I put some scriptural credibility challenges (https://write.as/dvfi4zeyotiky.md) to a Christian apologist on X some weeks ago. The usual rigmarole followed in which he first accused me of being either Indian or Jewish (to pre-emptively disqualify me? Somehow?) so I had to post a photo where I touch bologna. Then came the physique test, to which I replied both Aquinas & Lewis were fat, disqualifying their works by his own rule. So it went, throwing things at the wall to see if anything stuck that would spare him from having to attempt a proper answer. Finally, he grew exasperated and said "Look, argument is a waste of my time & yours. Just go read Mere Christianity, Lewis answered all your questions decades ago."So I went and bought Mere Christianity. Leery, because this has happened before; a different apologist promised me my challenges were refuted in The Case for Christ, which turned out to be a snipe hunt; sending me off in search of something that wasn't there, to get rid of me without conceding. When I later confronted him, he was unremorseful, instead tickled that he'd tricked an atheist into reading so much apologetics. Then smoke bomb + ninja vanish.Now I'm halfway through book 3 of 4, in Mere Christianity. Parts 1 & 2 purported to reconstruct something close to Christian doctrine from first principles, but amounts to projecting human morality onto the universe (denying it's reducible to instinct, socialization or the superego) plus Lewis' misunderstanding of what the big bang & evolution entail. These wrong turns then compound, baked in as foundational dependencies in his chain of reasoning, errors carried forward. The greater problem however is that I'm now roughly halfway through the book, and there's no sign Lewis will ever address the credibility challenges I was promised he refutes. I begin to fear I was too trusting, and have been deceived by Christians a second time. I don't want to believe this is true, but the remaining chapter titles don't bode well. Should I conclude Christians are tricksters, and broadly untrustworthy? Charitably, maybe he didn't know, having never read Mere Christianity himself. It's "The Big Famous Christian Apologetics Book" that always receives glowing recommendations, he might've naturally assumed it would cover everything. The enduring popularity of faith promoting hoaxes also testifies to a tendency in this crowd not to investigate the basis for their beliefs if there's reason for concern that what they might find would be injurious to their faith. If there is some book that actually does answer my challenges, what is it? Also, how can I trust that I'm not being given the runaround for a third time?
>>25012738Lewis denies human moral feeling is explicable as instinct. Which is defensible to a point, as certainly not all moral feeling is encoded in instinct. Instinct is the crude morality of animals. Our moral feelings are too detailed and granular to account for this way.Instinct may explain the sense of fairness in monkeys, and some of our modern morals (concerning, say, political corruption or income inequality) seem like higher level expressions of these primordial impulses. But the remainder is socialization, which explains how cultures can differ so drastically on questions like whether dogs are acceptable to eat.Lewis denies that he’s talking about socialization, placing feelings he describes in a way which makes it clear he really does mean socialization, and putting their developmental emergence before the age when socialization begins, like instinct. What is that feeling, he asks. Who put it there, if not Yahweh, god of Abraham?That’s rather putting the cart before horse, though. Because there is something similar to what he means which precedes socialization, called the superego. Christians also perform this sleight of hand with many other presuppositions, placing their conclusion at the start of any chain of reasoning so that reasoning can never lead anywhere which disconfirms the premise. They justify this with rationales like “reason is only possible if my religion is true” when if you dig into that a little, they’re appealing to theistic arguments cribbed from the Greeks, who used them to support gods that Christians reject. It isn’t specific to Yahweh, then, and saying “but Christ is the Logos” is just a more elegant semantical way of doing the same thing, defining their desired conclusion as the foundation of and precursor to logic itself, so that no one may reason outside of that framework.
>>25012765But, one question he never asks is “do we need metaphysical grounding for our morals, in order for civilization to function?” I’d argue that we plainly don’t. Civilizations with varying moral codes have flourished or floundered throughout recorded history, some existing for longer than both the Christian and Jewish religions.There are better and worse morals, as judged by the level of dysfunction in a given culture, which may be judged in turn against its own ideals. But we can get more grounded than that, if we try. Game theory furnishes a means of mapping out & justifying rules of interpersonal conduct on a purely pragmatic basis. The Prisoner’s Dilemma, with which I trust most are familiar enough that I needn’t recapitulate it, reveals the archetypical strategies people use to protect themselves or take advantage of others in a low trust environment.But, it also shows us how to build trust, and how not to lose it so easily. Forever Grudge throws out any alliance following a single betrayal, not accounting for accidents or variations of mood. Always Forgive is the hapless doormat Yeshua implores us to be. Tit for Tat is how most people actually behave, but it’s prone to retaliation loops. Tit for Two Tats is then revealed to be the optimal strat, letting the first offense slide in case it was a fluke, to prevent never-ending cycles of revenge at a small personal cost.None of this was etched into the fabric of the universe! We concluded to it by reason. Which is also how I conclude to truth as the anchor of morality. I agree with apologists that morality must be fixed to some immovable landmark or principle, else corruption and confusion may distort it over time into anything.My thinking goes like this: On a hierarchy of values one might optimize for, truth must necessarily come first, because the moment you compromise it for some other value, you lose the ability to optimize for that value effectively (something you need accurate information in order to do).Comment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>25012688>Anything to say about the other points?Not much, but I guess I could say for point 7, "The Problem of Interaction precludes immaterial souls" that I believe there are versions of Christianity that don't require strictly immaterial souls? There's the idea of soul-sleep, where between now and the resurrection, the dead are just unconscious. And in support of that death is often referred to as sleep in the New Testament. And if you want to avoid that and still have immediate heaven and hell, I guess you could just say that when you die God uploads your soul-pattern to a new body, so there's no point where the soul is without a medium. I don't know how heretical that view would be though.
>>25012773You could also say that the soul itself is composed of subtle material that interacts with the body and separates out when a person dies, and science just isn't advanced enough to detect it yet. Maybe God has designed it in such a way that we can't detect it so that we won't be able to mess with it. Maybe God mindwipes anyone who figures it out.
>>25012773"Human nature presents human minds with a puzzle which they have not yet solved and may never succeed in solving, for all that we can tell. The dichotomy of a human being into ‘soul’ and ‘body’ is not a datum of experience. No one has ever been, or ever met, a living human soul without a body… Someone who accepts — as I myself do, taking it on trust — the present-day scientific account of the Universe may find it impossible to believe that a living creature, once dead, can come to life again; but, if he did entertain this belief, he would be thinking more ‘scientifically’ if he thought in the Christian terms of a psychosomatic resurrection than if he thought in the shamanistic terms of a disembodied spirit." -Arnold Toynbee
If written erotica is aimed at straight women, why the fuck do they keep writing the sex scenes in a way that only describes how the female feels? and not the male??I want to read about the male characters body reactions and emotions during sex!
>>25005030Because, surprise, WOMEN WANT TO SELF INSERT AS THE WOMAN!
>>25011726Yes they do. Twilight was popular because of it.
>>25011728Why is OP so clueless then?
>>25009617>muh transphobiadie faggot
>>25011436There are gay/bi men(male) who don't care much for mainstream gay culture.
What are some mistakes you think george grrm martin made while writing a song of ice and fire?For me it was >including lady stoneheart>making 5 books take span of 2 years instead of 5 or moreI'm not talking here about including 5 year gap, just make time gaps beetwen chapters longer. Having 14 year olds win duels against grown ass men is not believeable>autistically sticking to 7 booksThat's the big one for me, I'm pretty sure he's stuck in a writing limbo because he has no idea how to wrap up all the plotlines in just two books. Because of that we probably won't even get winds
>>25012619It still is a trilogyIt's just that the last book has 3+ volumes
>>25012651>Tolkien had unfinished worksBut he didn't submit them for publication. Every writer has unfinished works.
>>25012564Writing A Feast for Crows so he could worldbuild (his equivalent of masturbation) instead of focusing on the plot and the existing POV characters.Really, anything that has to do with Essos is a waste of time. Everyone we care about is or will be on Daenerys' side. Despite dedicating multiple POV characters toward fleshing out Essos, its nations are just comically evil mooks compared to the factions related to the war for the Iron Throne.I simply do not care about what Rizzdhar lo Dumfak thinks about Daenerys' tax policy. I also do not care about a sand nigger getting burned to death when his story role was less important than his ability to serve as a worldbuilding tool.
>>25012717rektHow will Gurmfags ever recover?
Their tits weren't big enough
>Your age>The last book you finished and your thoughts on it>The book you're currently reading and your thoughts on that
>>24991290>33>The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour HershAnother banger from the investigative lad>Religion and Nothingness by Keiji NishitaniHard, but good. Impossible to parse if you haven't read Nietzsche or Kant or Heidegger beforehand.
>>24991290>27>NeuromancerIt was good. I got a bit lost at times because of the way it's written. Really liked the ending and how it was sort of sudden. >The Revenge of the Sith Novelizationbecause ppl at Twitter said it's actually good. I'm about 1/3 in and I'm not that impressed but what did I expect. Been trying to get back into the habit of reading and also start writing, just for the heck of it. I have lots of ideas for stories and characters, I just don't have that any time left to draw or play with them anymore.
>>24991290>23>blood meridianmy esl ass is not built for this>moby dicki think i'll return to reading webnovels for now
>>25011122There's a "Best fucked up books thread" on the farms that's pretty good.The thread is slower since one of the biggest contributors there did a backflip but that's another story.
>>24994821I would definitely add Chesterton and Tolstoy to that list. I think that sincere, deeply analyzed moral belief is not tiresome moralfagging, any more than the hero's journey is. Knee jerk disgust reaction (even when warranted) is moralfagging, by people who are essentially better-programmed NPCs. It is the difference between a "Christian writer" and a "good writer who is Christian".However, Screwtape in particular goes down so smoothly because what is prescriptive about it is entirely implied. It was to the point that some particularly dense moralfags turned against it rather than engage their brains.You can reason with people, but that requires reason being on your side. Blurting out the answer in a polemic is easier but makes people suspicious for good reason.It's a rare writer, almost unheard of in modern times, who is aware of this.
None More Black Edition>Old:>>25000152>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
>>25012562I liked it long ago, and I love it now. it's just that there's absolutely no contradiction whatsoever between Watts being brilliant and a lazy fucking hack at the same time. In fact, /lit/ is the single substrate most conductive towards discourse discovering all the ways in which their everyone's brilliant favorite authors might also be fucking lazy hacks. /grrm/ has elevated doing that into an art form.
I'm reading fire upon the deep, it's great. Next up is soldier of the mist. What am I in for
>>25012568>gurm>brilliant
>>25012568I'm 100% with you on the theory that he stitched some pre-existing articles together and called it a sequel, and that he was bored by the endDon't even hold it against him
>>25011533>>25011786I'm not familiar with any of these books.What makes a book more "difficult" than others? What are some markers of "literary material"?
Listening to audio books and calling it "reading" is equivalent to prompting AI slop and calling it "art", no?
No.Nothing in your comparison works. You are just trying to use stale bait to get people to argue about audiobooks again. This isn't twatter. You don't get paid to rage bait here.
>>25012357Sometimes I read with my ears.
Sometimes the narrator does such an exceptional job that it behooves one to listen to the audio version.
>>25012549A great example is Dracula read by Christopher Lee. His voice is perfect for reading gothic horror and he did a fantastic job of it.
>>25012387But he DOES get paid to screenshot this thread and post it on Twitter/reddit/tiktok/wherever, probably
When you hear people discuss classics they’ve read, women seem much more likely to say Lolita. On Reddit and Twitter threads about it or YouTube analysis or clips from the films, the comments are usually mostly women discussing it. There is an even a popular fashion trend among women based on it. But why? Where does the fascination come from?
>>25010475Don't be obstuse. Men consume enormous amounts of pornographic dross via video streaming, far far more than any women's kindle erotica.
I just realized that Annabel Leigh is named after the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe. Is this just a reference by Nabokov, or did Humbert Humbert make up the character of Annabel to elicit sympathy in the reader? I hope not, because I really relate to Humbert Humbert.
>>25010890I didn’t say otherwise. But the weird stuff being promoted isn’t necessarily because that’s what’s actually popular. Certain owners are purposeful amplifying it.
>>25002090>Why is Lolita so popular among women?Same reason it's popular among men. It's legitimately really well written and most people like the thrill of reading about something just a bit taboo.
>>25012558Both cope and non-sequitur. Wouldn't the same absolving cope also apply to women's written erotica, that the producers and marketers are the ones truly at fault? And wouldn't both deflections be an instance of handwaving to pretend the moral sin lies elsewhere to the consumer? And here the culpability of men is much higher: porn is created with real women, written erotica is created with keystrokes and ink; and men consume vastly more video streaming pornography than women consume written erotica.
Reading books without first learning about memetics is incredibly dangerous. Without properly understanding the spread and evolution of ideas, you run a near 100% chance of infecting yourself with a memetic hazard. That is to say, you will start believing something harmful.See, ideas are selected for and compete in much the same way as living things. Unlike most life, however, ideas cannot exist on their own. They must parasitize a host to propagate and ensure their continued existence. Thus, ideas that are uniquely effective in steering the behavior of hosts towards the survival of the idea (rather than the host) are the ones that spread and endure. In this way people can become subverted by ideas. Loyal to a force outside of themselves, acting against themselves in service of an informational virus. This is no different from any other virus (or even your own genetics, but that itself could be considered an infohazard).Know the dangers. Immunize yourself.
>>25010604>see youtube video about cognitohazards>hover mouse over>the preview shows the forbidden thumb breaking technique>oh shit it's real infohazards>do not click videoI win.
>>25012661>taking the trouble to redirect a shitpost
>>25012613NTA. An idea is encoded in brains, expressed by flapping gums and the gum flapping is encoded back into brain signals. No need for anything except physical interactions.I don't subscribe to materialism but there is "material" stuff as in stuff described by physics, genetics and memetics only deal with material stuff.
>>25012753A meme is literally a concept. >I don't subscribe to materialismThen if concepts are materialist, give an example of something that isn't.
>>25012753An idea requires consciousness, the only difference between a signal and patterned noise is interpretation by a conscious being.inb4 AI, it's trained based on conscious beings and does not in fact always distinguish signal from noise.
Nothing but druggie babbling. When I read someone like Joyce, or Faulkner, I know I will be rewarded for putting in the effort to understand the more cryptic or difficult passages. Even if I do not at first fully comprehend a passage, their writing is beautiful and thought-provoking. But this is just schizophrenic babbling. Pynchon even admitted himself he just shit this out while he was le high. Complete nonsense, waste of time.
>filtered by Gravity's Rainbow
>>25012521This.
>>25012496>Nothing but druggie babbling. When I read someone like Joyce, or Faulkner, I know I will be rewarded for putting in the effort to understand the more cryptic or difficult passages. Even if I do not at first fully comprehend a passage, their writing is beautiful and thought-provoking. But this is just schizophrenic babbling.>Pynchon even admitted himself he just shit this out while he was le high.>Complete nonsense, waste of time.
This book is a good way to filter out pretentious pseudo-intellectuals. Whenever someone starts speaking about it's safe to ghost them out of your life.
>>25012496He writes Wagnerian Opera for blue haired enby libs; V, The Crying Lot of 49, and Gravity's Rainbow are a ring cycle for people who simultaneously want women to transition and be able to have abortions. Pynchon's entire metaphysical exploration of life and death cycles amounts to an eschaton, a cosmic battle between Orphism and Gnosticism, in which man's liberation from darkness is predicated on the legalisation of medical-grade marijuana and the banning of assault weapons.
Severian gets way too much pussy for me to self insert as him, and for that reason I'm out.
>>25012712Are you admitting to being unable to follow the plot unironically?
>>25012718The things you mentioned definitely are a big part of it. But once Severian eats Thecla's corpse and inherits her memories, which recontexulised the entire narrative thus far, was when I really got beyond just passingly interested. The entire framing device and the way it sticks to it so adamantly despite how bizarre and requiring explanation so many of the weird is.
>>25012741Stupid cunt. Probably American, definitely obese.
>>25012743I meant irrelevant to what draws people to the story, not that it doesn't exist.
>>25012749*Also the entire framing device and the way it sticks to it so adamantly despite how bizarre and requiring explaining so much of it is.
>Rilke, Pushkin, Baudelaire and Rimbaud will never make it to /lit/'s top 100 because we are the literary equivalent of /sci/ being populated by guys who can't solve textbook ordinary differential equations
>>25012512All of those writers suck. star wars EU books from the 90s mog them and have done more for humanity than them
Discuss good narrative history books on any subject.>1776 is a nonfiction historical account written by David McCullough and published in 2005 by Simon & Schuster, focusing on the military campaigns of the American Revolutionary War during that pivotal year, particularly General George Washington's leadership of the Continental Army against British forces under General William Howe.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77347.1776https://www.audible.com/pd/1776-Audiobook/B002V8KSTW
Conquistador: Hernán Cortés, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs by Buddy Levy>It was a moment unique in human history, the face-to-face meeting between two men from civilizations a world apart. Only one would survive the encounter. In 1519, Hernán Cortés arrived on the shores of Mexico with a roughshod crew of adventurers and the intent to expand the Spanish empire. Along the way, this brash and roguish conquistador schemed to convert the native inhabitants to Catholicism and carry off a fortune in gold. That he saw nothing paradoxical in his intentions is one of the most remarkable—and tragic—aspects of this unforgettable story of conquest.>In Tenochtitlán, the famed City of Dreams, Cortés met his Aztec counterpart, Montezuma: king, divinity, ruler of fifteen million people, and commander of the most powerful military machine in the Americas. Yet in less than two years, Cortés defeated the entire Aztec nation in one of the most astonishing military campaigns ever waged. Sometimes outnumbered in battle thousands-to-one, Cortés repeatedly beat seemingly impossible odds.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2774104-conquistador
The Great Siege: Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford>Malta, then one of the easternmost bastions of Christendom, was attacked in 1565 by the Sultan of Turkey with 200 ships and 40,000 men. This dramatic account, based on the historical records, tells how six or seven hundred Knights of St. John, with some 9,000 men, defended the little island during one of the most famous and crucial sieges in history.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2547394.The_Great_Siege
>>25000622Thanks.
>>25006269More stuff around this time period?
Men to Match My Mountains: The Opening of the Far West 1840-1900 by Irving Stonehttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7649061-men-to-match-my-mountains
> Those who reject at once the method of Wolf, and of the Critique of Pure Reason, can have no other aim but to shake off the fetters of science, to change labour into sport, certainty into opinion, and philosophy into philodoxy.
>>25009862*Rapes you*How about now huh?
>>25008739>anything that cares about history, semantics and prejudice is philodoxycall me a philodoxist rather than a philosopher
>>25011712that's not what he said retard
>>25011803i'm reading a separate essay on philodoxy, dipshit
>>25010112Nigga really just tried to pass off a chatgpt response as his own post
I do not care for the Bible. It insists upon itself.
>>25010639Jesus is not God.next time read a magazine or a textbook on programming, quit wasting peoples time like we care
>>25010646any update ? um, that sounds like you're being gaslit by people who don't water their plants
>>25010367wtf bro you have to love jewish mythology and retarded stories about jewish kvetching in a desert thousands of kms away. /lit/ voted it #1 in the chart. bro you have to read it. I for one love Paul and Abraham; such great men.
>>25010818They are and Roman Catholicism and Sunni Salafi Islam are the only two real religions on earth
How true is this? And what would be the best (either highest quality or most illustrative) examples of each?
>>25011774/threadfemale fantasy stuff is always centered around power or powerlessnessfor men, it's about wishing to be the object of desire for once
>>25010831>He doesn't read metaphysical erotica
>>25011774>>25012655Increasingly, the male sexual fantasy is one of submission and denial. It is to be a FemDom socially or a FemSub sexually in which they, the man, takes the role of the object of desire. In the social/dating world, it is to deny women for being not up to standards, and in the bedroom it is to be the center of attention, the person whose pleasure matters most. Futa x Male porn caters to this, because the male anal/prostate orgasm is always the priority. And he has it served to him on a silver platter, like a queen resting on her throne while servants fan her and plop grapes into her mouth. More and more, modern man envies the Stacey, not the Chad.Sometimes people refer to this as “topping from the bottom”. And of course. Why would men not envy women the way women envy men? To have their pleasure, satisfaction and sexual gratification be the priority, through which intercourse ultimately centers around? Why would men not envy having their orgasm be focused and worked on to fulfillment as often as the female orgasm?To not think this even possible is to have bought into a caricature of the feminist description of the world so fully that men are socially and functionally invisible, or any other pernicious half-truths of the extremely fragile current zeitgeist.“Topping from the bottom” is extremely common, not just among gay men, but especially much more so among straight women, OP's pic being exhibit A. Women want to be dominated on their terms, and the moment the dom fails his job, he's fired, only to be replaced by a new Top. To reap the greatest benefits from sex for as little physical or emotional labor as possible. To be the partner who inspires such lust and enthusiasm in the Dom that it makes the Sub feel irresistible and wanted. In other words, to finally become the object of desire. Why would anyone assume men have not seen, let alone envied, that role?Some might object to this and say “But this isn't a sexual fantasy – this is a power fantasy!” Yes. What's the difference?
>>2501079150 shades of grey became an epidemic. Both genres seem reasonably popular but most writers want a twist on things.
>>25012402Only because they're not brave enough to criticize their gf or wife even among strangers.
