>>25380468
I still believe in a Creator but not quite God as a being as described in religion. It’s sort of ironic because I was pretty hardcore religious at one point, I even had a Substack about my religion. (I deleted it when my crisis of faith worsened, it felt dishonest to speak on religion when I am unsure).

It all goes back to the problem of evil. God exists, certainly, but does the being who let WWII for example happen deserve to be celebrated and adored? I think not.

>anon you don’t see the whole plan
>anon evil is the price of free will
>anon it’ll all be worth it someday
It’s all just cope.

>>25380468
Your doubt is could be coming from a place of self-doubt. If you believe that you're unworthy of love then you'll reflect that back at your idea of your creator. If you don't deserve the people in your life's love then why would an all knowing God love you? The whitepill is realizing that God created you out of love despite the people in your life that might feel otherwise. Those other people are no more than variations of yourself judging you from your own expectations. The people are limited by their narrow spectrum of understanding, just as you are as you question their points of view. Meanwhile God is above the prism and created you with the understanding of the entire spectrum.

>>25380468
Fear and Trembling

>>25380494
>but does the being who let WWII for example happen deserve to be celebrated and adored? I think not.
How do you avoid antinatalism then? All life is violent on some level and WW2 was a uniquely human phenomenon.

>>25380468
Just commenting to say I am in the same boat.
For me it was the problem of hell. I cannot square the existence of an infinitely loving god with the doctrine of infinite torture. The standard response of "hell is locked from the inside" does not make much sense to me.

>>25380468
You're assuming God may have malice, that he may judge you wrong for sincere attempts to be good with incorrectly placed faith.
Consider the promise of Heaven with this God. If he could be so malicious to eternally torture saints who lacked the proper specific faith and religion, can you really trust Heaven to be Heaven? It would be Heaven as defined by something evil, not something good.
Death is what you are scared of, not the afterlife. If you're being honest with yourself, you have no idea what fate you await, in any possible afterlife. You don't know the rules. Whatever happens is not really your fault. All you can try to do is to live life on your own terms, to have strong morals and principles that you strive to adhere to. If there is an afterlife, no matter what it has in store for you, you will want to know you lived your life with virtue and honor.
Death is scary. You need something to ground you. Get a wife. Have children. You are life. Go experience life. You'll have plenty of time to experience death, and the afterlife if there is one. Go live while you're alive.

>>25380468
Why would you even care about your eternal soul if you don't have faith?

Some days I worry and doubt and fear silence. Other days the plain blunt fact of God is unveiled for me as sun through clouds and it strikes me and takes me and it is absolutely impossible to look anywhere without seeing it and I'm just like oh.

>>25380468
I don't believe in supernatural,. omnipresent beings, but I do have some recommendations for you:
Silence (Shusaku Endo)
Christ Recrucified (Nikos Kazantzakis)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Nikos Kazantzakis)
The Monk (Matthew Lewis)

>>25380494
>finite suffering is an insurmountable problem for the infinite good
We deserve hell. By all that is just every moment we are not in eternal torment is a blessing. People who get oneshotted by the problem of evil don’t understand the infinite transgression we make towards God every single day of our foolish lives.

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>>25380468
>the terror of losing your faith
You meant to say the freedom of being unshackled.

>your eternal soul
No such thing you, you narcissistic little boy.

>by attempting to cast your fragile and very limited intellect (brainlet level for me) onto a gigantic scale in order to make a cosmic decision
Humanity isn't as important as you consider it to be, Anon. We had one chance, one planet, and we already fucked it all up. You're not damned, you're human. Nothing more, nothing less.

As per the maxim, OP is a faggot and loves sucking cock, but I'll humor you
>The Plague, by Camus
>Trainspotting, by Welsh
And I know it's /a/, but fuck you
>Vagabond, by Takehiko Inoue

>>25380691
Same for me. Except that I solved this problem. I just don't believe in hell. Hell sounds so retarded. I reject the idea of hell.
I also don't believe in heaven either anymore. Like what am I gonna do there? I think dying and stopping to exist is better than eternal heaven.

>>25380837
Actually I think lost all my faith :(
It only makes sense to me that religion got created because humans were scared. They had no explanations for many things so their way of coping was to explain it through religion.
And heaven is obviously a way to cope with death. We humans are scared of death. The idea that we will just stop to be, that our loved ones are just gone forever hurts so much that we reject the idea of eternal death with le heaven and le "he is in a better place now". To me this is clearly cope and therefore not real. Plus heaven or the idea of reincarnation is also a product of us taking ourselves way too important. As if the entire galaxy centers around us and we are so special.
In my childhood and teens I was a proud Christian. It meant so much to be that I still say that I am Christian lol. It'd hurt too much if I say I wasn't. I pray too sometimes. But never for myself lol. "Please God, make my investments successful." Lmao.

>>25380468
You mention reading all of these other voices, but did you read the Bible? Have you read Luke 15?
It is known and expected that some people will falter. God knows you are fallible and is more than willing to have you back at any time. He won't shame or judge you upon your return. The prodigal son was bettered by having been a pig boy. Maybe you heard the story of Job, having faith no matter the circumstance, and thought that had to be you too, But Job's story would be meaningless if he were not a special case. If all men were like that, there would be no need to describe it.

I think, if you didn't still have faith, if you were the kind of person that could go without faith, you would not be feeling any terror at the prospect. I think you will find something to believe in no matter what. I know you're asking about books on losing faith, but it doesn't sound like you're struggling with faith itself, but with 'manifestations and interpretations of ''God's will'' and his absolute law'. Those are human things. Those are the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. It may be the people around you that you are losing faith in. If your experience with Christianity is akin to the modern American beliefs, then no one can blame you for becoming disillusioned. I think, rather than reading about the struggle of men losing their faith, it might be more worthwhile to read more widely about the thing you are supposed to have faith in.

I say take this, literally God-given, opportunity to find your faith anew. Identify what God looks like to you now. Are you only taking your ideas from the dominant beliefs in your culture? Do you know the history of your religion? Do you know what it looked like back in Rome, before it was altered by horrors of medieval Europe? Have you taken the time to look at what the other Christians are/were doing? Do you know what makes a Protestant, a Catholic, an Orthodox different from each other? Have you looked at the Gnostics? Do you know about the African Christians, the ones that existed before post-renaissance European missionaries? Find God for yourself, rather than relying on the God that was enforced on you.

>>25380854
>It only makes sense to me that religion got created because humans were scared. They had no explanations for many things so their way of coping was to explain it through religion.
It's a bit deeper than that. The tendency to assign a human-like mind and intention to nature is a direct consequence of nature being interpreted by a human mind. If we parse outside reality through our reason then it makes sense that reality itself seems to subject itself to human reason projected upon nature itself i.e. God.

But yeah, afterlife is pure cope.

>>25380919
>If we parse outside reality through our reason then it makes sense that reality itself seems to subject itself to human reason projected upon nature itself
Bro just circled back to chaos magick lmao

>>25380864
The Church of Latter Day Saints is the only true way

>>25380468
White Noise by Don Delillo

Anon, that fear of damnation for not believing is what the church uses to keep you hooked. It is a abrahamic tool to scare you. If you live a good life, a potential virtuous god cares much more about that than some devotion. Devotion is a human want. Humans filter everything through themselves. Millions of people die every day thst don't believe in god. They do not all go to scary hell. Hell is a fanfiction constructed by people like Dante. It would be best to not worry too much about the unknowable. You don't get to know what happens after death. In fact, no one will ever get to.

>>25380494
Western philosophy kind of shot itself in the foot with Christianity. The idea of God being this ultimate figure that is all-powerful, all-rational, and all-good, goes back to Pagans that supported Plato's philosophy during the Roman Empire. Christianity was born in this environment and adapted many characteristics of Plato's philosophy for its theology. Christianity also added that God is this fatherly moral law-giver that's invested in human affairs, something Plato's philosophy did not have. But there have always been issues with this.
>How can a being that's all loving, allow evil?
>How can this all forgiving being, torment people for eternity for not submitting before God?
>Why does God have a Son and why did he have to die for a rule God created?
>Why is God so invested in the affairs of humans in the first place?
There is a surprising amount of criticisms against Christianity even as far back as the 2nd century that people echo today. What eventually happened was that Christianity became the Roman state religion, shut down any objections to its movement, and essentially became the core tradition of European civilization (even if the whole religion made zero sense but hey that's how tradition works). Despite all of that there are still some Western philosophies & religions that has arisen over history that tried to provide an alternative to mainstream Christianity, although they remained rather niche.

>>25382074
>Why is God so invested in the affairs of humans in the first place?
I don't understand how this is meant to be a critique. It implies that God has a finite amount of attention he chooses to use to care about human beings, or whims and changing interests, like a human being would. But this makes no sense if you accept the idea of an omniscient God.

The Exorcist

>>25382085
Not him but I think people want God to be particularly invested in humans because it makes us special. If we're the same as all the rest, the squirrels, the slugs and the dirt, then there's no point either in giving God any special reverence.
It's about shared reverence. If we're not special to God, God shouldn't be special to us.

>>25382164
Also makes no sense. We are very obviously not the same as dirt or squirrels or whatever and it's pure sophistry to argue that we are. If you accept the idea of an omniscient God who created the world, even as the premise for an argument, then it follows that we are special to God because we are the only rational beings capable of thinking about God which exist, and God deliberately made us so.
But the argument that we have to be super special in some way or there's no point to revering God doesn't hold water for me either. God's omniscience and value of created things are not zero-sum, and again, if you accept an omniscient, omnipotent creator, you are necessarily accepting the idea that every single thing that exists was deliberately created out of an overflowing abundance of care and love for creation, that every single thing is willed to be and to continue to be. You could see this is a negative thing, like, 'god only values me as much as this rock' or whatever, but it's the opposite, that rock and you came to be precisely because God wished it to be so and the fact that you are a person with a rational nature rather than a rock should tell you something about the nature of God's will and intent for creation.
All these arguments, again, seem to come from some kind of projection of human tendencies onto God, whether limited attention or love/care that privileges, selects, and excludes some over others.

>>25382179
>We are very obviously not the same as dirt or squirrels or whatever and it's pure sophistry to argue that we are.
The only physical difference between us and them is the arrangement of our protons, electrons and neutrons.
You're taking for granted humans are special. You WANT to be special. That is different from being special. If God exists, we have no idea if we are special to him or not. We have no idea if we're the only rational beings. God made the universe with 2 trillion galaxies minimum.

>>25382184
>The only physical difference between us and them is the arrangement of our protons, electrons and neutrons
Are you going to argue that your rational nature has nothing to do with whether you are different from a rock or a squirrel? Sophistry, like I said. If you accept an omniscient, omnipotent God who created the world, then the arrangement of human beings and their nature is intentional and deliberate, and the fact of their intentional arrangement as something other than a rock or a squirrel should, again, tell you something of how God saw fit to create the world and human beings within it.
You are, again, acting as if God can only consider a handful of things special, that the manner in which he might consider one thing or another special is a zero-sum game, and that things like the physical size or arrangement of different parts or number of parts of the world have any bearing on the previous. But this doesn't follow, and it again smuggles in very human-like assumptions about what God would or would not find 'special' that make no sense to smuggle in. If your argument is that there is no way to know what God considers 'special,' why do you care if there are such-and-such number of galaxies? What bearing does this have on the argument, other than an appeal to very human ideas of relative scale?
I return to my point about God's love, attention, and care being overflowing rather than finite and contingent. Every single thing that exists, including the rock, squirrel, and human person in our argument, exists because God willed for it to be so. It doesn't matter to me that besides me, God created innumerable other things with vastly differing natures; he also created me, endowed me with a rational nature, and allowed the idea of his existence to be intelligible to me. No other things which exist, besides human beings, exist in this manner, and that says enough about the special nature of humankind to satisfy me and more.
And even if non-human beings with rational natures exist, the fact that human beings share in that rational nature but were created in the specific manner in which they exist, having their form, living in the specific environment of Earth, et cetera, is again because God deliberately willed it to be so, and his love and attention for human beings is not diminished by the existence of non-human rational beings who he also has love and attention for.

If you do not accept the existence of an omnipotent God then none of these arguments will follow. I hope you at least see the point of view I am coming from here and the way it leads me to view myself, other people, and the world, rather than taking this as a debate to be won. I don't believe rational argument alone can lead one to believe in God, but I do believe considering the ideas which follow from belief will give you, if nothing else, another perspective.

>>25382211
You're the one who keeps assuming a lot dude. There's no reason to assume the universe was made with love, attention and care. You have no proof for a lot of things you're claiming or implying. All we know is is that the universe was made. You're assigning judgments that aren't objective based on your own values and desires. You have no idea of his motive. It's irrational to assume you know anything about God. God could completely and thoroughly deceive you if he was so inclined.

>>25382085
It's good evidence its human made. Way back in the day, God was often used to justify the rigid hierarchies and inequality most people lived in. The King was chosen by God, obey the church & clergy as they offer the way to heaven, poverty is a virtue and you'll be rewarded after death.

It's worse with religions with divine commandments in their religious texts like Islam or Fundamentalist branches of Judaism. There are rules there that people would find disgusting and outdated. Things like polygamy, females as second-class people, corporal punishment, circumcision, slavery, etc. It's very clear reading these texts that they are not the words of God, but the words of Ancient Near Eastern men in a very specific human social order.

If God were real, the best thing this being can do to truly be "timeless" is to not involve itself with petty rules and social systems for a bunch of 2 legged apes. What's right or moral now can be considered barbaric tomorrow.

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>>25380494
I never really had a problem with misfortune that, for lack of a better term, resulted out of consequence. War, illness, horrific injuries, torture..etc all that merry shit seem impersonal to me on a conceptual level, as it could happen to anyone at any time in any place, which is why everybody runs with the idea of the banality of evil. As cruel as it is, it's all just a part of life unfolding and there's nothing anybody could do about it, and with a belief in divine justice, I keep holding onto the idea of every being getting what it truly deserves once we all return to dust.
But as I've said, that's strictly within the realm of consequence. I bash my head against the wall when it becomes a targeted effort instigated by the religious forces themselves, where the least you could do is wish harm upon ''the other'' and the highest honor you could bestow upon a believer is for him to slay them. I really struggle with making sense out of stomping out creation. Now of course I do find that some practices are more righteous than others, you're not gonna find me defending the noble savage myth and arguing that a culture that is predicated on ritual human sacrifice is worth saving, but it is all part of a mosaic, and when I start to really pay attention to the infinite amount of details packed into each and every corner of life itself, I have to ask myself why would it have to so full of signs of God yet be given texts that are explicitly calling for its belittlement and over simplifying it as nothing but a means to and end. Even when looking at biodiversity, I am appalled at how I'm supposed to think I am supposed to ignore all of this as nothing but illusory and a distraction from the Eternal that awaits beyond death.
That's where the liberal status quo really sucks me in: I can't argue with its emphasis on witnessing the finest details of life soar into our microscopes, because I -some may say out of weakness- really get a lot of joy out of observing the phenomenon of life. How the mind gets to twist and turn through Art, how fate always humbles us, how wide the spectrum of every single facet of our perception is, and so on. I do have moments where I lean into the idea of this whole thing being a prison, but as it is right now I'm just amazed at being here.
Then again the scriptures do warn of those who have forsaken the infinite for the finite, but I probably am just another fool. I just keep hoping that my naivete will be enough of a good argument for God not to cast me into eternal darkness.

>>25382269
>Polygamy
Men are naturally predisposed to it moreso than women. See Esther Vilar
>females as second-class citizens
You've seen just how far the feminist movement has taken the world. I'm all for women having the means to escape horrific abuse, but they really are very easily manipulated by tptb and are pawns in the sociopolitical chess game. Their concerns have taken a lot of vital space that would have otherwise been used to discuss very alarming issues, and their presence in the job market has opened up a lot of bullshit positions that have severely imbalanced the distribution of capital power for middle to lower class men, and they do it all with half the wages because they have no other choice to escape their households.
>corporal punishemnt
More effective at scaring scumfucks out of explicitly commiting crimes than a paid vacation in the can. Yeah there will be cases of abuse and discrimination and corruption and all that, but that's every justice system that has ever existed.
>circumcision
Not a big deal
>slavery
It's called having a job now. Slaves used to have constitutional rights over in the middle east. They were legally obliged to own a home, earn a living wage, and be assigned a wife. The owners who didn't fulfill those requirements were punished by the state.

>>25380468
>Books
Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

"Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world then seem to me.
The dream—and diction—of a God, did the world then seem to me; coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou— coloured vapours did they seem to me before creative
eyes. The creator wished to look away from himself,— thereupon he created the world.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world once seem to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction’s image and imperfect image—an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:—thus did the world once seem to me.
Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?

Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human madness, like all the Gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not unto me from the beyond!
What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom withdrew from me!
To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus speak I to backworldsmen.
Suffering was it, and impotence—that created all backworlds; and the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body—it groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the earth—it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head—and not with its head only—into “the other world.”

But that “other world” is well concealed from man, that dehumanised, inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence do not speak unto man, except as man.
Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak. Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?
Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most uprightly of its being—this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is the measure and value of things.
And this most upright existence, the ego—it speaketh of the body, and still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth with broken wings."

>>25380468
>on the terror of losing your faith?
"But one day will the solitude weary thee; one day will thy pride yield, and thy courage quail. Thou wilt one day cry: “I am alone!”
One day wilt thou see no longer thy loftiness, and see too closely thy lowliness; thy sublimity itself will frighten thee as a phantom. Thou wilt one day cry: “All is false!”
There are feelings which seek to slay the lonesome one; if they do not succeed, then must they themselves die! But art thou capable of it—to be a murderer?
<...>
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way to thyself! And past thyself and thy seven devils leadeth thy way!
A heretic wilt thou be to thyself, and a wizard and a sooth-sayer, and a fool, and a doubter, and a reprobate, and a villain.
Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the creating one: a God wilt thou create for thyself out of thy seven devils!
Thou lonesome one, thou goest the way of the loving one: thou lovest thyself, and on that account despisest thou thyself, as only the loving ones despise.
To create, desireth the loving one, because he despiseth! What knoweth he of love who hath not been obliged to despise just what he loved!
With thy love, go into thine isolation, my brother, and with thy creating; and late only will justice limp after thee.
With my tears, go into thine isolation, my brother. I love him who seeketh to create beyond himself, and thus succumbeth."

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Interesting and good thread for once here. I struggle with similar things as you. Only thing i can do is share my story.
When i was a teen i didnt believe. Then in early 20s i got into christianity hardcore. I got into desert fathers and such. I prayed the Jesus prayer all day. I should also mention i got into a friend group that are hardcore catholics. Turns out they werent so good people. One of them was telling me i was going to hell. The others bullied me since i wasnt percieved as that good of a catholic and like i was commited less to it and that i wasnt good enough. I should also mention that i had mental health issues from weed at the time. Guess what, obsessing over faith made my mental health much worse, i started having visions and such things. Thousand different things and no way to make sense of them. So at some point i just dropped it all. I also had vision that i was saved that was pretty convincing. I know by traditional catholicism i shouldnt trust that vision, but lots of things dont make sense to me in catholicism. I also have issues with concept of hell, like other anons said.
At this point i just dont care, man. I have no idea whats going on, maybe no one does. I just take it easy, take it one day at the time and try to live my best life, loving my parents, friends, taking care of my health and living with integrity and justice. Theres only so much you can know and control in this life. Atleast i know that i dont know anything, like Socrates said.
Godspeed anon

>>25380697
This is a great response. Thanks

>>25380468
I have been more certain a few years ago but now I feel like I was thrown into the ocean and I am trying to stay above water. It is painful on the one hand to experience this uncertainty, but on the other side this seems a lot more honest. I believe in god, that fact is unshaken because I had an existential experience in the past which convinced me. I am just not certain anymore how to talk to others about faith. I believe that grace is the primary mover of good things, the bad things are your own fault. I also believe that we are thrown into this world and suffer from constant disorientation. You mentioned Gabriel Marcel. He has this beautiful passage about life being a dark cave that we have to traverse and the only thing guiding us through the darkness is hope which appears as a small light in the blackness.

As a recommendation:
The consolation of philosophy by Boethius helps me through doubtful times. Also Ecclesiastes and the four gospels (I circle through them).

I basically think this feeling is what it comes down to for being a human. We are all in the same boat, life is mostly unpleasant and suffering, but there are the little things: friendships, nature, good food, sport, reading a good book.

At last, I don’t know about your faith or prayer life, but I can really recommend praying everyday in the morning and evening at least the our-father, also pray when you feel discouraged.

God tests us, but he doesn’t test us beyond our abilities.

>>25380468
>you're basically taking a gamble on your eternal soul
" Zarathustra, however, remained standing, and just beside him fell the body, badly injured and disfigured, but not yet dead. After a while consciousness returned to the shattered man, and he saw Zarathustra kneeling beside him. “What art thou doing there?” said he at last, “I knew long ago that the devil would trip me up. Now he draggeth me to hell: wilt thou prevent him?”
“On mine honour, my friend,” answered Zarathustra, “there is nothing of all that whereof thou speakest: there is no devil and no hell. Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body: fear, therefore, nothing any more!”
The man looked up distrustfully. “If thou speakest the truth,” said he, “I lose nothing when I lose my life. I am not much more than an animal which hath been taught to dance by blows and scanty fare.”
“Not at all,” said Zarathustra, “thou hast made danger thy calling; therein there is nothing contemptible. Now thou perishest by thy calling: therefore will I bury thee with mine own hands.”
When Zarathustra had said this the dying one did not reply further; but he moved his hand as if he sought the hand of Zarathustra in gratitude. "

>>25380468
I keep seeing this as "the fear of losing your teeth" and I'm like yeah I just had a dream about my teeth falling out. Scary shit

>>25383370
Maybe you should attempt writing a short story or a novella out of that dream. Could be great. I know I'd be glad to read it

>>25383359
>God tests us, but he doesn’t test us beyond our abilities.
Bullshit.

>>25383359
>God tests us, but he doesn’t test us beyond our abilities.
"And I wept and trembled like a child, and said: “Ah, I would indeed, but how can I do it! Exempt me only from this! It is beyond my power!”
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “What matter about thyself, Zarathustra! Speak thy word, and succumb!”
And I answered: “Ah, is it my word? Who am I? I await the worthier one; I am not worthy even to succumb by it.”
Then was there again spoken unto me without voice: “What matter about thyself? Thou art not yet humble enough for me. Humility hath the hardest skin.”
And I answered: “What hath not the skin of my humility endured! At the foot of my height do I dwell: how high are my summits, no one hath yet told me. But well do I know my valleys.” "

Yeah I'm thinking y'alls a buncha effeminate bitches. This kind of thinking is always born out of a position of privilege and luxury, where the subject forgets just how blessed he is in his daily life and chooses to follow in the devil's filthy footsteps because he doesn't enough room in his heart for gratitude nor for humility. You have to keep convincing yourself that you must know better, that your ''intellect'' must be the key to the truth. The actual fact of the matter is you're too lazy and cowardly to live with rigor and with strong morals, you're above those plebian rules, you're above those rituals, so you denounce them altogether as false when you don't know jackshit about living in the trenches. No wonder hell exists with lazy faggots roaming the earth at all times.
>Nooooooo I can't stare at flowers all day and fuck bitches all night long without having disgusting proselytizers telling me to give back to the community and actually fill a role as a man, a son, a parent, a citizen, a warrior, a worker, a provider. Therefore relijun is le ebil! Why can't we all just along!

>>25383315
>>25383323
>>25383368
>>25383794
Nietzsche is so gay. I can't believe people take this seriously as if it was the most inspired thing ever. Shit reads like a fucking monologue from Code Geass (pronounced gay-ass)

I was never religious, I was never raised religious, and I didn't even know what christians believed until I was in my mid twenties. To be honest, I can't get in the mindset of religious people and from the outside teaching children religion seems like indoctrination and child abuse to me. I feel bad for religious people because there is mass apostacy across all religions, especially for the past ~20 years or so, like hundreds of millions of people are realizing that what they were taught was all false and not true. It's really sad and it upsets me to be honest. I think it should be illegal to teach children religion

>>25383817
Neither god nor satan nor heaven nor hell exist, anon. They're all made up.

>>25383832
Arrogance is not worth neverending torture

>>25380468
You should probably kill yourself

>>25383845
I am not arrogant, and heaven and hell do not exist. Grow up buddy

>>25383845
I think he wants someone to torture him on purpose because he's a faggot with a BDSM kink.

>>25383847
You're the blackest gayest nigger though.

>>25383850
You're a faggot fantasizing about homosexual erotic fantasies. I don't do that.
>>25383851
Nope.

>>25383824
You're just admitting to being a brainlet here, man

>>25383334
Are you croatian by any chance, anon?

It's always funny to me how people lose their faith because the world sucks or because they think they have a better judgement than god, but never because it's a fucking fairy tale that has absolutely no connection to material reality or logic.

>>25383822
It was written centuries ago, retard, what would you expect?

>>25383822
zarathustra is his weakest shit but norms read it most cuz it's in like a narrative form rather than just lobbing trvkes at the reader like genealogy of morals. disturbing that there are even ppl on nu-/lit/ who didn't read nietzsche at all.

> serious doubts regarding the manifestations and interpretations of ''God's will'' and his absolute law,
why don't you try jumping off a bridge if you want a concrete example?

>>25380494
>it's all just cope
EVERYTHING is cope, anon. This is a nothing sentence. Saying something is cope is just cope for being unable to eloquently critique it. "Cope" and its consequences have been a disaster for global discourse

>>25380795
You really do deserve to die you depraved faggot.

>>25380468
I wouldn't worry about that tradLARPer

You can't lose something you never had in the first place

>>25383824
>I feel bad for religious people because there is mass apostacy across all religions, especially for the past ~20 years or so, like hundreds of millions of people are realizing that what they were taught was all false and not true.
"Mass apostacy" isn't an organic movement whatsoever. You and many others were socially engineered into materialism/nihilism from constant media exposure and the internet at an extremely young age.
>I think it should be illegal to teach children religion
You already live in the most religious society to date (secular humanism + the petrodollar)

>>25384026
Go ahead and tell the class what you think "material reality" and "logic" are.

>>25384300
psychoanalysis is so jewish

>>25380795
>Camus
safe to ignore the rest of this drivel

>>25380919
>But yeah, afterlife is pure cope.
It's also correct because consciousness is irrefutably primary. Do you have a single argument to the contrary that isn't pure question begging ("muh external world")?

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>lol christcucks are so retarded
Did you know that atheism is also a religion? Arguably an even worse religion, quite possibly the worst one, alongside pisslam. If you don't want to be an idiot, be agnostic at least.

>>25380919
>But yeah, afterlife is pure cope
Sorry, faggot boy, but consciousness will continue and you'll suffer forever like the rest of us.

>>25384539
This.

>>25384784
>Did you know that atheism is also a religion?
"Zero is indivisible, so that zero belief cannot be rigorously differentiated from belief in zero. It is in this sense that atheism is a religion. Not that atheism is committed to a specific conviction, quite the opposite; it is precisely the specificity of conviction that it attacks. Understood negatively it denies the false absolute of theos, but understood positively it affirms the true absolute marked by the ‘privative’ a-; the nihil from which creation proceeds, the undifferentiable cosmic zero.

Everything has obviously gone wrong for us in order for Plato to begin with One rather than Zero. To take One as originary is to presuppose everything; such as unity, individuation, achieved form, and dogmatic plenitude. The One is the phallomorphic base of Occidental culture, in the sense that Irigaray understands it. It is the mono—of monotheism, and monotheism is condensed irreligion; the definitive patriarchal effacing of intra-uterine indifferentiation (and thus of the primary ripple from out of chaotic zero). The differentiated one is the Father, and his adorers understand nothing of religion. Even in writing the nothing, as Aquinas does, they eclipse it with absolute ego (Him). Nor is it the case that primary immanence is merely crushed with arbitrariness beneath a partially inadequate metaphorics, since—far from being neutral between the sexes—it is precisely because indifferentiation (= 0) is sexually unsegmented that it is even more feminine than the mother. The femininity of zero is uncompromised by its indifference, due to the unilateral character of individualizing deviation. Whilst zero is certainly alien to the Father, there is no differentiation from zero. Indeed, zero is so utterly vulvo-uterine that patriarchy is synonymous with irreligion (faith).

Between barter systems and money systems there is a difference strictly analogous to that between Roman arithmetics and the place-value system from India, transmitted by the Arabs to the West. Like zero, money is a redundant operator; adding nothing in order to make things hum. When Marx associates capital with death he is only drawing the final consequence from this correspondence. Surplus value comes out of labour-power, but surplus production comes out of nothing. This is why capital production is the consummating phase of nihilism, the liquidation of theological irreligion, the twilight of the idols. Modernity is virtual thanocracy guided insidiously by zero; the epoch of the death of God. There is no God but (only) zero—indifferentiation without unity—and nihil is true religion."

>>25384539
>consciousness is irrefutably primary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard%27s_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

>>25384784
>but consciousness will continue and you'll suffer forever like the rest of us.
"It is Aquinas’ stupendous *Summa Theologiae*—an intellectual cathedral that is perhaps the greatest single achievement of Christian civilization—<...>Far more than the messy, wildly inconsistent, and arbitrarily compiled text we know as ‘the bible’, it is the Summa that provides a doctrinal basis for hegemonic Christianity
<...>
The central accomplishment of the *Summa* is that of establishing a rational basis for the Augustinian rantings that had become embedded in the faith, and prominent amongst these is the conception of the ‘second death’ as eternal torment, bound to the doctrine of the soul’s natural immortality (the deepest well-spring of Christian ressentiment). <...> The position Aquinas inherited from Augustine can scarcely be described as philosophical. It is at most an attempt to construct some semblance of doctrinal consistency on the basis of conscientious but talentless scriptural exigesis conducted in the context of an anti-pagan polemic that aspires to persecutory authority
<...>
Aquinas’ extraordinarily intricate task was to reconstruct the Christian doctrine of death on orthodox grounds (but this time rational ones), without succumbing to the humanistic impiety latent in the notion of the soul’s natural immortality. Both Irenaeus and Arnobius had challenged this doctrine, considering it incompatible with the absolute dependence of all created things upon God, and even Augustine himself seems at times to undermine it. Once the natural immortality of the soul is questioned, however, it is but a short step to the thought that the unreformably wicked might be simply extinguished— after an appropriate period of rigorous punishment—rather than eternally tortured: a doctrine that Irenaeus seems to have held, and Arnobius certainly did. This is the extreme heresy of annihilationism, later to be associated with the Socinians (who were vigorously persecuted for it) and other Arians. It was considered so heinous a belief throughout the hegemonic period of Christian domination that professing it was literally suicidal, <...>. D.P.Walker, in his discussion of seventeenth and eighteenth century annihilationism, remarks that: ‘atheists and Socinians, who were supposed to believe in the annihilation of the wicked, were generally considered outside the bounds of even the broadest religious tolerance; since they were socially dangerous, it was the business of the state to eliminate them’ [DH 4].

It is thus a mark of considerable integrity that Aquinas—some 400 years earlier— insists upon the (limited) plausibility of the annihilationist case. He divides his argument into stages, first affirming God’s power to annihilate, and only then denying that this power is in fact exercised by a benevolent being (eternal damnation as the sentimentality of God)"

>>25384828
>>25384784
>>25384539
>because consciousness is irrefutably primary
"Annihilation or—more precisely—the return to nothing, is related to two interconnected concepts of decisive importance to scholastic theology; those of *creation* and *conservation*. The *nihil* of annihilation is the nothing from which creation brings forth the being, since ‘what is created comes out of nothing [ex nihilo]’ [A VIII 41]. Creation both draws the being out of nothing, and holds it out of nothing, or conserves it. The perpetual conservation of the being is a positive and incessant causation that relates it immediately to God, so that ‘[w]ere God to annihilate, it would not be through some action, but through cessation from action’ [A XIV 51]. Annihilation is thus a *release from action*’, a relapse that has a merely negative relation to God. It is the being’s own tendency that leads it to annihilation, as soon as God ceases to interfere in the creature’s relation with absolute death (which is alien to God, since his relation to nothingness is purely inhibitive). In one sense the being of the creature communes with God as its cause, but as a difference from the *nihil* the tension of the creature relates only to death, and God’s participation is that of a third party incidentally impinging upon a communication that escapes him. God and the *nihil* squabble over creation as jealous rivals fight over a shared lover, except that the creature—however much it might respect God—is torn by its desire in quite the other direction, whilst the *nihil* has all the tantalizing indifference that naturally flows from incomparable powers of seduction."

>>25380697
That understanding of malice gets fundamentally underminded once you deal with the concept of judgement emanating from infinite knowledge. If positioned in an argument against the all-knowing God, man always loses, so you really can't be sure of what to think here. But your sentiment is beautiful and full of love, I hope you find your way out of this grinding mess we're stuck in, whether it's in this life or in the next one.

>>25380468
>A bit of guidance and reading about others' experiences with this classic dilemma would be very helpful
The Book of Marlon

>>25384311
No, Christianity is false and has been disproved, so people are leaving en masse. It is not some conspiracy. It has nothing to do with "heckin' nihilist materialist propaganda". Jesus didn't rise and he's never coming back.
"secular humanism" is not a religion. You guys need to stop throwing around these buzzphrases, it's pathetic and retarded.

>>25384812
>irrelevant non-sequiturs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_am_I_me

>>25385421
>"secular humanism" is not a religion.
It's funny when progress-mongering atheshits lack the self-awareness to realize willingly enslaving yourself to big petroleum has nothing to do with "intelligence", but insatiable avarice and pride instead.
You really do believe you are the first to be unlike any other generation before you lol.

>>25385482
None of the slop you're shitting out has any meaning.
The reason christianity is declining is due to the fact that it has been disproved and it isn't true. That's the reason, buddy. Grow up.

>>25385489
>disproved
>>25385421
>has been disproved
And you say this because...?

>>25385489
The oil barons and freemasons will love this post.

>>25385427
>nor does it contain any intellectual substance whatsoever
Your point started with 'proving' the immortality of the soul via the primary status of consciousness.

1. Meanwhile, Augustine kept rambling about 'second death' (but was inconsistent enough to equivocate it with eternal damnation).

2. Meanwhile, Irenaeus and Arnobius argued against immortality of the soul, per se. The soul is immortal only as long as your sky-daddy actively chooses to source it. (Ergo, the primary status of your consciousness ain't got nothing to do with your soul's alleged immortality, nigger)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnobius#Adversus_nationes
"He also affirms that the human soul (Book II, 14 - 62) is <...> not immortal by nature, but capable of putting on immortality as a grace. Arnobius argues that a belief in the soul's immortality would tend to remove moral restraint, and have a prejudicial effect on human life."


>Aquinas was a shit for brained retard, anon. Have you ever actually read his slop?
https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q104.A3

"Therefore that God gives existence to a creature depends on His will; nor does He preserve things in existence otherwise than by continually pouring out existence into them, as we have said. Therefore, just as before things existed, God was free not to give them existence, and not to make them; so after they are made, He is free not to continue their existence; and thus they would cease to exist; and this would be to annihilate them."

"If God were to annihilate anything, this would not imply an action on God’s part; but a mere cessation of His action."

>>25385421
Christianity is unfalsifiable, as is the resurrection without a time machine. Do you have a time machine?

>"secular humanism" is not a religion
Look up the etymology of "religion" and then explain to us how it isn't, please.

>>25385503
>And you say this because...?
Because the claims of Christianity have been disproved.
The reason for death is not due to "sin" and jesus did not rise from the dead in order to pay for "sin". The bible makes trivial errors about the world and contradicts itself multiple times. Jesus didn't fulfill any of the prophecies in the old testament (Daniel isn't a prophecy and Jesus didn't even do that, as the translation is wrong) and it wouldn't matter anyway, as the old testament isn't the word of God in the first place.
>>25385514
"leftists" and "liberals" are the only ones who attack the oil barons and try to make oil and carbon taxes or to even shut down fossil fuels entirely. Its right wingers who defend those corporations. You're extremely confused.

>>25385519
>Christianity is unfalsifiable, as is the resurrection without a time machine. Do you have a time machine?
https://web.archive.org/web/20190704065822/http://www.xenosystems.net/gnon-theology-and-time/

"Glutted on forbidden fruit, Gnon-Theology strips God like an engine, down to the limit of abstraction, or *eternity for-itself*. Does any such perspective exist? We already know that this is not our question. All such ‘regional ontology’ has been suspended. We are nevertheless already entitled, through the grace of Gnon (which — remember — might (or might not) be God), to the assumption or acceptance of reality that: for any God to be God it cannot be less than eternity for-itself. Whatever eternity for-itself entails, any God will, too.

What it entails, unambiguously, is time-travel, in the strong sense of reverse causation, although not necessarily in the folk/Hollywood variant (which has also had serious defenders) based on the retro-transportation of physical objects into the past. Knowledge of the future is indistinguishable from counter-chronic transmission of information. This is perhaps the single most critical insight in realistic time-travel research — we’ll get back to it.

To accelerate this discussion with bloggish crudity, on a heading out of Gnon-Theology into Occidental religious history (and to the possibility of sleep), we can jump to one simple, certain, and secure conclusion: No Christian can consistently deny the reality of time-travel. The objection ‘if (reverse) time-travel if possible, where are the time-travellers?’ is annulled by the Christian revelation itself. Messianic Incarnation (of God or eternity for-itself), along with all true prophecy, providential history, and answered prayer, instantiates time-travel with technical exactitude. There can be no truth whatsoever to the Christian religion unless time-travel has fundamentally structured human history. Whatever else Christianity might be, it is a time-travel story, and one that at times appears to be peculiarly lacking in clear self-understanding.

(Time-travel, it should perhaps be noted explicitly, has no obvious dependency on Christianity, or even upon the God of Gnon-Theology. That is a topic for other occasions.)"

>>25384812
Consciousness is not personality.

>>25385520
>"leftists" and "liberals" are the only ones who attack the oil barons and try to make oil and carbon taxes or to even shut down fossil fuels entirely. Its right wingers who defend those corporations.
Not for the reasons you're implying. Both right wingers and left wingers are materialist retards.
>You're extremely confused.
You're simply a retard.

>>25383359
>We are all in the same boat, life is mostly unpleasant and suffering,
This hasn't been true for most people in the ''first'' world for 60 years at least
Excellent recommendations nonetheless, Boethius can illuminate one's day.

>>25380468
>Thenceforward, he sat all day over the fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined, sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the streets of the city. He, I say—I cannot say, I. That child of Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred. And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions raged within him like a tempest. He walked fast, hunted by his fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less frequented thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from midnight. Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of lights.[matches] He smote her in the face, and she fled.

what's with all the niggers here reposting passages without assigning any sources to them or even articulating on why they find them relevant? are they bots?

>>25385973
>This hasn't been true for most people in the ''first'' world for 60 years at least
That's cope.

>>25383516
Thanks anon, but I lack the skill.

>>25386342
Fair point—that was my mistake. The passage is from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, from Jekyll's final confession.

I should have cited it and explained why I posted it instead of just dropping the excerpt. I thought it captured the kind of spiritual and psychological collapse that can accompany losing one's moral or religious bearings in adversity. Jekyll's line, "He, I say—I cannot say, I," especially stood out to me because it reflects a fractured identity and alienation from the self, while the overwhelming fear and hatred in the passage felt relevant to the thread's discussion about faith giving way under pressure.

Sorry for the contextless quote—I wasn't trying to spam or bot-post.