/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17980588]

Apophatic theology is atheism. Advaita vedanta is atheism. Plotinus was a modernist atheist. Depersonalized after-life is just oblivion. Convince me otherwise.

[Plotinus No.17980782]

>>17980588
Atheism and theism make the same mistake: that God can be given predicates. The former negatively, the latter positively. For us -- the negative theologians -- God is neither real nor not-real. He can not even be said to be 'neither real nor not-real'. All language eludes God. However in their failure to reach God, like the lover letter which proves its authenticity in its failure to communicate its own love, a glimpse of the 'before' of language, the primal wholeness, that is to say (not to say) God.

God doesn't represent a thing but no-thing. Not just any no-thing but 'mere' no-thing. The radically immanent -- the vauity at the heart of the individual -- is the root of all phenomena but it reveals itself as the radically transcendent, that which eludes all phenomena. In that moment, in the most intense moment of apophatic discourse, the subject melts into the object and a reality beyond distinction and dualism is encountered. God is laid bare in the recesses of logic, where allthought breaks down.

Apophatic theology is not atheism, nor theism. Our faith is the faith to let go of ourself and melt into the Other, to have an experience with no-thing. We are, in a certain sense, agnostic. We move towards greater unknowing. That unknowing of God is greater than any knowing.

[Anonymous No.17980917]

>>17980588
>Convince me otherwise
What are your reasons for reaching such outlandish conclusions? That’s where I’d start

[Anonymous No.17980927]

>>17980782
based plotinus poster

[Anonymous No.17980944]

>>17980588
Religion is secularized metaphysics, modernity has as much power over people who reject it as it does over people who embrace it (recreating them in it's image), and the only solution is expanding your ego to recreate modernity in your own image. You are submitting to modernism by recreating it's perspective. Tradfaggotry is nothing more than a brand.

[Anonymous No.17981045]

>>17980944
>Religion is secularized

[Anonymous No.17981075]

>your schizo ramblings are nonsense
>my schizo ramblings are divine truth

Ok.

[Anonymous No.17981082]

>>17980588
how is advaita vedanta apophatic you filthy retarded? its positive theology is consistent. buddhist sunyata can be called apophatic, not advaita

[Anonymous No.17981089]

>>17981045
I know you can be a better person and I will pray for your happiness, you don't need to act in such a way in the future

[Plotinus No.17981130]

>>17981082
>advaita literally means nondual
It is apophatic. Even the apophatic continually produces the cataphatic -- nothingness overflows into positivity. Try neti-neti meditation -- not this, not that. I have read descriptions of apophatic theology as infinitely affirmative.

[Anonymous No.17981143]

>>17980588
>Convince me otherwise.
No, fuck off.

[Anonymous No.17982040]

>>17980944
>Religion is secularized metaphysics
sup, ken

[Anonymous No.17982074]

>>17980588
>Depersonalized after-life is just oblivion
If you believe in oblivion you are not an atheist.

[Anonymous No.17983126]

>>17980588
bump

[Anonymous No.17983172]

>>17980782
>God is, like, real AND unreal, maaaaaan
That’s not how God is seen by the majority of believers in him, at all

[Anonymous No.17983180]

>>17981089
Act in what way? Disagreeing with you? The fact that you consider that a sin that needs to be atoned for says much more about you than about that poster

[Anonymous No.17983234]

>>17980588
>Advaita vedanta is atheism
have you even read the vedas? any deistic interpretation of god is a simplification of the idea of brahman. the western concept of god is just a shorthand for "everything i cannot control," and makes a number of arbitrary simplifications concerning the nature of reality.

[Anonymous No.17983910]

>>17983234
advaitic conception of God is literally atheism and a """God""" that can't interact in any way with """maya"""

[Anonymous No.17983983]

>>17983910
>advaitic conception of God is literally atheism
No, it’s not “literally atheism”, you should stop being so inaccurate and sloppy in your choice of words. Advaita Vedanta says that Brahman is a sentient God who is the Supreme Lord of everything, and that things only exist by virtue of Brahman existing as their basis and origin. This is mutually exclusive with atheism which denies the existence of any Gods, not just the God of ‘personalistic theism’.
>and a """God""" that can't interact in any way with """maya"""
Maya is Brahman’s power which He is ever wielding or projecting in a manner that is changeless. Some additional set of interactions with a particular thing or a set of things within maya over and above this general wielding would mean that because of those specific actions Brahman would be subject to change, but this is not so as Brahman is changeless, immutable.

[Anonymous No.17984057]

>>17983172
The majority of believers are theists so who gives a shit

[Anonymous No.17984227]

>>17980782
This is not apophaticism.

[Anonymous No.17984251]

>>17980944
Metaphysics could only be anything because of religion (any thing could be anything because of the stability, anthropologically unitive force that religion has and gives man to take him out of the chaotic, irrational flux of pre-communal/civilizatory - and therefore pre-conscious - stage). Consciousness, religion and metaphysics are intimately related.

[Anonymous No.17984259]

>>17984057
Apophatic theology is theist and gnostic. Your opinion is incongruent to all apophatic theologians.

[Anonymous No.17984362]

>>17980782
This reads like a fundamentally incoherent parody of post-modern, Derrida-derived theology written by AI. John D Caputo fot those educated by twitter account philosophers who have never even seen the inside of a church. Cringe fatuous moron.

[Anonymous No.17984384]

>>17984362
Nah you are just ignorant of ancient sources that spoke in similar ways. Much of the phrasing of his post would be at home in ancient philosophy.

[Anonymous No.17984410]

>>17984384
Not a single apophatic theologian would consider apophatism “agnostic” nor neither atheistic nor theist. This is to miss the whole point of apophatic theology to a ‘literalist’ understanding. It is easier to understand this going to primary sources: Bible, Nyssa, Dionysius, Plotinus, Philo, Cusanus, Eckhart, Eriugena, the Kabbalists. Reading them it is clear that this unknowing is not agnostic but gnostic, and that the “nothingness” is actually divine abundance.