So what are you to take away from the Book of Job?

God is a real pos

God's an asshole and likes to watch you suffer.

I don't get Gods reply, it seems like a fallacy. "I was there in the beginning". That sounds like fans of a band bragging that they knew about them longer and are therefore more entitled to be "truer fans"

KEK

>The Book of Job
>main character becomes unemployed almost immediately

Guys I need to cut out the religious urge inside of me, the constant study of theological books, Christian writers, watching hours long conferences, reading internet forums on the subject...

I don't even frequent Church and I'm rather atheist, but in the past few months - I've been hardcore studying the history of western world, and came to the conclusion that Christianity - mainly the mind, the operating system I may permit myself to say... allowed the birth of modernism, which is awesome so to speak.
This paired with rational arguments from Pascal, Euler, Duhem, Gödel ( mainly his modular logic argument ) and many others...

What came shocking to me and ONLY hurt me more... is that the human soul is of such complexity that Christian soul can explain it - to a level that if Christian faith is wrong/false the soul became perverted somehow - or this potential of it suddenly looks like a lie for me now.

The study of religion became a time consuming activity, I genuine need help to cut it out - all I want is that you guys suggest me some books that could come as medicine for my sick soul in this matter.

I'm a sad religion addict, that needs help - have mercy on me.

...

God is the original oldfag

Well, that uncertainty is important.

Also, this ties in with the new Milton criticism.

The entire lesson is contained in God's asking of Job "Would you condemn me so that you might be justified?"

Just think how absurd and impious it is to hold yourself in higher esteem than God himself. God isn't beholden to you and your personal sense of morality. God is perfectly good, and if you think he does something that isn't good, then you are saying you are better than God and know better than God...which is idiotic.

Who calls God perfect good?
Kids with bone cancer?

>Judging the righteousness of God by human standards and from human perspectives.

wew lad

Yea in the end it's just fantasy, why bother or consume energy, billions of souls on this planet barely even heard of Jesus, nor the "truth" of God has any impact on their minds or their societies.

Life's a bitch and then you die.

>made in God's image
>Christians often harping on about God given consciousness and morality

>but dude you don't even understand morality, God's not inconsistent and evil, he's just omnipotent, do as he says, not as He does, it's not hypocrisy, he's just transcendent LMAO

The poem is about how God is beyond human comprehension

The prose intro and epilogue were probably added later to make it about obedience to God

Cosmic Trigger

These are not new ideas. Human goodness and morality consists in a likening to that which is Godlike or divine. This isn't achieved purely through reason.

Socrates: Now because it cannot be taught, virtue no longer seems to be knowledge?

Meno: It seems not.

Socrates: So it is not by some kind of wisdom, or by being wise, that such men lead their cities, those such as Thermistocles and those mentioned by Anytus just now? That is the reason why they cannot make others be like themselves, because it is not knowledge which makes them what they are.

Meno: It is likely to be as you say, Socrates.

Socrates: Therefore, if it is not through knowledge, the only alternative is that it is through right opinion that statesmen follow the right course for their cities. As regards knowledge, they are no different from prophets. They too say many things when inspired, but they have no knowledge of what they are saying.

Meno: That is probably so.

Socrates: And so, Meno, is it right to call divine these men who, without understanding, are right in much that is of importance in what they say and do?

Meno: Certainly.

I really dislike the cheapened ending. You can tell it was added on.

Job is the earliest book in terms of when it was written chronologically, and it is a type or a forecast of the entire bible. By that I mean that the lessons found in the bible were first written in Job.

Job says 'God is just, everything and everyone else is wrong,' which is one of the big declarations of the Bible, beginning to end.

Job's 4 associates invent various perspectives on things, basically inventing reasons for why Job is suffering, related to his own sins, tradition, moral testing, or just arbitrary fate. This is consistent with human reasoning and religion.

At the end God first speaks to Job, saying in essence 'where were you when I created everything?' The interesting bit here is that a lot of the words used are architectural in nature, lending credibility to the proposal that Job was an architect, not just a farmer.

And then God speaks to the friends saying, 'Job will pray for you.'

So to answer OP's question, it's basically the true introduction to the Bible, the first book so to speak.

That we must prefer a real hell to an imaginary heaven

this is the pleb tier reading. god's an asshole is the patricians reading

God is a sadistic fag.

"God's an asshole" is the "I never read it or any scholarship on it" reading.

needing theologists to tell you the correct interpretation is exactly why you're pleb

such a pleb thing to do, listening to experts who have spent decades studying the text instead of going with my first impression based on my preconceived notions. haha what a pleb xD

exactly, instead of studying the works yourself and coming to your own conclusions you seek the easy way out

unlike you we don't work at starbucks with a philo degree. We have actual jobs to do, so we read a bunch of different theologists and come to our own conclusion

Indeed, and thus the patrician choice. The patrician doesn't concern himself with the snivelling slave morality of the sexual deviants who derive pleasure (for that is the only explanation for their eagerness to justify) from being dominated and cast into submission by an omnipotent being.

When we read, someone else thinks for us; we repeat merely his mental
process. It is like the pupil who, when learning to write, goes over with his pen
the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly, when we read, the
work of thinking is for the most part taken away from us. Hence the noticeable
relief when from preoccupation with our thoughts we pass to reading. But
while we are reading our mind is really only the playground of other people’s
ideas; and when these finally depart, what remains? The result is that, whoever
reads very much and almost the entire day but at intervals amuses himself with
thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a
man who always rides ultimately forgets how to walk. But such is the case with
very many scholars; they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading,
which is at once resumed at every free moment, is even more paralysing to the
mind than is manual work; for with the latter we can give free play to our own
thoughts. Just as a spring finally loses its elasticity through the constant
pressure of a foreign body, so does the mind through the continual pressure of
other people’s ideas. Just as we upset the stomach by too much food and
thereby do harm to the whole body, so can we cram and strangle the mind by
too much mental pabulum. For the more we read, the fewer the traces that are
left behind in the mind by what has been read. It becomes like a blackboard
whereon many things have been written over one another. Hence we never
come to ruminate;* but only through this do we assimilate what we have read,
just as food nourishes us not by being eaten but by being digested. On the other
hand, if we are for ever reading without afterwards thinking further about what
we have read, this does not take root and for the most part is lost. Generally
speaking, it is much the same with mental nourishment as with bodily; scarcely
a fiftieth part of what is taken is assimilated; the rest passes off through
evaporation, respiration, or otherwise.
In addition to all this, is the fact that thoughts reduced to paper are
generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is
true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we
must use our own eyes.

Get off Veeky Forums, you don't belong here.

>This is your brain without formal education.

Your pasta is shit.

wow schopenhauer BTFO

sorry, pasta formatting*

i learned that the Demiurge is a narcissistic sadist

God had a rigged gamble with Satan to prove that Job was the best guy in the universe. He lets Satan slaughter his entire family, servants and all of his animals. Then his friends, who somehow managed to avoid getting divine intervention'd, spend the next few pages telling Job he must have angered God in some way. Then God himself descends upon Job to deliver a righteous verbal pegging. Job decides that he IS a worthless piece of trash (Even though he got into this whole mess by being the best man in the universe) and God says "Work the balls too, bitch" and Job obliges. After Job wipes God's wisdom off his face and neck he receives a brand new set of children, servants, animals and a new house.

>Don't be too good or else God will 'test' you.

>God is a gamblin' man

>God has regular, casual conversations with Satan

>Your wife, children and employees are disposable

>Your friends will just harangue you if you ask for help

>Job has a severe case of battered wife syndrome

>God's explanation for wiping out his entire family is "lol you weren't around when I created the universe fucking faggot get on my level"

>God's other explanation for cruelty is a series of elementary science questions.

>Doesn't matter, God gave him new sons and daughters, and the daughters were HOTTER and possibly even THICCER than the last ones.

Short version: If you're too good god will slaughter your family, but it's ok because god is right since he's older than you and he can replace your family with an even hotter family.

Imagine being one of Job's servants. You bring him food, clean his house, earn a little bit of money and then suddenly you get smitten by god almighty himself while he's trying to prove a point.

God has a tough job

These guys do a great job summarizing.

youtube.com/watch?v=GswSg2ohqmA

God shows that poor guy that world is complex, although it is self sufficient and because it's complex God implied why the fuck he should bother with humans :^), snakes and insects are more important to weight in when deciding to cure bonce cancer of a kid or not... but yet again this is just fiction today we know that nature is self-sufficient and God of the gaps has been pushed far away.

Bible and new testament has a lot of inconsistency with reality that will move most intellectuals away from religion day 1, without ever returning back and suffering 0 repercussions of their cognitive process.

I'm 100% certain that according to the style of that book and scholars consensus it was not written by Jewish culture, rather just borrowed in their literature.

This is why you memorize what you read not just read for the sake of reading.

whose other standards are we gonna use? If we say "God is justified by standards that humans do not understand," we are once-again conceding to human standards of understanding -- the human understanding of the idea of "something humans do not understand." By bringing any of it into human language, it inherently falls under human understanding.

Zizek's reading of it is that it's catastrophe all the way up.

>discover author/thinker
>get on Veeky Forums next day
>someone posts them
IT KEEPS HAPPENING

Job is basically what Plato talks about in The Republic.

What I got from it is that bad things will happen to everyone, righteous or not. And it's wrong to accuse God of wrongdoing, as his perspective on running the universe is better than anyone else's.

Man cannot comprehend the actions of God, and theodicy is ultimately futile in light of this. All you can do is worship.

It isn't up to the defendant to question the judge, the charge, and the society that created the legal structure. You can dislike the prosecutor, but that's his job. The duty of the defendant is only his actions, and remembering that the judge is just.

Elaborate.

Popper was right when he regarded Plato and Aristotle as the forerunner of totalitarianism

>the human soul is of such complexity that Christian soul can explain it- to a level that if Christian faith is wrong/false the soul became perverted somehow- or this potential of it suddenly looks like a lie for me now

I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you were saying here at all. Could you break it down for a poor brainlet?

that's an opinion.

an argument starts at propositions that support the conclusion.

Wrong.

"The modern view that Plato's completely good city is some form of totalitarian society stems from... his criticisms of democracy and his censorship of the arts. This modern view is much contradicted by Plato's placing tyranny as the polar opposite of his completely good and just city. One has to understand this polar opposition before modern criticism can stick. Plato would have a hard time understanding Popper's criticisms; yes, Plato thought of his just society as anti-democratic, but the direct democracy Plato criticized is far removed from our representative democracies and does not exist anywhere among modern nation states, just as his ideal city does not. The moderns tend to think that if a regime is not democratic then it is totalitarian. Plato's completely good city is the rule of knowledge, not the rule of power, or honor, or wealth, or freedom and equality." (198)

From Gerasimos Santas, Understanding Plato's Republic (2010).

SEE:

Euthyphro dilemma

You're basically saying 'good' is arbitrary because god does not follow the rules, just makes them, where as, if god did good because it is good - like a 'perfect good' would be in categorical senses - then god is pointless outside a judge and policeman.

AND, if you seem to think our senses cant beholden the nature of god, then why the fuck do you feel so confident about your illogical response?

You seem to just be guessing at categories also; so, lets just assume we have the knowledge of categories and logic to guide them, else there is no sense in structurally using our brains as their intended purpose, to ask questions only these parts can ponder - and do.

In other-words, you are beholden to your logic in argument, not god in the material universe, right now. IN that, your answer does not suffice the logical forms we all have access to, yet you seem to believe you supercead on 'god's behalf', lol

Christianity is built on the martyr mentality, and if your not defending it as a victim somehow, you're not a true christian; which explains you acting like Job over here with your 'justified' talk.

I'm not even responding to the Republic but ok. Popper's criticism of Plato doesn't even respond to his censure of democracy or the arts. He calls him the forerunner of totalitarianism because he was the first utopian, the first person to suggest restructuring society in the mold of what he deemed correct. Not to mention Plato naturally places himself, as philosopher-king, among the elite of the ideal city.

SEE:

Form of the Good.

Christianity answers Euthypros dilemma definitively by claiming that goodness CONSISTS in God. Socrates gives two options in Euthyphro. Christianity is the embodiment of one of those options.

Both of these.

That life is horrifying and the universe is indifferent to your suffering.

Congratulations you're transforming into a non-brainlet.
Did you read Aquinas at least?

that's why we get high

The real redpill on the Book of Job is that the Leviathan is Satan.

Explain

Are you talking about the "big and frightening and would eat you but not evil" part or the part where he's a giant sea monster?

Leviathan is a symbol of Satan.

Job would've understood; Leviathan was known in those ancient cultures as the enemy of God or the gods.

It clicked in Job's mind that Satan was the cause of his suffering, and that Job had no power over Satan, who is invincible. Only God has any control whatsoever over Satan.

I still don't get it

I didn't even mean to spoiler that

Read the last four paragraphs. What don't you get?

"He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride"

Everyone knows Pride is Satans original sin.

The creator god is a sociopath and we're nothing but rats in his game.

We are toys in the celestial playground, made to be used, abused and thrown away. God is petulant enough to gamble his toys in a bet he already knows he can win. He cares more about his own pride than your well being. Job's reward is incidental in this, though it also clearly shows that women and children are property to be gambled and rewarded with.

I ain't readin' no fuckin' book of jobs, sheeeiiit!

>"Would you condemn me so that you might be justified?"

Of course I would. Knowing one's mind and thinking without fear and shame can only lead to this conclusion.

An unknowable God is indistinguishable from the Materialist-Positivist-Darwinian Cosmos, and equally useful for justifying endless suffering.

Good luck with that, buckaroo.

God's fairness and existence is contingent on self awareness if what little we have been given is a blessing from circumstance.

God isn't unknowable. I mean, he left us an entire Church. In fact, you can actually go see him there every Sunday, user.

>There have been many that have said
>that death is like a deep sleep
>but it is not peaceful and it is not restful
>and the ones that have told you this
>seek only to make themselves feel better
>better about what life is
>but I do not care for your feelings
>because your feelings are meaningless, completely
>and utterly
>meaningless
>weightless.
>Death is a great horror:
>immediately upon leaving the body
>the deceased human being becomes the sole spectator
>of a marvelous panorama of hallucinatory visions
>all things became the cloudless sky
>and a mountain of clearest glass
>opens up from the blackness
>and punctuates the air above it with it’s fingers
>and causes pure death to rain towards him
>and there are no words to describe
>what it is truly like
>you cannot know it
>it as if god himself
>had bled out onto the ground
>and everywhere, everywhere
>is the stain of it
>we are soaked in it
>and it all smells of copper
>but this is false!
>it is a spectre
>it is a phantom
>anguish of a writhing spirit
>reflected against the purest backdrop of nothingness
>because, oh, the death of a god! the pain of his blood!
>that would give meaning.
>But there is no god in death!
>you will not see him, you will not find him.
>god is deathless.
>what use does god have for death?
>that father of all things
>what use has he for a broken toy? what use has he for the shattered vase,
>the broken vessel?
>what use has god for death?
>and what use has god for the dead?
>when you die you pass out of god’s realm.
>you pass from his sight.
>and the spirit stays
>cocooned in the glass mountain
>wrapped in those beautiful un-lights
>until, whispered into his ear
>those cold, nothing words
>shudder downwards in a spiral
>and, like earth spinning into water
>broken apart into pieces unlimited in number
>their very force causes deep lines of fracture
>to appear in the very face of the mountain
>those awe sounds and radiances
>first pitch upwards
>rising screams and calls
>and then finally cease altogether
>the silence echoing everywhere
>lingering in space
>and through every time
>and the visions of the Afterdeath stop
>and in one clean perfect moment
>of absolute, impenetrable nothingness
>everything simply
>stops.

Reminder that this is the likely consequence of Faith.

>what use has god for death?
>and what use has god for the dead?

Catechism of the Catholic Church, Article 460:
"For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God. For the Son of God became man so that we might become God. The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."

True. This place is full of cunts who are too cowardly to do anything but shitpost ironically, and couldn't string two sentences together about praise even about the things they love the most.

Even worse than those however, are those who proselytize their contrarian pseudofaith on the most degenerate place on the web without realizing that it is a contradictio in adjecto, and who don't even realize that any browsing of Veeky Forums is an expression of acedia, and most of their posts are expressions of wrath, pride and envy. That's four of the deadly sins already. Browsing the internet mindlessly in your fleeting youth, for hours on end, is just about one of the biggest insults to God's creation that you can give.

synchronicity or God is posting on Veeky Forums.

I'm pretty sure it's the latter but I can't prove it.

>Ruling class determines who works with what
>Ruling class is the only ones with access to proper (in Platonic terms) education
>Ruling class determines who goes into eugenic reproduction programs and who doesn't get to breed
>It's okay though, they're always "correct"
>knowledge and power are in no way related

Plato believes in radical value absolutism - this, combined with the belief that insight into this absolutism is possible, implies either totalitarianism or idiocracy, by necessity. Plato is quite adamant in the fact that it should be a totalitarian republic, with every aspect determined by the ruling class with access to wisdom.

Is Gerasimos Santas an academic? Because that gives me hope. If they can get published with such easily dispelled horseshit, there's hope for anyone.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said to them,“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

>comparing your shitposting on Veeky Forums to the acts of Christ

Pride. That's the worst one of them! Nicely done.

>>Ruling class is the only ones with access to proper (in Platonic terms) education

Wrong. Reread Republic my dear man, if you have read it at all, which I now suspect you haven't.

"For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."

Is there ANY facet of Psychopathy that is not part of mainstream Theodicy?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_syndrome_by_proxy

It's been a while since I read that dear old fascist, sure. As I remember it, the other ones are sorted from the kings before they reach Plato's conception of intellectual maturity. Thus they're not given access to the higher levels of education. My use of the word access was maybe misguided. I'll concede and say "not given the proper education" then instead, because they're too dumb, kicked out of school in grade 10, and should be cobblers and servants instead.

Even I concede your point, you haven't touched the argument that it implies totalitarianism. Classic Veeky Forums, making comments on haven't having read the book instead of touching the actual thought. Totalitarianism, by definition, is "the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority". Do you disagree that Plato's republic implies this? Whether or not it's "true, beautiful and good" is irrelevant to the definition of totalitarianism.

Would you look at the digits God gave you?

Do Veeky Forums Christians believe in divine signs?

Spooky.

Good post/conversation. Sorry, I'm always on the defensive and quick to dismiss others in this cesspool.

There are a few reasons why I don't want to call Kallipolis a prelude to totalitarianism.
1. The citizens have more rights than the rulers.
2. The process for choosing rulers is based on an educational meritocracy.
3. Reason precedes power in Kallipolis, not vice versa.
4. Your definition of totalitarianism is a strange one. "The political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority". Isn't every citizen subject to absolute state authority, whether that authority rests in a polling booth, the nays and ayes of a Senate, monarchical decrees, the proclamations of a tyrant, or in the letters of a constitution?
There is a misunderstanding between us on this point. If that's your definition of totalitarianism, then it seems to me that every system of govenrment is totalitarian except for anarchy, which is not a system of govenrment at all.

So I, or we, need to reach a better mutual understanding of totalitarianism.

Lol I've been spamming Weil for a few months now. She's fantastic.

Dick's VALIS trilogy and Eco's medieval epics won't cure you, but they will give you different perspectives while satisfying your hunger.