Stop being an atheist

Fuck off commie I bet you read marx

>Christian
>Communist
>At the same time
wew

>reading the works of one of the most influential thinker ever is bad
You're either 14 or clinically retarded. Either way fuck off.

>I bet you read marx
Your autism is showing.

LET'S BRING IT BACK!!
YOU AND I, TOGETHER!!!

jesus was a communist though

I'd have no issue with being religious if I was convinced by any religious arguments, or if they provided genuine proof for their beliefs.

HOW

Aquinas my dude.

Again, I've read some Aquinas, but I've simply never been convinced.

TOGETHER.

WE CAN
BRING IT BACK!!!

Never was one, user. Feels good.

I'm an atheist but I really admire religion and am interested in the ideas and practices behind it.
The only thing I'm lacking is actual faith. How should I go about obtaining that?
I'm currently a ways into C&P, and I intend to read Karamazov bros. eventually as well. Will this help me in establishing real faith?

Dostoevsky Christianity is way to literal for my tastes also all his character are caricatures.
Solzhenitsyn for example has a much more human of people and multifaceted characters while still having a strong Christian moral.

You don't have to "be religious" to not be an atheist. Just believe in some higher power, by any means.
I think the idea strictly subscribing to one religious doctrine is the undoing of productive theism.
If I wanted to use a belief in god to construct a sense of morality and purpose, I's shy away from joining institutional religion myself.
With that being said, its fine also to follow a religion with out taking their scripture as fact. Its not important whether or not God flooded the earth and Noah built an ark, nor is it important if you believe it happened, you can still be a better christian than 99% of the others just by understanding the allegorical message and doing right by God based on the message.

tl;dr Unorganized religion is the answer

That's completely reasonable, but I've never had any cause to believe that there is anything beyond the material.

This is some hot garbage. I'm not religious myself, but your take on it is laughable. If you're not willing to following the sacred text of a religion (however you interpret it), then you're not in a place to call yourself an adherent. 'I believe in Christian God, but don't follow his command' is worthless new age crap that dissolves into nothing the moment you give it a second thought.

What does this genuine proof look like to you? What kind of proof would you find convincing?

Believing in God or not is meaningless, what matters is the religious rituals.

Pensées by Blaise Pascal then.

It's a good philosophical book too.

Read this book too.
Also B.Karamazov might help you, yes.

BTFO'd by Spinoza. Theism is comforting, but silly. Don't fall into this trap, OP.

>Implying Theism and Deism aren't both true on a different level.

Theism =/= Anthropomorphism

(Not OP).
Why would it be a trap? Let him lie to himself like everybody does. He'll be happier. Un-edge you'reselfie.

Alright. I did.

Now what?

For me (28, and I've only been a Christian for 2 years) it was a combination of exposure to modern Christian philosophy and I also began the practice of praying daily.

Why? I don't mean to be rude (and I obviously spent nearly 26 years of my life not accepting anything beyond the material), but what would make you believe that there was nothing beyond the material given proper thought? The beginning of the end of my atheism was a realization of the absurdity of believing only in the material (even from a causal perspective, reducing everything down to efficient and material). It's become even more ridiculous in recent years when atheism seems to maintain on scientific grounds that you believe everything immaterial springs forth from this material. It all seems pretty unlikely to me. And deeply anti-philosophical in nature. That was a major turning point for me also, realizing the philosophical grounds on which Christianity stood was far greater than the ground on which atheism or even any other religion stood.

Heh.

>true on a different level

Something empirical, something repeatable, provable, testable and so on.

Alternatively if I had some sort of religious experience which was in every sense completely real to me, and I knew I was sober at the time then I suppose that would be convincing as well. I've just never had one.

>what would make you believe that there was nothing beyond the material given proper thought?
What would make me believe that there is though? Every possible 'truth' - either there is an immaterial or there isn't - is absurd in its own way. I've never encountered, read, heard, saw, experienced or felt anything that would push me towards the belief that there is an immaterial, so currently I don't believe it exists. I suppose technically I'm agnostic, because I'm open to the idea that there /might/ be a supernatural, or immaterial, or a god, or whatever you want to call it, but as of yet nothing has convinced me of any of those.

>atheism seems to maintain on """scientific grounds"""
>seems pretty unlikely to me
You're the kind that deserves to be mocked by fedoras.

In the same manner a window glass can be hot of cold depending if you're inside a house lit by a warm fire or outside on a stormy night.

God can be impersonnal in His absolute essence and still be the "source of love, justice, etc. " in relation to humans.

You do not need to believe in God in order to be a good and moral person.

In fact i find the notion that we need the promise of divine retribution in order to not behave like shit to be fundamentally flawed.
Being good and moral without it actually makes you a better person than the good Christian.

There is no good case for believing in God but there is a good case for treating others according to Christian values.

>relativistic simile
>absolute essence
This doesn't really work. You shouldn't try to explain Christian mysteries logically, you're only making a case for theistic fallacies.

What's your point here? Atheism never used to be this pathetic. In fact, at an academic level it's rarely as illogical as it is among fedoras and on the internet and among the New Atheists. There's nothing scientific about these theories. They are philosophical conclusions. Science couldn't know these things to begin with so saying that because science can't account for them, they must not be so is just an opinion. But they'll say the conclusion is as much science as actual empirical science.

You don't think consciousness arising from matter is kind of an absurd idea? Not even talking about God here. Science can't prove a lot of things, like existence of other minds for example. There are things science could never prove or speak to regardless of how advanced it becomes. Science can only speak to the natural and the material, so it will only ever give you those answers. You don't think there's value in other methods? Like reason?

>implying there is good and evil without God

In fact i find the notion that we need the promise of divine retribution in order to not behave like shit to be fundamentally flawed.

>implying some people aren't morals just to manifest the will of God on earth as in the saying "the kingdom of God is inside of you"

You realise the moral argument isn't that you need God in order to be good, right? I mean, Christians would say you could never truly be good because not believing in God is in itself immoral, but no theologian or philosopher of note has ever said you need a belief in God in order to be good. Even when they say that no God would mean that anything goes.

The moral argument is that the very existence of objective moral truths depends on the existence of a deity. So non-Christians are capable of recognising what is moral in nature precisely because God exists. That's the claim. Christians would simply say that you are capable of knowing what is good and moral because those things are objective truths.

I've never heard anyone outside of hack televangelists say that you need the belief in order to do any good or moral thing.

stop jacking eachother off over nonsense and go learn how to paint or build something

>You do not need to believe in God in order to be a good and moral person.
Yes you do.

>In fact i find the notion that we need the promise of divine retribution in order to not behave like shit to be fundamentally flawed.
Nobody said anything about 'diving retribution'. Christian morality has nothing to do with retribution.

>science doesn't have empirical evidence to disprove my arbitrary postulates
Yep, you're definitely the one to be mocked. I have no problem with people turning to religion to fulfill their transcendent needs, but you with your insistence on some quasi-logical rationale behind it is the epitome of a hypocritical pseud.

I may be a Christian, but I think it's foolish to believe that you need to believe in God to be a good and moral person. That's like saying that eveyone who believes in God are good and moral people. There's Christian pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and so on, just like there's atheist pedos/rapists/murderers. Similarly there's good and moral Christians just like there's good and moral atheists. I believe that agnostics will generally be more pleasant and less arrogant than atheists, but that's not saying that ALL atheists would be unbearable, unpleasant, and completely arrogant.

>I may be a Christian, but I think it's foolish to believe that you need to believe in God to be a good and moral person.
I meant 'you' as a collective noun, not as a third-person singular -- in the sense that humanity's conception of good and morality comes from religious experience, not in the sense that a particular person needs to experience religion to be good.

What is pseud about that? I'm not postulating things that I know science can't prove for the sake of it. I'm making a point about science. Science doesn't speak about such things. It doesn't speak about a lot of things. So why would you rely on it to formulate such a view? Would you use science in literary criticism or to tell you if a painting is beautiful? There's nothing quasi-logical about it. If anything appealing to science when talking about the existence of a transcendent God is quasi-science.

>I may be a Christian, but I think it's foolish to believe that you need to believe in God to be a good and moral person.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me" is literally the first commandment. By not believing in God, you've already broken the first commandment and thus sinned. Which is fine, everyone sins, but your being unrepentant about it is immoral.

>That's like saying that eveyone who believes in God are good and moral people.

No it isn't. That doesn't follow.

>Similarly there's good and moral Christians just like there's good and moral atheists.

The problem with this is that no Christian is good and moral of their own doing. Even synergistic understandings of salvation wouldn't affirm that. By God's grace we are saved. So any good deeds you do without believe are to no avail and ultimately worthless. Either you do them out of duty in which case atheists fail because there are certain duties they can't fulfill (like loving God) or you do them because of your virtue and Christianity would say you can't be virtuous without being conformed to the image of Christ.

Obviously I'm biased here, but there is a point. No Christian can truly say an atheist's good works are really good or of value. We necessarily have to operate on different understandings of what is good and that's where this breaks down. You are essentially saying that atheists can be capable of good according to what you as a Christian know to be good. But without the existence of God in the first place there is nothing that can be called good objectively and you also can't be sure that what you think is good or evil is shared by the people you are talking to here on this forum.

You Christians come across as the most miserable people sometimes. You have faith in God but not in your fellow man.

>Having faith in man

lmao look at the world bro.

Dostoyevsky's retreat into a higher power really is pathetic when you consider the situation of his life. He was just another addict confiding in god from a total lack of self control and dignity.

...

>lmao look at the world bro.
>steady and unyielding improvement in the qualify of life for all and the general enlightenment of the averge person over time
the world tends towards the good, to betterment

I look at the world and that's what I see

What does Ben Stiller have to do with God or Dostoyevsky?

And why have faith in a god that brings storms, pestilence, and earthquakes?

We may live on a beautiful confortable world on the outside but we have never been more ugly inside.

Please explain

>If god isn't a sky daddy who creates an absolute perfect material world I won't believe in Him.

God created natural laws and let them do their work. Don't see the *personnal* action of God everywhere.

Alright, I think I understand. I do believe a Christian society would generally be more 'good and moral' than an atheist society.

Why would someone worry about the commandments if they're not religious? Also, I'm Christian but I don't believe there is only one God. I can remember when I was a kid at church and heard the priest say something to the congregation about there being only one God. Everyone else said amen, but I didn't because I didn't think that was the right thing to believe; it's suggesting that all other religions are wrong, and I don't have the right to say that since I haven't experienced other religions so I haven't experienced enough to believe or disbelieve in them.

I guess you could call me an agnostic form of Christian. I believe in Christianity, and in terms of non-Christian religions I'm open-minded.

It also sounds like you have the belief that people are natural bad/immoral unless laws and/or religion make them good/moral. I remember reading about two prominent Englishmen, one believed that people are naturally good unless circumstances/teachings make them bad, and the other believed that people are naturally bad unless law/religion makes them good, or something like that. Been a few years since I've been to College.

But if he's omniscient, he must have known what the outcomes of his natural laws would be when he made them, right? I don't see the personnal (sic) action of God everywhere or anywhere. I just think it's silly to say, "People can't be trusted bro, look at the world," while believing in and exalting a god who both allows and causes an unmeasurable amount of suffering.

>says the Veeky Forums shitposting basement dweller
yeah, dosto sure was pathetic huh...
lmao

Deistic god has no function.

>two prominent Englishmen
You're thinking of Calvin and Hobbes

> I'm Christian but I don't believe there is only one God
>you could call me an agnostic form of Christian
>I believe in Christianity
This site is 18+. Please, leave.

>a god who both allows and causes an unmeasurable amount of suffering
"Suffering" is a meme and a spook that only exists in your mind. (Yes, I'm serious.)

According to whom? On what basis do you make those claims?

I dare because I have a system of values and I can back it up.

Not until you provide actual evidence for the existence of a god.
After you do that, you must provide me with evidence that this god wants us to actually worship him.
After that, you need to provide evidence that shows which religion we should follow to worship that god.

Then I will stop being an atheist.

autism

Let's see here.
Fellow man - achievements during my lifetime:
>

Christianity forbids the worship of other gods, and only idolatrous gods are to be taken as false.

Wow, how is highschool treating you, boi?

But God and morality are real, right?

Anecdotal evidence

>Anecdotal evidence
Literally worthless.

>Anecdotal evidence
Well, I'm glad that you at least have the courage to say you're retarded.

I don't worship other Gods, but I don't wish to denounce other Gods either. If people want to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who am I to say they can't? Do I think it's ridiculous? Yes, but who am I to suggest that it doesn't exist. Let them believe what they want to believe, and hopefully they'll let me believe what I want to believe. What goes on in our own minds and hearts is our own business, of course unless we require brain or open-heart surgery in which case it's a surgeon's business of what goes on in our own minds and hearts.

If you don't think science has made any useful investigations into how consciousness arises from matter, then that's your own fault for being behind the curve. It's impressive that you'd choose to become a Christ poster rather than educate yourself.

I got banned from /r/WritingPrompts for shitposting about Christianity and had this conversation with a mod, still waiting for him to reply.

baka lads

>going to reddit
You were asking for it, mate. The mod is still retarded, but come on.

People like you give Christians a bad name.

Wtf I hate Jesus now

people like you n lack empathy with johnny, who worked at the docks, wo oh ow wo oh ahww

But I'm a high functioning basement dweller, Dostoyevsky lived his life fleeing from debtors addicted to gambling, it's no wonder a man without any self control would hand over the freedom and responsibility of his very soul to some magical boogeyman.

I rarely post and when I do it's only when I'm lurking I get autisticly angry over some of the stuff people post and have to reply

I was replying to this, for example.

Please show me all of the empirical data for the existence of God

There is literally nothing offensive about this, aside from how poorly written it is

>tfw christfags can't argue with level 0 scientist fedora
You guys are not making joining your society any more lucrative.

K....KEEP ME POSTED

Hence why I said I was shitposting

It is a really poor interpretation of the Bible though

I did! I'm now an agnostic.

I knew reddit was bad, but not this bad. This is the worst thing I've read since highschool.

At the end of the day suffering doesn't matter. God offers us compensation; for a human being, going to heaven is the definition of self-actualisation and therefore it's perfect fulfillment and bliss. Any amount of even the most horrible suffering will be repaid with even the smallest amount of mentioned divine fulfillment.

I'm not a Christian, though; I'm agnostic.
But I think that it's stupid for anyone to rely on anecdotal evidence.

belief in god is a prerequisite to developing or believing in a code of morals. all of the morals in any society are based in the belief in god or at least some power above

otherwise no one would follow any moral codes , only legal ones

You. Hey, you.
Recommend me some books to turn me Christian, please.