How do I sound less pretentious when I talk about literature with people?

How do I sound less pretentious when I talk about literature with people?

I genuinely believe that great literature has a lot to teach about our place in the world and all that shit, but I'm worried that I come off as condescending when I talk to peers about books.

Anyone have experience with this? I'm a college student who wants to go into seminary, hopefully to become a pastor. Literature has helped clarify a lot of key points of my faith and I'd like to be able to share that in the least pretentious way possible.

Its really in the tone. You can have a geniune and passionate conversation with anyone about anything, even shoehorning in your most autistic opinions, if youre friendly and sincere. That and be open to friendly debate.

You can't possibly not sound pretentious because your goal in life is to preach nonsense at weak minds and wishful thinkers and shun all who understand subjects better than you do.

Go fuck yourself.

It sounds like pretense is your bread and butter user. Maybe try the scientific method and stop approaching problems answer-first-question-later.

This. Some people are going to think you're pretentious no matter what because they hate anything even remotely intellectual, but fuck them.

Faith is pretense.

Every second you spend encouraging people to believe in sky fairies you slow down the evolution of our species. Douche.

>faith
>intellectual

wow satan youre not even trying anymore are you

>not experiencing the divine logos

Yeah I'm going to have to agree with this. I'm kind of like an awkward dude, or at least I view myself that way, but for some reason people appreciate what I have so say - especially about intellectual fields. I guess the key is to just be sincere about your interests and your conversation with other people. And like you said, some people might be opposed to anything intellectual, but those are people you should actively avoid.

I've probably read much more than you of all the same people throwing ambiguous and interchangeable terminology at unquantifiable topics. They were all dumb delusional and full of shit and wasted their lives. Faith is a closed mind and organized religion is a mistake. Sorry you waste your life clinging to fairy stories.

You are religious and want to be a pastor. Your worldview and your livelihood sit entirely upon your aversion to defined terms, cited sources, or anything intellectual.

ok satan

keep trying to convince people you dont exist!

This is not an argument. This is the kind of retardation necessary for religion.

I remember being 14
You belong on /b/

Hey, OP. Here's a good example of how not to speak if you don't want to sound like a pretentious cunt lol

Are you autistic? Do you know what a joke is?

appreciated

Hit us with some of your speech and we'll critique. What's a novel that best teaches us about our place in this world, and why?

Do you equate my distaste with an answer-first-question-later style of opinion structuring with a teenaged angstiness expressed through atheism and religion-bashing? Because they aren't the same.
If when somebody points out the gaping methodological holes in religious practice as a means of processing information and structuring perceptions, your response is to label them an extension of some ultimate evil character, you're an absolute idiot and have nothing to contribute to any discussion about anything.

Nice ad hominem. I don't expect you religious types to be familiar with all the different types of fallacy in discourse, but nonetheless your worldview rests upon all of them and your arguments depend entirely upon them. I hope one day you adopt a big-kid style of thinking which allows you to understand that just because you repeat the same drivel over and over again doesn't make you right. Neither will it when people congregate around you to wishfully think together, plug their ears to any critical analysis and call it confirmation.

>>Here's a good example of how not to speak
>Nice ad hominem
Gotta be trolling

bro are you trollin?

You and the rest of the internet have no idea what that word means and all sound stupid repeating it. And even if I were, I would have no say in the matter. Best focus on the ontent of what was said and not your personal opinions. That's called ad hominem. But like i've been saying, religious thinking is dependent entirely upon such fallacy and without it falls apart entirely. So go ahead and continue slowing down our species. We'll wait I guess.

lol if a bunch of religious idiots can get in the way of a biological process then nature is retarded

Nope, just making a passing effort before I go into work to remind an up-and-coming pastor that he's wasting his life and dealing much more damage than not to the weak and pitiful people around him. I guess that's what happens when you take the easy way out and become an expert in unquantifiable nonsense sold as gospel.

The most important thing is that you actually care about not coming across as pretentious. Don't lose that. Also be mindful of your audience and sensitive to who will be more or less receptive to the points you might make.

Also, as you can see, this site is by and large the worst possible place to seek this kind of guidance.

>Nice ad hominem
Not surprised to see you don't know what an ad hominem is. Insulting you does not make an ad hominem. It is only an ad hominem when the insult is used as part of an argument but that poster was making none. Way to go to make yourself sound like an idiot.

Nature is directionless. Not retarded. Religious is a stagnant lump of redundancy and idiocy in the middle of it. Acting as a centerpiece around which the stagnant and the redundant can congregate rather than letting life force them to change and grow as adults and embrace the terrifying truth that we don't actually know what's going on.

No the most important thing is if he cared about the validity of what he was saying before devoting a life to it and asking others to do the same.

>Crafting a lie and asking the masses to join you in living their lives by it is fine, as long as you're super nice about it.

>the terrifying truth that we don't actually know what's going on
That's a useless truth. If a lie makes a more meaningful impact on the world that lie is more significant than any truth that leads to no actionable outcome.

I give up. I'd forgotten you people were truly retarded.

Well, I hope you at least learned from us retards what ad hominem actually is so you won't make yourself look like a fool next time you try to detect fallacies.

You lose all right to call people out on ad hominems when your first post in the thread diminutizes thousands of years of religious belief and culture to "sky fairies."

>all those presuppositions
>we dont actually know whats going on

aaaallllrighty then