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/lit/ - Literature

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3453779 No.3453779 [Reply] [Original]

>that feel when the more you read, the more you start to contemplate faith in God

I know this is literally the worst website to post this on, but I'm wondering if any other /lit/ anons know this feel?

Please restrain yourselves from the religious/atheistic debates. I don't even know that what I'm contemplating as "God" is necessarily the Biblical God, but more some variation of the Wittgensteinian "unsayable".

>> No.3453826

>>3453779

>>that feel when the more you read, the more you start to contemplate faith in God

That's because the more you read the more you understand just how little you actually know. Most atheists are reactionaries.

>> No.3453837

>>3453779
I know that feel op. There could be something ubiquitous.

>> No.3453842

>>3453779
I've experienced that feel too, I blamed it on victor hugo.

>> No.3453845

What are you reading? Lots of Russian classics? I read a lot and I never think about gawd.

>> No.3453853

Yes, definitely. For me, it was C. S. Lewis and Tolstoy that made me question just how beneficial atheism was, and I started going back to my Roman Catholic roots.

I've since (re-)rejected all that shit, but at the time it was nice.

>> No.3453867

I was a Christian, then I was a self-proclaimed agnostic, then a neopagan, then an atheist, then I contemplated Buddhism for a while, then read the Tao Te Ching and thought I was content with just contemplating its wisdom, then was a Christian again.

Now I don't call myself anything. I believe in an infinite reality of which we're all part. And reincarnation. And enlightenment. But I wouldn't really call myself a Buddhist.

Shit, I don't know.

But yeah, reading caused most of that. Except the neopagan phase. That was peer pressure.

>> No.3453872

I think I have all the necessary equipment to function as a Christian. I can claim to believe purely for fun, for show. I know that the traditional God is mere fiction and doesn't exist but that doesn't matter to me because when I die I will go to heaven and it will be awesome. I think I've internalised all the common Christian arguments such that, I can pull off a pretty good facsimile of one.

I don't think this position of thinking Christianity and Atheism can mututally co-exist is terribly stable. For instance, if I actually believed instead of just pretending to, then would my belief reach so deep it would try to strangle my atheism away? I don't know, I don't know to what extent actual belief extends. How can you weigh one persons belief against someone elses etc. "I believe more than you" it all just gets meaningless to me after a while.

I think I've got a touch of the old postmodernism to be honest. Also I'm sure there are many Kierkegaardians waiting to pounce in this thread.

>> No.3453903

That's the feeling of a truly open mind.

>> No.3453905

>>3453872
What do you think the Kierkegaardians would have to say?

>> No.3453911

Congratulations OP you're getting more intelligent.

>> No.3453913

>>3453905

Something like "stop being an ignorant facetious dickhole" To which they would presumably be right.

>> No.3453969

I feel you OP. The more I read about mystical traditions and via negativa the more I understand the feelings I felt and defined as God as a child. Having experienced what they were talking about (at least I think I did) the more I open up to the idea in believing in God.

>> No.3453981

More of a focus on faith than on some kind of God per se, but yes absolutely.

>> No.3453993

Also I'm impressed with your willingness to even post this here. /lit/ has more than a few malevolent trolls.

>> No.3454017

>>3453872
I mean, the concept of faith basically is atheism and Christianity coexisting. You know it to be false, but you believe it anyway.

>> No.3454012

I'm an atheist, I've always been an atheist and probably will forever be an atheist. But the thing is that the word "God" is filled with dirt, with horrible ideas all the way, from institutions, from mediocrity, from atheists themselves...

Literature opened me up to a God that is unlike all that and is not anymore an object, a person, a being, but a measure of the inconceivable, the origin and the end, the gap, the leap, the act, the connection. The name "God" does not predate God and is, in fact, the name that we give to that which we already serve. And this servitude is far from obeying rules or lowering our heads, but an acceptance of our space, of our inner most desires, which are nothing like our impulses, but what drives us. And this spirituality is an act of rebellion against the limitations that surround us, limitations of concept, knowledge, power, vanity, as much as it is an act of faith, faith necessary for us to surrender to what we are and to what things are, without conformity, but addressing necessities that are human and artistic.

Religion is reunion and I think the problem is we are not united with religion to begin with, even less with whatever religion is trying to unite us. Words are dirty. I dislike most of religious talk, but I have faith that they are all truths, corrupted by strange mundane relationships between signs.

>> No.3454054

>>3453779

do you even know what wittgenstein means by the unsayable?

>> No.3454055

McManus always used to say, "I don't believe in God, but I'm afraid of him".

Well... I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Kaiser Soze

>> No.3454061

>>3453779
Look up apatheism.

>> No.3454074

>>3454012
great post, i have nothing to add

>> No.3454075

>>3454017

I get this, but something still doesn't feel right about it to me. I mean I can act as a Christian and other people can even think I am a sincere one, but something is still missing, some indefinable core constituent which I think I lack.

Anyway, I'm much more interested in this personal aspect of what faith means to people individually over the circlejerky debates around ontology and anthropic principles and so on.

>> No.3454101
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3454101

>the Wittgensteinian "unsayable"
>The Absolute in Hegel

Oh look, another attempt to smuggle the cosmological proof back into philosophy incognito

>> No.3454111

>>3454054
Yes. I know it isn't a conventional interpretation, but I find that by tying some of his statements in the Tractatus to things he wrote in his letters and in his notebooks, you can certainly find some formulation of God in the unsayable.

"There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical."

"Propositions can express nothing that is higher"

So clearly Wittgenstein isn't even a positivist in the sense that he is merely attempting to demarcate the sayable from the unsayable, still acknowledging that there is an unsayable which can never be expressed as propositions.

From his personal writings you'll find things like this:

"The meaning of life, i . e .
the meaning of the world, we can call God ." (1916 notebooks)

"I have managed in my
book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it." (letter about the Tractatus)

>> No.3454130
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3454130

>>3454101

>mfw this sails completely over the head of everyone here

Good to see there's still a few sharp ones around here

>> No.3454133

>>3453779
>I don't even know that what I'm contemplating as "God"

ya and just leave it as that, if you go any further you're being dishonest and that is the beginning of religion

>> No.3454134

>believing in the supernatural

Just get out. You are clearly underdeveloped.

>> No.3454144

>>3454130
>
>mfw this sails completely over the head of everyone here
>Good to see there's still a few sharp ones around here

not really, Kant would agree with wittgenstein and he demolished ontological/cosmological proofs of God

there may be something there, but it's incoherent to us and we can't talk about it

>> No.3454138

>>3454130
People make it way too obvious when they are samefagging these days.

>> No.3454148

>>3453779

Why call it God? God has too many terrible and retarded associations stuck to it, i.e a conscious entity, that loves and has powers, blablabla...

why can't you just be in awe of nature and reality, and leave it at that? Why you gotta make up stupid shit

>> No.3454149

>>3454144

The x Kant left is not anything like a 'God', it has no moral qualities--no POSITIVE qualities whatsoever, actually

>> No.3454152

>>3454138

Looking straight up and you still missed it :)

>> No.3454156

>>3454144
This. There's a pretty big difference between limits in the epidemiological system to an infinite and good being.

>> No.3454159

>>3454149
>The x Kant left is not anything like a 'God'..'God', it has no moral qualities--no POSITIVE qualities whatsoever, actually

you've never heard of negative theology?

>> No.3454160

>>3454111

The unsayable is the existence of anything at all as they are. What he's saying is that nonsenical expressions such as one finds in theology, ethics, aesthetics etc. are expressions of wonderment, but can be no facts.

This leaves no space for a traditional belief in God. However, one can commit himself, to say, a christian worldview and the christian ethics without believing at all in the resurrection. It's passionate commitment.

>Queer as it sounds: the historical accounts of the Gospels might, in the historical sense, be demonstrably false, & yet belief would lose nothing through this: but not because it has to do with 'universal truths of reason'! rather, because historical proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief. This message (the Gospels) is seized on by a human being believingly (i.e. lovingly): That is the certainty of this "taking-for-true", nothing else.

>> No.3454161

>>3454156
>epidemiological system

lol, you mean epistemological

>> No.3454162

>>3454149
>it has no moral qualities
And?

>> No.3454165

But wait.

Someone pushed the original "philosophy incognito" into "cosmological proof" scenario first! Damn right you push it back.

I don't want to play this game no more.

>> No.3454166

>>3454162

>THEN WHY CALL IT GOD?

>>3454159

I have; the bigger problem is that no one untutored in philosophy has.

>> No.3454226

>>3454166
>the bigger problem is that no one untutored in philosophy has.

why should we care about the common folk?

>> No.3454228

>>3454226

Well, I mean, they are your biggest consumer of religious wares, so to speak

>> No.3454230
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3454230

>mfw I realized God exists

>> No.3454235

>>3453779
most sensible people eventually arrive to the conclusion that what we "know" amounts to fuck all so therefore one must "believe" in something in order to have a framework for an enjoyable, productive life

>> No.3454240

I'm an atheist, but then again, I pretty much stick to bitter, bitter, realism so I might be a bad example

>> No.3454258 [DELETED] 

>>3454230
http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread3363400#p3363899
http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread3373294#p3376282

Stop this bullshit.

>> No.3454263

>>3454230
http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread3363400#p3363899
http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread3373294#p3376282

stop this bullshit.

>> No.3454267

>>3454263
hey, only one of those was me

also, don't hate just cause you don't know that feel

>> No.3454274 [DELETED] 
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3454274

Faith should be provisional. Direct experience of the Absolute is attainable, but sentimental or rationalistic acceptance of dogma--faith--is a necessary first step. Observe a traditional religion's exoteric rituals and strictures, become initiated into that religion's mystical path (if applicable), and perform the esoteric rituals and contemplative practices prescribed by your spiritual master in that tradition.

>> No.3454281

>>3453779
I've always thought god was the universal plan, the chain of cause and effect, in everything starting from the chemical level up to collisions of astral bodies, and lord knows what else, and everything in between. He is simply everything that is, and while we can't change him, we can try to touch him.

Then I started questioning what consciousness might be, and the possibility of a soul existing, and that sort of confounded my whole "interaction theory."

Now I've sort of taken the lazy route of throwing my hands skyward and saying "I dunno."

>> No.3454285

Clearly you're not reading the right books.

>> No.3454525

>>3453779
WIttgenstein was devout Protestant since the age of 29. He chose not to submit God to any particular dogma of human understanding, but he definitely believed in a more concrete notion of God than simply something "unsayable".

I am of this mindset as well. I became an atheist in high school and was riding that for a while, but then in college I got a BS in biology and a BA in philisophy, booth of which taught me my own presumptuous idiocy for presuming to know God's existence. I have since become a Christian and now have the most consistent world view I have ever had, but it is hard to describe myself as such considering all of the baggage that comes with being "Christian" etc.

Fancis Bacon describes my intellectual journey with God and religion perfectly:

"It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion."

But I am careful to keep from saying I somehow have all the answers or know something assuredly etc. Even Aquinas and Anselm offered their proofs of the existence of God merely to show belief in God was not irrational. Neither believed them to be infallible deductive proofs as they are oft presented

>> No.3454533
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3454533

You've made an important first step OP.

Now read this book.

>> No.3454545

>>3454533

In a few months this pretty will be mine.

Oh yes it will.

>> No.3454598

>>3453993
Even trolls have a God; the God of Trolls, the Troll God.

>> No.3454601

>>3454598

TROLLS FOR THE TROLL GOD!