Theology reading club and theology general

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Theology reading club and theology general Thomas Sat Mar 14 22:59:38 2015 No.6270753 [Reply] [Original]

This is a theology general thread, and the beginning of our theology reading club! Hopefully it will get more traffic than Outis' clubs do. Our first reading is not long, we're going to read Genesis. Keep it simply to start off with, but we'll do more later and once we're done with the Bible, we'll move onto various theologians.

I'd like us to get to know each other on a first name basis because I think that will allow us to be more civil with each other in our discussions. So Introducing myself, I'm Thomas, I'm an Episcopalian.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:01:57 2015 No.6270760 /lit/ - Literature

>>	James Sat Mar 14 23:03:14 2015 No.6270767 >>6270753 I'm James, and I don't know what I am.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:09:22 2015 No.6270792 >>6270753 Sounds interesting. I'm Zach and I'm a baptist.

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:12:41 2015 No.6270807 >>6270767 Are you a Christian? >>6270792 Nice to have you.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:15:33 2015 No.6270821 I'm Anonymous, and I'm an atheist

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:17:14 2015 No.6270828 Link to pdf of Genesis and I'll read it and offer my thoughts. I've actually been meaning to read the bible for a while (not for spiritual purposes, just because I've always wanted to try and emulate that classic biblical prose).

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:20:22 2015 No.6270845 I'm Jose and I'm Catholic

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:21:48 2015 No.6270852 >>6270828 https://www.biblegateway.com/ >>6270845 Welcome.

>>	Sam Sat Mar 14 23:27:22 2015 No.6270876 My first name's too distinctive so I'll just call myself Sam Was raised non-denominational, open to any churches.

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:29:12 2015 No.6270892 >>6270876 What churches have you been to, Sam?

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:29:13 2015 No.6270893 OP just doxxed all of you enjoy it

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:30:29 2015 No.6270900 http://sparks.eserver.org/books/genesis.pdf This is a better link I think. Posting it here anyway so I don't forget it in the morning, that's way longer than I anticipated and I need to sleep.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:34:00 2015 No.6270917 >>6270892 I've went to my mothers church (non-denominational) since I was one. Any other churches were randomly protestant. American btw.

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:35:04 2015 No.6270926 >>6270917 Ever try Presbyterian or Lutheran or Methodist?

>>	Sam Sat Mar 14 23:38:07 2015 No.6270942 >>6270926 Nope. I've been to a Baptist one. That's about it.

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:41:21 2015 No.6270957 >>6270942 How was communion done?

>>	Sam Sat Mar 14 23:42:35 2015 No.6270963 >>6270957 A small piece of bread is passed to each person, it is eaten, then a small cup of wine (grape juice).

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:44:03 2015 No.6270968 >>6270753 I'm Alexander and I'm a latter day saint.

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:45:18 2015 No.6270974 File: 114 KB, 500x401, 250.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6270963 So little grape shots?

>>	Sam Sat Mar 14 23:46:13 2015 No.6270978 >>6270974 I suppose. Didn't have the caps.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:47:12 2015 No.6270982 >theism how do you sleep at night with this much cognitive dissonance

>>	Thomas Sat Mar 14 23:50:08 2015 No.6270999 >>6270978 Oh, the caps are the wafers. Sometimes they're packaged with the juice. You should try a Lutheran or Episcopal Church sometime, if you haven't done a traditional communion where you each kneel and sip wine from a shared cup.

>>	Sam Sat Mar 14 23:51:31 2015 No.6271005 >>6270999 I'll consider them. I've also been considering orthodox.

>>	Anonymous Sat Mar 14 23:54:05 2015 No.6271016 My name is Andrew, and I'm a Mormon.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:16:54 2015 No.6271121 >>6270760 You missed the Richard Dawkins porn shoop thread.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:17:56 2015 No.6271126 >>6270753 I'm Thor, and I'm a Methodist, but I've been thinking about Anglicianism.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:27:32 2015 No.6271170 >>6270982 I can't wait until spring break ends and all these Plebbitors go back to school.

>>	Sam Sun Mar 15 00:34:49 2015 No.6271201 So Genesis. The first few chapters—literal or metaphorical?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:44:54 2015 No.6271241 How does it feel that this one man's theory disproved your entire clandestine religion over a matter of 150 years? BTFO T F O

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:47:36 2015 No.6271250 File: 1.43 MB, 1367x1921, 8_Darwin-1fzoj4d.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6271241 Sorry forgot to attach pic

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 00:48:13 2015 No.6271253

I'm Liam, I was raised Christian (Catholic I think), I'm not too interested in Christianity any more but I want to read the bible.

I'm like halfway through Genesis already because I have it on my kindle and started it before, I like it so far. There's actually a graphic novel version of Genesis I found at the library that I thought was kind of cool.

>>	steven Sun Mar 15 00:51:41 2015 No.6271261 i am steven and i am a protestant of no true denomination but i am looking to find one. maybe going to seminary school in the fall

Thomas Sun Mar 15 01:04:00 2015 No.6271309

>>6271005
You should try attending an Orthodox Mass, then. I don't think you can receive communion unless you're Orthodox, but you can at least see how it's done and how the whole service works. When it's time for communion, just go up and keep your arms crossed.

>>6271016
Any good Mormon theologians?

>>6271201
Metaphorical. At least that's the stance of every Apostolic Church.

>>6271126
You should try going to an Anglican service. I love my church and Anglican service in general.

>>6271253
Welcome

>>6271261
Which denominations you have tried Mass with?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 01:16:11 2015 No.6271360 >>6271250 >>6271241 gr8 b8 m8, how does it feel that I'm the only asshole dumb enough to respond?

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 01:32:42 2015 No.6271412
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I'm Victor. I was born protestant, but converted to Islam when I was 18.

After studying and travelling, spending time with various sufi groups in the Muslim world a bit and studying a ton of philosophy (ten years later) I realised my mistake.

I'd like to go back to Christianity, either catholic or orthodox. But orthodox doesn't seem tenable since you just end up going to the Greek church with old ladies. I've been going to catholic mass, once at a benedictine monastery and it was great. However the only thing that concerns me is the changes that have taken place since Vatican II. Is Catholicism even valid anymore? According to some writers like Rene Guenon, who I was really into when I was younger, Christianity itself isn't even valid anymore. Not sure what to think.

>>	Thomas Sun Mar 15 01:42:26 2015 No.6271434 >>6271412 They still have Apostolic succession, which I consider a prime factor in the validity of a church. I don't know why people would be uppity about Vatican II. The Catholic Church has made numerous alterations to its doctrine over its existence.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 01:55:18 2015 No.6271459

>>6271412
Trust in Apostolic Succession. The priests, bishops, and cardinals are the true heirs of the Apostles. Nothing they do is done without consideration. Don't believe all these stupid HBO, Starz, History Channel shows that try to make everything sexy and trashy and cynical. In fact, for all of history the line of priests have actually been very aware of the legacy they pass down.

So, then, in that light, Vatican II is not some trashy thing, but is rather a logical move to bring the Church into the modern world. It shares the Gospel and the Catechism with the vast majority of peoples, which, far from losing believers, instead wins new believers.

Trust in Christ and the Church he established. Trust in Peter and Paul and John and the Apostles. The Church they founded will not falter.

>>	Gregory Sun Mar 15 02:21:01 2015 No.6271510 Greg. I was raised Catholic and I suppose I still identify as a Catholic even though I don't agree with the Church on some things.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 02:27:04 2015 No.6271525 File: 879 KB, 870x1290, 1424980924523.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6271459 >>6271459 Why is coming in to the modern world a good thing? I like all the ancient rituals, latin and stuff.

Matthew Sun Mar 15 02:30:17 2015 No.6271534

I'm Matthew. "Evangelical protestant" is probably the closest label to what I am.

So how'bout dat Genesis? I'm pretty sure it's metaphorical, at least in the creation myth stuff. I'm pretty inclined to treat the Abraham parts as containing some kind of historical core.

The interesting question re the Creation account is what it tells us about the world, perhaps in contradistinction to the other views of the world and its nature prevalent at the time.

Thomas Sun Mar 15 02:37:29 2015 No.6271550

>>6271510
Such as?

>>6271525
I can see why, but it's not like it makes them a fake church for the vernacular. The Apostles didn't even write in Latin.

>>6271534
All churches with Apostolic Succession treat the creation as metaphorical, so it's certainly that. I think the taking of the fruit of knowledge was sort of self-consciousness, something unique to humanity, and humanity chose to sin with it. The choice to eat the fruit is about the first instance of free will, and sin was chosen.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 02:48:46 2015 No.6271578

Materialist Atheist here

>>6271412
>Islam when I was 18
Where the fuck do you live?

>catholic or orthodox
Go join an non-heirachical denomination (or even be non-denominational), the catholic church is one of the most repressive institutions in history and still is. Same with the Orthodox church (especially in Russia)

>Having men between you and god

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 02:54:57 2015 No.6271590 Peter, Catholic. >>6271578 Kek. Apostolic succession is where it's at. Atheists have bad opinions about religion. I say this as a former atheist.

Thomas Sun Mar 15 03:58:33 2015 No.6271722

>>6271578
Apostolic succession is important, I think. On a spiritual level it connects you directly to Christ, because Christ ordained the original Apostles, you can be surer you're doing things the way they're supposed to be done knowing that, you're establishing a serious connection with Christ's intent instead of just LARP'ing one. Even not looking that the spiritual is important to know you're following a serious interpretation of scripture rather than simply some people thinking they got it all right and know better than a line of experts tracing all the way back to the people who wrote the scripture. Even aside from those, an authentic continuation of the early Christian Church is more beautiful from the angle of tradition.

I'm not a Catholic, but I am an Episcopalian and we recognize the Catholic Church as Apostolic, and every Apostolic Church needs bishops.

>>6271590
Where you baptized early and become atheist, or did you come to the faith on your own and get baptized?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:08:28 2015 No.6271743 I'm Frederick, I was raised a Catholic and still am.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:22:14 2015 No.6271771

I see the taking of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil as basically the crossing of our being from our creaturely nature into something more, ie gaining moral agency. Our original sin is less a literal act of disobedience which occurred in history and more the capacity to be disobedient or obedient. As such, we still would need saved, still would have an impassable gulf between us and God without Christ

The fall I see as the establishment of our civilization, a civilization built on a foundation of murder (cain the agriculturalist murders his brother the nomadic pastoralist and dispossesses him and establishes the first city)

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:28:02 2015 No.6271781 >>6271578 I ask because you are a materialist atheist, how much do you know about music? Do you have an understanding of how music works? I ask because studying music completely rekt my materialist stance

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:28:03 2015 No.6271782 >>6271412 Try some Girard to void your bowels of Guenon

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:29:02 2015 No.6271785 >>6271781 Sorry not great english

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:34:42 2015 No.6271796 >>6271782 >Girard Any book suggestions?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:35:47 2015 No.6271798 File: 198 KB, 855x1174, sacred-heart-1910.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6271578 It's easy to find muslims in most western countries now, you know.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:35:58 2015 No.6271799 Is there a decent argument for God's existence that doesn't rely on muh feels? I've never heard one.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:46:56 2015 No.6271826 >>6271799 you might, like me, find the idea of an immanent god less silly than the idea of a transcendent god if you just think about it

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 04:49:44 2015 No.6271836

>>6271799
The presupposition to argue for God's existence is that His existence self-explanatory. If somehow failing to argue God exists means he ceases to exist would mean God never existed, and any and all arguments would be unnecessary to begin with.

There has been countless arguments for why reason alone cannot reach God; faith is a requirement to know God so arguing for God's existence is pointless.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:17:05 2015 No.6271898

>>6271799

1. A contingent being (a being such that if it exists it could have not-existed or could cease to) exists.
2. This contingent being has a cause of or explanation for its existence.
3. The cause of or explanation for its existence is something other than the contingent being itself.
4. What causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must either be solely other contingent beings or include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
5. Contingent beings alone cannot provide an adequate causal account or explanation for the existence of a contingent being.
6. Therefore, what causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
7. Therefore, a necessary being (a being such that if it exists cannot not-exist) exists.

I'm more interested in finding flaws in it than defending it, but it's pretty sturdy.

>>6271836
Even though I'm not a believer, I find a real dilemma between thinkers who believe human reason can arrive at knowledge of God's existence (like Aquinas) and those who deny the possibility (like Kierkegaard). But then Aquinas is very clear that our knowledge of God is knowledge of what He is not, so I might be overstating the conflict.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:24:15 2015 No.6271915

>>6271898
Aquinas doesn't believe human reason can arrive at knowledge of God's existence in the way that through reasoning one can argue that God exists, but rather having reason is proof that God exists. He's not saying human reason can prove God's existence, but God's existence is manifested through human's capacity to have reason in the first place.

>those who deny the possibility (like Kierkegaard).

Kierkegaard's not denying reason cannot understand God, but rather reason cannot understand God absolutely, which is what Hegel was in a way hinting at.

Materialist Atheist Sun Mar 15 05:26:32 2015 No.6271917

>>6271722
No I think you would be LARP'ing if you believed in Apolistic succession, a real christian would have absolute faith knowing that God will show the right interpretation through personal revelation, through the question is why are bishops needed?

Horizontal structure of just believers in the holy spirit, 100% egalitarian

> Even aside from those, an authentic continuation of the early Christian Church is more beautiful from the angle of tradition.
>Any modern denomination close to being a representation of the early church
I doubt that considering the Episcopal Church ordains gay bishops and women and not mentioning the various historical councils.

>>6271781
Do you mean aesthetically? My favourite philosopher is Schopenhauer, music is direct manifestation of the will in aesthetic experience. Or you can have the scientific materialist version that music is a product of evolution.

>>6271798
Are you white? How did you believe in a religion that has almost nothing to do with western culture and is prejudiced against it?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:30:47 2015 No.6271923 >>6271917 Yes, I am white. I was interested in Sufism, the political aspects weren't that important to me.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:35:44 2015 No.6271932 I'm Joshua, and i'm agnostic. I've got some interest in reading the bible, mainly to further understand people's beliefs but also to help set my own

>>	Materialist Atheist Sun Mar 15 05:42:35 2015 No.6271940 Various Christian and theistic beliefs list: Top tier: Pantheism Deist non denominational Christian Okay: Protestant Gnosticism Agnostic (Kant no nuffin!) Institutional oppression: Orthodox Catholic Batshit crazy: Mormons Jenovah's Witnesses

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:46:07 2015 No.6271945 >>6271940 Implying anything is wrong with institutional oppression.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:46:37 2015 No.6271946 >>6271940 >Agnostic (Kant no nuffin!) Yeah no you should reread Kant

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:47:17 2015 No.6271947 >>6270753 >how many spooks do you fear: the thread

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:49:52 2015 No.6271952

>>6271940
Hey, it's you again. It's me, the pro-revolutionary Catholic

Read any liberation theology yet? Cone is fantastic. You would like him, since you seem to be anti Catholic. Gutierrez is of course the man, but also Sebastian Kappen wrote an interesting piece called Jesus and Freedom

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 05:57:54 2015 No.6271970 >>6271940 The fact that you consider pantheism and deism christian and theistic speaks about how little you actually know about the subject.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:02:00 2015 No.6271979

>>6271915
Doesn't Aquinas hold that human reason can infer some knowledge of God from His effects? And that this is the only way reason can know God, since it cannot know Him by acquaintance.

>Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God "whether He exists," and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him.
>Hence we know that His relationship with creatures so far as to be the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, inasmuch as He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from Him by reason of any defect on His part, but because He superexceeds them all.
ST I 12

>There is a twofold mode of truth in what we profess about God. Some truths about God exceed all the ability of the human reason. Such is the truth that God is triune. But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such are that God exists, that He is one, and the like. In fact, such truths about God have been proved demonstratively by the philosophers, guided by the light of the natural reason.
SCG 1.3

Gabriele Sun Mar 15 06:03:42 2015 No.6271980

>>6270753
Gabriele, catholic. As you may have assumed from my name, I'm Italian, and I also live near Rome.
I actually have many doubts about my faith: my family is not Christian (I was an atheist until one and a half years ago), so I have to go to Mass by myself, which is not very encouraging. Add social anxiety, and it results in me not going to Mass at all.

Maybe this reading club will help, though I'm sceptical about it.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:08:21 2015 No.6271989

>>6270753
Liam

Been an athiest until recently. I read Meditations and then a friend mentioned Jainism, a lot of it really appealed to me but it's hard to follow while still being in school (such as not being allowed to use electricity). I kind of forgot about all of that until I started reading Brothers Karamazov, I'm becoming more agnostic now.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:08:42 2015 No.6271990 >>6271980 r u a grill Seriously why is going alone to mass a problem? I have been studying away from my family for a year and a half now, I barely speak to anyone and go to mass alone.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:10:41 2015 No.6271992

>>6271979
Yes but the argument is basically this: through our reason we know what caused our reason (God). Thus God is the cause of our reason (not Augustinian theory of understanding where God participates in every instance of human understanding but you know what I mean).

>But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach
The context though is God gave us intellectual substances through which we can prove God's existence because He created us.

>>	Ivan Sun Mar 15 06:11:07 2015 No.6271994 >>6270753 Ivan here, Roman Catholic, christian well since my childhood. Boring stuff.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:16:56 2015 No.6272009

>>6271990
Mass of course is about gathering together, participating in the universal sacrament of salvation that is the churchand through this participation receive the channels of grace that are the particular sacraments. None of which encourage being alone, but are all about participating communally in the reign of God

Not that going to mass alone is bad - its good, because you're not alone when you're at mass! I would recommend to the guy expressing difficulty or loneliness to get involved in the parish, volunteering, maybe for caritas (i think they have a more prominent presence in rome) or the catholic worker. Get to know the people of your parish :)

Shoot, I need to take my own advice, really. I donate, but I havent volunteered in a quite a while now

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:19:59 2015 No.6272015 >>6271992 OK, that makes sense.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:28:58 2015 No.6272030 >>6271980 What helped me get more involved was going to a smaller mass held in a chapel instead of a larger one in a church. It became a much more personal experience for me and I enjoy it more now.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:30:19 2015 No.6272032

>>6272015
The subtitle for SCG is The Truths of the Catholic Faith Against the Errors of the Infidels, and the first 3 books are to prove the truth of the catholic faith in which natural reason is sufficient. The way in which our reason proves God, however, doesn't mean we can reach an understanding of Him, it only proves truthful concepts, such as the Transcendentals and how our intellect cognizes. In this way Aquinas can prove God in whole along with his fourth book, which focuses on revelations and that which natural reason is not sufficient.

Of course there are also other theological debates going on at the time which Aquinas tries to address, such as arguing against Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle.

Aquinas is an interesting person to read since you can see his thoughts echoing through philosophy, even to Kant.

>>	Materialist Atheist Sun Mar 15 06:38:57 2015 No.6272044 >>6271946 Actually had nothing to do with Immanuel Kant but whatever dumb joke >>6271952 Okay thanks >>6271970 >List of positions on the existence of A god also with a Christian focus Will this club read Materialists?

>>	Ivan Sun Mar 15 06:42:28 2015 No.6272052 >>6272044 Theism implies a personal god, not a single god of any kind. Which is why Judaism, Christianity and Islam can be considered theistic beliefs and deism which only has the unmoved mover is not a theistic belief. And no, it won't.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:49:41 2015 No.6272073

>>6272032
>arguing against Averroes' interpretation of Aristotle

De unitate intellectus has one of my favourite Aquinas passages I've come across:

>It ought to be asked by those who consider themselves to argue so subtly whether for things understood to be numerically two but specifically one is contrary to the notion of the understood insofar as it is understood, or insofar as it is understood by man. It is clear from the argument they formulate that it is contrary to the notion of the thing understood. For it is of the notion of the thing understood as such that nothing need be abstracted from it in order that it be understood. Therefore, on the basis of their argument, we can conclude, not just that there is only one thing understood by all men, but that there is simply one thing understood. And if there is but one thing understood, on their reasoning it follows that there is only one intellect in the whole world, not only for men. Therefore not only is our intellect a separate substance, it is also God Himself, and the plurality of separated substances is wholly swept away.

And there is the very useful point that a concept is not what we understand of some thing but just IS our understanding of that thing.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 06:56:41 2015 No.6272090 >>6272073 There're quite a few concepts here that without a further reading of Aquinas would be insufficient in understanding him completely: such as species, abstraction and what he actually means by the thing understood.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:06:22 2015 No.6272117 >>6270753 this sounds like fun. Im vince and i was raised protestant, had a falling out and im trying to regain my faith now. Im interested in perennialism and sufism but also christianity.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:40:01 2015 No.6272196

>>6271898
Andrew, Anglican
>4. What causes or explains the existence of this contingent being must either be solely other contingent beings or include a non-contingent (necessary) being.
Why? This is in no way logically necessary. Stupid argument. It's logically possible that life spontaneously generated from inanimate matter.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:48:15 2015 No.6272220 Tom ~ Seventh Day Adventist.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:49:03 2015 No.6272223 >>6272196 >It's logically possible that life spontaneously generated from inanimate matter. Nope

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:49:58 2015 No.6272225

>>6271722
>Where you baptized early and become atheist, or did you come to the faith on your own and get baptized?
Baptized early, became an atheist in high school (which was Catholic) because my edgy friends and the Wikipedia article about Nietzsche convinced me God was dead, went through all the sacraments for the sake of family and tradition (my mom almost cried when I told her I didn't want to get confirmed because I didn't believe in it), then in college I started studying philosophy, had a couple spiritual experiences, and finally realized that 1) everything about Catholicism was what I already believed, minus the part about Jesus being resurrected, 2) there isn't a better religion than Christianity, and 3) I was prepared to believe in the Resurrection. I had my conversion experience last year.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:55:05 2015 No.6272244

I see the apple as representing the transition from unthinking unity of human consciousness with the world to a break from that unity and the emergence of athe opposition between humanity and the world. I kind of get this from Hegel/Boëhme. You have to do wrong to know what's right, and the eating of the fruit was the first wrong. Right, naturally, comes in the form of Christ, after the gradual revelation of God's plan for His newly sinful creation.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 07:55:37 2015 No.6272247 >>6272220 Anyway, I really like Genesis. Although my churchs official stance is literal, the more I think about it the more I believe it is symbolic rather than what's on the surface.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 08:11:59 2015 No.6272308

>>6272196
>Why?
If every being which can possibly exist is either contingent or necessary, then obviously options for causing the existence of a contingent being contain either a) solely other contingent beings or b) at least one necessary being. Premise 3 is based on the fact that contingent beings can't be their own cause since they would then exist prior to themselves, which is contradictory.

>It's logically possible that life spontaneously generated from inanimate matter.
The premise has nothing to do with life.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 08:38:57 2015 No.6272410

>>6272223
Yep. If God doesn't exist, as ever increasing numbers of people believe, that's precisely what happened, and there's literally no logical reason for them to believe otherwise. It's not at all impossible to imagine that the universe spontaneously arose from natural processes.

>>6272308
Not necessarily. The cause of a contingent being could simply be successively more complex accretions of inanimate matter. And what does be mean by contingent being if not a created lifeform? Further, for a being existing outside time, notions of cause and effect would be irrelevant.

All he is saying at best is: something that requires a creator exists, therefore a creator exists.

This argument is simply not logically sound. It's a seductive wordplay, nothing more. Or am I missing something?

Jack Sun Mar 15 08:44:02 2015 No.6272420

>>6270753
I don't know whether I'm a christian or not. I have tossed between atheism and agnosticism and full-blown theism. I have completed a Certificate 4 in Christian Theology before through my old church. I guess at that point I was a hard-line Reformed Protestant, 5 Point Calvinist type. Not sure where I am now. My girlfriend is a christian, and I want to believe but struggle with a lot of things.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 08:45:43 2015 No.6272431

>>6272410
Nope in the sense that life cannot generate from nothing. life having no cause.
Yep in the sense that inanimate matter is a cause of life.

You can't have something coming from absolutely nothing, that defy laws of physics and logic.

So basically things are either caused by like things (such as fire heating an object) or by a non-contingent agent (water being poured on fire).

> Further, for a being existing outside time, notions of cause and effect would be irrelevant.
Not true again if you consider the fact that nothing can be produced absolutely ex nihilo.

What you think is there can be random fire that's not caused by anything at all, physical or immaterial, which is impossible (even for God).

So yes, you're missing the most basic point of laws of causation because you're looking at it from a theological perspective. Nobody said anything about creator and creation.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 08:46:54 2015 No.6272435 >>6271796 I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 08:52:40 2015 No.6272456 >>6272044 Sure, why not. Go ahead, make some suggestions and I'll put it on my list of things to pick up

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 09:08:04 2015 No.6272488

>>6272410
>The cause of a contingent being could simply be successively more complex accretions of inanimate matter. And what does be mean by contingent being if not a created lifeform?
If you have a contingent being caused by successively more complex contingent beings, the argument is that such an arrangement is impossible since those contingent beings aren't deriving their causal power from anywhere. Contingent being means exactly what Premise 1 states: a being such that if it exists it could have not-existed or could cease to.

>something that requires a creator exists, therefore a creator exists
More like
-Something that isn't a necessary being exists
-Something that isn't a necessary being ultimately requires a necessary being for its existence
-Therefore a necessary being exists

>not logically sound
Logic has no bearing on the soundness of an argument; it isn't going to help us determine whether the premises are true (at least not directly). I'm not sure myself whether the argument is sound (which is why I said earlier that I was more interested in researching objections than defending it) but it is logically valid.

>>6272435
I second this, along with The Scapegoat and Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (I think he later repudiated some of what he said in there though). Regardless of how accurate Girard's anthropology is, his interpretation of the atonement is very compelling.

Matthew Sun Mar 15 10:26:27 2015 No.6272660

>>6271898

For an atheist, the chain of contingent beings might terminate not in a necessary being but a brute fact- a contingent state of affairs or principle with no explanation of its own, ala Russell's "the universe is just there, and that's that."

The argument then needs to show, if it claims to be demonstrative, that brute facts are not possible.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 10:37:27 2015 No.6272698 >>6272660 There's really no distinction then between the termination of the brute fact and the termination of the necessary being (or Being). Ie "God is just here, and that's that."

Matthew Sun Mar 15 10:57:37 2015 No.6272756

>>6272698

The brute fact, unlike God, is a contingent thing. God is not "just there," as if he could possibly not have existed. God's being is intrinsically and completely intelligible in itself, and so has nothing left to explain, nor is a further explanation of God's existence possible or expected. The brute fact is, on the other hand, contingent, so its existence doesn't have to be given. In other words, it is something for which we would ordinarily expect an explanation, but it happens not to have one.

I personally tend to think that brute facts are impossible. If it is grounded in some qualified being, then it has metaphysical parts which entail an extrinsic cause of its existence. If it is unqualified being, then the grounding of the fact is God, and it is not brute.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 12:09:50 2015 No.6272981

Gen 1:1-3 in various translations

NIV: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be Light," and there was light.

NRSV: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

Tanakh translation: When God began to create the heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 16:43:37 2015 No.6273889 >>6271923 Why did you decide that it was the wrong faith for you?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:07:52 2015 No.6273988 >>6272247 Have you read The Silmarillion?

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:26:25 2015 No.6274067

>>6273889
>>6273889
Many reasons. The shariah, killing of apostates, rape of women in war, honor killings, all of these are permitted according to shariah. Muslim moderates don't know what they're talking about.

The Qur'an is frankly just boring and shit, even after having learnt arabic. It contains blatent falsities, such as its saying that the trinity consists of Jesus, Mary and God. The science in the Qur'an stuff is total BS. The oldest biography of Muhammad is 150 years after he died, meaning his life story is unreliable. Compare this with the Gospels which were like 60-80 years after Jesus. The hadiths weren't collected til nearly 200 years later. So they're useless, despite the contrived chains that exist.

The folk superstitions surrounding sufism and Islam in general, the unsophisticated theology, their ideas on free will are vague and muddled, the idea of the eternality of the Qur'an. Their attribution of anthropomorphic attributes to God like hearing and seeing and speaking. Muhammad's companions all started killing eachother after he died, Islam really was spread by the sword, they'll admit it amongst themselves and say it was necessary to spread Allah's religion.

Some things i found hard to accept like muhammad's night journey, or the claim that it was ishmael, not isaac, and that jesus wasn't even crucified. These two things seem too convenient for me, since if it's how Islam says it is, then that negates both Judaism and Christianity totally. Too convenient.

And the best sufism is all considered heretical. There's not much point considering yourself muslim if 80% of muslims consider you an infidel.

As as side note, being Muslim never made me want to go out and help people or give charity, because Islam doesn't really generate that in its followers; there's no "Islamic mother theresa", so I feel like Islam made me a worse person. As a sufi you become kind of egotistical and self absorbed, just concerned with your own spirituality. Too many westerners who get into this succumb to spiritual pride and think they are now better than others because of their supposed 'spirituality'.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:37:14 2015 No.6274113 >>6274067 but what drew you towards Islam?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:43:34 2015 No.6274133 >>6274113 youth and stupidity

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:43:56 2015 No.6274136

>>6274067
>As a sufi you become kind of egotistical and self absorbed, just concerned with your own spirituality. Too many westerners who get into this succumb to spiritual pride and think they are now better than others because of their supposed 'spirituality'.

You should be self-concerned. You can't walk another person's "Way" for them, you can offer them your insight but that's pretty much all you can truly do--you can't force them to take your advice or even act upon it. I'm not saying it's okay to have a Holier-than-thou attitude about it, however.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:44:55 2015 No.6274139 >>6274136 You're right. But that's not what I meant.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 17:57:12 2015 No.6274183 >>6274067 The Islamic trinity seems interesting. I myself have always attributed God in Islam more to the Holy Spirit than the Father, so to me it seems that Islam has the Mother, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Anonymous Sun Mar 15 18:02:11 2015 No.6274203

>>6274183
Sorry if it wasn't clear. The Qur'an is stating that Christians believe that the trinity consists of Jesus, Mary and God. Which is false, Christians don't believe that. Hence the Qur'an must be the work of some people who didn't really understand much about Christianity.

Muslims don't believe in a trinity.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 18:07:25 2015 No.6274223 >>6274203 Ah, I see.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 19:08:31 2015 No.6274474 >>6271917 >a real christian would have absolute faith knowing that God will show the right interpretation through personal revelation, through the question is why are bishops needed? So a real Christian is only what a material atheist wants him to be?

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 19:33:54 2015 No.6274572 I'd rather not share my name, but I'm an Orthodox Christian, have always wanted to study the Bible, so I am looking forward to it.

steven Sun Mar 15 20:18:44 2015 No.6274745

>>6271309
i was raised going to i believe a Presbyterian church down the street from my childhood home. but when i was around 10 my father openly defied the faith and forbid my mother from taking me and my brother to church. so i turned from God for a moment. i returned when i was a senior in highschool after a near death experience caused me to read the bible coverto cover. since than i have tried a Quaker church which i found too new agey as well as several baptist churches and some christmas's i was suck it up and go to catholic mass even tho i dont recognize papal authority and find Catholicism to be kind of scary for a lot of reasons. i agree with a lot of the teachings of some of the more famous saints as well as the teachings of the first church fathers

Thomas Sun Mar 15 20:22:15 2015 No.6274758

>>6271917
>a real christian would have absolute faith knowing that God will show the right interpretation through personal revelation, through the question is why are bishops needed?
This is the same logic Christian Scientists use with medicine. It's not good logic,

>>6271980
Doubts about Christianity in general, or Catholicism?
>>6272030
This is really true

>>6271994
Welcome

>>6272220
Nice to have you, one of my best friends is Seventh Day Adventist.

>>6272196
Great to have a fellow Anglican!

>>6272247
Every Church with Apostolic Succession says it's metaphorical, so I think it's a safe bet that it is.

>>6272420
Well, that is part of faith you know. Faith is defined by struggle, not perpetual absolute certainty.

>>6274572
Good to have you aboard.

Thomas Sun Mar 15 20:25:44 2015 No.6274772

>>6274745
Why not a Church with Apolosotifcal succession, only not Catholic? There's Orthodox, Anglican (Episcopal in the U.S.), and many Lutheran Churches which have obtained Apostolic Succession (either from tracing back to ordained Bishops who left the Church of Rome, or being ordained by Catholic Churches which broke from the Church of Rome, or being ordained by Anglican bishops). Not to mention numerous smaller Churches, one of which might be in your area.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 20:42:36 2015 No.6274829 Abdifatah, muslim. Excited for Bible studies.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 20:43:39 2015 No.6274834 >>6270753 Start and finish dates pl0x.

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 22:15:20 2015 No.6275236 >>6274829 Can you argue the claims made in >>6274067 ? I would like to see what fruits come of the discussion.

>>	Thomas Sun Mar 15 23:02:25 2015 No.6275445 >>6274772 >Apostolic succession >>6274834 Start date is today, finish date is next Sunday

>>	Anonymous Sun Mar 15 23:23:12 2015 No.6275527 >>6275445 I've got a backlog to get through first, will you include weeks off to catch up like the book-club?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 00:37:01 2015 No.6275823 >>6271412 >But orthodox doesn't seem tenable since you just end up going to the Greek church with old ladies Nice to see a decade of philosophy and theology in action

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 00:47:35 2015 No.6275859 What have you guys found to be the best explanation of the trinity that doesn't devolve into modalism or polytheism?

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:00:01 2015 No.6275895

>>6274067
>The shariah, killing of apostates, rape of women in war, honor killings, all of these are permitted according to shariah

So in other words if a religion doesnt conform to your cultural and christian understanding it is incorrect?

I could use that same reasoning to argue that neopagans are "better" than christians

>The Qur'an is frankly just boring and shit, even after having learnt arabic. It contains blatent falsities, such as its saying that the trinity consists of Jesus, Mary and God. The science in the Qur'an stuff is total BS. The oldest biography of Muhammad is 150 years after he died, meaning his life story is unreliable. Compare this with the Gospels which were like 60-80 years after Jesus. The hadiths weren't collected til nearly 200 years later. So they're useless, despite the contrived chains that exist.

All of which is still places it miles in front of the bible which is vastly more confused and contradictory. There is vastly more evidence of Muhammad's existence and experiences than those of the bible. Christians dont even know the Authors of the books of the New Testament or even the year in which he was crucified.

>The folk superstitions surrounding sufism and Islam in general, the unsophisticated theology, their ideas on free will are vague and muddled, the idea of the eternality of the Qur'an. Their attribution of anthropomorphic attributes to God like hearing and seeing and speaking

Until the Protestantism took hold this would be a perfect description of Catholacism and most modern Christians with thier modified pagan festivals and understandings of the divine.

>Muhammad's companions all started killing eachother after he died, Islam really was spread by the sword, they'll admit it amongst themselves and say it was necessary to spread Allah's religion.

What is Indonesia? Christianity spread entrenched itself across the world through Roman and later European violence and genocide. Likewise the conflicts between protestants and catholics have percentage wise been some of the most deadly conflicts in European history.

>Some things i found hard to accept like muhammad's night journey, or the claim that it was ishmael, not isaac, and that jesus wasn't even crucified. These two things seem too convenient for me, since if it's how Islam says it is, then that negates both Judaism and Christianity totally. Too convenient.

Given that the reason the Qur'an was sent down was specifically to fix the corruption that had distorted these beliefs it makes perfect sense. There is no reason for God to be needlessly cryptic or obtuse.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:08:08 2015 No.6275918 >>6275823 Sometimes we need to be realistic.

Matthew Mon Mar 16 01:14:57 2015 No.6275937

>>6275859

I like Anselm's model in the Monologion. It's a riff on the old memory/knowledge/love model, which in itself would be modalistic, but Anselm presents this analogy in a way which points away from itself toward an intelligibly non-modalistic understanding of the Trinity. It's a tighter version of Augustine's strategy in De Trinitate- start at modalism and point away.

I also like the idea of a Platonic form of a triangle to illustrate a compatibility between multiple relations subsisting in a single being and divine simplicity. In such a Form, the multiple relata (e.g., corners, sides) which constitute the triangle are what they are in relation to each other, but don't each have a distinct ontological ground.

To me at least, it gives a pretty intuitive picture of a thing's being as constituted by essential and distinct relations, yet which suppresses the temptation either to reify the relations as parts (because the form of a triangle is not three forms) or to collapse their distinction (it is essential to the form of a triangle to have multiple sides in multiple relations).

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:18:20 2015 No.6275948
File: 388 KB, 984x733, 1425266914242.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6275895
>>6275895
>>6275895
>So in other words if a religion doesnt conform to your cultural and christian understanding it is incorrect?
Yes. Just like burning widows in hinduism is wrong too.

>Given that the reason the Qur'an was sent down was specifically to fix the corruption that had distorted these beliefs it makes perfect sense. There is no reason for God to be needlessly cryptic or obtuse.

That's what the Qur'an is though. Cryptic and obtuse. Their claim that it is so eloquent that it must be from God can't be proven; at best it can be described as so esoteric that you need to be a top level expert the language to actually experience this. Or at worst an incomprehensible mess. But ultimately its eloquence is just a dogma. Nothing more.

>All of which is still places it miles in front of the bible which is vastly more confused and contradictory. There is vastly more evidence of Muhammad's existence and experiences than those of the bible. Christians dont even know the Authors of the books of the New Testament or even the year in which he was crucified.

That's just your opinion. Jesus parables are much deeper than the vague incoherent ramblings of the Qur'an. Have you even read it? It's just the same thing over and over, threats of hell etc. They claim it was necessary for humans to know how to behave, but the Qur'an mostly talks about marriage, divorce, inheritance and jihad. Humans could have figured the first three on on their own. Why didn't Allah reveal some useful information? Perhaps that stuff was useful to medieval Arabs, but not anyone else.

>
Given that the reason the Qur'an was sent down was specifically to fix the corruption that had distorted these beliefs it makes perfect sense. There is no reason for God to be needlessly cryptic or obtuse.

That's very convenient. Just like every other heretical group. But this specifically changes the focus of God's revelation in history on to the Arabs and negates Islams two main rivals. If you had lived among Arabs you'd know they don't have much respect for historical objectivity, they just want a history that suits them.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:18:35 2015 No.6275951 >>6274139 What did you mean then, rafiq?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:24:11 2015 No.6275960 >>6275951 See the bit at the end where I talked about charity.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 01:42:24 2015 No.6276014

>>6275948
>Yes. Just like burning widows in hinduism is wrong too.

Can you see the risk of the subjectivism you have there?

>That's what the Qur'an is though. Cryptic and obtuse. Their claim that it is so eloquent that it must be from God can't be proven; at best it can be described as so esoteric that you need to be a top level expert the language to actually experience this. Or at worst an incomprehensible mess. But ultimately its eloquence is just a dogma. Nothing more.

Compared to the bible with its constant mess over different translations (which Christians are loathed to read in the original), arguments over which books are legitimate and what is allegorical and what is literal the Qur'an is very clear compared to the bible..

>Why didn't Allah reveal some useful information? Perhaps that stuff was useful to medieval Arabs, but not anyone else.

WHy didnt Jesus? The Quran talks about contract law how to handle succession ect and all the other things you need to actually run a society. If the second comming was really as immanent as Christians belived his teachings would be adequate, but given the 2000 year wait they are not.

This is why tradition and people like Paul are so important to Christians; because the words attributed to him are so corrupted and piecemeal that it would be unworkable otherwise.

>That's very convenient. Just like every other heretical group. But this specifically changes the focus of God's revelation in history on to the Arabs and negates Islams two main rivals. If you had lived among Arabs you'd know they don't have much respect for historical objectivity, they just want a history that suits them.

Unlike the Christians who bastardised the God of Abraham dividing into 3 seperate gods and who completeley ingnore the fact that the messiah comming in instalment is ludicrous heresy.

You are literally a post modernist with your subjectivism

Wilhelm Mon Mar 16 03:03:23 2015 No.6276184

Hi. I'm an agnostic, Lutheran on paper. Interested in the religion my country lost faith in but which they still kept, though fragmented. Besides, I'm not sure whether it was a good choice or not. So that's mostly why I'm here.

In the earlier thread I got recommended Essentials Writings of Christian Mysticism, which I'm going to pick up as soon as possible. But maybe this book would also be of interest to this reading club?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 03:04:15 2015 No.6276185 >>6275937 Can you expand+simplify on this, Im not familiar with the terms you are using.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 03:10:57 2015 No.6276206 >>6275937 This got me thinking if one can explain the Trinity through an adaption of Kant's a priori synthetic judgment.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 03:27:00 2015 No.6276262

>>6270753
Jovan, Eastern Orthodox.

>>6275895
>there is vastly more evidence of Muhammad's existence and experiences than those of the bible.

No serious historian would argue that the existence of Christ, or his death is historically untrue (assuming this is the non-truth you are alleging). No single group or their histories accounting from this time would have benefited from lying about Christ's death. Finally, What kind of God tries to trick billions of his future people by faking his (under your allegations, simply a prophet) prophet's death?

>for the functioning of society
There’s your mistake. God isn’t reaching for the ordinance of society (although contract law, interest etc,. is discussed in the old testament). He’s reaching to your personal salvation--- “The kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:21. The Gospels don’t look to provide an example for the best sort of earthly governance, if anything the instruction of Christ goes directly against the supposition that there is a best form of earthly society. The only direction it even gives to groups of people is in the formation of church communities and in paying strictly material dues to whoever is in power.

> Christianity spread ... violence and genocide

Brah the initial spread of Christianity was not only peaceful, but also persecuted. Also you can't find a single one of these Western wars, conflicts, expeditions etc,. that was committed without preliminary economic reasons, or with any approval from even the most basic Christian instructions --

“Why does a state’s economic interest have anything to do with the church?”

The church historically is relatively innocent of actually wanting a role in state affairs, they came under necessity and remained under greed.

During the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the remaining Roman officials delegated government responsibility to the institution of the Roman Church (i.e. Pope Leo the Great vs. Attila the Hun). You can criticize the institution of the church all you like, however the institution’s historical failures still remain separate from the theology of their scholars and the acts of their Holy men.

I would lead you onto more differences between Roman Catholic and Orthodoxy, the schism and etc,. but for now that’s too detailed and irrelevant to your criticisms.

>who bastardised the God of Abraham dividing into 3 seperate gods

Damn son there is literally like 1800 years of dialectics on this subject but you didn’t bother searching for a single argument from someone that is not your Imam. Arianism was put to rest intellectually at the first council of Nicea 325 AD. Compare Nicean Creed and points of contextual reference to God in the Bible.

shalom shalom

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 04:07:37 2015 No.6276330 >>6276014 You muslims are the equivalent of walls, you can't understand even the basic concepts in Christianity like the trinity, which you really have to be stuck up your own ass not to.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 04:08:56 2015 No.6276334 >>6276262 I'm your Croatian nemesis, Ivan the Roman Catholic.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 04:16:40 2015 No.6276354 What is the mark God puts on Cain and why does he do it ? It's not like there is anyone else on earth for him to be afraid of.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 04:21:34 2015 No.6276361 >>6276354 No one knows really. Mormons think that black people are descendants of Kain (though they aren't all too Christian), in my Jerusalem Bible it says that we don't know, like it is with the giants and angels having sex with women and such.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 04:36:08 2015 No.6276400

>>6276354
>why does he do it? It's not like there is anyone else on earth for him to be afraid of.

Commentators have been coming up with answers to whether Cain, Adam, and Eve were alone for thousands of years, but I don't think it's a very interesting question and it doesn't change the narrative function of the mark. Along with the etiological nature of Genesis, you have Cain founding a city immediately after, so very soon you have people who could kill Cain.

As for the nature of the mark, like >>6276361
says some have thought it refers to dark skin, others to a nervous shaking of the head, others to some written sign on Cain's body (since the Hebrew for 'mark' also means 'inscription'), others to a pair of horns. It seems the author(s) didn't think it important enough to specify.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 05:16:10 2015 No.6276480

>>6276262
>No serious historian would argue that the existence of Christ, or his death is historically untrue (assuming this is the non-truth you are alleging). No single group or their histories accounting from this time would have benefited from lying about Christ's death. Finally, What kind of God tries to trick billions of his future people by faking his (under your allegations, simply a prophet) prophet's death?

Nice moving of the goal posts there, you changed it from the bible being more historically accurate to the question of whether Jesus existed or not. Just to humor you though

>No single group or their histories accounting from this time would have benefited from lying about Christ's death

So is that why it its impossible for groups like the mormons to exist?

>What kind of God tries to trick billions of his future people by faking his (under your allegations, simply a prophet) prophet's death?

Well Satan is a good candidate for this , likewise god is by definition loving. Even when he wiped out all most all of humanity the first time or chose not to reveal himself to the India and China.

> The Gospels don’t look to provide an example for the best sort of earthly governance, if anything the instruction of Christ goes directly against the supposition that there is a best form of earthly society. The only direction it even gives to groups of people is in the formation of church communities and in paying strictly material dues to whoever is in power.

Yes lets pretend Romans 13 doesnt exist and that the failure to inculde specific pronouncements has lead to millions of deaths and outrageous tyranny in the name of Christ.

>Brah the initial spread of Christianity was not only peaceful, but also persecuted.

Nice cherry picking. Chrisitanity would have petered out had it not been for Roman violence. the Early church was rapidly forgotten.

Those south Americans were totally oppressing those noble peace loving conquistadors. Not only that but Roman emperors proscribing the death penalty to practicing pagans was totally an act of self defense. Charlemange how no choice but to threaten the saxons with extiction unless they accepted christs love.

>Also you can't find a single one of these Western wars, conflicts, expeditions etc,. that was committed without preliminary economic reasons, or with any approval from even the most basic Christian instructions --

So in other words millions of people can die in the name of Christ and it is acceptable to you as long as there is another motivation with it? Could the same broken logic be used to explain away Islamic "atrocities"

>The church historically is relatively innocent of actually wanting a role in state affairs, they came under necessity and remained under greed.

How was it a matter of necessity to shut down the philosophical academies of Greece and burn down the library of antioch?

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 05:19:05 2015 No.6276487

>>6276262
>I would lead you onto more differences between Roman Catholic and Orthodoxy, the schism and etc,. but for now that’s too detailed and irrelevant to your criticisms.

I know full well about the divide and the petty power struggles of the churches that supposedly have the guidance of the holy spirit.

>Damn son there is literally like 1800 years of dialectics on this subject but you didn’t bother searching for a single argument from someone that is not your Imam. Arianism was put to rest intellectually at the first council of Nicea 325 AD. Compare Nicean Creed and points of contextual reference to God in the Bible.

Yes and all of them revert to modalism or it being a divine mystery that is incomprehensible to human knowledge. ie they copped out.

The same arguments used by christians to delude themselves into thinking the trinity is not a polythesitic concept could be used to justify a circle being square.

Matthew Mon Mar 16 05:22:23 2015 No.6276492

>>6276185

OK. When I talk about Anselm's model, I'm referring to how he describes the Persons of the Trinity as existing through relations within God.

In Anselm's model, the Son (or Word) arises from the Father as God's knowledge of Himself. Since God knows Himself perfectly, and to know something perfectly just is to have one's conception of that thing contain its full reality, both knower and knowledge participate fully in the indivisible divine essence. Since it is not the same thing to be knower and knowledge, God's self-knowledge entails two "things-which-stand-in-relation-to-each-other" (called "relata") which each possess the fullness of the divine essence, but which nonetheless possess one act of existence between them. The Father on Anselm's model stands in relation to the Son as memory to knowledge- knowledge "looks back" on that from which it came, which it reflects.

For Anselm, the Spirit is the love God has for Himself, through His self-knowledge. Since love is the willing of the good, and the good is the perfection of one's existence, and God's act of self-knowledge is the knowledge of His own perfection, God's will as it applies to himself must be a loving one. That God has a will with regard to himself follows from his self-knowledge- for the knower can only have knowledge insofar as he stands in a relation to knowledge itself, and that relation of knower to knowledge just is will. So God loves himself.

That love is not the same (insofar as it is some kind of relatum) as the Father or the Son, since it is not a "relatum" in the self-knowledge relation. Rather, it proceeds from them both as logically dependent upon lover and beloved. The self-love of God, in loving the divine essence, must be a will capable of having the divine essence as its object- but nothing has this relational capacity in itself, save the divine essence. Hence the love of God must, like Memory and Knowledge, possess the divine essence.

So Anselm uses the language of memory, knowledge and love to paint a picture of the asymmetric relations that the divine essence bears to itself, which do not multiply the essence but nonetheless constitute differing relata. Whereas in us, our knowledge is only a pale abstraction of our true essence, and our memory likewise, and our self-love correspondingly weak, God's knowledge, being perfect, fully participates in his very being, as does his love and memory. So Anselm in using such concepts points beyond them to a perfection that entails the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.

Matthew Mon Mar 16 05:35:49 2015 No.6276517

>>6276487

Haha, your failure to grasp the Trinity doesn't make it a polytheistic concept. No creedal statement of Trinitarianism entails polytheism. It is enough for authentic spiritual practice that the creeds rule out heresies.

The truth is not grounded in human understanding, but in God himself. Even a merely negative creed is sufficient for religious purposes to channel love in the right manner. That said, there have been excellent expositions of the doctrine, too, which help strengthen the dim relationship our intellects bear to the truth, and easily deflect charges of impiety or contradiction.

Matthew Mon Mar 16 05:58:02 2015 No.6276562

>>6276185
As to the Platonic form analogy, the image I use is that of the Platonic triangle.

A Platonic Form is the essence or "idea" of something considered apart from any individuating features. So the Platonic Form of a triangle, for instance, would have only what makes a triangle, a triangle, and none of the individuating features that mark off individual triangles from each other (e.g. a certain size, a certain distribution of their internal angles, etc).

I think that the Form of a Triangle serves as a good image of how to reconcile the multiplicity of the Persons of the Trinity, with the oneness of God. The first thing to bear in mind is that the Form of the triangle is one Form. We can describe features of it by means of many other Forms or ideas (e.g. the idea of a "line," an "angle," etc) but the Platonic Triangle nonetheless is not identical to the ideas we use to describe it. It doesn't have parts either, since it is all one idea. Yet the Platonic Triangle, even though it is one Form, is in itself composed of multiple relations that make it what it is- for example, its internal angles adding up to 180 degrees, or its having three sides. These relations have to be really distinct from each other, but they can't be treated as having their own existence without becoming separate ideas.

So in the idea of the Platonic Triangle, we can affirm one thing, bearing really distinct internal relations that nonetheless do not have their own autonomous existence. In the Trinity, these relations would be personal rather than mathematical ones, but I think that the image of the Platonic Triangle at least shows what it is to have multiple relations without compromising simplicity.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 07:28:10 2015 No.6276756 >>6276562 But isnt that a problem though given that using the trinity reasoning each line or angle would be a whole triangle? Given that Jesus the father and the holy spirit are all god whilst still being seperate?

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 07:46:03 2015 No.6276804 >>6276517 When the Nicean creed talks of him being begotten not made what do they mean? Couldnt the argument that being of one divine substance would mean that the greek gods would be a single being in a simmilar fashion?

Matthew Mon Mar 16 08:28:21 2015 No.6276936

>>6276756

Yep, that is a legit problem. The analogy isn't perfect- it's just supposed to show how multiplying relata within the Trinity doesn't necessarily divide the substance.

If one were trying to describe the line's mode of existence, though, I think one would need to use interestingly Trinitarian language, in the end. Since it's not a distinct idea, each side in the Platonic Triangle doesn't have its own individual act of existence. The Platonic Triangle has only one kind of existence-triangularity. Hence, when considered as denoting some existing thing, each side of the Platonic Triangle, to the degree it has existence, has the irreducible existence of the Platonic Triangle itself. So if we could point at one of these sides, the existing-thing we'd point to could only be the one Form. Only when we consider the sides, not as beings, but as relata standing in relations, can we articulate their distinction from each other. But this is probably (given the creeds) just what we would want to say even of the persons of the Trinity.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 08:46:45 2015 No.6277004

>>6276936
That reasoning just seems like modalism or something very similar. Likewise if one is to use this reasoning of yours consitently why must it be limited to only 3 aspects and not *all* of these aspects that have an irreducible existence within the triangle? Why stop at three?

Matthew Mon Mar 16 08:49:49 2015 No.6277011

>>6276804

>When the Nicean creed talks of him being begotten not made what do they mean?

They show what they mean in the bit immediately following:

>"begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made."

So Jesus is not a created thing that began to exist, nor is he a contingent thing dependent for his existence upon another, nor is he another God, for he is "one substance" with the Father. A substance is a thing which exists in its own right, so being one substance with the Father means having the same "instance of existence." So Jesus's "begetting" should not be construed as a causal relation between distinct entities, but a relation with the Father that "exists" within one "substance." This relation involves a certain "coming-from," but it's not to be construed as compromising the coeternality or consubstantiality of the persons (see the post about Anselm's Trinitarian model above for a possible model:>>6276492 )

The Anathansian Creed makes a few things clearer: https://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html

>Couldnt the argument that being of one divine substance would mean that the greek gods would be a single being in a simmilar fashion?

Well, the Greek Gods are usually not thought of as being a single being, or coeternal. They are subject to passions and change, causing and being caused by each other, hence not even in the running to be the One God.

You could, perhaps, posit a One God which was a multiplicity, but I think there are good arguments that God must be a Trinity (I'm persuaded of Anselm's account).

Matthew Mon Mar 16 09:02:07 2015 No.6277042

>>6277004

>That reasoning just seems like modalism or something very similar.

Certainly not modalistic, I think. In the analogy, the mathematical relations between(say, the sides) of the Platonic triangle are my analogues for the personal relations between the Trinity. In the Platonic Triangle, these relations are certainly not illusory, hence their relata are not illusory. Hence the Persons represented by this analogy are not one person in many guises, but many persons in eternal relation, which seems just what we would wish to say of the Persons, as Christians.

>Likewise if one is to use this reasoning of yours consitently why must it be limited to only 3 aspects and not *all* of these aspects that have an irreducible existence within the triangle? Why stop at three?

In the case of the Triangle, there are a couple of aspects (e.g. sides, angles) which can be said to exist in a Trinitarian-analogous relationship. Now just as it is the very essence of the triangle to exist through these relations, so too does the very being of God necessarily entail the Trinity.

How exactly this being entails the Trinity cannot, I think, be established without doubt (because, from what we know about God, we can't grasp his essence the same way we grasp a triangle's). Yet I think Anselm (as I understand him above) gives the matter a pretty good go. Basically, God is three divine Persons and no more and no less, because that number of persons is the necessary consequence of His relations to Himself as God.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 09:09:35 2015 No.6277066

>>6277011
>So Jesus is not a created thing that began to exist,

Then how could he be a human let alone died then?

>Well, the Greek Gods are usually not thought of as being a single being, or coeternal. They are subject to passions and change, causing and being caused by each other, hence not even in the running to be the One God.

Couldnt the greek argue that they are in fact what we see as incoherence is just a result of human ignroance/ an inability to comprehend like many Christians do?

>but I think there are good arguments that God must be a Trinity (I'm persuaded of Anselm's account).

Wouldnt it be more correct to say there is a good argument about why god *could* be a trinity instead?

Anslems model seems to be extreemly counterintuitve to the mainstream explanation of the trinity on both Catholic and Protestant accounts and seems to use sophistry to try and hide that Jesus and the holy spirit are components of God.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 09:15:41 2015 No.6277081

>>6277042
Many people in enternal relations is incompatible with the oneness of the trinity Anselem's model appears to get around this by denying their personhood and turning them into abstractions.

>Basically, God is three divine Persons and no more and no less, because that number of persons is the necessary consequence of His relations to Himself as God.

But that seems like you are working backwards. Why is it that *only* love and *only* knowledge require this division why can no other relationships possibly requrire this?

Matthew Mon Mar 16 09:29:47 2015 No.6277111

>>6277066
>Then how could he be a human let alone died then?

I was referring not to Jesus as human, of course, but as the second person of the Trinity. As human, he had a beginning and a death and after that an everlasting life.

>Couldnt the greek argue that they are in fact what we see as incoherence is just a result of human ignroance/ an inability to comprehend like many Christians do?

They could say that, but it would be a pretty unprincipled ignorance. The gaps in knowledge about God are motivated by what we do know- i.e., that the is one, uncreated, perfect, etc.

>Wouldnt it be more correct to say there is a good argument about why god *could* be a trinity instead?

I think the arguments as Anselm presents them are more in the "must" category.

> seems to use sophistry to try and hide that Jesus and the holy spirit are components of God.

I don't think he does use such sophistry. Each person must share in the divine essence to play the self-relational roles Anselm posits God as bearing to himself, so they must possess Godhood, but at the same time cannot "divide the substance" of God.

>>6277081
>Many people in enternal relations is incompatible with the oneness of the trinity

Nope, the traditional doctrine of the Trinity (see the Athanasian Creed above) explicitly contrasts person with substance. God is one being but three persons, where "persons" does not denote a being, but a relatum in relation with others. Hence multiple persons in eternal relations is a pretty standard account of the the "tri" part of the Trinity.

> Anselem's model appears to get around this by denying their personhood and turning them into abstractions

I'm not sure how he turns them into abstractions. We need to think in abstractions, of course, but I don't think the abstractions Anselm uses to think about the persons entails that *they* are abstractions.

>But that seems like you are working backwards. Why is it that *only* love and *only* knowledge require this division why can no other relationships possibly requrire this?

Anselm begins with knowledge because knowledge (i.e., the characteristic act of the intellect) is the necessary and sufficient condition for an interpersonal relationship (and also because he's riffing on Augustine). Since the Trinity aims to account for the manner in which God possesses personhood, his knowledge relations vis. himself are the only relevant starting-point. If we then follow Anselm's process, it turns out that God's act of self-knowledge entails knower, knowledge, and love, which entails to the three divine persons, and no more or less.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 09:32:56 2015 No.6277119 >>6277111 I have to go to bed now if the thread is still up tommorow Ill respond to your points. Thank for taking the time to respond and not just vomit out fedora memes or platitudes at me.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 09:40:55 2015 No.6277147 >>6277119 That's why you didn't ask fedora tier questions

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 15:08:58 2015 No.6278182

>>6274203
>Sorry if it wasn't clear. The Qur'an is stating that Christians believe that the trinity consists of Jesus, Mary and God. Which is false, Christians don't believe that. Hence the Qur'an must be the work of some people who didn't really understand much about Christianity.

I love how Christians expect nothing less than an infallible understanding of their religion from critics yet dismiss other religions on the flimsiest grounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_view_of_the_Trinity#Discussion

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 15:16:41 2015 No.6278198 >>6278182 If the Qur'an is supposed to be the literal word of God you should expect it to say the actual facts about what Christians believe when it's criticising Christianity.

Anonymous Mon Mar 16 15:21:18 2015 No.6278209

>>6278182
The Collyridians have become of interest in some recent Christian–Muslim religious discussions in reference to the Islamic concept of the Christian Trinity. The debate hinges on some verses in the Qur'an, primarily [Quran 5:73], [Quran 5:75], and [Quran 5:116] in the sura Al-Ma'ida, which have been taken to imply that Muhammad believed that Christians considered Mary part of the Trinity. This idea has never been part of mainstream Christian doctrine, and is not clearly and unambiguously attested among any ancient Christian group (including the Collyridians). But there has been some modern speculation that Muhammad might have confused heretical Collyridian beliefs with those of orthodox Christianity. There is no evidence that Collyridianism still existed in Muhammad's time (the 6th and 7th centuries AD), but perhaps the idea of the divinity of Mary might have been associated with Christian belief in Arabia because of the heritage of the Collyridian heresy.

The Islamic response amounts to little more than desperate apologetic. They'll never consider the fact that the Qur'an was written by a man, not from God, so they frantically search for any scrap of material that may validate its claims.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 21:27:05 2015 No.6279464 >>6270753 Would it be more accurate to call this a christian reading group rather than a theological group?

>>	Phil Ossiferz Stone !!esSirF6LRYN Mon Mar 16 21:43:24 2015 No.6279531 >>6279464 Why does having a pool of well-educated end users somehow tarnish the enterprise....? Most people that critique religions haven't actually read the user's guides. They just glean what they want off Wikipedia.

>>	Anonymous Mon Mar 16 23:21:00 2015 No.6279880 >>6279531 I never said that it did only that it seems a tad disingenuous to call it a theology group when it is wholly interested in Christian apologetics.

Anonymous Tue Mar 17 01:58:43 2015 No.6280294

Very interesting. I'm Anthony, I'm a non-demoninational Christian with a strong urge to explore the faith I was raised in- Catholicism.

When this girl invited me to her youth group when I was 14 I became non-denominational, though my doctrine, if you really figured it out, would probably look Protestant. Funny how things have more or less come full circle.

Anyway, I really appreciate this, Thomas. I'm excited and it'll actually finally get me to read the Bible in its entirety.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 03:56:04 2015 No.6280579 >>6270753 What is Episcopal church anyway? And other protestant churches? I know very little of their doctrine.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 06:08:00 2015 No.6280774 >>6280579 The Episcopal Church is basically the American chapter of the Church of England.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 06:11:46 2015 No.6280783 Is Catholic Stalinism possible?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 06:13:34 2015 No.6280786 >>6280783 why not? it's a natural conclusion of both, the ideal dialectic.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 06:50:48 2015 No.6280862 >>6280783 Nope, it's just a meme.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 16:41:41 2015 No.6282447 >>6280862 Bourgeois "Christian", plz

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 16:44:08 2015 No.6282460 >>6282447 Meme "Christian", plz

Anonymous Tue Mar 17 16:46:13 2015 No.6282471

>>6282447
Are you seriously suggesting they're compatible when numerous popes have explicitly condemned Communism and every Communist party has persecuted Christians?
If you're the same guy from the Stalin thread, a lot of what you said there was misinformed or heretical and you should stop telling your parishioners that Catholic Stalinism exists.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 16:52:20 2015 No.6282501 File: 834 KB, 2005x2869, Bezbozhnik_u_stanka_22-1929.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6280783 No.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:27:52 2015 No.6282695 How many of you have read the retreat chapter in a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and what did you think of it's imagery, that sermon scared the shit out of me

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:45:08 2015 No.6282775 >>6278209 >>6278198 Sorry but you guys are wrong http://www.answering-christianity.com/sami_zaatri/mary_worship.htm

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:47:02 2015 No.6282786 >>6276480 >How was it a matter of necessity to shut down the philosophical academies of Greece and burn down the library of antioch? You were making some interesting points until this. You are literally retarded.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:49:01 2015 No.6282795 >>6280783 Who would be a Stalinist in 2015? Might as well call yourself a Hammurabite or something.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:51:21 2015 No.6282806 >>6282775 >Sorry but you guys are wrong Umm I feel even more right after reading that.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:53:14 2015 No.6282814 >>6282795 /lit/ is full of them

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:54:56 2015 No.6282819 >>6282814 It's /pol/ish shitposting.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:55:51 2015 No.6282822 File: 10 KB, 227x222, manofsteel.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6282795 Who wouldn't be a Stalinist in 2015?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:55:56 2015 No.6282823 >>6282775 Holy shit. Top kek. Has to be b8

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:56:22 2015 No.6282824 >>6282819 That's what the Commies say about the Christposters, though.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 17:58:38 2015 No.6282828 >>6276487 >I know full well about the divide and the petty power struggles of the churches that supposedly have the guidance of the holy spirit. tips hijab

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:00:22 2015 No.6282831 >>6282824 There's a large difference between /pol/'s Christianity and regular Christianity

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:02:01 2015 No.6282836 >>6282831 Indeed, but that doesn't affect the local Marxists' opinions of Christianity threads.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:19:59 2015 No.6282886 File: 40 KB, 699x637, Gr8+b8+m8+i+r8+8+8+4+your+h8+b4+_6509e537a5c36e8f37cb0c19b8b23b65.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6282823 Islam itself is the ultimate bait, it got lots of people hooked.

Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:47:02 2015 No.6283017

>>6276014
>Can you see the risk of the subjectivism you have there?

No risk at all. I won't have my morals dictated to me by barbaric Arabs or Indians.

>Compared to the bible with its constant mess over different translations (which Christians are loathed to read in the original), arguments over which books are legitimate and what is allegorical and what is literal the Qur'an is very clear compared to the bible..

There is an equally numerous amount of translations of the Qur'an, so what?

The original greek version of the Gospels still exist.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:50:09 2015 No.6283037 >>6283017 The confusion with the translations is only there for English as far as I know. Other countries, especially Catholic ones have "official" translations done by the best in the field.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 18:56:06 2015 No.6283066 >>6283037 Yeah that's my point. But Muslims assume we are all southern baptist biblical literalist protestants. Maybe because its close to the way Muslims think, so they think it's the true Christianity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 22:46:45 2015 No.6283903 As Christians, how do you account for that according to the bible(?) Earth is like 6k years or something. I mean it clearly is not. And the thing about no hate just genuinely asking

Anonymous Tue Mar 17 23:02:13 2015 No.6283948

>>6283017
>No risk at all.

The same reasoning you used could be used to deny Christianity in favour of Roman Paganism.

>There is an equally numerous amount of translations of the Qur'an, so what?

There is not actually there are a few english trasnlations but unlike Christians Muslims actually work to understand it in its original language which is why it lacks the problems that the bible has.

>The original greek version of the Gospels still exist

How many christians can read koine greek? How many churches actually encourage learning it or preach in it? - Almost none.

Most preists cannot even read it in its original language.

How do protestants and others who hold the bible to be a central and divinly inspired document reconcile this gaping and structual ignorance when you have all the resources availiable to end this problem?

>>	Anonymous Tue Mar 17 23:03:24 2015 No.6283951 >>6283903 Most christians see those parts as being a form of allegory. Biblical literalism is a relatively new and American concept.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 00:48:46 2015 No.6284254 File: 11 KB, 200x259, 200px-PhilipDick.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6271940 Gnostic mustard race reporting in. Too late to jump in on this?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 00:59:48 2015 No.6284281 >>6283903 >according to the bible(?) Earth is like 6k years Citation needed, dipshit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 01:29:29 2015 No.6284352 >>6284254 So how do gnostics feel about Apostolic succession?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 12:55:35 2015 No.6285817 >>6284352 Since Gnostics don't even have churches, I'm guess it doesn't matter to them

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 13:04:04 2015 No.6285847 gnosticism is paganism enjoy

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 13:06:14 2015 No.6285855 >>6285847 It's a heresy but not really paganism.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 15:38:03 2015 No.6286388

Lapsed Catholic here.

So anyway I think the logical conclusion to atheism is hard nihilism though of course just like many Christians don't live a religious lifestyle most atheists live their lives as if there is an objective morality or truth ignoring the implications of their belief system.

I fell into the line of thinking there is objective morality so I was drawn to theism. Then I was drawn to Catholicism because I found of the Christian denominations it was more open to philosophical pursuits

But I don't want to camp in Catholicism And just chill. So my question is are there any books that are for the lack of a better term comparative religion books.

And I don't just mean books that go. This is false this is false, hurray atheism or huzah Christianity. I mean something that just lays out religions with no hard opinion from the author or editors.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 15:40:41 2015 No.6286396

>>6286388
I think atheists more live according to a morality because of the law, then sort of ingrain themselves with it as a personal position. If they knew for sure they didn't have to worry about the law, I'm sure many atheists would do all sorts of immoral things.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 15:41:47 2015 No.6286398 >>6285855 paganism is hella ill defined

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 15:51:42 2015 No.6286429

>>6283948
>Most preists cannot even read it in its original language.

Do you know anything? You talk about protestants as if they are all christians. Catholic and orthodox riests learn greek and hebrew as part of their studies.

>The same reasoning you used could be used to deny Christianity in favour of Roman Paganism.

Except that they'd be wrong.

>There is not actually there are a few english trasnlations but unlike Christians Muslims actually work to understand it in its original language which is why it lacks the problems that the bible has.

There are at least a dozen translations into english, countless others in to other languages. You fail. The vast majority of muslims can't even understand arabic and have no intention of learning it.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 15:59:11 2015 No.6286456

>>6286396
Yeah, its very common to be blind to the sources of your own opinions.

Most shit Christians think is immoral is from a secular tradition too, and they talk of god informing it, but there ignorant of its origins. Christianity never was good about establishing a corpus of law, or unlike Judaism or Islam, a codified and complete series of religious rules to govern life. And that's why its so easy for atheists to leave it and keep western values. Western values are secular.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:09:26 2015 No.6286494

>>6286456

Depends if you mean values in the sense of law making and govt traditions that yes you tip your hat to the Greek and Romans.

If you mean values as in cultural perceptions of morality or ethics Christian values are everywhere including in humanist thoughts,

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:10:51 2015 No.6286498 >>6286456 Christians have considerably tighter morals than the law.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:12:28 2015 No.6286504 Just curious, can you still be a Catholic if you strongly detest the current pope?

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:16:03 2015 No.6286521

>>6286504
Technically, but it's pretty poor form considering he's the representative of the Holy Spirit on earth (which is also what his infallibility rests upon, along with being Peter's successor), and blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one unforgivable sin.

Why do you hate him? Because he sympathized with the attackers over those cartoons? what?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:21:34 2015 No.6286540 >>6286521 >and blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one unforgivable sin No. You misunderstand.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:22:22 2015 No.6286546 >>6286521 I don't hate him; just curious about Dante, who fucking hated Boniface VIII. Does that make him not a Catholic?

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 16:47:36 2015 No.6286688

>>6286494
Tip your hat to the Greeks and Romans? What does that mean?

Christian values and ethics informing Western values isn't falsifiable because Christianity's values are vague and subjective. Christianity was used to argue for and against slavery, for and against serfdom, etc. We neither support slavery or serfdom anymore so we can easily say western values are as much a result of leaving Christianity as adhering to it. In any case, extra legal values are not what the original discussion was about, so we can discard the whole topic.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 17:46:23 2015 No.6286908 >>6270753 The bible is mind numbingly mundane and full of illogical fallacies, how could anyone take it seriously?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 17:50:38 2015 No.6286922 >>6286388 >I think the logical conclusion to atheism is hard nihilism Why do you think that?

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 17:55:36 2015 No.6286939

>>6286908

Yeah, it is full of a few illogical bits. It's also fucking awesome.

No other book has had such an impact on human society--atheist or otherwise, the Bible does have an impact on your life by sheer virtue of its own ubiquity. It's a worthwhile read just to see connections with other literature, not to mention its own merit, given that there are some pretty cool/pretty fucked up stories in there.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 18:08:34 2015 No.6286977 >>6286908 Because it's the greatest story ever told, supported by a myriad of other great stories that have, all together, created the background for a beautiful aesthetic and tradition that lasts to this very day.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 18:17:25 2015 No.6286997

Tip for prayer. Don't concentrate on yourself or your emotions. Don't try to strain pious emotions out of yourself.Just pray in a solemn way without worrying what is going on internally. Your soul is a more substantial thing than your emotions, so to measure the quality of your prayer by intensity of emotion is foolish. To pray to the emotions is to cease to be a Christian and to be become a Romantic instead. In fact I think I read Coleridge saying that his way of "praying" was to "compose himself" in a loving emotion, or something like that. No. Prayer is ritual, embrace the ritual of prayer and let the emotions come second. If you are analysing your emotions while you are praying you aren't focused on honouring God.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 18:39:02 2015 No.6287075 >>6286997 Thanks bro, this is highly insighful

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 19:09:27 2015 No.6287186 >>6286997 Nice

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 19:12:00 2015 No.6287196 >>6286922 Logical deduction, seriously basic philosophy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 19:15:42 2015 No.6287212 >>6287196 Could you spell it out for me? Like, fill in the '...' to get a valid argument. (1) There is no god. [Supposition] ... Therefore, (C) Hard nihilism is true [from X, Y, and Z]

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 19:53:34 2015 No.6287396

>>6283948
>Do you know anything? You talk about protestants as if they are all christians. Catholic and orthodox riests learn greek and hebrew as part of their studies.

Protestants are are huge section of Christianity and cannot be discounted. Im not sure about the Orthadox but Catholic preists certianly do not learn ancient greek and hebrew in any meaningful way - compared to say how they learn latin. Likewise I like how you completley ignored the whole problem of Christians being ignorant of the original lanauge of the bible and being the only Abrahamic faith that doesn't actively work to have its adherents understand it in the original.

>Except that they'd be wrong.

Roman Pagans at the time were far more civilized and cultural than the relatively barbaric Christians. In the same way the west is compared to the middle east.

>There are at least a dozen translations into english

Except all of them are held to be interpretations and not the actual Qur'an. How many churches even have the greek and hebrew bibles in them/ being used by the clergy?

>you fail. The vast majority of muslims can't even understand arabic and have no intention of learning it.

Unlike almost all Christian Churches it is acticley encouraged and resources are, likewise even if a majority of the Muslims cannot % wise and in raw numbers more muslims can read the Qur'an in the original than Christians (pretty damming when you consider the vastly greater numbers and resources christians have).

Reading the bible in the original lanauge has no importance to Christians outside of an academic pursuit.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 20:14:32 2015 No.6287463 >>6286546 Welp, there were some bad popes then. Alexander VI, for example.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 20:23:15 2015 No.6287496 >>6286388 It might be worth taking a look at the perennial philosophy by huxley

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 21:07:51 2015 No.6287675

>>6270753

Hello, my name is Arvid, I'm an atheist, wishing I could believe in any religion, I tried for years but just can't. I really hope someday something will happen that will make me believe in a deity or some afterlife, so I can overcome my overwhelming fear of death and nonexistence.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:00:49 2015 No.6287913 >>6286429 >. Catholic and orthodox riests learn greek and hebrew as part of their studies. Please source this

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:02:10 2015 No.6287918 Any book about reincarnation and the like?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:12:01 2015 No.6287950 >>6287918 This is a christian thread

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:20:19 2015 No.6287984 >>6287675 Read about near death experiences, that's what I did when I had an anxiety attack when I thought too much about death. Look into Dr Raymond Moody.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:30:47 2015 No.6288017

>>6287984
>Scientists have written that Moody's alleged evidence for an afterlife is flawed, logically and empirically.[7] The psychologist James Alcock has noted that "[Moody] appears to ignore a great deal of the scientific literature dealing with hallucinatory experiences in general, just as he quickly glosses over the very real limitations of his research method."[8]

>Moody has been described as a "strong personal believer" in the paranormal.[9] His methods have drawn criticism from the scientific community as many of the personal reports he collected on NDEs were given by the patients themselves, months and even years after the event. Terence Hines commented "such reports are hardly sufficient to argue for the reality of an afterlife."[10]

>The philosopher Paul Kurtz has written that Moody's evidence for the NDE is based on personal interviews and anecdotal accounts and there has been no statistical analyses of his data. According to Kurtz "there is no reliable evidence that people who report such experiences have died and returned, or that consciousness exists separate from the brain or body."[11]

>The philosopher Robert Todd Carroll has written that a characteristic of Moody's work is the omission of cases that do not fit his hypothesis. Carroll writes that what Moody describes as a typical NDE may be due to brain states triggered by cardiac arrest and anesthesia. Moody believes NDEs are evidence for an afterlife but Carroll states they can be explained by neurochemistry and are the result of a "dying, demented or drugged brain."[12]

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:31:28 2015 No.6288021 >>6287950 its a theology thread.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:34:38 2015 No.6288035 >>6288017 He isn't the only researcher of NDEs. Just because he's wrong, it doesn't mean the phenomenon is bunk.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:35:27 2015 No.6288038

Daniel. I was raised Catholic. I'm not religious anymore, but when I get married I will probably take my kids and wife to a Catholic or Episcopalian church, or whichever church is the most popular among wealthy people in my community. I think church is valuable for a few reasons:

1. Teaching kids respect for authority. Once my kids are old enough I'll explain they can believe whatever they want but encourage them to go to church because
2. Church is valuable as a social institution where you can meet people and be regarded as a moral person. You can also be seen doing charity and whatnot.
3. Church is a pleasant aesthetic experience with the music, readings, and prayers done properly.

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:37:14 2015 No.6288044

>>6288038
Episcopalian rates as very high income. Catholic is an almost perfect representation of the national average. Baptist is below average.

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/28/us/the-episcopalians-an-american-elite-with-roots-going-back-to-jamestown.html

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:44:08 2015 No.6288060 What are the best books for someone with no knowledge to read on this topic, aside from the Bible?

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:49:16 2015 No.6288074 >>6288021 Its a theology thread in the same way that stormfront and revleft are forums that discuss politics.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:56:52 2015 No.6288105 >>6288060 Reasonable Faith (William Lane Craig) Mere Christianity (CS Lewis) The Case for a Creator/The Case for Christ (Lee Strobel) The Resurrection of the Son of God (NT Wright) Gary Habermas' PhD dissertation (available on his website)

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 22:59:50 2015 No.6288117 >>6270753 >Our first reading is not long, we're going to read Genesis. YOU DIDN'T START WITH THE GREEEEEEKS

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:01:34 2015 No.6288124
File: 1010 KB, 500x248, pissed off elderly keebler elf is disappointed.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>6288038
>1. Teaching kids respect for authority.
>2. Church is valuable as a social institution
>3. Church is a pleasant aesthetic experience

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:06:11 2015 No.6288139 >>6288074 Ever consider there just happens to be more Christians than any others on the board at this particular point in time who dropped in on this thread. I don't think anyone is actively keeping non-Christians out

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:19:33 2015 No.6288177 >>6288044 >>6288044 True, but in some communities Episcopalians may not be the center of the real social elite. In my home city, it was the Presbyterian church that the old money people went to, and the best schools were affiliated with it.

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:24:37 2015 No.6288200 >>6270753 been meaning to get down with some Tolstoy and John Howard Yoder

>>	Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:27:04 2015 No.6288204 >>6271722 >Apostolic succession is important it's not and it's absolute bullshit. the Roman Catholic church has fuck all to do with Peter

Anonymous Wed Mar 18 23:59:37 2015 No.6288301

>>6288139
>Ever consider there just happens to be more Christians than any others on the board at this particular point in time who dropped in on this thread.

Look at the OP

> we're going to read Genesis. Keep it simply to start off with, but we'll do more later and once we're done with the Bible, we'll move onto various theologians.

No discussion or indication of reading anything else from another religion and discussion of Islam at least is treated with hostility.

Its clear to most of the board that this is just another iteration of the Christian generals that used to pop up. Thats why you wont see any of lits Buddhists or Muslims.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 00:06:40 2015 No.6288319 >>6288204 I agree they have nothing to do with Peter, but that hardly means they don't have Apostolic succession, as do several other churches.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 00:15:02 2015 No.6288340

>>6286997
>A man should never pray for any transitory thing: but if he would pray for anything, he should pray for God's will alone and nothing else, and then he gets everything. If he prays for anything else, he will get nothing. In God there is nothing but one, and one is indivisible, and whoever takes anything but one, that is a part, not one. "God is one" (Gal. 3:20), and if a man seeks or expects anything more, that is not God but a fraction. Whether it is repose or knowledge or whatever else but God's will alone, that is for its own sake and so is nothing. But if a man seeks God's will alone, whatever flows from that or is revealed by that he may take as a gift from God without ever looking or considering whether it is by nature or grace or whence it comes or in what wise: he need not care about that.
-Meister Eckhart

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 05:37:01 2015 No.6288957 >>6287396 >Reading the bible in the original lanauge has no importance to Christians outside of an academic pursuit. Because translations exist.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 05:45:09 2015 No.6288975 Have you guys figured out how many angels yet dance on a pinhead? Spooks, everywhere

>>	Matthew Thu Mar 19 05:52:41 2015 No.6288997 >>6288975 All of them or none, duh.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 06:37:11 2015 No.6289040 >>6288957 This is a perfect example of what is wrong with Christians

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 06:38:23 2015 No.6289042 >>6289040 Fuck off

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 06:44:55 2015 No.6289048 >>6289042 What an insightful response.

Zach Thu Mar 19 06:51:56 2015 No.6289060

Hello, call me Zach (my name is quite unique so I'll just use another rare name).
Mom is agnostic, dad is Catholic raised but a true fedora. His whole family is traditionally Catholic but they don't know batshit about their own religion. The new generation that just got spawn isn't even christened so I guess it's pretty much over.
I was never baptized because he's into new age (while not too serious about it) and my mom didn't care. When I was a kid, I drew Christian pictures all the time, for some reason. I even bought a small cross for myself. Led a shitty depressive life until I have decided to go to church by my own.
I am now a protestant.

I'm in a relationship with a Catholic and it's no joke. Like real, deeply rooted Catholic, from a very involved Catholic family (historic reasons, family had ties with the Catholic church for centuries). Haven't discussed marriage yet but I get the feeling it's going to be a huge mess. While I do respect the Catholic church, I do not want to switch and at the same time, I want to marry in a church. If we do marry in a protestant church, I don't think the Catholic family will be pleased (Yuropean family, I am Anglo).

Will see, it will solve by itself I guess.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 07:02:45 2015 No.6289075 >>6289060 Would you be okay with leaving her is she doesnt want to convert or get married by protestants?

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 07:04:38 2015 No.6289078 >>6289048 What an insightful response.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 07:07:36 2015 No.6289084 >>6289078 Well would you like to discuss the issue of the issues posed by translation in greater depth and the consequences it has for congregations?

Zach Thu Mar 19 07:11:34 2015 No.6289090

>>6289075
I don't want anybody to convert. She's not even a practicing Catholic. We're both fine as long we both believe in Christ. She believes in Christ, she even taught some classes for kids about catholicism and the Bible.
The only issue is that her connections will get butthurt if I don't want to convert. Her family is followed and well respected by the Catholic church and community. Heck, I don't even think they are that strict about it. The issue is they know many important Catholic priests and authors and they might get pissed if it ends in protestant celebration.
I heard that I can be allowed to marry in a Catholic church only if I promise that our kids will become Catholic or something like that. It's fine in my book, they'll be Christians but they will choose which church suit them the most.
It's still too early to discuss about it though.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 09:16:09 2015 No.6289318

I'm having a lot of personal issues accepting the justice of hell. I understand the author of morality is objectively right in all that he does because he's the author of morality but it just strikes me as a bit cruel to torment people for an eternity for the actions and beliefs of a finite life. I brought this up to my friend who's a youth pastor at a local reformed church and he gave me a pretty wishy-washy answer and mentioned that there are theists who believe that only the worst of the worst will end up there, as if I should tweak my beliefs to fit whatever I'm most comfortable with.

Do any /lit/izens have any arguments in favour of hell or passages to look into that might give an indicator of hell not being as infinitely evil as heaven is infinitely good?

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 09:48:17 2015 No.6289402

>>6289318
I always thought that hell.was simply the absence.of heaven; that damnation was simply the absence.of salvation. God does.not condemn people to hell, they just happen to miss.out on heaven. Satan gave man the option to miss out on salvation when he had already missed.out himself.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 09:53:32 2015 No.6289416

>>6289318
A theistic God is the perfect justice, the platonic form of it, thereforE what He considers right is justice and our limited minds don't get a say. We cannot even comprehend how just he is, what we may consider cruel can be right by all objetcive standards.
>>6289402
Nope, God does condemn people to Hell and Hell is a place as real as Haven. It's all too clear.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 09:57:41 2015 No.6289427

>>6289416
>>>6289318
>Nope, God does condemn people to Hell and Hell is a place as real as Haven. It's all too clear.
How do you reconcile that with the Christian concepts of salvation and forgiveness? What you said is spot-on for a Jew or Muslim, though.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:00:11 2015 No.6289432 >>6288301 Then why don't the Muslims make their own threads? The Buddhists make plenty of threads as it is.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:00:25 2015 No.6289433 >>6289427 God saves those who want and deserve to be saved. Those too wicked and unwilling go to Hell. Jesus himself spoke of Hell as a real place for the wicked. Also the Apocalypse as a whole.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:01:13 2015 No.6289436

>>6289318
Are you sure that hell is for eternity? A considerable number of Christians believe that hell is temporal, and after a certain period of time, God takes peoples' souls out of hell and wipes them out - they become literally nothing; some believe that this wiping-out is the hell; some have other interpretations. I don't have any verses sorry, but you're on the right track on looking for them; it's important to find what the bible actually says about hell before we start arguing about it.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:07:13 2015 No.6289455

>>6289427
One of the reasons why I find hell so hard to accept fully is because my pastor said that God is "both perfectly just and perfectly merciful". It feels paradoxical, and I feel the use of the word perfect is really just to hype up God, but I don't think a perfectly merciful being would subject people to eternal torment. Maybe it's as anon above says and hell is merely existing outside of heaven.

Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:11:58 2015 No.6289466

This is an argument Boethius makes in The Consolations of Philosophy. It isn't precisely like this but it's one of the better explanations I've encountered.

Hell is reserved for the unjust.
The unjust are evil, in that they lack goodness; otherwise they wouldn't be sent to Hell.
By coming into contact with God when they are sent to Hell, they thus come to have a greater degree of goodness and acquire a sense of justice, simply through this interaction with the ultimate source of justice and goodness.
Thus, Hell is a good thing and compatible with God's goodness.

That was poorly articulated but maybe someone else can make the argument in a better form if they've read Boethius more closely than I have.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 10:50:23 2015 No.6289554 >>6289466 I guess going to Guantanamo with a signed photograph of Jack Nicholson is probably better than just going to Guantanamo.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 14:10:56 2015 No.6290078 >>6289554 Lol

Gabriele Thu Mar 19 14:30:44 2015 No.6290146

>>6274758
Doubts about Christianity.
The main doubt is about plurality of religion: given that there are more than one faith, which criteria should I use when choosing between them?
Now, Catholicism asserts that there is one God, but different ways of worship. Again: how am I sure that Catholicism is the right worship?

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 16:57:09 2015 No.6290683 >>6289318 Might want to look into Orthodox. They don't conceive of hell as punishment, but rather the state of agony a soul is naturally in when separated from God.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 16:57:35 2015 No.6290687 >>6289433 Jesus spoke of Gehenna, a literal place where the Canaanites sacrificed children by burning them alive. Sheol/Hades and Gehenna were both translated to "hell".

Thomas Thu Mar 19 17:02:14 2015 No.6290698

>>6290146
There were disagreements from the start between the Apostles. They just managed to reconcile, but once the Church was big enough, schisms were inevitable, you had Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic and Assyrian.

The Apostles are not infallible, but Apostolic succession is better than nothing, since nothing leads to stuff like creationism. So my advice is pick a Church which has Apostolic succession, since those all worship essentially the same way. I think the core is right, it's rather the added rules and theology that can be in error.

Matthew Thu Mar 19 18:07:16 2015 No.6290870

>>6289318

Think about it this way, Anon. Human nature, apart from God, is only capable of producing for itself finite goods. Thus, apart from God, given our materiality, we are doomed to run out of the goods proper to us in the end, since materiality entails the potential to lose the goods we have: the most obvious expression of this inherent limitation is our susceptibility to death. Since human beings, in virtue of what they are, cannot justify the infinite and unqualified good that is the beatific vision, in ourselves we are doomed either to annihilation (if we are wholly material) or some diminished, lingering misery (if we have indestructible souls).

As justice (as it pertains to human beings) is grounded in human nature, so too is the fate we are due in nature an expression of the divine justice: justice is what is each is due, and as humans, in the end what we are due (because that is what it is to be merely-human) is destruction at worst or a lingering misery at best. Hell is thus both an inevitable and a just consequence of human nature lived out apart from God, as inevitable as death (indeed, this is one of the primary metaphors for Hell used in the Bible).

Even if we conceive of damnation as of infinite duration (as I think is likely, given the scriptural and philosophical evidence), though, I don't think we can call Hell an infinite evil. This is because everything which exists, insofar as it exists, obtains some degree of goodness. Insofar as it attains some degree of goodness, since existence depends upon the sustaining act of God, its good is willed by God. So even though the damned may diminish themselves to a lingering spectre, on the infinite view of damnation God does not abandon even these sinners to utter ruin.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 19:26:21 2015 No.6291154 >>6290687 I know. Hell isn't even the world used in my Jerusalem Bible. It's lake of sulphur, place of darkness and chattering teeth, pit of fire and such.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 19:28:49 2015 No.6291163 >>6289455 I don't think a perfectly merciful being would necessarily forgive everything. There are some things that don't deserve forgiveness. Or the punishment itself may be a form of mercy.

>>	Anonymous Thu Mar 19 19:50:24 2015 No.6291253 >>6288957 See >>6291154 >>6290687 >>6289433

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 02:56:16 2015 No.6292494
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>>6284352
Its all about the devine spark, and that indwelling salvific knowledge that can strike at any time. Christ is for everyone, not just those who follow a line.

>>6285817
We have churches, but they are few and far between. I attend an Episcopal church myself, and I was never really been secretive about my Gnosticism. I've lead discussions on the Gospel of Thomas and other texts. However you see this mystical, mythical(?) figure of Christ, he brings out the best in people.

>>6285855
Its a hodgepodge of beliefs for sure, but it isn't like what became "the orthodoxy" didn't take on aspects of the surrounding Pagan traditions.

>>6286398
Just like Gnosticism, to be honest. I have a love/hate relationship with Miguel Connor, he's an edgy dude, but he wrote about Gnosticism being "the jazz of religions", and I think thats accurate.
http://www.examiner.com/article/what-are-the-main-principles-of-a-christian-gnostic

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 02:57:36 2015 No.6292498 >>6292494 i... spelled divine with e...

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 04:49:48 2015 No.6292634 >>6282822 Why be Stalinist when you could be Hitlerist?

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 04:50:41 2015 No.6292638 >>6292634 Because, unlike Stalin, Hitler was an insane war criminal.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 04:52:27 2015 No.6292644 >>6283903 Pentecostals are heretics

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:07:19 2015 No.6292678 >>6292638 Kek Hitler was more sane than Stalin

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:12:21 2015 No.6292690 >>6292678 Yes, nothing shows sanity quite like killing 50 million people

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:19:46 2015 No.6292701 >>6292690 >my big daddy dictator killed fewer millions than your big daddy dictator! please leave.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:20:52 2015 No.6292704 >>6292678 >Kek Hitler was more sane than Stalin Yeah, that's why he started a world war, lost and killed himself. Epic fail.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:33:49 2015 No.6292733 >>6292704 More sane than Stalin. Not sane. Both were insane. See it like this, both are disgusting fat feminist with purple hair and a passionate love for Sherlock, but at least Hitler shaved his pussy.

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:37:41 2015 No.6292742

>>6283951

American Protestants have really screwed things up.

I was preached to all the time about the evils of meditation and vegetarianism, not to mention EVILution. That was my whole childhood until I had "the option to make an informed decision regarding the LORD" at 16. You can guess what my choice was.

I've come to see that actual Christianity is pretty beautiful.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 05:58:29 2015 No.6292761 >>6292742 >actual Christianity On what basis do you make that claim?

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:04:38 2015 No.6292765

>>6292733
How in the world is Stalin "insane"? Yeah, his attempts at micromanagement of an empire sometimes lead to poor results. How does that make him insane? Give him a break, he was a regular dude schooled in the university of hard knocks, not some sort of aristocrat groomed for generations for the job.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:22:21 2015 No.6292776 >>6292765 He caused the death of what, 60 million people, killed most of the intelligencia, wrecked the economy and was clinically paranoid. If that doesn't make him insane I don't know what does.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:25:26 2015 No.6292778 >>6292776 >clinically paranoid citation needed retard

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:28:49 2015 No.6292785 >>6292761 Any church with Apostolic succession is actual Christianity. The rest are LARP'ers, as per >>6271722

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:34:47 2015 No.6292793

>>6292778
>kills thousands of people who may or may not have been any kind of a threat to him
>not paranoid to an extreme degree
Fucking basic logical deduction and knowledge of history need retard. And fuck off already with your Catholic stalinism, it's truly the retarded /pol/ tier opinion.

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:39:16 2015 No.6292797

>>6292793
No. That's extremely callous, but considering most of the world was against the USSR and the reward for anyone helping them would be extraordinary, and there was no doubt many overtures, and that many people had good reason to believe they could run things if they cooperated with a foreign state for power, Stalin's purges had a lot of logic to them. "Better safe than sorry" would be insane in a Western nation today, it wasn't really insane in that place and time. Similarly the Reign of Terror wasn't really crazy either, for the same reasons.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:44:29 2015 No.6292802 I'm fez and im a hindu

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:54:03 2015 No.6292819 >>6292793 I'm pretty sure they were a real threat. Russia just came out of one of the ugliest civil wars in human history, acting democratic when there are enemies wanting to literally eat you alive would be irrational.

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:55:01 2015 No.6292821

>>6292785
>The rest are LARP'ers, as per

What you see as LARPing many would see as living a life in closer communion with christ's teachings.

>>6271722
Given the many iterations of the Apostolic Churches and their ability to corrupt the word of God and willingly play a role as a pawn to the state you greatly over value the empahis on this succession.

This is espeically true when you see things like Vatican II, the orthodox church under Tzarism and the wealth held by churches at the expense of practioners who were intentionally kept ignorant.

Do you think you could be letting your love of the Apsotalistic aesthetic unduley influence what you see as being beautiful in Christianity?

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 06:57:45 2015 No.6292829 >>6292494 Gnosticism is psychosis. Enjoy your corrupted Platonism.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:00:00 2015 No.6292837 >>6292797 Get your Commie bullshit out of the theology thread. Catholic Stalinism is the most absurd concept I've ever seen someone advocate on /lit/.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:03:09 2015 No.6292842 >>6292819 Nah, they killed even most of the communist philosophers and lawyers shown were loyal. Will have to look up the names, can't remember atm.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:05:04 2015 No.6292846 >>6292837 Without Stalin you theologists would all be out of work right now. He is the man who saved christendom.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:06:30 2015 No.6292849 File: 22 KB, 207x239, 1426776591370.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6292846

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:11:33 2015 No.6292853 File: 68 KB, 640x640, IMG_310874175429444.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>6292846

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:32:38 2015 No.6292896 File: 61 KB, 200x200, clapping4u.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Wow this thread turned out adorably cringe worthy. The Alcoholics Anonymous style intros was a great touch, good job OP.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 07:38:59 2015 No.6292906 >>6292896 It's one of the best thread on lit this week.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 11:02:41 2015 No.6293286 >>6292644 Elaborate.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 11:08:36 2015 No.6293305 >>6293286 Not Catholic or Orthodox=heretic to a certain degree

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 11:08:52 2015 No.6293306 >>6292802 Hello, Fez, how do you feel about Hindus being considered People of the Book by Islam?

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 12:08:30 2015 No.6293476
File: 100 KB, 255x210, reddit.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

I don't understand how you can choose Christianity over another religion. Choosing one popular belief over another when neither really have evidence supporting them just doesn't seem reasonable to me. Tell me christfriends, why do you believe in Jesus' resurrection not Hindu beliefs. Sorry if this is pic related, I don't get many chances to talk Theology

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 12:14:28 2015 No.6293498 >>6293476 The same can be said for secular philosophies. Science has little-to-no jurisdiction over /lit/.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 12:15:55 2015 No.6293502 >>6293498 but you can choose a middle ground between hedonism and asceticism, you either believe Christ was resurrected or you don't.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 12:44:00 2015 No.6293570 I'm Jaroslav and I'm a Reformed Baptist. Grew up a Catholic, my parents have given me up for lost. My sister became a nun and has cut me off completely. I haven't met a single Reformed Christian in person in my life (that I know of).

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 15:41:29 2015 No.6294186 >>6293502 those are general concepts, not specific ideologies. Your example is more akin to theism and atheism than Christianity and another religion.

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 16:36:04 2015 No.6294424

Why do so many people have this assumption that all religions are equally probable? I question this assumption very much, it does not make sense. The fact that people have argued over a bunch of philosophical points does not make every philosophical point equiprobable.

As an agnostic that has been heavily leaning towards Catholicism recently, I hold that it's the most likely religion to be true. It has an amazingly developed and rational system of metaphysics and ethics that is also totally continuous with classical thought. It forms the very foundation of western science and culture.

The assertion that Catholicism is equally likely to be true as a religion founded upon violence from a man who grew up around jews and christians, misunderstood their doctrines and wrote it in a book claiming private relevation nobody can verify in any way, is ridiculous.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 16:43:32 2015 No.6294453 >>6293306 could you please expand on tjat? ive never heard of that before.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 17:23:05 2015 No.6294588 >>6294453 Muslims believe that Hinduism is a corruption of ancient prophetic revelations that came from Allah. They have always believed this with Christians and Jews, and some also believe it with Buddhists.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 17:27:38 2015 No.6294606 How is this thread still bumping? Is it God?

Anonymous Fri Mar 20 19:41:26 2015 No.6295131

>>6294424
>. It has an amazingly developed and rational system of metaphysics and ethics that is also totally continuous with classical thought

The church that believes in the trinity and has a system of ethics that is enterily based on appeals to authority and dogmatism. Can you go into detail about just how much you looked into other Christian denominations and religions.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 19:44:20 2015 No.6295144 >>6295131 Almost every Christian denomination believes in the Trinity.

>>	Anonymous Fri Mar 20 19:46:20 2015 No.6295155 >>6295144 Yes which is why I asked him/her about his readings into other religions as well which dont have similar problems.

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/lit/ - Literature