What book converted you to your current faith and what book would you now use to convert someone

>almost gets executed
>sentence commuted to a long ass time in as close to hell as you can get in Russia
I'd be fucked up too

>addicted to gambling
>literally believed he found a surefire method of beating the roulette
>lost all his money several times but it's ok one more game this time he'll win for sure
he had a hard life

i never knew what the fuck was going on and still don't

The bible confirms that, too. Romans 2:15 * For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

James 2:19 *
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
Matthew 7:21 *
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Gotim.

His gambling is honestly incredibly sad and I wish that his novels weren't born of something so sad

I'm a moral realist and an atheist because I believe happiness, pleasurable experiences, and pain and/or unpleasant experiences are incontrovertibly Good and Bad in-and-of-themselves. This truth is as evident to me as my own consciousness and thoughts. As such, I am a moral absolutist Utilitarian. I don't need Peterson's meaning, or a God and cannot believe in no notion of truth when many are presented for me in so blatant a fashion
Literally: look inside yourself: The philosophy of meaning and ethics

>moral realist

>moral absolutist
>utilitarian
Pick one and only one.

??

Do you think moral absolutism the the preserve solely of deontological ethics?
Because it isn't you know.
I thought it was obvious but I'll restate:
Pleasurable experiences are an absolute Good. Unpleasant experiences are an absolute Bad.

but pleasurable experiences don't have infinite value because there are cases where you would sacrifice some pleasure to avoid a great deal of pain if you deem it profitable
it's not absolutism because there are no absolute, inviolable moral values and duties, which are to be observed 100% of the time.

>hurr let's deliberately use a lable that doesn't describe my position because i have different definition for it in my head

t. intro to philosophy student

That's still incompatible with utilitarianism. Don't call yourself a utilitarian if you're not willing to kill a healthy person to donate their organs to two sick children.

Nothing. I'm a Christian because it suits my temperament. I don't care about converting anyone.

I love literature but music conveys feeling in a much purer and powerful way, the first and final movements of Hilarions St.Mathew impacted me more than the last chapter of Brother's Karamazov or Keirkergaard ever could

m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsUbmCoMP1Y

There are though:
Maximise pleasure, minimise pain with every action.
Now, we may not be able to do it perfectly, but that's the value to aim for.
Being an absolutist has nothing to do with infinite value, which is an utterly meaningless term when it comes to truth. It's like saying 2+2= 4 is "infinitely true"
Infinity doesn't apply to the truth and whoever told you it does was being deliberately obfuscating and was likely a continental philosopher.
> literally, "I never studied analytic philosophy: the greentext"
I got a First in my Philosophy Masters degree. Which why I can recognise when something is not an argument.
Are you too scared to give your interpretation?
Listen up you fucking cunt. Who said I wouldn't kill a healthy person to save two people?
I might do if it was utilitarian. Don't put words in my mouth.
You'd have to figure out if living in a society that practiced the harvesting of healthy people would lead to greater happiness overall. I can see pros and cons. For example: In the long run we might see less healthy people because we killed the people with good genes and helped the people with weaker genes. It's difficult to predict the future but if I could be reasonably shown that it would lead to greater happiness and less pain overall then I would do it.

Moral realism and Moral absolutism can be used interchangeably and are the opposite of moral relativism.
A moral realist believes that there are "moral facts" in the world, that are independent on human beings subjective ideas. This includes Kantian ethicists as well as Virtue ethicists and Utilitarians

values have nothing to do with truth. absolutist morality is traditionally about having absolute inviolable moral laws, for instance "killing is always evil" would be an absolutist tenant, because it excludes any stipulations that might make it ok to kill someone (such as to save an innocent from being murdered), because there is no ethical calculus going on, it could be said that absolutist values have infinite value, there's no situation where you balance multiple principles.

you think absolutism simply means "You should always maximise pleasure, minimise pain with every action" you could add the words "you should always" to every sentence and under your logic, it would count as an absolutist moral system. "you should always kill girls named lucy if you meet them in california" would be an absolutist moral tenant under your terms, you may as well not say anything because absolutism doesn't communicate anything meaningful.

moral absolutism is not the same as moral realism, which simply states that moral facts exist.

>>almost gets executed
>>sentence commuted to a long ass time in as close to hell as you can get in Russia

But this catalyzed his potential for artistic greatness, no?

>can we say an absence of faith?

I was recommended this book on Veeky Forums back in 2010. Thank you user wherever you are. I gave up all hope on religion, God and agnosticism.

We have doubts about life, ourselves, death and existence. Sagan believed that science would illuminate the answers to questions that humankind has dwelled on.

...

The birth of a pasta.

(sauce: )

I see your point. I was using absolutism and realism interchangeably because I thought you were this guy And I was defending my axiom (that pleasure and pain could be absolutely good and bad)

Now look. Do you see how saying "involable moral laws" could be confusing?
In my mind, I have inviolable moral laws. Simply the order to maximise please and minimise pain.
But in your mind you think laws have to apply to actions. But I don't see why my law can't be built of two equally important clauses.
In which case you aren't balancing, or having you principles fight against one another.

Ok, now you know I don't think absolutism means "You should always maximise pleasure, minimise pain with every action" - I was simply using it interchangeably with realism.

Now. While I'm not sure how useful this has been I will say two things:
It's very difficult to read your paragraph. If you have something meaningful to say make sure you re-read it before you post it.
You make it very difficult for someone to concede a point to you if you insult them.

Of course

So maybe happiness, pleasurable experiences, and pain and/or unpleasant experiences are not necessarily incontrovertibly Good and Bad in-and-of-themselves (pace ).

And maybe Dostoy found God through suffering, and God put him through the suffering as a kind of severe mercy/blessing (although it probably didn't seem that way in the moment).

This is a major theme of Dostoevsky's work

I understand what you're saying, but you must consider the pleasure by itself first.
Then you can contextualise it and see if it was worth it. But even then, the only way you see if it was worth it is by comparing the pleasure against the pain overall.
Let's take pain of childbirth. The pain: Bad in itself, it would be Good to take it away.
Enduring the pain in order to live a lifetime with a child? This will generate more Pleasure in the long-run. It was good to give birth overall in-spite of the Evil of pain.
Eating a cake generates pleasure. Getting fat generates pain. You calculate whether it will generate more pleasure than pain (or if it will reduce more pain at the cost of some pleasure) and then act on that.
No deeper, more real axiom or context is needed for my morality to function.
I can accept that Pain is absolutely evil and yet still allow it if it reduces more Pain in the long-run or generates more pleasure in the long-run.

i'm both your quoted posts. i don't see how that lead you to use absolutism and realism as synonyms, i assume you thought i thought they were synonyms, because if you thought they meant the same thing you would just use one or the other to describe your position. at any rate when i said ">moral realist" i was just memeing for no reason and i probably shouldn't have done that.

i see how "inviolable moral laws" can have multiple meanings, i probably should've given a more specific definition of what i take moral absolutism means given that at the time i thought my opponent didn't know what i mean by it.
i don't think that laws have to apply to actions. laws can be abstract, but it's a meaningless distinction to say that your moral system is "absolutist" because it has laws. all moral systems are a bunch of laws, and all laws are "absolute" in the sense that they are consistent and uniform.

i concede that my post was not clear but i never insulted you, so fuck off you big fat meany

>hurr let's deliberately use a lable that doesn't describe my position because i have different definition for it in my head

Was this you?
If so you saying "hurr" really triggered me

please view that hurr as a very affectionate and playful hurr

it's a damned greentext arrow paraphrasing meme m8 come on

This is a fantastic prompt OP.

I'm very sensitive about my intelegence

>continental philosophy is bad
>yeah, i'll commit murder if the ends "could be reasonably shown" to justify the means

hurr, indeed.

cuck

I'd rather be a cuck than a thoughtful murderer with a first in philosophy. Such men were the administrators and bureaucrats who facilitated the efficient disposal of millions under Stalin and Mao, and slept soundly in their beds while doing so. Because the ends justified the means.

Well that's very noble of you.

They often do it for the greater good, or more usually in the name of the "collective good", those are the "ends" that justify the means.
Not quite as refined as my principle in my opinion but hey-ho, I wouldn't try it Mao's way anyway.
It's true mass murder is a conclusion to draw from a Utilitarian model, which rarely distinguishes the pleasure of a man from those of a beast.
"Educated men" orchestrated the Parisian Reign of Terror.
It seems that every time someone thought "I'll get it right this time" when it comes to violent political change the ends do not seem to have justified the means.
That just means the calculation they made was wrong. It doesn't actually devalue the axioms of the Utilitarian position.
The truly enlightened Utilitarian knows that he knows nothing and should touch the Earth lightly.
To speak broadly think we should focus on scientific funding, as opposed to massive or radical political change.

I can't argue with the fact that people don't do very well with utilitarian models.
So give them the opiate of the people and let the leaders do their work, and remember that killing people en-masse doesn't tend to work for some reason. That'd be my suggestion.

Catholic. I was encouraged to go to church by /pol/. The rest is history.

...

>It seems that every time someone thought "I'll get it right this time" when it comes to violent political change the ends do not seem to have justified the means.
>That just means the calculation they made was wrong. It doesn't actually devalue the axioms of the Utilitarian position.

k.

...

>You're just trying to defend the position because you believe it's true

don't be childish now

I'm just laying on my back here floating in an ocean of blood while contemplating the magnificent edifice of your logic and soaking in the rays.

Blissed out and a sense of peace beyond all understanding.

Sounds like a higher pleasure, I'm genuinely happy for you.
What are you listening to?

...

...

I'm an antinatalist as well.

Well, that's just perfect, innit. That's the cherry on top, senpai. You just won the internet.

But I believe life is net positive experience. It's mediocre by definition but still a solid 6.5/10 from where I'm standing.
Furthermore we can develop scientific tools, like harmless drugs, and machines, which will make our ancestors far more productive, intelligent and happy than we are now.
Additionally we may be the only sapient life in the immediate area Universe - even if life is a net negative we have a duty to continue living in order to assist in the termination of all life.
Because life has a survival instinct, and it'll survive even if it's in pain. If life truly suffers then it's moral to destroy as much of it as we can - not simply destroy ourselves and allow this cycle of misery to continue

>which will make our ancestors far more productive
In other words, turn them into nice little worker machines.

>if someone is smarter or faster they're a worker drone
I bet you think communism is a good idea

Do you honestly think that if people could be legally drugged up to become "more productive" that this wouldn't lead to economic exploitation?

i think there are a lot of ways to interpret "drugs will makes us more productive" - I did also say more intelligent and happy.
I was making the point to an antinatalist, anyway - even at its worst a happy life as a slave is nonetheless worth living.
However I think most jobs will be automated in the future, and if work is fun who cares? Take your soma, work 30 hours a week and get some downtime

>Additionally we may be the only sapient life in the immediate area Universe - even if life is a net negative we have a duty to continue living in order to assist in the termination of all life.
>anti-natalism means genociding all life
is anti-natalism forever doomed to be strawmanned to oblivion

>tfw all the people capable of arguing convincingly for anti-natalism are dead

1 deliberately placing someone vulnerable in a hazardous situation constitutes negligence
2 negligence is immoral
3 deliberately having kids constitutes 1
therefore deliberately having kids is immoral

you made me do it you son of a bitch ;_;

>children
>personhood

really schopens my hauers

schoop had a hard life do not bully him

Schoopiesnacks was a rich bitch and a hypocrite and i'm glad he got sued by that washerwoman
but that's really just the tip of the iceberg:
we endure some hardships for greater reward and we often punish children or let them learn the hard way because there are more important things in life that avoiding hazards

you seem to be saying that there could be a morally sufficient reason to justify creating the possibility of suffering but you haven't given the reason why

do you intend to just disregard all the stress and suffering of mankind and accuse me of being a weakling for complaining about it like those meany christian fellows

reason: The happiness outweights the suffering in so many cases.
evidence: even very smart people tend to NOT kill themselves
reason 2: having kids is nice, a world with no kids is terribly bad
evidence: muh feels + all of every living creatures' feels
reason 3: adults rarely begrudge being born (this is reason 1 in disguise)
reason 4: babies and children rarely begrudge being born
reason 5: if placed under the veil of ignorance and given a choice: live a life or never have existed virtually everyone would pick the former

not disregarding it, i just think that just because it exists doesn't mean it's a good reason
it's a little data point

>what are metaphysics

Well-stated.

the anti-natalist argument which i'm a proponent of isn't based on the idea that life is not worth living, and therefore it's bad to subject someone to life. if that was the case then it would be an argument for suicide.

the reason i think having kids is immoral is because you are imposing risk on someone else. human beings are inherently vulnerable things, we have the capacity of experience a wide range of mental states. i'm sure there are many states of extreme suffering and extreme joy that i can hardly comprehend, and that i never experienced or will experience in my entire life. by bringing a child into the world, you are placing this inherently vulnerable thing in an environment that you do not control or even fully understand, and they are left at the mercy of the brute, blind, natural forces. this is like handing over a baby to a crazed babysitter to watch while you go see a movie. it doesn't matter at this point if the baby got lucky or if the babysitter tormented them, as soon as you made the decision, knowing that the babysitter is not safe, you've already done something bad. negligence itself is immoral even if the consequences aren't harmful, because it's disregard for others.
there is no morally sufficient reason for doing this, even if the child ends up being grateful for being born, even if having babies is nice

(so to clarify, the thing i'm asking you to find a morally sufficient reason for isn't the suffering of the child in itself, because i don't believe that suffering in itself is immoral or moral, only actions and intentions of people can be moral or immoral. in other words the mere existence of mental states is neither moral nor immoral, only actions and intentions that people have can be judged as being a good or bad action to take, a good or bad intention to have. i think that the choice to have kids is an inexcusable thing)

I'm sorry, but you're just dolling up the argument from skepticism.
Yes, any number of things could happen to a child.
And any number of things could happen as a result of your continued actions and existence on this Earth.
But you decide only to take ownership of the action that involves having a child, and only ownership of your own offspring?
You know, statistically, that the chance of a child suffering to the point they willfully end their life is 0.013% if you're an American.
You're literally more likely to "impose risk on someone" by driving a car. Yet you continue to act.
What justifies this discrepancy?

Even though you disagree I argue, furthermore, that there is nothing that make "avoiding hazard" a value in-and-of-itself. Avoiding hazard is useful to achieving true goods like avoiding pain and creating pleasure, but there is no evidence of it being bad in itself.
Now I see you're using the argument that blind brute forces may act upon the child, and that's the reason - do you think these blind brute forces are so bad as to generally outweigh the value of living or not?

i'm not sure what you refer to when you talk about "the argument from skepticism"

again my argument isn't based on life being awful or avoiding hazard, it's about imposing risk on someone, or placing them in a hazardous situation. it's not about minimizing the total amount of risk in the world, i'm fine with increasing the amount of risk i have to bear, but imposing risk on someone else without their consent is immoral.
i will say this a third time, it has nothing to do with whether or not live is worth living.

>You know, statistically, that the chance of a child suffering to the point they willfully end their life is 0.013% if you're an American.
this is nowhere close to an exhaustive list of what you impose on the child. they can get cancer at age 2 and there's absolutely nothing you can do to predict or prevent it.
you say that you impose more risk on someone by driving a car, but this is factually wrong. there is nothing that comes close to the amount of risk you impose on someone by creating a life. you're not looking at the bigger picture by selecting only death by suicide (or even death in general)

I ask you "What justifies this discrepancy?"
And you say
" i don't believe that suffering in itself is immoral or moral, only actions and intentions of people can be moral or immoral. in other words the mere existence of mental states is neither moral nor immoral, only actions and intentions that people have can be judged as being a good or bad action to take"
and now you're back to using statistics

Are you being an absolutist or are you doing some calculus?

Reading Fanged Noumena helped me accept planetary scale artificial death, that is, the terminal productive outcome of human history as a machinic process. I surrender myself to the inevitable realization of an inhuman futurity and the catastrophic extinctions that accompany our ultimate evacuation from meat-space.

yeh i saw the matrix too lmao

i explained that there is no discrepancy between the way i treat risks imposed on pedestrians while driving (or any other daily activity) and risks imposed on a child brought into the world because the degrees of risk are several orders of magnitude removed from each other.
if the imposition was the same in both cases then i would have to account for why i treat them differently.

i'm neither an absolutist nor do i engage in ethical calculus

...

>tells parents to not let kids play World of Warcraft!!!!! cause: "it SUCKS!!
>continues playing it himself, everyday, secretly loves it and hates the idea of canceling his account

>thinking that the factitious-corporeal human is the actual Human
boy, you shoulda started with those Greeks

Gravity and Grace.

>subjective knowledge is illusion
>objective knowledge is unattainable
>but a semblence of objective knowledge is attainable through God
>we do great evil without even noticing it
>only by constant attention and love can we avoid doing harm to others and ourselves
>we can save others through expiatory suffering

Used to be buddhist agnostic empiricist, had a sort of mystical experience, where I saw a light permeating the whole world and the closer I looked at it the more it took the shape of a baby and I felt at ease and comforted, as if the light/baby is taking care of everything and putting everything in its rightful place. That got me into idealism and thinking about the spiritual. Didn't convert me, just made me curious...

I read Frithjof Schuon's books, "The Transcendental Unity of Religion" and "The Fullness of God" and "Prayer Fashions Man" and some of James' Cutsingers books, really helped get me from Buddhist-Agnosticism into some sort of Neo-Platonic-Deism with "cultural christian" morals. But God was still an abstract impersonal 'ground of being' to me...

Then I began reading the New Testament, praying (to the unknown God) and reading lots of books on Sufism and Christianity and Neo-Platonism.
I don't think any book really converted me, but some of the ones that stood out were "The Imitation of Christ" by Kempis, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing" by Kierkegaard. The Philokalia. The Pilgrim's Way.
The works of John Romanides, brilliant ortho theologian and historian. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romanides

The works and lives of the early Church fathers, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Iranaeus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Basil, St. Symeon the New Theologian, etc...

Also I did a lot of arguing on 8ch/christian/ in order to break through some doubts and gain more understanding. Finally I went to Church with an orthodox friend, talked to the priest and felt very at ease. I loved the presence of the Church and the priest is really wise and helpful. I was already baptized in the Orthodox church as a baby but in my teens I gave it up. Now I feel at home. ;)

>had a sort of mystical experience, where I saw a light permeating the whole world and the closer I looked at it the more it took the shape of a baby and I felt at ease and comforted, as if the light/baby is taking care of everything and putting everything in its rightful place.

Interesting, since I've had a similar vision (not mystical, I just imagined it) when I heard this piece for the first time. For me though, I was in a grand cathedral and the light was descending from the ceiling towards the alter, and as it came to rest on the alter, it was revealed to be the infant Christ.

youtube.com/watch?v=7ewPFkn363E

Why does a book have to give meaning to what you believe, I understand seeing through the looking glass to a better life but what about thinking for yourself, trying and seeing what works best for your overall well being

Pretty much my experience desu, except without the luminous baby or the Orthodox Catholicism. Kempis' book is huge and used to be popular, and imitatio dei is the official doctrine of the Catholic Church I was baptised into. Honestly the plebs are being fed too much dogma, it's crudding up the actual beauty of Christian philosophy.

>he doesn't praise Sithis

>essentialism
>essentialism that posits structures beyond the physical with no evidence

How can objective knowledge be obtained through God if the belief in God is subjective?

TBK turned me from a fedora atheist into catholic atheist .
Not even joking.

>empiricism
>needing proof
>not transcending the stasis of observable reality

Through deeply focused prayer. As far as I can tell, objective knowledge can only be possessed as a subjective imitation. The basic lesson of idealism is that an objective understanding of God is impossible, and can only be know as an image, i.e., the Trinity.

God doesn't excist, though.

Which Harry Potter movie is that from?

yes he does

>abandoning a requirement for empirical evidence
>to arrive at boring as fuck conclusions like the unchanging human soul and god

But do you have faith in your uncertainty?