/lit/ - Literature

Other then the Bible, Quran, etc., of course.

>>16544255
>>16544273
>>16544289
>>16544328
Stop reading.

This is a question regarding the literary text that is called the Holy Bible: Why did God make the human heart to be a thing of evil? Genesis 8:21
>And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

>all his "good" female characters are nonexistent

Face it, this guy can't write women at all

I'm new to Christianity and am having some trouble choosing a denomination. While, from what I know, Catholicism is the "standard" due to the original church of Jesus, I disagree greatly with the the practices of the Catholic church both currently and historically. I very much so want to be a Catholic, considering my family is Catholic and many of my friends are Catholic, but I have a lot of trouble deciding whether or not I should be, considering both the current state of the Vatican (giving money to transexual hookers, kissing the feet of blacks for "reparations," endorsing homosexuality, etc.) and basically ignoring blatant scripture, and also historical wrongs (indulgences and that sort, although I'm not sure of how wrong indulgences actually are). I've considered claiming to be a Sedavacanist Catholic. I don't really want to be a Protestant, mostly because I think most individuals don't have autonomy to make informed decisions, which is why you have so many people claiming the Bible supports gay marriage and that sort of thing. What do you guys think?
Also, are there any works I should read regarding this sort of thing, or Catholicism in general?

God exists. The Afterlife does not. Why can't people understand this?

Why should I believe in God? Why should I have faith? No really, what is the point of worshipping, let alone believing in, a God(s)? What role does God serve that something else couldn't do as well? What tradition does the church offer that can't be replaced by something powered by human ideals and creativity? I'm not buying the loads of crap about God sanctioning morality and that without him everything is permitted. No, there is relativism or nihilism without God, that's only the cases if you're a weakling that can't handle the hard task of creating your owl values or the seeing the value that's already in the world. I'm genuinely hoping for a good answer.

Right now Ecclesiastes is giving me an answer that tells me this God business is redundant:

"I said in my heart, "Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals" For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to on place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. Who knows where the spirit of the sons of Earth goes upward? and whether the spirit of animal goes downward to the earth? So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?"

I interpret this as basically saying that man is just fine without God, that he do well through his work and all that require and provides. We come from the world, and then we'll die and return to it. I understand there's more going on here, but reading the elements of man's labor and our single breath and the mystery of the afterlife, I think hint at the truth of actual condition on Earth: we are meant to work, live fulfilling lives through heritage, and then die but rejoice in our works as valuable.

This is not unlike the Ethics of Aristotle, of what Marx says in the German Ideology about man's subsistence. In fact he cited Ecclesiastes in Das Kapital.

I'm genuinely interested to here counterpoints and other views on the matter.

When I say SORRY you say FOR EXISTING

SORRY

The fuck did I ever do to him?

In order to understand the meaning and purpose of reality 2 assumptions must be made:
1) Our universe operates with strict causality
While quantum physicists claim that on the quantum level some events are spontaneous and unpredictable, I see that as a cop out and self admition to incompleteness of the model. Even if quantum events are truly random non quantum events for the most part follow strict causality anyways.
2) There is a “first mover” like god who created the universe
Aristotle and Aquinas first thought about this and to me pretty much confirms to me the existance of a universe creator.

With these two things in mind we have to ask ourselves to what purpose god made the universe. Clearly he intended physics and the general nature of reality to be this specific way, so maybe by examining how physics operates we can discover the purpose and meaning of reality. The fundamental and key aspect to this universe to me is time. Time continually shapes, reshapes, and destroys everything in all places all the time, the past is destroyed to make way for the present, the present continuously destroyed for the future. God designed the universe intentionally to make things that do not persists to literally be removed from reality. It seems to me the thing god wants in his universe are things that are able to transcend the ‘un-realiting” into the past. And its opposite, favors things that are able to persist into the future. In effect god has created a “survival calculator” that when the universe ends, will tell him what given these certain set of parameters will be persistent.

I want to be Christian; my family is Catholic and many of the people I talk to are Christian in some way. I think religion itself is required for society to function properly, but it's hard for me to preach this idea if I'm not religious myself. Despite this, I refuse to larp, and until I reconcile my beliefs regarding the subject, I'm stuck in between. So, I'm posting here in hopes that someone may shed some light into the topic.
I don't believe that humans have free will. If you were to restart your life again, just as it was exactly as you were born with no knowledge of this current life, you would make the exact same choices. This, I postulate as the result of genetics and environmental factors (both of which would be identical to your reality as it has been lived up until this point, in the hypothetical I'm speaking of). While humans may the the illusion of free will, insomuch that they can make choices seemingly out of freewill, these choices were to be made regardless due to the nature of their being and the environment around them.
Free will, from my understanding and from reading Genesis just recently, is inherent to humans in Christianity. This is due to their eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now, one might respond by saying "well, why not just become a predeterminist?" The problem with this is that, if predeterminism were true, then what would be the point of God at all?
And so, I ask, is free will real? And if not, is not having free will truly compatible with a belief in God?

I don't think that there is a possibility in which the existence of a God gives meaning to our lives. If we are meant to choose between two moral paths for our own gain, that is not a purposeful action. If our fates are part of a greater scheme, that scheme cannot possibly matter more than our lives on Earth, as even the matters of a higher realm would need to have a greater meaning for that to be worth anything, and the only thing this could equate to in is a hierarchy of rulers with nothing more than vision.

Yes, live a purposeful life. Yes, believe in your God.

inb4 >>you don't get it, it's a higher power
>>that big bang shit appears in the comments

Why didn’t he just make everyone good and happy?

>Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

>But our God is in heaven;
He does whatever He pleases.

>“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

>Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

Clare Quilty

I'm a catholic and I feel like this religion has given me nothing but problems
Any books that will turn me into an atheist?

What the fuck was his problem

Your worship of God is nothing more than crying out for a return to nature.

You know how people came up with gods in the first place? They personified the wind, the rain, the sun, the seas. That's what humans do, the modern day equivalent is the superhero, the personification of civilisation. And like all things it gets refined and compiled and the best bits get kept and thousands of years later you get God, Jesus and Mary. But the original feeling behind it all remains. What people see in religion is what life as a hunter gatherer offers. Living in harmony with all of creation. God is nature, God is the world, God is the personification of the environment you evolved for millions of years to live in. So in a sense, you can say God does exist. But not in the sense that most religious people would think, it's not this higher power who created all and is watching us from above. It's the universe itself. The universe that provided just the right conditions for humanity and all life on Earth to thrive.

>>13841661
Yes. It's a liberal and academic take on a philosophy that is by the design not possible to be subject of studying by the general cloud thought of the academia.

If you really think about it, God is our CEO.

>>10956192

No. This is.

>time and space must have a beginning
>therefore there was once an existence without time and space
>this existence must of been timeless and immaterial
>whatever forces, energies or entities exist in this dimension must retain these qualities
>one of these must of instigated the universe
>the universe follows unbreakable laws
>these laws appear to have been designed
>if this is true that they were designed then the entity that existed was conscious, immaterial and eternal
>a conscious, immaterial and eternal entity witch created the universe is the definition of God
>therefore God created the universe

The only fault I can find in this is that we must make the assumption that the laws of the universe were designed, we do not have proof of this but it does appear that they were, it could however be that some immaterial timeless energy instigated the universe and the laws of reality are random (which seems almost unbelievable). Regardless the idea of a God creating the universe seems to be the most pleasurable, this does not however suggest what this God's intentions are or that this is a God of any religions of earth. One could argue that his laws are manifest by the laws of reality and nature and that one ought to follow those. So the conclusion is, the most likely reason for the existence of the universe is a God that created it.

Can we all just agree that God is a fiction and thus anything relating to the study of the divine is a spook?

Seems like we're all just wasting time on this