Why Christianity?

I'm starting to come around to the whole God thing. It seems plausible enough that I could take a leap of faith and be satisfied with it. I've also been reading a lot of Nietzsche, and his criticism of Christianity and platoism in general is pretty damning.

My issue here is that I could believe if I wanted to, I'm just not sure if I should.

Could Veeky Forums reconcile the two worldviews, or point to some good literature on the subject? I don't think people are strong enough to create their own values, leading me to the next point. Why Christianity?

I can understand the God part, but do you then just pick the religion closest to your culture? I read 'a confession' by Tolstoy, and that seemed to be the argument he was making. Im not entirely convinced. Any input from Christians?

...

Why Christianity? I can only speak for myself but it's because I believe Jesus teachings are correct. Even ignoring all the supernatural claims about him he is a paragon of virtue and living by the lessons he teaches are enough to enrich your life materially, let alone the spiritual fulfillment you gain.

Simply put, love is the key. Love for God, your fellow man and all creation. The message itself is whats worth following for me. I'm Christian because I want to follow Christ, that's all there is to it really.

>Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

>bare elbows

Harlot.

That actually makes a lot of sense, although I'm sure you'll get criticism for being shallow. Thanks.

>although I'm sure you'll get criticism for being shallow.
BTFO CHRISTIAN FAG BTFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

No problem. As for books I recommend Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis. Lewis was a convert to Christianity late in life and the book is essentially his reasoning for why he made the decision.

The fundamental idea of Christianity is this: God falls into his own creation, and by falling into it expresses his Godhood, beyond the mere judaic or islamic conception of God.
Jews and muslims say that God is somebody else, an impersonal 'other' who writes arbitrary laws based on his own preferences about what ought to be done etc.
In Christianity God became man, which completely violated the philosophy of judaism and pre-emptively violated the philosophy of islam.
Because Christ is God, he is transcendent, existing not as an 'other' being but as the subsistent principle of existence, and he is communicable in that whenever people are gathered in his name he is there too in the midst of them as in the holy spirit for example.

Another fundamental revelation of Christianity, which is a consequence of the above, and which western society is most invested in, is this:
Truth, beauty, and good, are all defined in terms of one another. To be beautiful must also mean to be true and good; to be true must also mean to be beautiful and good; to be good must also mean to be true and beautiful and so forth. To have one without the other two is an empirical error, and such ideas do not regard the inspiration of the holy spirit and as such are not Christian nor are they western.

As for reading, my personal favorites are Aquinas, Jacques maritain, Chesterton, Ratzinger, and kierkegaard.

What's a good starting place for Kierkegaard?

And do you have any answers to Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as life denying nihilism?

christianity is for plebs, real woke scholars are hermeticists.

just go chronologically
early kierkegaard is best kierkegaard but nowhere near as popular

Never read nietszche, if you wanna post a few arguments of his that you found compelling I'll shoot them down.

actually i take that back i didnt realize fear and trembling was published the same year as either/or

either way still go chronologically

Nice. Can you give some thoughts on the infallibility of the Bible? That's almost the only thing I have left to deal with before I can call myself Christian. I.e as it is now I have problems with accepting some parts of it

Bible infallibility is a Protestant thing since they assert that the Bible is the sole source of authority. A better way of putting it is that the Bible contains everything you need to know to attain salvation, and the stuff in there is the stuff God wanted you to know. Apart from that you still need to take into account the fact that it was written by human authors and the purpose of the writings is to drive home a point.

The shit that happens in the bible are mysteries. They are not space magic, the thing that makes miracles miraculous is that they happen. However, they happen in such a way that there is no violation of the physical system, hence the bush burned and was not consumed. Since God is subsistent he expresses himself in the very natural principles that would seemingly not permit his entry. Yet they do permit his entry because he is those very principles.
The bible is 'infallible' because it was divinely revealed, there's a truth in there that we have not been able to exhaust yet.
Once napoleon took the crown from the pope's hands and placed it on his own head as if to coronate himself, and the pope said "I know what you're trying to do, you're trying to destroy Christianity. Well it won't work, because the Church has been trying to do that for nearly two thousand years and we haven't succeeded yet."
So it's not that the bible is infallible like a law is infallible, but that there's something in there that is inexhaustible and even renewable, such that there has never been any idea that was so convincing and so contrary to Christianity that the world would abandon Christianity in favor of it, and to say that this is because people are deluding themselves is an act of sheer naivete.

Thanks fellas.
What about the idea that the Bible is the *only* such source?
And Christianity being the *only* way to know God?
I feel there is so much wisdom in other schools *as well*.

There is, just read maimonides, avicenna, avveroes etc.
Mind you, there's a reason why avveroes is depicted lying at the feet of Aquinas in the Gozzoli painting.
Does buddhism have a point? Sure, but it's incomplete. In buddhism you could for instance stab somebody and still be a fine buddhist because in reality morals are personal and the universal truth is that it was not you that stabbed the guy but that causality aligned in such a way as to drive the knife into him etc etc. Of course in Christianity people have killed for God or for the Church or holy land or whatever, but this differs because it is always an attempt at morality, even if it is a failed one, and since we are human we are also bound to fail, but the truth of Christianity can't fail, we only fall short of it.
Whereas for example buddhism can fail us at a fundamental level with this impersonality/nirvana stuff.
TL;DR Go find out senpai.

No, infallibility of the Scripture is a Catholic dogma.
The thing that Luther and subsequently all protestants and now a lot of Catholics got wrong is that faith is a belief. It's not. Faith is doing the will of God, making his will your own and acting upon his will. A leap of faith is for a Catholic an interesting idea, but in the end, nonsense. You don't need to take a leap because the truths such as the natural law and existance of God lead you to him as well as his own light which illuminates us, much like how Plato described it. But accepting these things is a problem for us because we see things like moderns and we need to go back to how these problems were seen before the 16th century. Empiricism (to stave off the skience thumping atheism, I'm talking about the belief that only the empirical is true), deterministic materialism and utilitarian ethics must be rejected, and we must start seeing things in a very different way. We cannot go back to Jerusalem without seeing things like they were seen by the apostles, which is for us today very hard. To do this you will need a lot of reading, it will take a lot of time and it will take years. It's still going on for me and I try my best. Faith isn't something you take up because it feels nice, in fact, don't go in it for comfort and expect hardship. The Catholic faith isn't a /pol/ like political ideology that gives you values and white children and a strong state, if you enter it because of things like that, you will only delude yourself. user before spoke of how Jesus is a paragon of virtue, which should in itself mean nothing to you, it's not about being nice. To take up faith must mean to take up your cross and reject the humanist view of Christ. He's not a guru and a teacher, he is the second person of the trinity, God himself, being itself, eternal truth.
cont.

As for reading, here's a list, chronological:
Republic, Symposium, Laws, Meno, Phaedo, Apology by Plato,
Politics, Nichomachian Ethics, Categories, De Anima, Metaphysics by Aristotle
Alongside this read History of Philosophy by Fredrick Copleston, vol 1
Jesus of Nazareth by Benedict XVI. and Confessions and City of God by st. Augustine
John Henry Newman wrote the definitive work on why Christianity is necessarily Catholic in Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine.
This should help you understand the Scripture better, especially the importance of the OT, which is a roadblock for many.
Summa Contrra Gentiles is the best point to start with Aquinas, but only after reading Aquinas by Ed Feser and History of Philosophy by Copleston vol 2
Contemporary Catholic philosophy is very strong, especially ethics, best authors are Alasdair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Anscombe. Their most famous works (After Virtue, Whose Justice, Which Rationallity? and Human life, action and ethics) are good entry points, even may serve the best place to start this whole possible journey
Important spiritual works to read, best before sleep, with only a few pages to internalise it:
Immitation of Christ, Diary of st. Faustina, Dark Night of the Soul, Interior of a Castle, Science of the Cross,
Important fiction would include Flannery O'Connor, Chesterton, Gene Wolfe, Dostoevsky, Shusaku Endo, Grahm Greene.

Forgot to mention
Avoid Tolstoy for input on Christianity (you should of course read a lot of him because he is a great writer, but not for this), contrary to the popular belief he wasn't a Christian (as in denied the divinity of Christ) and C.S. Lewis for philosophical and theological advice, as he was a bad theologian and a n awful philospher. Read his fiction if you must, but his apologetics are high school tier.

>I follow Jesus because he's a paragon of virtue

Okay, except that Jesus didn't invent virtue. I can follow the same values without being a Christian and I'd be as moral a person as I'd be if Christianity never existed.

What do I have to gain by becoming a Christian, if I'm already a good person who lives a life of virtue?

What if someone is put in a place where they cannot live virtuously? Does he go to hell?

>No, infallibility of the Scripture is a Catholic dogma.
No, Catholic doctrine says the Bible is inerrant, not infallible, and they say it can be misinterpreted by people

>However, since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, (6) the interpreter of Sacred Scripture, in order to see clearly what God wanted to communicate to us, should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended, and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

LMFAO some random clown is going to "shoot down" Nietzsche

Could you elaborate on what you mean about belief vs faith?

I've rejected materialism, and utilitarian ethics, but I don't see a way around having to take a leap of faith. God is impossible to prove, and by definition incomprehensible to human reasoning. Or are you simply saying that it's not enough to believe, you must also act? I'm not quite grasping your point. Are you saying if I read all those books I'll understand?

Do you live a moral life? How often do you reaffirm your commitment to the values you hold? Do you actively try to live by those values every day? The problem is you can't really be a good person just by adhering to some nebulous doctrine of being 'good'. Lots of people think they're good but really aren't all that good, they're good in the sense that they're self absorbed and don't 'bother' others, but rarely will they actively go out of their way to do good deeds for the sake of it.

I think the biggest boon of Christianity is having a codified set of values you can reaffirm to live by every day of your life. It's really hard to do good when a lot of people haven't put any thought into what being 'good' means to them other than just 'not be an asshole', nor do they often actively put effort into meeting that goal of goodness every day.

So really, I'd question your assertion that you're a good person who lives a life of virtue. I'd say I'd be fairly safe in saying you're a person who judges himself good because he is polite to other people and does the occasional good deed, which really is the bare minimum of being a good person. It takes constant, sustained effort to really be a good virtuous person who lives up to Jesus Christs standards, if you're not actively putting in that effort you're not meeting the bar.

So if you see homeless people do you give them money or what

or do you just justify walking away by thinking they're poor because they're lazy and helping them would worsen their addictions

Yeah no offense but I wouldn't do him justice if I tried to explain, and you wouldn't be able to argue against him well if you haven't read him. Nietzsche is very dense and requires a lot of big jumps in understanding that can't really be summarized.

> watch the Passion Of The Christ
> watch it from the perspective that Jesus in this movie is God. Not his messenger, nor his prophet, but God himself is getting crucified.
> contemplate on his god becoming man, being put to death and rising from the grave. Realize what Salvation in this world is all about.
> become a christian

Nietszche is only a little bit smarter than the average Veeky Forumsizen, it's natural that average Veeky Forumsizens would be incredulous at the idea of refuting his shit.
Most medieval scholars preemptively btfo nietzsche even.

>tfw too intelligent for religion

> watch the Empire Strikes Back
> watch it from the perspective that Vader in this movie is The Force. Not its messenger, nor its prophet, but The Force itself is getting electrocuted by the Emperor.
> contemplate on The Force becoming man, being put to death and rising from the grave. Realize what Salvation in this world is all about.
> become a Jedi

That's what I thought too, and now I think I'm too intelligent to be intelligent. Why make a God out of rationality? It's just a tool to serve your irrational biological drives. Better to make a God out of God. It's a more aestheticly pleasing way to live. In fact, because it's psychologicaly healthy, God is the rational thing to believe in, if you're going to be a slave to your biological imperative anyways.

The issue I'm having is if it's not better to suffer without God? And if you are going to have faith, why Jesus?

I'd rather not argue about the God thing specifically it because it would derail the discussion. But if you have input into my two questions, by all means.

How does something true have to be beautiful and good?

9/11 is true that doesn't mean it's beautiful and good (inb4 some shitty 9/11 joke response).

Star Wars is based on religion. Darth Vader is supposed to be Jesus. You're proving his point.

9/11 isn't true you wack ass weenie shit, the statement "9/11 happened" is true, and it derives goodness through its applicability and usefulness, and derives beauty through its logical coherence with the physical realm.

To have faith is to think and act in all times thinking of the final things, so God.
Diary of st Faustina heavily deals with this, but it's best seen through Abraham. He is the father of faith, but his faith is not just a belief and emotion, it's traveling for years because God asked him to and even was prepared to sacrifice his son. He had faith because he followed the will of God. He was working out his salvation in fear and trembling.
Are you going to reach this conclusion by reading these books? I hope so.
But like I've said, God isn't a hypothetical, it's a provable and irrefutable truth. Reason will always reach him and can prove his attributes. Books on Aquinas and his own work will deal with this and it's even a dogma, proclaimed at the council of Trent.

I guess we have different definitions of those then. By that definition almost anything would be beautiful and good when in the right context and thus the adjectives cease to have any meaning.

Anytime you say some sort of catastrophic event is beautiful and good is just philosophical jargon.

Many people will give you christian recommendations and that's all well and good. I'd advise you to consider giving both sides a chance.

I'd suggest reading works like the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and God is not great by Christopher Hitchens.

Both are good writers but I would strongly recommend reading Christopher Hitchen's work because of its quality.

>atheists can't even recommend the best atheist writers
Alternatively
>Christians pretending to be atheists for bait

That said Schopenhauer is pretty great and Hume is very interesting too. A. J. Ayer somehow isn't a mascot of the plebiean atheist masses, but I guess that makes sense.

Have you actually read this book? The arguments in it are pitiful. Just read Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or someone who knows what they're talking about if you want Christian literature.

The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton helped in his conversion.

Hitchens is alright.

I've read all that. I've been an atheist for a long time. I'm well aware of all the arguments. I don't buy it anymore.

Why?

Nigga you are making 0 sense.
The thing that's true is not the event itself but the statement regarding the event.
Using the same logic, the event itself is -not- beautiful or good because it is not ordered to life, complexity, order, being etc. And by virtue of these it lacks the category of truth completely, thus the co-relationship between the three is broken and the event is a disastrous one.

Christianity does create "good behavior" in a lot of cases, due to all of the reasons you listed, but this doesn't prove its claims to being the only true religion, and the only true set of moral standards. I find Christianity useless because of all the absolute claims it makes about itself which it has no way of proving.

This desu.

If you really followed Jesus you would give all your money to the needy, leaving yourself just enough to get by. But none of us do that because we don't really believe, or maybe because it is not a natural thing for humans to be able to do

This is how I'm feeling as well senpai. Man cannot live a fulfilled life without something to worship, some higher purpose. I'm just not sure what higher purpose to imagine. Christianity just doesn't feel right to me.

see
for the gist of it. I'm the OP btw. Most of the Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris stuff presents a religious strawman. They don't argue against more sophisticated conceptions of religious thinking. Not only that, but it's always done from a materialist worldview, which is philosophically untenable if you want any kind of consistent morality.

There's no way to solve the is/ought gap without additional axioms, which are philosophically the same thing as God. You need something to derive morality from, or you get postmodernist gay space communism.

A lot of my rejection of atheism is to be contrarian. Materialist thinking is in these days. I like being edgy, and right now western society is so devoid of purpose and values that becoming a christian conservative is the contrarian thing to do. I hate communists so much I'm going to abandon rationality to spite them.

I've also been vaguely suicidal for a while now, and I don't want to kill myself, I also don't see a point to life without God. Even if there is no God, believing in one will fix that. Worst case scenario I'm wrong, and I lived a happy moral life full of meaning.

In fact if we were all religious and it turned out there was no God, that would be amazing! That would mean that we gave our lives meaning all by ourselves. That's fucking beautiful if you think about it. Western civilization is built on Christianity, if it all turns out to be a lie, that's one very impressive lie.

Don't watch the OT through a prequel lens

George Lucas wrote Star Wars after reading a bunch of Joseph Campbell. It's an explicitly religious story.

>A lot of my rejection of atheism is to be contrarian. Materialist thinking is in these days. I like being edgy, and right now western society is so devoid of purpose and values that becoming a christian conservative is the contrarian thing to do. I hate communists so much I'm going to abandon rationality to spite them.
Dude, please.
Grow up.

>you're from a country where a Christian accurately portrayed and reavaluated Nietzsche's philosophy
>no one but you can read it

Too bad, suckers

>not understanding sarcasm
>being this autistic
>being a materialist

still haven't got an answer my good and righteous friends

I'll start by saying that I don't believe in hell. Jews don't believe in hell and Christianity is a branch of Judaism, so it just doesn't follow.

Anyways, I'm currently reading Franny and Zooey and Salinger stated something quite interesting; that he(Zooey is a guy) is worried that his mom might hire the wrong sort of psychiatrist for Franny. A psychiatrist that believes in his own intelligence and words of a text without believing in the grace of God. Without that humbled gratitude(not his words, but more or less) of a person who's grounded in something(or at least the idea of something) larger than them that allows them to do what they do, not that they're entitled because they have such and such IQ and studied such and such books.
It's an internal component, being kind is an expression of it, but if you're alone in a room how do you see yourself? What words do you say more than any others? What thoughts do you think more than any others? What are the components of your agency and the limitations of those components? Are you happy or are you correct?

Anyhow, I'm not really arguing with you, just tossing some thoughts in the discussion.
Also I recommend Z&F to everyone

I usually give him some food, because they need that a whole lot more

Also, you usually tell them where the salvation army is or the proper organisations are, they're usually more capable at dealing with homeless people than a single individual is

Proof would defeat the purpose of faith. In this sense, I can see why God would not "insert" a proof that would challenge the concepts of faith and the free will to choose out of conviction that emits from your conscience instead of being forced to acknowledge it through irrefutable material proof. Though, I don't remember how exactly it goes, so I'll paraphrase, but it reminds me of those verses where God scoffs at people who consider themselves learned or philosophers or are arrogant in their knowledge. In the sense that, the childlike will understand but the learned will not. In that way, I imagine God manages to always illuminate enough "proof" for those who will accept him. To others, this sounds just like ramblings of mentally deluded people. But the feeling I have is that God is even in the midst of that dichotomy between those who have enough "proof", though it may not be irrefutable material proof at all, to believe in their naivity and those who will refuse to believe for whatever reason. It is hard to find an analogy for it, but it would be like sitting in a classroom with a piece of paper and coloring it a certain color. Once you pick up the piece of paper and ask the classrom whether they see that color or not, some say that yes they see the color and others that no they do not. But before you even showed the piece of paper to the classroom, you alredy knew which individuals would say yes and which no. Except the moment after the paper is lifted and before the individual say yes or no is continously suspended for the duration of your life. I believe the responsibility of the individual for the time he has at disposal through his life is to make a final decision on yes or no, so while you are existing in material time and space you are experiencing the continous moment of making your decision. While God, who exists outside of time and space already knows the end-result for all.

>Without that humbled gratitude(not his words, but more or less) of a person who's grounded in something(or at least the idea of something) larger than them that allows them to do what they do, not that they're entitled because they have such and such IQ and studied such and such books.

The psychiatrist is grounded in his fear of failure and ruining someone's life/his own career. The thing that's larger than them is the law.

Humbled gratitude for what? How does that help him in his work? You don't need God, just life experience to keep you grounded and knowing that your clever books might not be correct 100% of the time.

>It takes constant, sustained effort to really be a good virtuous person who lives up to Jesus Christs standards, if you're not actively putting in that effort you're not meeting the bar.

Mind giving me an example?

>Mind giving me an example?
Literally The Bible.

>The psychiatrist is grounded in his fear of failure and ruining someone's life/his own career. The thing that's larger than them is the law.
Your argument is sheltered by the sterile vacuum of the hypothetical environment. Having worked in several fields and experience with people of numerous walks of life, these manufactured authorities carry little measurable weight in practice.
>Humbled gratitude for what? How does that help him in his work?
it's not an easy thing to put into words, it's the inner workings of a methodology, very similar to linguistics and the effect of language on culture.
>You don't need God, just life experience to keep you grounded and knowing that your clever books might not be correct 100% of the time.
this claim is hinged on your definition of God. I'm gonna go now, I promised myself I wasn't going to bicker with people on Veeky Forums anymore and I've been doing a pretty good job this year so far

I find it absolutely confusing that so many of you choose to belief some random semitic religion that took hold of society only because of pure circumstance. It is pure chance that you seem to think of of Christianity in the right way, the rigour you apply in your arguments may well be extended to Buddhism and Islam for that matter.
Also considering the influence that Greek philosophy had upon the Early Fathers, you might as well begin with the Greeks.
If you find it difficult to exist as a normal human being beside the others, sure worship Jesus and follow the basic rules. You can't go too wrong if you abide by the simple principles laid out in the NT and not think too much about it.
But the truth lies elsewhere.

That's why I started this thread, to figure out why people choose one and not others. I'm not entirely sure I got a good answer, but I can speak to some of your claims.

Buddhism makes no supernatural claims, and the historical evidence for Islam doesn't lend itself to supernatural belief the way christianity does. IE, why would so many people follow this random guy if there wasn't a resurrection etc.

One could also argue since religion is primarily a cultural institution, one could judge them off the effects of their cultures. Christianity and the culture that emerged from it produced the enlightenment, science, prosperity, etc. Islam gave us no such thing.

The Judeo-Christian West is the greatest force for prosperity ever to exist, heavily flawed as it is. Thus Christianity seems the pragmatic choice, given the alternatives.

There's also an aesthetic notion to it. You can't pick between frameworks without a meta framework, but since these things are so fundamental there's no good logical arguments for them. How does one pick between absurdism and hedonism? Taoism or Buddhism? Each answer to existential thought is a self contained framework, to pick between them you need something else to evaluate them. Beauty is the only thing that really fits the bill.

If there is a truth elsewhere, we can't comprehend it. We evolved to survive, not to comprehend truth. Religion is a means for coping with that, a very useful one I might add. You have to take things on faith no matter what to have a coherent worldview. One God over another doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. I started this thread to figure out, why this one in particular. Again, I don't feel like I have a great answer, I'm mostly playing devils advocate.

I give to persons who I know are in need and won't use the money to harm themselves even more (a guy was ruined by a stupid Bush anti terrorism law, he was somehow under it because he gave money to buy weapons for a war here to the side the americans actually supported, lost everything to pay lawyers and abandoned by his wife and children, sick and without us and a few other people would die from starvation). I also give to church funded public kitchens and shelters where anyone can eat and as long as you don't drink have a clean bedroom.

(1/2)
Please clarify what you mean by supernatural, because I'm not sure you're using it in the conventional sense.


>Buddhism makes no supernatural claims
Buddhism makes no claims to the supernatural because it does not concern itself with it. The arguments that sustain it do not do so from a western form of analysis however and it is thus deemed less worthy, maybe unfairly so.

> historical evidence for Islam doesn't lend itself to supernatural belief the way christianity does. IE, why would so many people follow this random guy if there wasn't a resurrection etc.
I feel like that's incredibly fallacious. First of all Islam is incredibly concerned with the supernatural. There is plenty of discussion about Djinns, about healing, visions and miracles.
Secondly, just because people believe in something doesn't make it true. Compelling maybe, but thousands of falsehoods are compelling. One can make a similar argument for Scientology and eastern forms of mysticism, OP. How many hundreds of thousands all over the world believe in their versions of God-men because they perform 'miracles'.

Furthermore, while the Bible is fairly authoritative when it comes to historical accuracy I'd be very cautious before believing any supernatural claim I read in it. AS YOU SHOULD FOR ANY HISTORICAL BOOK.

>One could also argue since religion is primarily a cultural institution, one could judge them off the effects of their cultures. Christianity and the culture that emerged from it produced the enlightenment, science, prosperity, etc. Islam gave us no such thing.
Islam was a shining source of enilghtenment until the ravages of the Mongols and the repeated warfare finally caught up with them. There is a significant recency bias here. If you were born in 1100 A.D., this would have been a compelling argument for Islam.

>The Judeo-Christian West is the greatest force for prosperity ever to exist, heavily flawed as it is. Thus Christianity seems the pragmatic choice, given the alternatives.
My point again is that the Judeo-Christian worldview did not exist in a vaccuum. I'd argue again, that it's Greco-Roman philosophies that influenced the west. Christianity was merely the clothes draped upon these philosophies.

>There's also an aesthetic notion to it. You can't pick between frameworks without a meta framework, but since these things are so fundamental there's no good logical arguments for them. How does one pick between absurdism and hedonism? Taoism or Buddhism? Each answer to existential thought is a self contained framework, to pick between them you need something else to evaluate them. Beauty is the only thing that really fits the bill.
So your answer then cannot be to abandon the debate, but to continue to delve these depths. These arguments do not end within a religion/Christianity. Of course, some may prefer to not think too much about these matters, but there is yet plenty of discussion within the framework of Christianity.

(2/2)
>Religion is a means for coping
Sure and I do not begrudge someone for believing in a religion for that matter. However I do start to get concerned when it becomes a matter of public policy or similar i.e. when it can influence large swathes of people.

For one thing religion is an easy tool to sway the masses. All you have to do is establish credibility as a reasonably pious man and most will endear themselves to you. Masking ideologies and people in religion is an easy way of getting people to fuck themselves over.

Secondly, religion cannot be taken into account when doing MOST actual work. Scientists cannot shrug an event away as 'God's work' nor can doctor's refuse to act citing the 'healing power of prayer' (I'm being hyperbolic to prove a point). Religion is untruth and a worldview founded in untruth will crumble in the long run. 2000 years is a mere speck in human history.

Humans have had supernatural beliefs for as long as we know. It's not just 2000 years, it's probably something more like 100,000. Atheism is not our default frame of mind. The human brain naturally tries to recognize patterns and fit things into logical frameworks. Supernatural beliefs are a natural consequence of existing, think of how people explained dreams for most of human history.

Religion answers moral questions. Science can't answer that. It's the most sophisticated moral guideline we have to date. Materialist conceptions of reality all fall short. There's no objective morality without God, and thus you get to moral relativism. Without morality you have nothing telling you how to act. Without God, there's no objective meaning in life. There's subjective meaning, but then you're just a slave to your biology.

>Islam was a shining source of enlightenment until the ravages of the Mongols and the repeated warfare finally caught up with them. There is a significant recency bias here. If you were born in 1100 A.D., this would have been a compelling argument for Islam.

Absolutely nothing compared to what was done in the West.

> I'd argue again, that it's Greco-Roman philosophies that influenced the west. Christianity was merely the clothes draped upon these philosophies.

Yeah, Christian philosophy is grounded in Platonism, so what? That doesn't make it wrong.

>For one thing religion is an easy tool to sway the masses. All you have to do is establish credibility as a reasonably pious man and most will endear themselves to you. Masking ideologies and people in religion is an easy way of getting people to fuck themselves over.

Would you not agree that the masses need to be swayed? Order is not inherently a bad thing. Society keeps us safe, it gives us liberty we wouldn't otherwise have. Tyranny is always a threat, but not all control is tyrannical.

>Humans have had supernatural beliefs for as long as we know. It's not just 2000 years, it's probably something more like 100,000. Atheism is not our default frame of mind. The human brain naturally tries to recognize patterns and fit things into logical frameworks. Supernatural beliefs are a natural consequence of existing, think of how people explained dreams for most of human history.
True, and as humanity's sphere of knowledge expanded these superstitions were steadily abandoned. That's my point OP, the more we know, the less religious we become. Furthermore, atheism isn't as recent either as I'm sure you well now.
Religion being our default state sounds more like a weakness in humanity to me: an inability to accept the truth when confronted with it (not in the individual, the species).

>Religion answers moral questions.
Religion does not seek to explain those morals to us however. They are merely handed down to us. One can see how they came about, it is more beneficial for a society to not be murderous/adulterous and those that weren't happened to survive. I'd argue that an evolutionary approach to societal ethics is how we came to possess the rules in religions we have today.

>Absolutely nothing compared to what was done in the West
There are historical and socio-economic reasons + recency bias for this as I said OP. It is unreasonable to use this argument unless you can demonstrate a linear chain of events from the propagation of a Judeo-Christian worldview to its role in the progress of Western Civilisation. One can point to current trends in the world and make a similar case for atheism - with a few exceptions those countries with a decreasing rate of religion in their population tend to be higher in the HDI lists. That does necessarily make atheism more valid. Correlation does not imply causation right?

>Christian philosophy is grounded in Platonism, so what? That doesn't make it wrong.

My point isn't that Platonism is wrong, it's that whatever is right about Christianity is exclusive of the events of the Bible. You do not need to be a Christian to be grounded in a school of thought that would lead you to act and make decisions in a similar manner. Christianity then loses its relevance as a guiding force for the apparently prosperous western nations.

>masses need to be swayed? Order is not inherently a bad thing. Society keeps us safe, it gives us liberty we wouldn't otherwise have. Tyranny is always a threat, but not all control is tyrannical

Order need not be the outcome of solely a religion. Society may perform those actions without a religion. I'd argue however that religion can be a powerful unifying force in the face of external threats, but I don't see your point otherwise.

>Okay, except that Jesus didn't invent virtue.
Yes but he is one of the few fgures from that era who acted just as virtuous as they spoke.

Everyone else was like "Charity, civility and justice are the highest virtues except in regards to females, my giant slave army in the silver mines, and "barbarians"".

If Jesus was so virtous, why didn't he take any female disciples? Nor people who had lower social status than him (slaves, beggars, handicapped people etc.)

he is one of the few fgures from that era who acted just as virtuous as they spoke.

How do we know that?

If you don't feel it, don't believe it. Religion isn't supposed to be weighed on virtue of its potential values to your life. Either you feel it or you don't. One may be healthier than the other, but don't pretend to have control over the choice.

Because he wasn't a 21st century liberal.

I can read it as well but its probably garbage.

That's not the point. He preached that all people were equal in God's eyes, right? Yet his actions and the people who he chose to interact with didn't reflect this. Instead of living according to God's will, he chose to conform with the social norms of the time.

The bible didn't really dive into his rational for why he chose the disciples he did. To say it was about prejudice is being presumptuous.

>He preached that all people were equal in God's eyes, right?
No, he didn't. He preached the exact opposite of that. That's why there is the whole eternal hellfire thing as well as a hierarchy in Haven itself.
>Yet his actions and the people who he chose to interact with didn't reflect this.
He interacted with prostitutes, tax collectors, roman soldiers, lepers and foreigners the Hebrews hated. That's about as interactive as you could possibly get in Israel of that time. You couldn't strech it more even if you wanted.
>he chose to conform with the social norms
Genuine question, are you fucking stupid or am I being baited? They literally crucified him because he didn't conform to them at all. The stupid ignorant shit people here will say is unbelievable.

Aren't you judged on whether or not you believe, meaning it's a choice?

If you walk with a crutch you'll start to limp.
God is a bit for the strong and a yoke for the weak.

If you must get into religion best do it the non-rube way and study to become a priest at a seminary.

They call the laymen the "flock" for a reason - they are a resource.

>No, he didn't.
Paul didn't seem to think so and he studied directly under Jesus. Are you telling me you understand Jesus's teachings better than Paul did?

>There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
>—Galatians 3:28

>he studied directly under Jesus

Paul never met the man.

I messed around for a while not really stopping on anything but bouncing between atheism and agnosticism and Catholicism, and I've settled for Celtic polytheism. It's the closest to what my ancestors were worshipping before the Romans came and Christianized them. Fuck neopaganism. The old traditions are where it's at, though the ritual sacrifice is out for obvious reasons.

This suits me fine, otherwise, and is mostly centred around votive offerings to an old tree and the local stream. I try to leave things that will deteriorate on their own and not litter the place, so its mostly flowers and handmade wooden beads.

Why Christianity indeed? I personally got little from that particular religion. I feel much closer to the land with my current one.

I'm very mixed race. German Irish Spanish Native American, all equal parts as far as I can tell. There's no coherent ancestral belief. Maybe a way to reconcile native mysticism with various forms of Christianity? Then again the natives all converted too. Christ seems like the only answer going by ancestry.

>and he studied directly under Jesus
I am being baited.

The early church just turned local hoodoo into saints and miracles anyway. Be catholic, Read more CS Lewis.

christian bitches are hot as shit

>Catholic
>C.S. Lewis
What?
If anything, it should be John Henry Newman

Tell me more, please.

>not converting to Catholicism

Stay pleb, pagan.

Nietzsche recognised that ascetic philosophies like Christianity manifest from the slaves of society who upon finding themselves enslaved label the virtues that the masters represent such as egoism, will, aggressiveness and beauty as evil and those virtues that the slaves hold such as compassion, meekness and equality as good to prevent themselves from hating themselves and assuage the resentment they feel towards the masters. What Christianity represented was an inversion of master morality (the dichotomy between good and bad) into slave morality (the dichotomy between good and evil). This Nietzsche claims has only weakened man because despite what slave morality claims man is essentially egotistical and be denying that one denys oneself and life itself. It's more of a genealogical and psychological argument which upon realising causes slave morality to fall apart.

John Henry Newman wrote the best work on christian doctrine, Essay on development of Christian Doctrine.
Lewis is a mediocre theologian and a horrible philosopher.

Thanks, Will look. Need me some religion.

I gave a larger list here

You clearly have never read the Bible

Paul is referring to the people of the Christian church. Once you joined, your outward appearance was irrelevant.

I think if you look at it like that it starts to bring you into a bunch of circular reasoning. I think christianity assumes that everyone "feels" god, but some choose to accept him and some choose to deny him. But if you look at it like a non-christian, like a materialist, then you are just a person, and if you don't feel something then you shouldn't force yourself to feel it.

Christianity states that the existence of God is so obvious (by observing His creation) that no one is without blame for not believing

Well I'm not a materialist, and I 'feel God.' I just don't see why it should be Jesus, besides cultural reasons.

All other religions suggest that you alone can earn your way to heaven/paradise through your "good" works. Christianity is the only religion, as far as I know, that claims that man is unable to earn heaven by himself.

I know this isn't necessarily a reason to follow Christianity over X religion, but it's something that separates it from all others.