/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6666045]

Can religion ever be a tool to liberate? or is it just a tool of control?

[Anonymous No.6666053]

well, it depends on whether it's true or not

[Anonymous No.6666056]

>>6666053
Isn't true just a matter of power relations?

[Anonymous No.6666058]

>>6666045
/lit/ - literature

[Anonymous No.6666073]

>>6666045
Only if it replaces an even more dysfunctional false belief, or motivates and organizes people to seek liberation from an oppressive force. Since I'm an atheist, I certainly believe the pinnacle of freedom doesn't involve false beliefs, but I suppose there are circumstances where one is an improvement over another.

[Anonymous No.6666102]

There is no liberation. Religion is a placebo at best and a means of oppression at worst.

[Anonymous No.6666113]

>>6666058
>not discussing the most important themes of literature

HE'S A PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEB!

[Anonymous No.6666127]

Every act of striving towards liberation has the danger of an entanglement in it, just as the uttermost dissolution has the potential towards enlightement in it. There is an intricate guerilla war going on between the Black Iron Prison and Palm Tree Garden - the former devours the latter, the latter crystalizes from the former in an infinitely complex process; a dance.

Therefore, the answer to your question is: either of those assumptions can be correct. The entirety of reality is in flux, and even this which I've just wrote can be in one moment a fallacy, and the supreme meaning in other (or anything in between).

[Anonymous No.6666129]

>>6666045

When the Catholic Church was dominating the West and was suppressing scientific thought or opposing views, it was Islam that was advancing human thought and understanding. This demonstrates that religion does not control or liberate though any inherent characteristic, but rather that the people who control the organised religions are able to exert power in whichever manner they see fit-to liberate, or to control.

[Anonymous No.6666130]

>>6666113
Pussy is a more important theme than religion

[Anonymous No.6666135]

>>6666130

>implying dogs aren't the superior pet

[Anonymous No.6666137]

>>6666129
>When the Catholic Church was dominating the West and was suppressing scientific thought
>implying it wasn't the Catholics who kept science alive after the pagans (read: atheists) sacked Rome

[Anonymous No.6666138]

>>6666135
>implying frogs aren't the superior thing that rhymes with "og"

[Anonymous No.6666139]

>>6666056
No. It may seem like it's true for a long time, but in the end, the real truth will come out, and the things propped up by power will be shown to be lies.

[Anonymous No.6666140]

>>6666129
I don't think the Catholic Church started suppressing science until the counter reformation.

[Anonymous No.6666141]

religion on an idividual level can be liberating. living by a moral code of conduct can free you from a lot of issues and problems others may have,but on a societal level it serves no purposes other than control. If you chose to worship Shiva, I am as fine with that as if you chose to worship Jesus, but if you force me to worship Shiva, then you are as wrong as those forcing me to worship Jesus. Religion is personal, salvation and liberation can only come from within yourself, no preist, sadhu, temple, book, or song is going to get you to your goal. the point of organized religion is to control the lay retards by reminding them not to steal, rape and kill each other but institutions get big and get corrupted. Like the catholic church for example. it's not the only religious institution that is corrupt only a recent example. If you solely within yourself choose to live a religious life you can't go wrong. but if you choose to do it because other people are doing it or others are telling you to do it, then you are wrong.

[Anonymous No.6666155]

>>6666137

hmmm

[Thomas !!2DZ1MGd6kEU No.6666178]

>>6666155
He's pretty much the only significant example, and his trial wasn't during any Islamic golden age of science.

[Anonymous No.6666184]

>>6666045

[Anonymous No.6666189]

This is one of these topics that people will jump to comment on even if they've never read a book on the subject, isn't it?

[Anonymous No.6666193]

>>6666178
besides, he got jailed for being a dick to the pope

and he didnt have any proof for his theory

[Anonymous No.6666196]

You're right OP, no religion could ever exist for a reason other than to control others. It's not like millions of people sincerely believe...

[Anonymous No.6666198]

>>6666129
The Catholic Church suppressed science so much that 35 craters on the moon are named after Jesuit scientists.

[Anonymous No.6666209]

>>6666198
Your point is really devalued by the fact that this is obviously one of those things that you have no way of knowing except by googling "church and science" and then scrambling for the pro-church ones

[Anonymous No.6666212]

>>6666196
>being this simple
Have you considered that the entanglement of the church with the state for millenia could have yielded a bastardized version of whatever that religion started with? People sincerely believe it, but that doesn't make it true and it doesn't mean their beliefs haven't been manipulated.

[Anonymous No.6666253]

>>6666155

Galileo was asked to give proper evidence for his claim, he had none. It was later scholars who actually made his view scientifically acceptable. This was especially annoying since he was demanding that the schools change their textbooks to start teaching his theory, he also openly attacked the Pope in many letters. They put him under house arrest for it when he was very old and not really doing much anyways. It's an incredibly mediocre persecution story.

In reality modern science began with the Friars' natural philosophy, developed due to their being interested in the natural world as an expression of God. First it was recovering Aristotle from Greek and Arabic sources since the Romans were horrible at Science and left the Medievals unsalvageable pieces of pseudo-scholarship. After the condemnations of 1277 Aristotelean science came under attack and lead to the 14th century Theologians developing most of the theorems and conceptual tools that thinkers like Copernicus and Galileo would use later to actually overthrough Aristoteleanism. The reason why the "scientific revolution" didn't happen sooner was due to skepticism about what could actually be known about the natural world in general ( mainly due to the kind of radical Nominalism/Empiricism of thinkers like Ockham that left little room for scientific inquiry to lead to anything more than the probable), so it took some time before the Anti-Aristotelean scientific critique could be formulated into proper systems to replace Aristotle's science. But the Church were supporters of Science through and through, and having a counter authority to Aristotle in Christian doctrine lead to more Scientific advancements then it retarded anything due to needing to resolve tensions between Aristotle and the Church, and needing to find alternatives to those Aristotlean strands of thought that could not be reconciled.

[Anonymous No.6666265]

Everything is always subject to the power of something else. There is no reducing subjugation, there is only changing to be subject to greater or lesser powers.

[Anonymous No.6666267]

>>6666189
why did you say "one of these topics"

[Anonymous No.6666269]

are you talking about religion or religious institutions? because institutions control, not the religions themselves

[Anonymous No.6666277]

>>6666253
What book would you recommend on this subject? You seem to be the only one who knows his shit.

[Anonymous No.6666305]

>>6666129

The Albigensians didn't have science, the Church was behind advancing Scientific thought and were the only ones in the West who really even cared about it or had the resources to even consider it( some Secular masters of arts perhaps also did, but they never went much further than Aristotle worship until maybe Buridan). There was no persecution of Science, there was persecution of heresy in general, but that happened in Islam as well save a few isolated cases.

[Anonymous No.6666341]

>>6666277

Edward Grant- Physical Science in the Middle Ages.
John Marenbon-Medieval Philosophy ( Talks about Science allot as well)

The bit on Galileo I learnt in class from the chair of History of Science and Philosophy at my University. I would suggest to just look up more modern books on the topic. Since the 70's or so It seems to me that allot of the old myths about the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and the Middle Ages in general are getting overturned due to better scholarship and more resources.

I am currently reading through " Before Science: The Invention of the Friar' Natural Philosophy", which is relevant.

[Anonymous No.6666348]

>>6666129

[Anonymous No.6666358]

Yes. Jeanne d'Arc.

Now that that question has been answered, there's a better one we can ask. Does religion, in the same token as society in general, help advance civilization and intellectual progress? Signs point to yes.

Simplified, when we're less consumed with survival and competition in nature due to indoctrination and mass cooperation, it allows us to seek higher pursuits, such as literature and the sciences. It's easy to have a personal disdain against those you consider sheep who blindly follow ancient, contradicting scripts; however if they and their ancestors did not do such, then there's a fairly good chance that you would not be in a position to critique them. It's somewhat like the failure of the millennials as a workforce compared to the greatest generation. They didn't believe they were all special snowflakes like the millennials, but because they worked as hard and as effectively as they did we have the time and availability of resources to delude ourselves into thinking that we are.

[Anonymous No.6666361]

>>6666209
>damage control

[Anonymous No.6666375]

>>6666361
Yes, keep it brief, don't try anything serious. You don't want me going after you.

[Anonymous No.6666378]

>>6666375

[Anonymous No.6666400]

>>6666045

[Anonymous No.6666437]

>>6666358
>when we're less consumed with survival and competition in nature due to indoctrination and mass cooperation, it allows us to seek higher pursuits

Like the crusades? The German Peasants' War? The Schmalkaldic War? The Eighty Years War? The French Wars of Religion? The Thirty Years War? The Wars of the Three Kingdoms? The Palestine Conflict?

I don't call social schisms over the proper way to crack an egg open progress.

[Anonymous No.6666446]

>>6666348
>Irish monasteries copying Plutarch instead of Greek manuscripts of the Bible and ecclesiastical works

[Anonymous No.6666459]

>>6666437
Don't forget The Troubles. The Civil War was also somewhat about slavery being compatible with Christianity (see Battle Hymn of the Republic). Heck, even WWII had a large conflict of pagan religious outlooks vs. Christianity.

[Anonymous No.6666480]

>>6666459
I also might point out the Spanish in the Americans. And communism, when you think about it, was a conflict between Christianity and communism as religion.

[Anonymous No.6666487]

>>6666480
*in the Americas

And the English Civil War was a conflict between Puritans and the Church of England

[Anonymous No.6666498]

>>6666127
PKD pls

[Anonymous No.6666572]

>>6666437
The Peasant's War, Münster Rebellion and such forms of radical christianity were very clearly progressive.

Too bad the Lutherans and the Church had to put it in their arses

[Anonymous No.6667635]

>>6666498
It's not that obscure referrence, is it? Phillip K. Dick had some amazing ideas.

[Anonymous No.6667655]

>>6666053
no, it depends on the uses to which it is put / which it affords the "users" with. since these uses will be culturally determined, or at least i should say limited by the regime of signifiers, the dominant discourse, therefore these uses will be reactionary, and more, doubly reactionary, religion necessarily produces ressentiment. that is its chief production.
now the question becomes, can ressentiment ever liberate? (can a force turned reactionary-- that is, against itself-- somehow liberate itself (from its assumed bonds to the Other which it has successfully turned inwards and away from?))

[Anonymous No.6667668]

>>6666102

t. marx

[Anonymous No.6667673]

>>6666184

>trade unions
>liberating

syndie go home

[Anonymous No.6667674]

>>6666045
yes to the pleb, no to the monks.

in being a system for the whole population, the religion must adress the lives of the public and the live of the monks. THe public being the public, it will never ever follow and therefore understand the prcepts and climb the intellectual ladder of the doctrine. Most people are not meant to become monk. A society of monks would not work anyway since it is a ful time job, becoming the opposite of the mundane life.

The task of the religion is to lead the pleb more or less towards the higher states defined by the religion. Nautrally, since the pleb is a most massive population than the monks, the religion tends to be judged from their perspective.

THe monks, them, are the best candidates to be intellectuals.

[Anonymous No.6667676]

Circumcision is a disgusting heretical practice

[Anonymous No.6667903]

>>6666045
Religion is pure ideology, so it can be used for any purpose.

[Anonymous No.6667913]

>>6666045

there is no solution to Jew shilling OP
someone tried...he tried his best
but you guys wouldn't listen

[Anonymous No.6667918]

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

[Anonymous No.6667929]

>>6667918
>marx
>/leftypol/

[Anonymous No.6667939]

>>6666138

>frogfags arguing with dogfags yet again

Quaint as always.

[Anonymous No.6667964]

>>6666045
Why is she in shackles and in prison uniform? Is it some kind of local perversion or is it a general pandering to the voters?

Truly, the US is a wicked place that must be cleansed with top-down reforms.

[Anonymous No.6668018]

>>6666073
>mentions something like "the pinacle of freedom" as a desirable end
Please, elaborate.

[Anonymous No.6668058]

>>6666129
>catholics supressed science meme

Did you know 50 atom bombs were named after popes?

[G 0 D B L 3 ß !zR/LhJxu0Q No.6668091]

>>6667918
>Man is the world of man – state, society
>Marx's Critique of Hegel
>Hegel>Marx
>When people are asked to apprehend some notion, they often complain that they do not know what they have to think. But the fact is that in a notion there is nothing further to be thought than the notion itself. What the phrase reveals is a hankering after an image with which we are already familiar. The mind, denied the use of its familiar ideas, feels the ground where it once stood firm and at home taken away from beneath it, and, when transported into the region of pure thought, cannot tell where in the world it is (The Shorter Logic, Hegel)
Nice try buddy guy, but this Materialism won't fly here!

[Anonymous No.6668100]

>>6666053
>>6666666

[Anonymous No.6668120]

>>6666056
No.