Even if someone were to prove to me that the truth lay outside Christ...

Such a way**

I need to proofread my posts before I send them.

He uses Christ as a device to shape his life into something he sees as worthwhile. It gives him meaning.

Finding a truth outside of Christ would not invalidate the Christ-system that shapes his life into something loving and productive, nor would the objective "correctness" offer a similar device that would render Christianity obsolete. It would not offer him purpose.

Truth is irrelevant to Dostoyevsky, but the applicable message that the truth offers him is what is relevant.

In the Myth if Sisyphus, Camus says something like "whether or not the earth orbits the sun is a matter of profound indifference" (referring to a time when we believed in geocentricism) and I think that captures the spirit of it.

A man's concerns should lie within him and not without

I want to into faith
I've realized beliving in God is something much more complicated that it seems at first, but I cant just pick a religion like someone picks a toothbrush in wallmart you know
Will reading that russian fellow help?
Is pic related in hell?

No one cares. We knew what you meant.

You can always follow who came before you if you are unsure. Newton, Bacon, Pascal, all Christians.

Probably.

I dont understand the first part of your post.

Poor Freddy, thats what you get for revealing your power level i guess.

Nietzsches world view is true faith, Christian pandering is a mockery of faith.

>I can't just pick a religion you know

Who knows. Read the Bible, The Quran, The Judaic Tanakh, The book of mormon as ridiculous as it sounds. Get a feel for religion. Its very enriching but at the same time you will read some things that will make you want to cast religion away but don't give up on it just because a crazy man found gold tablets and only he can read them or warlord with a taste for 10 year olds told a bunch of people that they are the ones who God really loves. Just go into with an open mind and don't take everything literally.

?

>I cant just pick a religion like someone picks a toothbrush in wallmart you know
No you really can't. The idea of 'shopping around' for a religion like suggests is just absurd. If you just want to become educated in various religions then do as he says but if you want genuine faith you won't find it that way.

I really don't understand how you are not getting it.

Just do what this user said.

Think I'll just leave this here

>but if you want genuine faith you won't find it that way.
then how

>theology is enlightenment flap doodle
>commences with flap doodle

He means "theology" in the modernist sense, obviously. Prior to the Enlightenment, theology generally meant the practice of prayer, and the rest was called philosophy. There are only three men who are canonized theologians in Orthodoxy (which is Taleb's religion).

Also, OP, this quote from Notes from Underground might help

>I repeat to you for the hundredth time, there is only one case, one only, when man may purposely, consciously wish for himself even the harmful, the stupid, even what is stupidest of all: namely, so as to have the right to wish for himself even what is stupidest of all and not be bound by an obligation to wish for himself only what is intelligent.

Actually you will. You will read the book of that religion and they say you "feel a calling" to it. Every time a priest or missionary from a religion wishes to recruit someone they ask them to read their book and see if it touches them. The books are meant to be the words of God so if that particular voice of God found in that particular book speaks to you then it is your religion.

>He means "theology" in the modernist sense, obviously

Yeah and how is using a heuristic argument not modernistic?

I recommend two books: The Way of a Pilgrim, and Laurus.

Most of those priests or missionaries would say that the idea that there are different voices of god saying different things to followers of different religions is blasphemous.

All secular philosophy was consider heuristic by the Church Fathers....

Well I would say I'm not religious so fuck you.

he means he thinks he can be greater than Christ

You should only read the Bible obviously. Why waste your time on the Kooran?

Not really, if you care to read the rest of the letter and the context.

>I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly and more perfect than the Savior;...If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not the truth.
This was written from prison, during Dostoevsky's religious renewal.

oh I read that backwards

Well, I won't pretend to have special insight into what he himself meant by it. But Christ Himself said

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

and

"Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."
[Note that he is not saying that those who hear Christ's voice hear the truth, but that those who hear the truth hear Christ's voice].

Christ IS truth, not simply someone who told the truth. Human reason is fallible, faith is not.

pascal's views on religion from any objective observer's point of view should be disregarded as soon as anyone sees his "wager"

yeah i know its wikifaggot.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

He is questioning the value of the will to truth.

I'm the user you replied to, and I'm not actually religious. I just think it would be better if I was.

Personally, analyzing the actual composition of religious literature ruins it for me. It's very obvious to see why the authors were writing what they're writing based on the time period they existed in. If God exists, he's terribly short sighted.

Dostoyevsky is said to have suffered from Gastaut-Geschwind. In other words he suffered the effects of a large temporal lobe brain lesion he wasn't aware he had, which gave him both an increased sense of superstition and hypergraphia. Or, the compulsive need to write. It also would have given him temporal lobe epilepsy he wasn't aware of, which increased his shifts in moods, which is hardly surprising given the content of what he wrote.

In other words, he was experiencing feelings of religious awe and feelings everything was connected more than most other people, leading him to become enrapt with it.

But he is right that this answer to his question on why he was so religious is more depressing and unnecessary than faith.

Because the "the truth" (a phenomenon that changes with the passing of time, that is never completely determined and is contradictory with itself) has no value in itself. What comfort is "the truth" to the dying man? What pain does the truth soothe? When man is at death's mercy, how will the truth help him back?

Western civilization's greatest folly is the dismantling of Christianity. Once you remove that which keeps the individual sane and happy, the group tight-knit and united and the nation as one, you tear a whole in the fabric of the society. The truth has no inherent value. In the wake of westerners losing faith, another ideology will take hold instead and the results will be unpredictable and probably detrimental to what was before.

>Western civilization's greatest folly is the dismantling of Christianity. Once you remove that which keeps the individual sane and happy, the group tight-knit and united and the nation as one, you tear a whole in the fabric of the society. The truth has no inherent value. In the wake of westerners losing faith, another ideology will take hold instead and the results will be unpredictable and probably detrimental to what was before.

This is really funny because it thinks that Christian faith is unique in this regard

pascal's wager is the final solution, if all else fails you can use it and hope for the best

it's not as bad as people make it out to be

Europe has indeed blossomed under Christianity like no other continent under a different religion has in human history. Christianity is a unique religion in many ways. There are bad religions and there are good religions. But in the absense of a religion, the bad religion will always claim victory. Intolerance always trumps over tolerance.

>Europe has indeed blossomed under Christianity like no other continent under a different religion has in human history

Western civilization as you understand it is one of several cultures which has not existed for over a thousand years.

the amount of shaky assumptions in this post is astounding

Doesn't that reinforce his stressing of Christianity as fundamental to Western civilization?

>Doesn't that reinforce his stressing of Christianity as fundamental to Western civilization?
no

Exactly! Praise be to Allah :^)

Read Kierkegaard. Pretty much all of his work has some aspect of Christianity and Faith. Fear and Trembling, Works of Love, Practice in Christianity, Christian Discourses, and his various Upbuilding Discourses. I'd recommend Practice in Christianity.

Anyone who says religion is useless have never stared into the eyes of sick old people who are so bitter and depressed about their coming end that they can barely manage to breath.

If all humans lived like this we wouldn't have the device we are using to talk now.

Not that guy, but why do you think this? Why is it not possible for computer and internet to exist with everyone adapting that user's philosophy?

That isn't true.
Many early scientific discoveries were made by Catholics and many scientists in even our current era are made by people of one religious affiliation or another.
Scientific advancement happens because people are driven by discovery and are genuinely fulfilled by scientific and technological pursuits.
I don't see the conflict between religious affiliation and technology.

The main reason which enabled the boom of knowledge were universities.

Try the Bhagavad Gita. Also read the Bible, mainly the New Testament gospels though (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) to get started.

aSSALAAM ALAIKUM BROTHER

Who said it's useless? You sound retarded user.

So he doesn't really believe in Christianity, but just pretends to because he's bored ?

It's better to live and believe in goodness rather than science because it can unleash horrible thoughts and acts from us.

If everything were to be proven by science and reason then killing raping etc would not be wrong because we're not going to suffer the concequence.

If we do not limit ourselves we become more animal than human. Driven by instinct rather than reason.

It really is a shame he never dealt with Stirners work because that quote seems like something that would be wholly in line with a religious egoist.

>If we do not limit ourselves we become more animal than human. Driven by instinct rather than reason.

With that quote alone I can tell youve never read Dostoevsky

which christianity?

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

That he loves the truth because it's Christ, not Christ because he's the truth.

Faith > Security

You don't pick up faith, It picks you up.

youtube.com/watch?v=YMfP5LcJYMo

truth doesn't exist outside of meaning

He is a truly Nietzschean Christian.

Now can you try writing a post that has meaning ?

If anything Nietzsche is a Dosteyevskian atheist.

i'm not bullshitting you with some hippie pseud philosophy, thats the truth according to dosto

That doesn't mean it makes any sense.

You don't get into faith just by wanting to; you have to either be taught to believe since birth or else you experience a moment of divine revelation. Anything else is dishonest.

>using reason for existential questions
i take it you haven't read any of his work have you

I've read the Brothers Karamazov

did you understand the claims of the grand inquisitor?

I think so, but it's been a while since I've read it so I don't really remember any of it.

...

you definitely need to understand the claims made there, along with those in Crime and Punishment and Demons to really understand Dosto's theology

Well I haven't read those other two, but I'm about to start Notes from Underground as soon as I finish Pale Fire.

it's definitely worth reading, so have fun with it

That's what everyone says. I don't know anything about it, but I've had the book recommended to me way too many times and way too strongly to put it off any longer.