Tfw to intelligent to believe in god but want to

Kek exists whether or not you believe in it

Mouthbreathers claim you can't prove god. Intelligent people claim you can't disprove god so there's nothing wrong with believing.

Why did I have to be born in an era where atheism is somehow associated with science? Why can't we go back to when science laughed at them and religious people killed them?

>Disbelievers end up in hell.
Wrong.
>When you can prove if its true or not, isn't it best just to believe anyways so you have nothing to lose.
You can't force yourself to believe in something. You can try, but there's no guarantee you'll ultimately be able to convince yourself it's true. I assume merely pretending you believe it or accepting it as a possibility isn't sufficient.
Moreover, I assume in order to get into heaven you'd have to make some effort to live in accordance with Christian teachings which many understandably don't want to do just on the small off chance they could be punished for it after death.

And beyond that, you have no more reason to believe that not being a Christian will result in consequences in the afterlife than not being, say, a Muslim, or not doing whatever else anyone claims will cause you to suffer in the afterlife if not done. Or doing whatever else they claim will cause you to suffer in the afterlife. You get the point.

It stems from the idea that humans are corrupt and regardless of how much good one does it can't counteract the evil that they inevitably do.

What constitutes evil? Something as minor as thinking sexual thoughts which you can not control.

TL;DR: Evil corrupts much more than humanly good can save and the system is rigged so that you can't abstain from doing evil.

>to

>tfw to intelligent to engage with b8 false flags but still reply anyways

Evil thoughts aren't sins.

In Islam an evil thought not acted upon is 1 good deed. An evil thought acted upon is 1 sin. A good thought acted upon is 10-700 good deeds.

The good vs evil is about self control. Everybody has Satan over their shoulders putting evil thoughts and temptations in their minds. Fighting against them and not doing it is a good deed not a sin.

Afriad that I'm only true faithful to Kek here. My lord, bless me with doubles.

So cruel. He punishes me for my hubris.

Kek is a Jewish conspiracy.

>He punishes me for my hubris.

O ye of little faith

I don't believe in god but find religion fun. It's fun to read various scriptures, analyze them from different perspectives and generally simply learn new stuff. I don't understand people who tie themselves to one belief and follow it blindly their entire life.

People do that without religion as well

True but religion is a prime example.

meant for

>tfw an intelligent discussion over the existence of god devolves into a dubs thread

If repeating digits KEK is the one true god!

(if otherwise he still is, cause u'kno he's chaos incarnate and all that shiz, famm)

This is Veeky Forums senpai. If you aren't practicing Kek's will you're not doing it right.

You're also too intelligent to use proper grammar.

For those who "want to believe," but can't, here are some things you can do. If you do them, it will greatly facilitate you achieving first-hand experience of God, which is an important part of Orthodox faith.

>Read three chapters from the Gospels every day.

>Pray the Jesus Prayer whenever you are waiting or have nothing to focus your mind on.

>Pray the Our Father first thing after you wake up, every morning

>Every time you are tempted by anger, lust, or anything else, follow what the monk does in this cartoon: youtube.com/watch?v=XP0J2eDPIjU

>Make the Sign of the Cross a few times every day, which is praying with your fingertips.

>Come to Divine Liturgy every Sunday.

>Read Psalm 50 every night (Psalm 51 in non-Orthodox Bibles).

>Read The Way of a Pilgrim

Optional: read Laurus

>I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna [hellfire] are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love?
-Saint Isaac the Syrian

If you don't have a church near you but want to go worship, email Ancient Faith Ministries

The original Church: ancient, Apostolic and unchanging. Questions welcome.

If you want to attend church but don't have a parish near you, email Ancient Faith Ministries.

Orthodox hymns in English
youtube.com/watch?v=v1ybJx1osyk
youtube.com/watch?v=qDoyZtkrU0s
youtube.com/watch?v=noetoc2W4Pc

Christianity is a joke. Either be a jew because it was the first or Muslim because its absolute monotheism.

This essentially amounts of a self brainwashing program. You could set up a similar plan for any religion, but doing so unhealthy, Its a way of turning your face from a truth which is too painful for you to handle

>Faith: dispassionate understanding of God.
-St Diadochos of Photiki, "Definitions"

Nietzsche was a relativist, he only believed in truth of the sense of "your truth," or "my truth," so him positing himself as a champion of *the* truth, is incoherent. He was BTFO by Father Seraphim Rose.

Talmudic Judaism started a couple of hundred years after Christianity. It's predicated largely upon the termination of the Jewish priesthood.

Nobody refers to made up denominations

Or you can read a couple verses in the Quran. Up to you phams, "la itra hafideen" and all that.

>of *the* truth, is incoherent. He was BTFO by Father Seraphim Rose.

I like how you ignored my point in favor of a misinformed attack on Nietzsche.

I'm referring to Orthodox Judaism. If you're referring to the other kinds of Judaism, they're not more than a few hundred years old, max.

Your point is buzzwords.

>unhealthy
Based on what conception of health? Certainly not on the clinical one.
>brainwashing
Literally all learning could be construed as this if you don't like what's being taught.

I think undergoing a reliogous regime designed to get you to embrace beliefs you reject at a purely logical level is unhealthy. If you can find an accredited psychologist NOT attached to a religious institution who disagrees I would concede the point.

>Literally all learning could be construed as this if you don't like what's being taught.

We are not talking about learning, at least in the normal sense of the word, but a religious regime meant to strengthen beliefs.

This would work for any religion, and as described is certainly a type of mental training that could be construed as brainwashing.

When someone says they're an atheist they usually just mean they don't believe in the gods of the bible, quran, etc etc

Exact dates are tough, but some reasonable dates are 1200 B.C. for the start of Judaism, 30 A.D. for the start of Christianity, and 610 A.D. for the start of Islam.

> If you can find an accredited psychologist NOT attached to a religious institution who disagrees I would concede the point.
I very seriously doubt that a psychologist is going to tell you it's unhealthy to pray and read religious literature to find faith.

>We are not talking about learning, at least in the normal sense of the word, but a religious regime meant to strengthen beliefs.
It's about experiencing the divine directly.

>This would work for any religion, and as described
No, not really.

Orthodox Judaism is extremely different from temple Judaism.

According to The Old Testament, Jesus was a Jew. That's the religion he was born into. So, Judaism came before Christianity.

But it's still Judaism.

Jesus wasn't a Pharisee, and the Pharisees were the forefathers of what today is known as "Judaism". Judaism today says this.

>I very seriously doubt that a psychologist is going to tell you it's unhealthy to pray and read religious literature to find faith.

That is not what I said

>It's about experiencing the divine directly.

That is impossible because the divine does not exist

>No, not really.

prayer and meditation regardless of religion activate approximately the same sections of the brain, which in turn encourages people to do more of it. This works with any religion,

Human minds are furthermore extremely malleable to physiological conditioning.

Those two things are what your program is. And I could create a religion right now, and get people to follow it using a similar method, as long as they were looking for God or some greater meaning the method would work.

It has the same name, but it's effectively a different religion. Temple Judaism had an authoritative Sanhedrin and were very much into proselytism. There is no authoritative Sanhendrin in modern Judaism, no Temple, not priesthood, just a bunch of teachers arguing about dietary laws who can never authoritatively resolve their disputes.

>That is not what I said
That's exactly what you said.

>prayer and meditation regardless of religion activate approximately the same sections of the brain, which in turn encourages people to do more of it.
If it were that simple, then every religious person would pray for hours, instead of our priests exhorting people to pray more.

Judaism was divided into sects even then, the pharisees are just the major survivors, there are of course other smaller groups that also survived, such as the Samaritans.

Certainly Jesus never disputed that the pharisees were Jews, and much of their cannon was complete before Jesus was born.

The Pharisees were the forefathers of contemporary Judaism, they're not synonymous with them.

Jesus didn't dispute the the Pharisees were racially Jews, but he did say they actively prevented people from following the faith (Matthew 23:13).

>tell you it's unhealthy to pray and read religious literature to find faith.

>I think undergoing a religious regime designed to get you to embrace beliefs you reject at a purely logical level is unhealthy.

Not the same thing.

>If it were that simple, then every religious person would pray for hours, instead of our priests exhorting people to pray more.

Maybe if the rewards of prayer were as powerful and addictive as a drug, but as it is it still takes self discipline to engage in any ascetic endeavor, even regular prayer or meditation, however the long term "benefits" of these practices are well documented.

And they in tern called him a heretic, that the thing with religious sects

>Not the same thing.
You're calling prayer and reading "a religious regime," so yeah, the same thing.

> however the long term "benefits" of these practices are well documented.
So you're suggesting they're healthy?

They called him a blasphemer because he said he was the "Son of God", which in Hebrew idiom, can be construed to mean you are God (just like "Son of Man" is Hebrew idiom for someone who's a man).

>It has the same name, but it's effectively a different religion.
>modern Judaism is separate from ancient Judaism despite them claiming descent because the actual religion is demonstrably different
>my Christianity is identical to the Christianity of the apostles despite being demonstrably different because we claim descent from Peter

Your overlooking the "reject on a purely logical level" part. If you already find something illogical, struggling to overcome that and believe it anyway strikes me as unhealthy.

>So you're suggesting they're healthy?
In terms of the benefits yes, though you dont need to have faith to practice many of these things, like meditation. there are many groups that do this without any necessary religious attachment.

I assume you could "pray" sans faith and achieve similar results but until groups like that emerge its just speculation on my part. Christians are a lot less comfortable with that than some eastern groups and atheists would be a lot more hesitant than with meditation.

>They called him a blasphemer because he said he was the "Son of God", which in Hebrew idiom, can be construed to mean you are God (just like "Son of Man" is Hebrew idiom for someone who's a man

Jesus never identifies himself as the Son of God in the earliest copies of Mark, the earliest Gospel. what you refer to is an elaboration added by later writers, probably not reflecting something Jesus actually said.

Attacking their interpretation of the law and implying he might be the messiah would be reasons enough in their minds to hate him

How is Orthodox Christianity different from that of the Apostles?

I don't think any psychologist is going to tell you that there's something unhealthy if you say you find a faith illogical, but are moved by it and desire to find it through prayer and reading.

Different faiths have different lifestyles. Not all prayer is the same. Christian prayer, for instance, focuses heavily on contrition, which no other prayer really does.

>the earliest Gospel
Ah, no.

when Christ says it is not when goes in which defiles, but that which comes out, Mark 7:19 has the gloss explaining in saying this, Christ made all foods clean, something that was only universally accepted after the Council of Jerusalem; Matthew has no such gloss, indicating that it is the earliest Gospel, and predates the Council of Jerusalem. If Matthew were written after the Council of Jerusalem, and was using Mark as a source for this saying, surely it would have included this gloss. There is also another gloss, in Matthew 19:29 says those who leave mothers and brothers and wives and fathers and sisters and houses and fields for Christ's sake will receive a hundred times in the age to come; Mark 10: 29-30 says the same thing, but then adds a parenthetical gloss right after Christ says a hundredfold, saying "now" repeating what Christ just said, explaining "with persecutions", (as in you will lose these things in persecutions, maybe these things might even be doing the persecuting); then the parenthetical gloss ends, and Christ finishes "in age to come". Mark was clearly written after the persecution of Christians became intense, whereas Matthew was written before then. Rather than Matthew and Luke using Mark as a source, it makes more sense to say Mark used Matthew and Luke as sources (although I will add that I hold to Papias's account, and believe Mark to predate Luke, and Matthew were used as a source, it was secondary to Peter's testimony). Finally, Matthew was clearly written in Hebrew and translated (as Papias says), unlike the other Gospels, because it uses Hebrew syntax and tense; for instance, see the very Greek syntax of Mark 15:21: "And they compel passing a Simon [a passing Simon] of Cyrene, coming from country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, that [he might] carry the cross of his [Christ's]."
cont

To clarify.

Christianity is a spin off of Second Temple Judaism. The first Christians (whom historians refer to as Jewish Christians) were the original Jewish followers of Jesus. Orthodox Judaism is nothing but a denomination of earlier Judaism, but not Second Temple Judaism. There are 3 major denominations of Judaism today. Most streams of modern Judaism developed from the Pharisaic movement, which came from the destruction of the second temple, which became known as Rabbinic Judaism, which is completely different than Second Temple Judaism.The denominations of Second Temple Judaism is Karaite Judaism. Today, there are about 50,000 Karaite Jews in the world, compared to the estimated 15 million Rabbinic based Judaism sects.

So to say "Why not believe in Judaism instead of Christianity which is just based off it." Isn't relative to the Judaism we well know of today.

So yes Judaism did technically come before Christianity, but it's not the Judaism that is commonly practiced today.

This sort of syntax sounds natural in Greek (where inflection and declension almost completely determine grammatical relations), but in English or Aramaic, languages that rely heavily on syntax to express grammatical relations, it's chore to parse (and remember there was no punctuation, lowercase and uppercase, or even word spaces, in ancient times); Matthew 27:32, by contrast, reflects a Aramaic or Hebrew syntax: "Going forth and they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they compelled to carry the cross of his [Christ's]." Here is another example, Mark 1:12: "And immediately the spirit him drives into the wilderness." Compare the Aramaic Matthew 4:1: "Then he, Jesus, was led into wilderness by the spirit." In Mark, the indirect object is adjacent to the object, which is quite normal in Greek, but generally not feasible in Aramaic or Hebrew.). Finally, Matthew was clearly written in Hebrew and translated (as Papias says), unlike the other Gospels, because it uses Hebrew syntax and tense; for instance, see the very Greek syntax of Mark 15:21: "And they compel passing a Simon [a passing Simon] of Cyrene, coming from country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, that [he might] carry the cross of his [Christ's]." This sort of syntax sounds natural in Greek (where inflection and declension almost completely determine grammatical relations), but in English or Aramaic, languages that rely heavily on syntax to express grammatical relations, it's chore to parse (and remember there was no punctuation, lowercase and uppercase, or even word spaces, in ancient times); Matthew 27:32, by contrast, reflects a Aramaic or Hebrew syntax: "Going forth and they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon: him they compelled to carry the cross of his [Christ's]."
cont

Here is another example, Mark 1:12: "And immediately the spirit him drives into the wilderness." Compare the Aramaic Matthew 4:1: "Then he, Jesus, was led into wilderness by the spirit." In Mark, the indirect object is adjacent to the object, which is quite normal in Greek, but generally not feasible in Aramaic or Hebrew.
FINIS

>I don't think any psychologist is going to tell you that there's something unhealthy if you say you find a faith illogical, but are moved by it and desire to find it through prayer and reading.

>I don't think

>
Different faiths have different lifestyles. Not all prayer is the same. Christian prayer, for instance, focuses heavily on contrition, which no other prayer really does.

But its effects are not that different regardless, except focusing on contrition might help build a guilt complex along side those benefits.

>Attacking their interpretation of the law and implying he might be the messiah would be reasons enough in their minds to hate him
Not enough to sentence him to death. Sentencing someone to death was quite difficult, due in large part to the Pharisees.

>.The denominations of Second Temple Judaism is Karaite Judaism
Karaite Judaism started long after the destruction of the Second Temple

few if any modern academics accept these theories, and any mainstream text on the subject will tell you Mark was first.

I have no interest in debating this with you, except to ask why if this is so obvious scholars outside conservative Christianity have not caught on to it?

>But its effects are not that different regardless
The effects of eating pizza and eating celery are not really very different on your physiology, but different diets over time can yield pretty radical physiological differences.

>Not enough to sentence him to death.

Claiming you were the messiah would be plenty of reason to sentence someone to death in the minds of the Romans and their collaborators.

Heck if people thought it, even if you didnt say it that would have been enough reason to make you a threat

If anything the benefits of buddhist mediation are far better documented, I am just giving Christian prayer the benefit of the doubt because it has been shown to stimulate the same general regions of the brain, so much that its hard to tell which would your doing looking at scans

I don't know and I'm not really interested in researching why they haven't addressed what I've just posted, which is a lot more substantial than what they're basing their theory on (Mark is more "bare-bones" and therefore earlier).

I'm sure both use the "prayer part of the brain". Just like the act of eating pizza and eating celery both employ the same parts.

In which case I am not interested in engaging your fringe theories.

I know you think in this metaphor Christianity is the health food, but if anything its more likely the pizza.

fortunately for you its a really bad metaphor.

I don't think eating either solely would be healthy long term, my point is suggesting individual instance of eating are extremely similar, is not enough to extract the larger effects of a diet, and the same applies to prayer.

They adopted many principles and opinions of other anti-rabbinic forms of Judaism that had previously existed, such as the Sadducees who kept going with their Second Temple beliefs.

The ancestors of the Karaites were a group called Benei Ṣedeq during the Second Temple period.

>I am not interested in engaging your fringe theories
That's really what Christianity is now, though, at least academically. Unless you're talking about a very liberal variant.

Sadducees were Sola Scriptura, but beyond that they have very little in common with the Karaites, since they didn't acknowledge any books beyond the Pentateuch.

>The ancestors of the Karaites were a group called Benei Ṣedeq during the Second Temple period.
What did that group believe and practice?

Pascal argued to brainwash yourself until you believed.

Believing in God kicks ass.
Don't believe, just know.
>as long as you give up convictions and motivation and anything which would make your genetics have a greater chance of overcoming my own you're fine

Find this cuck and destroy him in the name og God.
Only because he said logic is itself a form of brainwashing.
>he hasn't been building societies or studying history
One day you will see why you are wrong.
It goes along with realizing everyone is necessarily fundamentally different and you yourself do not matter.