What will finally convince me to succumb to spirituality? The Bible isn't doing it for me...

I just want to know why so many people fall for it when it seems so obviously bullshit to me.

Perhaps youve lost the sense of the absolute strangeness of [our] situation? Pity. Ignorance is your ally, not the enemy.

Skepticism did it for me.

The "absolute strangeness of our situation" is a copout.

A lobotomy should do the trick

You could say that but it doesn't change the fact that anything at all exists in any way fampai.

Watch The Believer with Ryan Gosling. That is exactly what it is.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Boethius Consolation of Philosophy

Yes, read Confessions

This is literally what Pascal's wager is about.

Also religion IS about giving up. At some point you need to give up because only God can control everything

Pretty funny how they pretend what you are saying makes sense to them. There is spirituality at the end of it, but its not their lunatic visions. Keep fighting no matter what they say! Ethically that means don't give up for what they believe.

Your understanding of spirituality will always be lacking until you have a religious or mystical experience yourself. It's not likely you'll understand the spiritual perspective as an outsider. I'm not going to derail the thread with you-know-what but there are pretty consistent techniques to reliably produce religious experiences that have been used by humans for thousands of years.

therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/lanciano.html

vivaguadalupe.org/news/ten-amazing-facts

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lourdes_Medical_Bureau#Notable_cases

first one is most important to be honest

More like, Disgustin'.

I think that spirituality begins with an experience with the divine, not rational arguments. If you're looking to be convinced into believing god then you're probably doing it for the wrong reasons.

>a man thinks the house next door is empty, yet he has heard others say someone supposedly lives there----a very kind, old gentleman, who they all say is full of love and that one should get to know
>this man has lived here for years and always thought the house was empty.

OP, how would you approach this?

>SITUATION A: full of doubt, disbelief, and anger----the man goes to the neighbor's house and bangs loudly on the front door, yelling "I DEMAND you show yourself to me! Let me in to prove you exist now!"
>SITUATION B: full of curiosity, yearning for knowledge---the man goes to the neighbor's house and knocks gently, wanting to meet the man he has heard so much about. Because he knocked---because he knocked and earnestly wanted to enter, the door was opened, and into the Kingdom he went.

If your approach is SITUATION A, do you think God would want to reveal Himself to you? You approach him like a poacher, wanting to hunt down an animal, wanting "proof". As we can camouflage ourselves from the wild animals, God's camouflage then is transcendental, and no matter how much you hunt for him like a poacher, his camouflage will cause his form to be hidden from your sight.

Read the upanishads, the dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita. Thank me later.

>spirituality basically means giving up. Instead of coming up with good arguments
I'm sorry you feel that way. Is there any part of Christianity which you're struggling with? Is it God as a whole, or perhaps the validity of Christ, or of scripture?
Just for a general overview, I suggest following what I did.
I started with apologetics and worked from there.
Try Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, then perhaps move onto Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis, then after that, read The Screwtape Letters if you catch yourself starting to believe, if not, just go straight to some Christology. Preferably The Case For Christ.

>I just want to know why so many people fall for it I just want to know why so many people fall for it
Death is scary, a world without explicit morality or meaning is scary, a world based around struggle with no reward seems unfair. And spirituality appears to be a beneficial evolutionary trait that can be triggered by stimulating brain areas. There, that's why.

>Death is scary

The only thing I don't fear is oblivion. By contrast, there is a tangible anxiety on the underside of every conscious moment that I constantly have to suppress, though I think we all do it quite automatically. If I had some assurance that death would cause the cessation of experience then I would kill myself that very instant because there's literally no downside.

>oblivion
Do you have any reason to assume there is such a thing?

no and I don't. I said as much. I also kind of said if I did then I would promptly kill myself.

Misquoted you, I meant is there any reason for you to assume that anything happens besides the machine that produces your consciousness shutting off. I.e. any reason for you assume that there is anything but oblivion.

Giving up?

No it teaches us how to be stronger.

Its just one of infinitely many alternatives.

Ashtavakra Gita
Advaita bodha Deepika

meant for

>infinitely many alternatives
There might be infinite possible alternatives, but they are not all equally likely to be accurate.

At least if you assume that the things we do observe are more likely to be true than things we do not observe. What is your stance on this?

relevancy. Brainlet Russel's teapot may exist its just we have no good reason to care. If we can abstract the idea of a being that apprehends our entire reality or the idea of some kind of immaterial soul, we can obviously say these concepts are more relevant than some hypothetical contrivance.

You do you come here if you have never read some philosophy and have no idea what spirituality is?
This fedora attitude toward anything spiritual is typical of people who just follow the "muh atheism" narrative, which implies one of more of the following:

>god does not exists
>religion is harmful and the cause of war
>the meaning of life is what you make it to be
>science disproves religion
>the soul does not exist
>there is no such thing as life after death
>morality does not exist OR it exist only in the of political association/social contract

And so on.
Now if you can't see how poorly put are these opinions, you are doomed to be a brainlet for life.
God is not only grugg's skyfather version of it: philosophy has declined the concept in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. Same for the soul. Same for versions of life after death.
At the same time, a poor conception of science and its fields of interest, as well as a poor conception of religion as a cultural manifestation, are the result of relying too much on narratives that come from television, movies and so on.

If you want to discuss about these things, please try to engage with complex thoughts about them - i.e. read philosophy. Otherwise, do not bother have an opinion on it, because nobody who has the slightest preparation on any of these things will ever take you seriously.

>if an immaterial soul exists then this set of possibilities X becomes more relevant

Yes. But why do you assume an immaterial soul exists?

And even if we assume an immaterial soul exists, I would argue the difference of likelihoods is still so insignificant as to be pointless to consider. There is no reason to assume anything happens with that immaterial soul after your death even if we assume it exists.

No, whether or not an immaterial self exists is the relevant question.

When ideas are too big to fit into your head, you must substitute detailed and nuanced descriptions with a framework of generalizations that you can work with.

Spirituality is a framework that substitutes a detailed description of everything that’s going on in the universe and your relationship with all the moving and static pieces.

Being spiritual is being able to use this mental framework to center yourself and balance your priorities and desires.

If your understanding of the universe isn’t based on a biblical explanation, you can not find spirituality through the bible.

Why wouldn't the non-superstitious study of reality interest you more? There's so much I don't know about reality and I have fun reading in order to find out. As for the study of religion, Freuds Totem And Taboo examines superstition in a readable, fairly empirical sort of way.

There's definitely a lot of truth about the psyche in folk stories and fairytales. You needn't believe them to find them interesting, you know
>fedora attitude
Not an argument. Stop dismissing atheism because /pol/ told you to. The Christfaggotry on this board is really astounding

I feel like spirituality will get easier once we get closer to death. It's too early to convert yet, I want to live carelessly and do a lot of degenerate stuff. It's not like you'll feel good about restraining yourself afterwards, I still regret not taking the chance to have awkward adolescent sex years after. Maybe consider Christianity in your 50s.

Self or soul however you want to call it. You must have some reasons to give the idea so much consideration as to include it in your life decisions? Why do you think it is likely to exist?

I've only given up in the sense that I started believing in Nerd Rapture—a technological singularity leading to 2010 (sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) type re-beginning ot an Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" type re-beginning. I don't have a fucking clue what will happen to this universe. I suppose it will eventually die out after being rejuvenated several [citation needed] times.
This entire spiritualism thing is a farce. Humans are rationalizing beings who act first and decide why they act later. I love and hate being a fucking monkey.
If I didn't believe in Nerd Rapture being highly likely, I would probably pull a homegrown terrorist act unlike anything the world has ever seen.
After I work as a properly functioning adult for +20 years, I plan on working in any field of tech I believe can help us on our way towards infinity.

Roast me if you like.

>I have this idea in my head that spirituality basically means giving up. Instead of coming up with good arguments, you just throw your hands up and say "God said so..."
That's kind of true, but Christians see this as surrenduring to God and putting your faith in him.

This

Maybe you don't know yourself and especially your fears not well enough. You say, that death and obliteration doesn't make you tremble in terror, is a good sign that you never experience real fear of dying. i somehow believe that you can soften and maybe even subdue this fear, but only if you had the chance of facing in its terror.

It's definitely not, you'll probably think differently when you have to raise a child and review the nature of your ideas while imparting your wisdom

The only thing to do is to change your »tendencies«, going from bad tendencies to good tendencies. First you must know what happens in »your world«, which as usual for the dhamma is what you experience. It turns out that you change your tendencies mostly by stopping to associate yourself with people who have the bad tendencies, and you begin to associate yourself with people who have the good tendencies. The concrete advises are at the end.

Once you know what happens in your life, you identify the tendencies which are bad, the ones which are good ; then you refrain from doing again the acts [actions, talks and thinking] which are deemed bad and you pursue the acts which are called good [it turns out that you do not know which tendencies are good since your remain a »normal people«, so you just follow the guidelines of the buddha on what are the good actions ]. It turns out that the principal, if not the only one, source which leads you away from nibanna is mental and not physical. [such as when athletes claim that the limit of their effort is the mind and not the body]

As usual , The beginning is, first, to stop going on the opposite of the path. SO that means to stop caring about what you have always been caring about in all the years you can remember living [since you are not at the stage of nibbanna, you know that whatever you did so far during the few decades of your life has been mediocre at best, if not totally pathetic and stupid. You must be sincere about your skills [you have none since you are miserable] and about the goal you want to reach. So far The only good thing about you, your behavior, your life is that you dislike some of your life and want to reach nibbanna and you have few hours of practice which are not effective according to you].

The usual objects of worry are about comfort, entertainment, the fear of missing out on pleasures and the worry being a good person as thought by people who do not care one bit about reaching a state where they are no longer unhappy once and for all [that is to say that there is nothing else to do after reaching this state of non-unhapinness and there is no dissipation of this new state ever].

The fear about missing out on pleasures is mental and is fed easily by other people who claim that »it would be a pity not to experience this ''happiness''« that is the experience when, let's say, you enjoy a yogurt or be on a cruise with a person you love, or Parachuting and so on.

The worry about comfort and a few other objects of habits is called »biological« by the same persons above, but it is not. It remains mental and you learn later on about managing them [ex: you learn tummo to stop being cold, instead of working to get money, then going shopping, then spending the money on cloths to get you warm, then washing the cloths because they stink, so you need other cloths while the last ones dry and then storing them].

>What will finally convince me to succumb to spirituality?
Trying to force it seems pointless, if religious teachings don't speak to you maybe that's because they aren't for you.

Then the morality from those same toxic people. They claim that you must worry about money, worry about getting a house, worry about attending such event, worry about listening to the people they admire, worry about opinions, worry about who is here and who is not here, worry about the news and so on [it never ends with these people]. This part is also obviously mental.

So far all those worries are fed by living, and worse, listening to those people have bad habits. The first step is then to identify those people, typically by what they claim and what they do [since you do not have access to what they think] and to stay away from them as much as you can. [ex: your friends bugs you off with going to the cinema to watch a movie? you do not follow them, otherwise you would become absorbed in the movie and experience the emotions that the actors try to make you feel. Perhaps if you were skillful at attending to the senses, you could go, but it turns out that once you are good at it, you would not want to go]

Once you stop cognizing about all those objects fed by those people, there is not much to do in your daily life. All those intellectual activities that so many people praise are exactly what must not be pursued. The daily life will be about getting the money that a few people demand from you, to carry out the tasks that a few people demand from you, and more intimately, it will be about food and cleaning the body and the house, sometimes talking to a person who wants to know more about the dhamma.

Far fewer speculations will be generated once this life is led. Once most speculations disappear, you stay on the level of the »body« to know »what you experience« which really means »to know what happens through the 5 usual senses«. The first step is to relax the body, then the mano and the citta. When the speculations appear, you know they appear and when they do not disappear at once, you follow the sutta by recalling that their pursuit is bad and you go back to the body and its relaxation to make them disappear and know that they disappeared by this way. Do this as long as the mind is not relaxed. It turns out that the most natural and the only relevant way to analyze the body is through the »elements«:

find what is soft and hard
find what is dry and wet
find what is cold and warm
find what is airy

Beforehand, the explicit advices are as usual:

with other people: do not lie, do not create stories and drama, settle disputes even if, from the point of view of you and other normal people, you appear to be losing
do not eat too much, especially too much meat
do not ejaculate semen
to not sleep too much, so as soon you as you are awake you start knowing what happens until the moment you fall asleep
do not become upset even when the sensual experience is not pleasant and never succumb to the sensual experience when it is pleasant
change the postures if you want to : go from being sit, to standing up, to walking, to laying in bed [on the back or on the right side] and when you are bored with that, you can clean the house and keep continuing to know what happens.

Knowing what happens is the basis, the beginning. Once you know what happens, you begin to reject whatever leads you to bad acts and you steer towards the good acts.

Once the mind is relaxed and pliant, you either dive into the jhanas and leave them and or you turn your mano and citta to the discourses, especially the most important sequence to recall at any experience: whatever is experienced about the senses is anicca, what is anicca is dukkha, what is dukkha is anatta [NOT what is anicca is anatta].

Let's recall that Nibbanna is the only experience that is anatta and not anicca and not dukkha.

Let's recall that anatta has nothing to do with ''self'' and the specualtions that people put bedhing this word. The atta is not a concept, not an idea, not an opinion, not a belief, not a speculation, not a fantasy, not a dream, not a thought, not a theory, not an observation, not an operation, not a reasoning, not a game, not an information, not an illusion, not a vision, not an hallucination, not a chimera, not a mirage, not a lie, not a ghost, not a fiction, not a simulation, not a charm; atta is and always will be first and foremost about the experience of ''I''', of ''mine'', of ''me'' which projects, it turns out, whatever experiences them towards the opposite of the goal. For instance, the ''me'' in ''I, mine, me'' is not an idea, it is an experience and perhaps you even have a few records of it, typically when you said, without thinking, the word ''me'' when acting with and talking to other normal people. [same situation with '''I'' and ''my''].

The next natural step is to stop worrying about the actions and goods remaining from the old daily life with normal people, which are, let's recall, »about getting the money that a few people demand from you, to carry out the tasks that a few people demand from you, and more intimately, it will be about food and cleaning the body and the house«. Having a house and taking care of it is a burden, finding food is burden, storing food is a burden; so it is the ideal time to become a bhikkhu and continue to attend what happens in your world.

Baghavad Gita (or the whole Mahabharata if you're willing to read one of the longest epics)
The Presocratics
Plato
Aristotle
The Upanishads

>wanting to succumb

lol.

and the easiest way would be to take a heroic dose of psychedelics.

>I want to live carelessly and do a lot of degenerate stuff
This makes no sense at all. To be religious in the sense that you seem to describe it would mean to believe that “degenerate stuff” is meaningless and can never be a source of fulfilment. What you’re basically saying is “in the future I’ll probably commit to a belief system that will consider my past actions pointless and shallow - but I want to be pointless and shallow until then.”

how so? a copout to what?

>no vedas
>no puranas
lol typical internet pseud
he sees pleasure as the highest meaning because he’s unattractive and never had a chance to be draped in pussy, attractive people don’t even have these kinds of values

God is real faggot

>philokalia
Reading this now and it's very interesting.

>There is among the passions an anger of the intellect, and this anger is in accordance with nature. Without anger
a man cannot attain purity: he has to feel angry with all that is sown in him by the enemy. When Job felt this
anger he reviled his enemies, calling them ‘dishonorable men of no repute, lacking everything good, whom I
would not consider fit to live with the dogs that guard my flocks’ (cf. Job 30:1, 4. LXX). He who wishes to
acquire the anger that is in accordance with nature must uproot all self-will, until he establishes within himself
the state natural to the intellect.

>a religious or mystical experience
Fuck off. Just because the chemicals in your brain decided to go wacko doesn't mean anything supernatural is going on.

>Try Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig, then perhaps move onto Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis, then after that, read The Screwtape Letters if you catch yourself starting to believe, if not, just go straight to some Christology. Preferably The Case For Christ.
These are all terrible books.

>Just because the chemicals in your brain decided to go wacko doesn't mean anything supernatural is going on.
You misunderstand my fedora friend. A religious or mystical experience does not imply that anything supernatural happened. It means that the subjective perspective experienced something seemingly beyond their grasp that can be interpreted in a religious framework.

That's cool and all but do you have any arguments?

Nobody said anything about the supernatural you absolute brainlet

The ancients were not that clever.

The 'virgin birth' myth is nothing but copy-pasted straight from the Persian myth of Zoroaster's virgin birth. The Bible is a semi-literate mishmash of non-original myths, stories, and hearsay from various stone-age middle-eastern societies.

To think that one should lead one's life, or indeed, lead entire nations, by this nonsense is, truly, the greatest travesty of all time.

>literally my feels say so, the argument

>The 'virgin birth' myth is nothing but copy-pasted straight from the Persian myth of Zoroaster's virgin birth
youtube.com/watch?v=3x6aOBqc9d0

The idea that because there are superficial similarities in two different myths means one had to be copied or they're connected in any way is dumb and far too prevalent.

The medium of knowledge at the time was if someone remembered something, or through stories, legends, myths etc. passed down by ancestors. How could there not be reasonable suspicion for connections between the two?

Also how have billions of people misinterpreted a literary device? The Holy Spirit figuratively inseminates Mary, a sign of the beginning of her spiritual life. Are people just morons?

>How could there not be reasonable suspicion for connections between the two
Because it only appears that way on the most superficial level. It's like saying that because Jurassic Park and Land Before Time are both about Dinosaurs that one had to inspire the other. It's not a very good argument because when you start digging a bit deeper you can see they're actually very different. The problem is people try to paint the stories with the broadest brush possible to try and simplify them to the point where they can say "Look, see, it's clearly based on this!" but it never holds water when you actually look at the historical facts.

if you are reading the bible expecting to read "now, this is why you should believe in god: [...]" you are doing it wrong. Reading the bible properly requires faith, its a bad option for people with prejudice against christianity. Either start with some fiction that might open your mind, and go building from there.

If you want actual arguments go read Summa contra Gentiles.

Its not likely but I don't feel its especially unlikely either.

thats a myth itself you uneducated mong

>What you’re basically saying is “in the future I’ll probably commit to a belief system that will consider my past actions pointless and shallow - but I want to be pointless and shallow until then.
Sounds like a good plan, honestly.

How do you know if your divine experience isn't just a hallucination or an illusion from your brain? If its just faith how do you know in what to believe? What is divine and what is not?

How do you know you're not just a brain in a jar being fed sensory information like the Matrix?

This argument could be used for anything. If something is completely unpercievable in the phisical world, what is left of it to exist? A dog is a dog because it occupies space and has the visual form of a dog. There must be, then infinite gods, if it is not necessary for them to occupy physical space nor interact with the real world. If he exists in a transcendental world, does a god exist in his world too, that can not be seen? Like a God's God? If not, then why? If there's no real parameter to say if something exists or not based on physical senses, which are our only door to the real world outside our brains?

Are you arguing that people other than yourself cannot have consciousness because consciousness is impossible to perceive, and indeed doesn't even exist in a physical way?

Yes, that is a valid argument.

You cannot know for sure, because there is no access to the outside world despite our 5 senses. On the other hand, we can assume it is not the case because of an Occam´s razor, and also assuming the world it is real by the definition of what something we consider "real" is. A divine experience has all the characteristics of what is defined as a hallucination, then why not consider it a hallucination by definition also? If not, what is the difference?

>Occam's razor
Time to stop posting.

It's so interesting how these threads work.

Inevitably it intrigues a few mental champions who type out three/four big, long replies in the middle. And the ends have little replies, tapering off.

It's almost parabolic in content, tbqhwyfam.

Actually there is a method of connection between you and the other's consciousness, which is communication, through a physical channel. There is no basis for assuming there is a god in this sense because there is only a communication wich exists inside the mind, a closed system, and that could be a hallucination by pure definition.

>a communication wich exists inside the mind
No such thing exists, I think you might be schizophrenic or insane.

However, there are signs from God. Communicable signs that affect people in spiritual ways. Like love, or the wind.

I never said it was a proof of existence, but rather a possible evidence, and a logical tool.

>Like love, or the wind.
How are these signs of god? The wind exists because of the differences in temperature between soil and atmosphere, and also a constant rotation of the earth. Love can be just a chemical release of dopamine in the brain, or an evolutionary mechanism in mammals. In Greece it was commonplace for men to fall in love with eachother. Why isn't it the case in western culture on the last centuries? Was there a change in the nature of humans, or just a reorganization of sexual behaviour woch changed the way we define "love", proving it is relative to culture and time?

>Love can be just a chemical release of dopamine in the brain, or an evolutionary mechanism in mammals
I too watch Reddit and Memey

Woah dude epic refutation. I'm a believer now!

Ok dude it's still just a meme, not an argument. Doesn't matter if its on a reddit cartoon or not

you guys always respond this way as though it's some incredibly juvenile and edgy line of thought.

Isn't it actually a very reasonable idea? What exactly is wrong with it

>you just throw your hands up and say "God said so, or something!"

If that's your analysis then you haven't read much about Christianity.

You seem to want arguments, so I'd direct you to scholasticism.

>Thinking I need to refute something so baseless and edgy
If you haven't grown out of that vapid, nihilistic philosophy after high school then you need to grow up. The fact that R&M panders to that dumbass pseud demographic with it should be all the information you need to understand that it's not deep, or insightful or interesting. It's what dumb people tell themselves to feel smart.

The Bible is not some magically-imbued text that is supposed to impregnate you with holy spiritual knowledge, it's just a bunch of fables and metaphors, some of which embodying the essence of human spirituality with themes like judgement and sacrifice that have been present in the human race and some animal races for thousands of years.

Other posters have said, it's basically impossible to be spiritually aware without having some sort of religious experience. You can try, for sure, but it won't be sincere.

And if you want to go "WELL IT'S JUST BRAIN CHEMICALS!" then I don't think you want to play that card, because literally every thought, spiritual or not, is nothing more than brain chemicals, so if you want to invalidate that, you are invalidating all of human logic, emotion, rationality, and experience.

Being spiritual isn't believing in a big bearded dude striking people with lightning from the clouds, nor is it about a virgin hippie healing people with magic fingers. These are all allegories, and sadly it's been lost on just about every fucking major church who takes the Bible as literal.

Being spiritual means that there is meaning in life, and it is found through deep introspection, contemplation, and thought, and not by external stimuli. It sounds ironic and roundabout, I know, you have to have a religious experience to become spiritual but you have to go through deep introspection to have a religious experience, but that's part of what makes it such a unique human experience is the irony of it.

Matthew 7:7-7:8: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.…

The spiritual experience can only happen when you are willing to search for God and meaning.

>it's some incredibly juvenile and edgy line of thought.
It is. You're dismissing your subjective experience in favor of a theory that disregards it and tells you you're a cellular automaton. You don't do this because it's a well supported idea, you do it because in spite of the fact that your own experience tells you it's outright false you accept it anyway because it makes you feel superior. Again, grow up.

And this is what you tell yourself to feel smart. Being incapable of using rational tought to refute an argument, you put yourself in a position of delusional superiority, denying your lack of reasoning to your own yourself. This is unironic mental gymnastics.

>>Thinking I need to refute something so baseless and edgy
Yes, you do. If you don't have any good arguments against it other than "lol dude so edgy" then you are forced to concede that it may be valid. Follow your own advice: don't be so juvenile.

What experience exactly tells you you are not a biological organism that works on the basis of natural selection regulated by biochemical processes?