cannot know for sure, because there is no access to the outside world despite our 5 senses. On the other hand, we can assume it is not the case because of an Occam´s razor, and also assuming the world it is real by the definition of what something we consider "real" is. A divine experience has all the characteristics of what is defined as a hallucination, then why not consider it a hallucination by definition also? If not, what is the difference?

[Anonymous No.10732487]

>>10732480
>Occam's razor
Time to stop posting.

[Anonymous No.10732488]

It's so interesting how these threads work.

Inevitably it intrigues a few mental champions who type out three/four big, long replies in the middle. And the ends have little replies, tapering off.

It's almost parabolic in content, tbqhwyfam.

[Anonymous No.10732500]

>>10732455
Actually there is a method of connection between you and the other's consciousness, which is communication, through a physical channel. There is no basis for assuming there is a god in this sense because there is only a communication wich exists inside the mind, a closed system, and that could be a hallucination by pure definition.

[Anonymous No.10732509]

>>10732500
>a communication wich exists inside the mind
No such thing exists, I think you might be schizophrenic or insane.

However, there are signs from God. Communicable signs that affect people in spiritual ways. Like love, or the wind.

[Anonymous No.10732510]

>>10732487
I never said it was a proof of existence, but rather a possible evidence, and a logical tool.

[Anonymous No.10732537]

>>10732509
>Like love, or the wind.
How are these signs of god? The wind exists because of the differences in temperature between soil and atmosphere, and also a constant rotation of the earth. Love can be just a chemical release of dopamine in the brain, or an evolutionary mechanism in mammals. In Greece it was commonplace for men to fall in love with eachother. Why isn't it the case in western culture on the last centuries? Was there a change in the nature of humans, or just a reorganization of sexual behaviour woch changed the way we define "love", proving it is relative to culture and time?

[Anonymous No.10732558]

>>10732537
>Love can be just a chemical release of dopamine in the brain, or an evolutionary mechanism in mammals
I too watch Reddit and Memey

[Anonymous No.10732570]

>>10732558
Woah dude epic refutation. I'm a believer now!

[Anonymous No.10732572]

>>10732558
Ok dude it's still just a meme, not an argument. Doesn't matter if its on a reddit cartoon or not

[Anonymous No.10732576]

>>10732558
you guys always respond this way as though it's some incredibly juvenile and edgy line of thought.

Isn't it actually a very reasonable idea? What exactly is wrong with it

[Anonymous No.10732584]

>>10726170
>you just throw your hands up and say "God said so, or something!"

If that's your analysis then you haven't read much about Christianity.

You seem to want arguments, so I'd direct you to scholasticism.

[Anonymous No.10732588]

>>10732570
>Thinking I need to refute something so baseless and edgy
If you haven't grown out of that vapid, nihilistic philosophy after high school then you need to grow up. The fact that R&M panders to that dumbass pseud demographic with it should be all the information you need to understand that it's not deep, or insightful or interesting. It's what dumb people tell themselves to feel smart.

[Anonymous No.10732601]

>>10726170
The Bible is not some magically-imbued text that is supposed to impregnate you with holy spiritual knowledge, it's just a bunch of fables and metaphors, some of which embodying the essence of human spirituality with themes like judgement and sacrifice that have been present in the human race and some animal races for thousands of years.

Other posters have said, it's basically impossible to be spiritually aware without having some sort of religious experience. You can try, for sure, but it won't be sincere.

And if you want to go "WELL IT'S JUST BRAIN CHEMICALS!" then I don't think you want to play that card, because literally every thought, spiritual or not, is nothing more than brain chemicals, so if you want to invalidate that, you are invalidating all of human logic, emotion, rationality, and experience.

Being spiritual isn't believing in a big bearded dude striking people with lightning from the clouds, nor is it about a virgin hippie healing people with magic fingers. These are all allegories, and sadly it's been lost on just about every fucking major church who takes the Bible as literal.

Being spiritual means that there is meaning in life, and it is found through deep introspection, contemplation, and thought, and not by external stimuli. It sounds ironic and roundabout, I know, you have to have a religious experience to become spiritual but you have to go through deep introspection to have a religious experience, but that's part of what makes it such a unique human experience is the irony of it.

Matthew 7:7-7:8: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.…

The spiritual experience can only happen when you are willing to search for God and meaning.

[Anonymous No.10732602]

>>10732576
>it's some incredibly juvenile and edgy line of thought.
It is. You're dismissing your subjective experience in favor of a theory that disregards it and tells you you're a cellular automaton. You don't do this because it's a well supported idea, you do it because in spite of the fact that your own experience tells you it's outright false you accept it anyway because it makes you feel superior. Again, grow up.

[Anonymous No.10732607]

>>10732588
And this is what you tell yourself to feel smart. Being incapable of using rational tought to refute an argument, you put yourself in a position of delusional superiority, denying your lack of reasoning to your own yourself. This is unironic mental gymnastics.

[Anonymous No.10732612]

>>10732588
>>Thinking I need to refute something so baseless and edgy
Yes, you do. If you don't have any good arguments against it other than "lol dude so edgy" then you are forced to concede that it may be valid. Follow your own advice: don't be so juvenile.

[Anonymous No.10732614]

>>10732602
What experience exactly tells you you are not a biological organism that works on the basis of natural selection regulated by biochemical processes?

[Anonymous No.10732620]

>>10732602
But that's an entirely moralistic argument you're making, as well as just assuming things about me and insulting me.

What is wrong specifically with the idea that love evolved to make mammals pair-bond, because that was evolutionarily beneficial?

[Anonymous No.10732621]

>>10732607
>lol life is like, totally meaningless dude, you're just chemicals lol
>If you don't refute this with proper arguments you lose!
Uh no sweetie. I treat your argument like the vapid high school tier drivel it is. I'm under no obligation to engage you as if your philosophical stance has any merit whatsoever. Your own experience of the world soundly refutes your own stance and your only response is "Uuhhhh that's just chemicals in my brain tricking me!".

[Anonymous No.10732624]

>>10732614
woah dude watch the edge XD! rick and morty rick and morty hahaa!!!!

[Anonymous No.10732626]

>>10726186
Read everything Plato wrote, then read Plotinus after that. You'll naturally end up in the Gita or zen or something Zoroastrian next, and you'll end in sufi texts unironically.

Christianity doesn't do it for anyone these days because of the anthropomorphic image of God and his very narrow ideas. The ancients had (imho) a more complex concept of God as a totality of things... an infinite everything of everything. Basically something that is logically believable.

I'm not saying you'll end a Christian but you'll understand the context in which the bible was written and you'll probably be convinced that a world greater than what you immediately see exists.

[Anonymous No.10732627]

>>10732621
>Your own experience of the world soundly refutes your own stance
How, exactly?

[Anonymous No.10732634]

>>10732621
Of course you are not obligated to refute any argument, this is why you have to willingly type an entire response on your keyboard, then solve a captcha and use your internet connection in order to do so. If you do not want to respond, then don't, this is a general thread destined to the whole community of the website, you are not especially enlightened nor superior in authority to any of the other anonymous posters, its not like I am begging specifically you for a response. The fact that you are still engaging in this argument only proves your ego is hurt, and this is a part of your mental gymnastics to feel superior for a brief moment.

[Anonymous No.10732643]

>>10732624
Ok so a cartoon is nihilistic then I must believe in God now thank you

[Anonymous No.10732656]

>>10732620
It's not moralistic at all, are you retarded? It's quite simple. Subjective experience supercedes all other facts. This is an axiom that science is based on. If you see an apple fall to the ground then you assume an apple fell to the ground. If you confer with others and they confirm you assume that it is true that they saw the same phenomena. You don't sit around assuming you're a brain in a jar being fed sensory information because that would be fucking stupid and again, we work on the premise that what we experience is real and true until proven otherwise.

Conscious experience is not physical. It can't be detected via any known means.
>b-but what about brain scans!
No, what you're detecting is the underlying physical phenomena that gives rise to consciousness. Think about this. If an AI was developed how do you prove it has an internal sense of self like we do, and isn't just following an extremely complex programming? Could you determine it by looking at the code? By looking at the electrons flowing through the gates? It's not possible.

Thus saying love is a chemical process is fucking stupid. Lust is a chemical process. Arousal is a chemical process. The feeling of love cannot be detected by any means because it's part of the conscious experience that we still cannot interact with at all.

[Anonymous No.10732661]

>>10732656
>Could you determine it by looking at the code
Yes

[Anonymous No.10732666]

>>10732634
I've given your dumbass high school level "argument" far more respect than it deserves. >>10732656

The problem is you clearly don't understand anything you're talking about, if you did you wouldn't hold such an uninformed view in the first place. And is as normal for people with strong uninformed views you're going to dig in further rather than admit you're wrong. So there's really no point is there? If you reply and try to dig in further then you'll only have proved my point

[Anonymous No.10732669]

>>10732656
Consciousness not being physical doesn't harm the argument.

Brain patterns that produce the feeling of love, if love makes the organism act a certain way, (it doesn't even matter if consciousness is epiphenomenal or causal) would be part of the evolutionary calculus.

If you don't like using love, then consider pain, pain is also a conscious experience, technically impossible to locate in the physical world, but you don't think it's absurd to say that we evolved pain so that we avoid danger do you?

[Anonymous No.10732670]

>>10732661
How?

[Anonymous No.10732677]

>>10731782
>These are all terrible books.
Why?
What issue do you have with them?

[Anonymous No.10732680]

>>10732669
>Consciousness not being physical doesn't harm the argument.
It does, it completely destroys it. Please stop, you're just embarrassing yourself.

[Anonymous No.10732689]

>>10732680
Did you see what I wrote about pain?

There is no need to be rude, this is just a conversation.

[Anonymous No.10732696]

>>10732666
But no one asked for your specific respect because you are not a figure of authority. Actually, no one asked for your specific response at all. All you did was say that you are smart. No one cares nor believes it, you are literally anonymous. You call others juvenile, but act like an attacked narcissistic teen. You typed entire paragraphs, but your words were empty. Big paragraphs with nothing on then except for a tantrum.

[Anonymous No.10732697]

>>10732666
>I've given your dumbass high school level "argument" far more respect than it deserves
Dude the entirety of philosophy is dedicated to refuting high-schoool level arguments

[Anonymous No.10732705]

>>10732697
He does not have a response. This is his coping mechanism: put himself on a position of superiority, even though he is literally another anonymous poster on an imageboard

[Anonymous No.10732709]

>>10732677
It's pop-theology written by literal brainlets. Might as well read a self-help book while you're at it.

[Anonymous No.10732727]

>>10732696
>You typed entire paragraphs, but your words were empty
So you just can't understand them. Funny how you're so upset I'm treating your dumb argument with the disdain it deserves but you're proving me absolutely right by the fact that when I did bother engaging you, you just respond with some nonsense about "words being empty" because you don't understand your own argument let alone the reason for why it's pseudointellectual tripe that people who engage in that kind of pointless nihilistic navel gazing absolutely adore (Rick and Morty viewers for one)

[Anonymous No.10732742]

>>10732680
If consciousness is not physical then nothing can be physical. You are literally mistaking signifiers for objects. "love" is the word, the SIGN that is used to represent in an abstract sense the physical sensation of a chemical process, and does not exist in the "real world" because it is not an object, but a signifier. In the same way, we can talk about the word "dog": the physical process that we understand by a "dog" is not "dog". "dog" is a word, and cannot be found in the physical word. This does not mean that dogs are actually a spirit or a miracle. It just means that the symbols we use to identify things are not themselves, but there is still a physical world.

[Anonymous No.10732747]

>>10732742
He didn't respond to the argument at all. The metaphysical status of consciousness doesn't even change the logic of evolution, so long as it at least obeys causality.

[Anonymous No.10732758]

>>10732747
I meant to respond >>10732656

Yes, I agree.

[Anonymous No.10732794]

>>10732727
You are lost in your own process of protecting your attacked ego. There were no arguments, only implicit claims with no rational train of thought nor justification, wich is typical of the pedantic persona you are descrkbing me to be. Notice how in your earlier responses you genuinely believed you were in a position of enough authority to refuse to give a response that was not even specifically asked from you. You acted like a professor wich ignores his naive pupil, although you are in an anonymous imageboard, and are literally an unknown individual willingly making comments on a thread. See how this comical yet absurd situation demonstrated your deep sense of narcossism. Now you're desperate to protect your online persona from an ego attack. Thats purified autism speaking.

[Anonymous No.10732814]

>>10732794
>You are lost in your own process of protecting your attacked ego
Now this is just projection at absurd levels. I'm not being attacked. I'm mocking an edgy and naive philosophy that most kids grow out of by high school. You're the one being attacked and you clearly feel some desperate need to defend your dumb, childish philosophy from valid criticism by trying to deflect and project. I don't feel anything toward you but contempt because "we're all just chemicals duuuude, who cares" is a despicable view to have

[Anonymous No.10732817]

>>10726170
City of God is a great book.

[Anonymous No.10732828]

>>10732814
>I'm mocking
as opposed to engaging with. You can't mock something unless you are so superior to it that you can defeat it easily.

You literally haven't replied once to any arguments, except to point out that consciousness may not be physical as though this were some great revelation, or in any way even relevant to the idea being discussed.

But here we see what's actually happening 'is a despicable view to have'. Exactly what I thought: this isn't philosophy to you this is religion. We're insulting your religious feelings about love and the sanctity of the human subject.

[Anonymous No.10732849]

>>10732828
>You literally haven't replied once to any arguments
I not only replied, I dismantled your argument and because you've got the old dunning kruger you're digging yourself deeper into the hole you've dug instead of just accepting you're wrong. What's that old phrase about not arguing with idiots? They drag you down to your level and beat you with experience? I've refuted your point simply, and easily. Now if you don't accept that it means you don't even understand what you're proposing in the first place and I'm not going to sit here and spoonfeed you your own argument you're making AND why it's completely wrong.

[Anonymous No.10732851]

>>10732814
You are a repulsive goblin. You have zits around your anus and inside it. You have zits all over your face. Your mother is gay, your brothers are gay, you are gay. You, sir, are an ugly a-word n-word.
I hope you choke on a dick.
Your head looks like a melon.
Your life loooks like a melon, and your life is gay.

[Anonymous No.10732857]

>>10732849
reply to the point I made about pain

Are you saying that it is absurd to propose that pain evolved so that we avoided danger? Are you saying pain is not a conscious experience?

And if you aren't saying either of those things, then please explain why love is different.

[Anonymous No.10732860]

>>10732849
BEGONE THOT

[Anonymous No.10732873]

>>10732857
Pain is not analogous to love so your lame strawman attempt doesn't work.

[Anonymous No.10732878]

>>10732873
Refute >>10732742

[Anonymous No.10732881]

>>10732873
You are a nigger so your strawmen argument doesn't work

[Anonymous No.10732886]

>>10732873
Why is not analogous exactly? Aren't they both conscious experiences? Don't they both affect how we behave, and thus our reproductive outcomes? Aren't they both therefore important things to consider from an evolutionary perspective?

Stop just stating things without even a semblance of an argument.

[Anonymous No.10732892]

>>10732878
>If consciousness is not physical then nothing can be physical.
Incorrect premise. Consciousness is one thing we know isn't physical because we experience it. It's an axiom we work by that our experience of reality is congruent with the experiences of other people. When I say the sky is blue I assume you perceive blue as I do and don't perceive it as being green or some other color. That doesn't mean that nothing is real, just that there are both qualitative and quantitative aspects of reality.

[Anonymous No.10732898]

>>10732828
>>10732814
>>10732794
>>10732727
>>10732696
>>10732666
>>10732634
>>10732621
>>10732607
>>10732588
>>10732570
>>10732558
>>10732537
>>10732509
>>10732500
>>10732500
>>10732455
>>10732439
>>10728349
>>10728349
>pic extremely related
I never understand why poeple of any intellectual calber engage in theese pointless internet dick measuring contests.
Its obvious you both care way to much about the others opinion as you continue to respond to each other in long fucking paragraphs.
If you truly didnt give a fuck what the other thought you would have
A, stopped responding
or B, only made the most basic logical responses that would easily refute the others point as your arguments have devolved into childish insults.
>>10726170
To answer your original question though OP, I dont know. And the reason i dont know is that you have yet to mention the most nessessairy question to answer your question which is.
>What if anything could prove to you that God existed?

[Anonymous No.10732901]

>>10732410
I don't. You're missing the point again.

[Anonymous No.10732906]

>>10732886
Pain is a response to external stimulus while love is a feeling entirely engendered by the consciousness itself. Once again you're conflating lust and love. I don't know if you're strawmanning deliberately because you know your argument is shaky, or doing it because you don't actually understand what you're arguing in the first place

[Anonymous No.10732908]

>>10726170
As I understand it, spirituality is about belief in something you don't know to be true because there are good reasons to believe it paired with evidence. I don't know for sure that there is such a thing as objective goodness, but its probably better to act and be fully invested in the idea anyway and it becomes self fulfilling regardless.

[Anonymous No.10732909]

>>10732906
>love is a feeling entirely engendered by the consciousness itself.
What exactly is your proof for this? How do you know love isn't caused by your brain telling you to pair-bond?

[Anonymous No.10732910]

>>10732410
How do you know that anything you perceive is true, you could aply the same logic to all your censory organs and make the "how do you know we aren't in the matrix argument"
If we cant trust our senses we cant trust anything anon

[Anonymous No.10732917]

>>10732909
>>10732906
I mean at the very least isn't love a response to the external stimuli of the person it is directed to?

[Anonymous No.10732918]

>>10732892
>we know isn't physical because we experience it
lmaoooo nigga u dum

[Anonymous No.10732949]

>>10732892
Lol is that it? Thats the enlightened argument you were holding inside the whole time? Thats the superiority you claimed to have? To wrongly try to refute one of the many points I wrote?
Nigga consciousness is a signifier that designates an object, and that object is the biochemical intellectual process that occurs in the brain if an individual wich we define as conscious. You can't find it nor sense it because it is a signifier not an object. You fell into the exact argument you were trying to refute

[Anonymous No.10732952]

>>10732917
Indirectly. I mean yes all your experiences of the world outside your mind are filtered through your senses as a matter of course, but it's not a response to sensory information so much as it is your intellect. You need to differentiate the primordial urges of the brain from the intellectual ability to override those urges. You see an attractive woman and feel lust, that's a direct physiological response to sensory information. Your conscious self has the ability to override that sensation though, you don't rape because of your sense of morality and the knowledge if you act you'll be punished. Just like smokers can quit smoking by pure will when they have strong physiological urges compelling them to smoke again.

Love is not a function of seeing someone and being attracted. It's an intellectual connection between two people that goes above physiological response to stimuli like lust or pain and comes from the same region of your mind that enables you to override base urges, your intellect.

[Anonymous No.10732965]

>>10732949
>I don't understand the argument so I'll say it was wrong
See? I tried to explain it to you in the simplest terms and you still simply cannot wrap your head around it. Pointless exercise, I should have just stopped at mocking you for being an intellectually vapid R&M fan rather than taking pity and trying to explain concepts that are clearly beyond your mental reach.

[Anonymous No.10732968]

OP here. You all are fucking autistic, and nobody satisfactorily answered my question because "well... you'll know it when you see it, bro!". I'm going to go back to being a fedoralord.

[Anonymous No.10732972]

>>10732952
But the intellect has physical roots doesn't it? I mean our brains are the sources of things like our logic, or do you believe that logic is purely conscious?

Because what you're proposing here is almost mystical. Two people's pure intellects merging without any causal interaction through the physical world. That's essentially what you're saying. Because if there is causal mediation, even if it is indirect, then love enters the calculus of evolution again.

To make sure Im not misconstruing your position- your're saying love occurs wholly divorced from the causal physical world? Love has no impact on a persons behavior in that world? And Love is not caused at all by anything in the phsyical world?

[Anonymous No.10732979]

>>10732968
Sounds like you never wanted it in the first place pussy. No one is going to spoon feed you your spirituality.

[Anonymous No.10732986]

>>10732979
This. OP is a fag

[Anonymous No.10732992]

>>10732968
Ignore the two autists ranting to each other and there is some good info. Try engaging with the posters in your thread and you might learn something

[Anonymous No.10733007]

>>10732965
You made a huge mistake by mistaking a signifier for an object. Consciousness is a signifier of a physical object as well as "dog", as well as 狗 are signifiers of the physical object that is pic related. There is no way of phisically feel or sense 狗. There is a way of atesting the phisical presence of pic related tho. Same thing with consciousness. Lets call consciousness 意识. There is no physical 意识, but there is the object that we designate as 意识. That is because 意识 as well as "consciousness" are concepts created by language.

[Anonymous No.10733013]

>>10733007
This says nothing about immaterial things that are demonstrably true, but not materially provable. Like soul, or energy.

[Anonymous No.10733036]

>>10733013
How is soul demonstrably true?
Also, energy is a physical object, and can be atested through observation, but, again, "energy" is what we define "energy" to be. So if we take kinetic energy, for example, it is defined as the mass times the velocity squared divided by 2. It can be observed and sensed as an object. Because the word energy is so vaguely defined, it gives the impression that it indicates an immaterial object, but this is a failure of language, not of the object desognated by it.

[Anonymous No.10733039]

>>10733036
>How is soul demonstrably true?
NDEs
http://www.near-death.com/

[Anonymous No.10733056]

>>10733036
A soul is demonstrably true through perceiving the spiritual nature of reality.

Communion with God and Nature makes one immediately aware of his soul.

You will immediately have to recognize how this is a better answer than
>>10733039
which just uses some sort of physical phenomenon to explain the soul.

However, you can use Nature to prove God, as Emerson did.

[Anonymous No.10733058]

>>10733039
There are processes that can occur in the brain after near death. As a med student, I can attest that brain death is not a sudden and absolute event. It is a process. Many of the biochemical processes are still happening in the brain after a near death. Also, this is anecdotal evidence. If I specifically have a vision because of a condition like schizophrenia that causes visual or auditory hallucinations, is that a proof of the divine? Are my hallucinations present in the sliritual world, even if they can be eliminated through a proper chemical balance in my brain with the use of medication?

[Anonymous No.10733086]

>>10733058
>If I specifically have a vision because of a condition like schizophrenia that causes visual or auditory hallucinations, is that a proof of the divine?
Depends how much you trust yourself. Personally I put my personal experience over anyone elses in terms of what I choose to believe. Living your life believing that your own experiences can't be trusted would be the saddest thing. If I see something with my own eyes, I believe it.

[Anonymous No.10733097]

>>10733086
But that's retarded when insane people clearly exist

[Anonymous No.10733100]

>>10733086
>I put my personal experience over anyone elses
This would make sense if your personal experiences belonged to you; they don't. "Your" experiences and those of others are multiple pieces of the same whole.

[Anonymous No.10733102]

>>10733097
So if you see something with your own eyes that seems irrational you conclude you're insane?

[Anonymous No.10733117]

>>10733056
>You will immediately have to recognize how this is a better answer than
It's only a "better answer" insofar as you said jack shit. Your mumbo-jumbo about the "spiritual nature of reality" and "communion with God and Nature" (gotta get the capital letters in there!) is meaningless.

[Anonymous No.10733119]

I wasn't quite won over but the closest I ever got to embracing some kind of Christian spirituality was in reading the Divine Comedy

[Anonymous No.10733249]

>>10726186
I'm no jew but I would recommend Martin Buber's Ich and Du (Kaufman Translation + introduction) as a piece to return to while going through anon's (>>10732626) Gnostic/Esoteric reading.

[Anonymous No.10733330]

>>10732709
>It's pop-theology
I think you mean it's theology in simpler terms, which is exactly what OP needs. There's no point in him reading 5 pages of the summa then giving up because he doesn't get anything.
Are you this pretentious with all books? A textbook for high schoolers is clearly just pop-biology, innit?
>written by literal brainlets
Yes, yes, I'm sure you're a master of theology, as evident by you talking down to famous authors on an anonymous Ethiopian postage stamp collecting imageboard.
>>10732968
Refer to >>10732992
Don't ask a question, not engage with any of the posters, then come back later to whinge that none of us posted exactly what you wanted to hear.

[Anonymous No.10733467]

>>10732898
>Posting rick
Go back to fucking reddit

[Anonymous No.10733512]

>>10726170
If by spirituality you mean finding God then the best thing to do is read philosophy. Read Aquinas, Augustine, then Berkeley. After that you can move onto other idealists. Berkeley claimed that what makes atheism possible and attractive is the hypothesis that matter or corporeal substance is the bearer of real existence. Just because we, as first worlders I'm assuming, live in a culture of empiricists doesn't mean that has to be how you perceive this reality. There are an infinite amount of things we are yet to, or incapable to, understand. Recognizing this idea is a good first step away from the dogmatic skeptic mindset and towards better understanding.

[Anonymous No.10733527]

>>10733512
>live in a culture of empiricists
I meant to type materialists.

[Anonymous No.10733532]

>>10726170

jordan peterson

[Anonymous No.10733543]

>>10733532
He barely seems like a spiritual person. It's very questionable if he even believes in God.

[Anonymous No.10735457]

>>10726170
Spirituality shouldn't be a surrender, at least in the sense you've stated. Even if embraced partly or entirely for mystical/spiritual reasons, you should be able to defend most aspects of your faith or spiritual system. (Context: raised catholic, only really became faithful after learning a lot more of the philosophical basis). If you're looking for accounts to justify faith, there's Augustine, Aquinas, Chesterton, Lewis, and others. For a less philosophical take, Orthodoxy and Mere Christianity are excellent. For something more rigorous, Summa contra Gentiles, Augustine's Confessions, or more recently, something like Edward Feser's account of his conversion (http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/road-from-atheism.html)) is a good and more recent thomistic account.

[Anonymous No.10735464]

>>10726170
Depends on how willing you are to lie to yourself.

[Anonymous No.10735528]

>>10727839
>http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html

So this is it? Why is this discussion still going? Why is any discussion still going when it's already been proven?

[Anonymous No.10736991]

>>10735457
>Mere Christianity
STOP recommending this garbage book for literal Christ's sake.

[Anonymous No.10737023]

>>10736991
>could that possibly be construed as pursuing a good thing in the wrong way?

He was pursuing the pre-eminence of his nation, the freedom of his people, and theitr safety, which are commonly held to be good. He went about this the wrong way, that is, by putting all the blame on Jews and "degenerates," and trying to have them all exterminated.

You see it doesn't take many rhetorical contortions to arrive at a seemingly reasonable conclusion while working in an Aristotelian framework.

[Anonymous No.10737028]

>>10737023
No Hitler just wanted to kill Jews for the sake of killing Jews.

[Anonymous No.10737405]

>>10736991
TIL Boethius and Augustine makes you vomit.
Hitler fetishized the pangerman volk life and saw the jews as a threat to that. Wrong and outright sick, but he did perceive the good as good and seek to do the bad, but the bad as good.

[Anonymous No.10737597]

>>10736991
I feel sorry for the poor twisted soul that wrote that review and actually think they contributed absolutely anything of merit.
Of course Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. Hitler didn't (as stated by >>10737028) just go around hunting Jews with a crossbow for sport and hung them up over the fireplace at the Berghof. I guess this is what happens when you sit through the public education system and get fed that he was the worst person in history and 6,000,000 Jews died more or less at his hands.

[Anonymous No.10737629]

>>10737597
>6,000,000 Jews died
>believing this marketing campaign in the year of the dog 2018

[Anonymous No.10737704]

>>10732898
people are discussing these things because they matter to us. You think we'd be on this forum if we'd rather be in a club or a restaurant?

[Anonymous No.10737718]

>>10737704
>people are discussing these things because they matter to us
>discussing
Look at the those posts. It's two autists calling each other autistic for 20 posts. No discussion is occurring.

[Anonymous No.10739073]

>>10726170
Drink ayahuasca. Not memeing. Start differenciating between religion and spirituality.

[Anonymous No.10739093]

>>10739073
>Start differentiating between religion and spirituality.
>differentiating
Those are two words for the same thing.

[Anonymous No.10739111]

>>10739093
Just drink the damn vision juice you incorrigible twit.

[Anonymous No.10739115]

>>10726186
I recommend these books in the following order.
Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, The Great Controversy

free PDFs and audiobooks can be readily obtained with a google search

[Anonymous No.10739153]

>>10739111
Then what? I'll understand your nonsense? Maybe try and explain your claim before acting smug and pushing your brew on people.

[Anonymous No.10739168]

>>10739073
Share your ayahuasca experience?

[Anonymous No.10739278]

>>10739153
You started a thread asking people to open your mind despite the obvious: you are the only one who can change your mind. To pursue or begin humoring the validity of spirituality would require genuinely engaging with the possibility that the reality you've garnered from intellectual efforts has been nothing more than a primitive attempt to mask your fear of unimportance.

You see people with their religions and equate their faith and presumed purpose with small mindedness. Perhaps you're just jealous?

In any case, I didn't "push" anything. If you were used to exploring new experiences you would have seen my blunt quip for what it is; simply proding your precious convictions.

>>10739168
I entered the evening thinking I was there to help myself yet realized half way through that we were all as a group sharing the same "mind." After the mildly uncomfortable onset I began stretching for some time. Time slipped away with only the music serving as a symbol of its passing. I saw many things when I closed my eyes but I wouldn't say the visions are what deserve most mention. For me, the most profound aspect of the evening was the inner dialogue that transpired. These communications diluted any negative mental patterns and transmuted the initial negative thought into an affirmation of the collective process of becoming and learning that everyone is attempting. No one has the same experience, as one's philosophical backbone is a huge factor, but anyone can eventually bliss out after going through the process of weeding out their unproductive intellectual patterns. This occured for me near the end of the night. I was able to achieve the kind of mental clarity monks expound upon. Silent minded and heart overflowing I glanced around at the others and their stages of realization knowing their respective prowess or insufficiencies were equally honorable. That was years ago and I've since left that scene because there are a lot of problems in the community that no ammount of brew can account for.

[Anonymous No.10739313]

>>10739278
>You started a thread
I'm not OP. I'm >>10739093 I'm Christian and I see spiritual and religious and mystical experiences as the same experience and I wonder where you see the difference.

Thanks for describing your ayahuasca experience. Did your view of the world change drastically? and were you able to effectively incorporate what the plant taught you into your life and behavior?

[Anonymous No.10740081]

>>10737629
thankfully no one on 4chan actually believes that shit
>>10737718
fuck off back to plebbit you useless piece of shit. This is how we talk here, and this is how it has been on 4chan for a long time. If your better self is upset by the way people speak here, you can put a toothpick under your toenail and kick the fucking wall.
If those two lads didn't want to be discussing it as they are, they would close the browser and walk away. Let them be.
>>10739073
Peterson pls go
>>10739278
Did you go on one of those ayahuasca trips to Peru or Bolivia or w/e? Or did you do it somewhere in your city?
>>10739313
>>10739093
Not that lad obvs, but I just thought I'd put in my two cents. I'm a fellow Christian and I think that religion and spirituality are certainly distinct.
I think religion is more organised. There tends to be a place of worship, religious text, a set of ideas, typically some creation myth of sorts. Whereas I think spirituality is more like a feeling rather than a fully fleshed out belief system. Certainly spirituality is a part of religion, I'm sure you and I have both felt that at different times.

[Anonymous No.10740248]

Don't succumb.