Christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism

>Christianity is much more atheist than the usual atheism,

What did he mean by this?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=tABnznhzdIY
joyfultraditionalist.tumblr.com
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Friday_Devotion
youtube.com/watch?v=8Kck_YJQEvs
youtube.com/watch?v=sQ3g2zS6Tuk
usccb.org/bible/psalms/22
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

you sure that's what he said? sometimes it seems like he has a sock in his mouth so it's hard to tell. perhaps he was talking about the effect of Denny's grand slam after a night of drinking on the psyche?

I wouldn't be surprised, He is always making up paradoxes, even if it makes no sense.

Link to the whole thing pls.

He loves Chesterton and it shows

youtube.com/watch?v=tABnznhzdIY

Quote is near the end about 6 minutes.

It means you can only really appreciate the idea that God is dead after wrapping your head around the idea that God was here, and we killed him, and he's not coming back and the rest is memes. We're on our own now, no one to blame, no excuses.

"God is dead" only means something if you actually step over the great corpse. You can't walk around it or stick your head in the sand and pretend it isn't there. And if you're rejoicing in this fact there is a small chance that you are a creative genius wunderkind and a much larger chance that you might want to reflect on this a little further.

I agree and I appreciate the notion that to fully accept the emptiness of the vacuum left by the absence of god one must have had an idea of god or the "big other" as Zizek uses in this context but what particularly confuses me here, is his emphasis on Christianity rather than religion in general and his contention that there is something about the death of Christ on the cross that leads to some type of "purer" atheism.

I have always suspected that the Zizek we get today is a kind of bizarro/alternate-reality version of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, a guy who is constantly making fun of himself and cracking jokes about Stalin because he could just as well be using Hegel and Lacan like bludgeons to make you feel really really shitty about desire. And maybe sometimes he still wants secretly to do that in some way. I don't know. I'm sort of a brainlet really.

He doesn't like the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, because to him it seems to justify holy war, that ideological violence in the name of which everything can be done. It's a reductive and misleading interpretation, I think, because the real message of the Gita is I would say about the internal struggle with oneself, to wake up and take action against despair, which would seem compatible with some of Z's own thoughts. He doesn't like Buddhism either I think for the same reasons, because it advocates detachment from the world, and Z wants you to join in, etc, and so on and so on, sniff.

Christianity is disturbing and deeply unsettling. I think that's why he likes it. You can't get cozy with it and it beats the pants off of all things ideology. Z is a complicated guy.

I would agree with what you've said:
>there is something about the death of Christ on the cross that leads to some type of "purer" atheism.

That purer atheism means, basically, No Cynicism. He likes Sloterdijk for this reason, I suspect, even though S is a Nietzschean. No cynicism. If you're going to be an atheist, understand what it is that you are required to stand for. Even if the only rule appears to be that there are no rules. Because there's still that ticklish blind spot there in the back that supplies your psychoanalytic guilt...

Also that picture is beautiful. Good thread user.

Christianity and Scientism hand-wave the misery of the world using identical dialectic. Individual words, what they call the basic causal agents, may differ but the two word models are one and the same.

Atheism is mainly Ontological outrage against abomination. The STEM aspect is almost irrelevant. It is no more against God than the Gospel of Thomas.

>ask myself why that is
>can't think of a reason why it wouldn't be that way
>draw conclusion that both are somehow correct
>carry on bravely i guess

They are both correct because that's just the way reality in relation to humans is like. They both just use different buzzwords and memes, the underlying ''reality" is still the same.

That doesn't mean that you should disregard scientific explanations though

>you know this thing? but wait, it is actually the opposite!

t. Zizek

> atheists like the world
> god created the world

> therefore I was special enough to be born into the one true religion out of the 4000 around today and countless dead ones through all history

> "because: Jesus said so" unironically

Every cult ever makes it's claims based on things that are known to be true. Just because one cult tapped into the same ideals many other cultures earlier and later tapped into doesn't mean they are right about all these unrelated unfounded claims. "L Ron Hubbard told me if I don't worry about anything I"ll be happier, guess i have a brainwashed alien soul living inside because he was right on this one thing"

The Bible is a decent book though, I normally don't like the whole scientism stuff but that reasoning is just painful. I clicked this thread to see people trash talk Zizek

No disregarding of scientific explanations here mi amigo. Philosophy is for me these days much more about the best possible viewpoint of ignorance rather than anything like production of knowledge or certainty.

Things are. What they mean I have no idea. All I am certain of is that I have a headful of rocks and occasionally a little light shines on them and shows the contours.

He meant to make a controversial statement to increase his public profile

*sniff*

Any of you anons read this?

Hi, Ans. Not to derail but these comfychrist pics are bringing me joy. Thanks for posting 'em.

Sometimes I do think with Zizek this is at least partially true. Using contradictions or subverting expectations is a useful tool but there has to be something firm and coherent behind the provocative claims and his explanations are often lacking.

Have another one then my man. More here.
joyfultraditionalist.tumblr.com

I think this is true also.

>trash talk Zizek
Why would we do such a thing? Veeky Forums is still pretty heavily Catholic-Marxist and Z is friendly with both in his way

How could you reconcile Zizek with Catholicism? even if he does have respect for certain doctrines or can find common ground in aspects of a world view. he does not believe in God and certainly not the catholic churches conception of one.

No, but his "I am an atheist, but I am only an atheist through Christianity" is a pretty interesting piece of pseudo-apologia. He basically wields Christianity to make his own Hegelian-Lacanian arguments about ideology, but without openly shitting on Christianity itself and if anything only making it more worthy of study and contemplation. Even if he isn't a practicing Catholic it's clear that he has vastly more respect for it than basically any other religion.

"I am an atheist, but I am an atheist through Christianity" - he's basically qualified atheism itself as a Christian, if not necessarily (or...?) a Catholic phenomenon. Zizek's own atheism is informed by his understanding of Christianity in ways that only make his own arguments as well as those of Christians more and not less persuasive.

youtube.com/watch?v=tABnznhzdIY

So not a Catholic, but as is the case with all intelligent and articulate commentators even when they create distance between concepts they make them all seem more appealing.

For a lot of so-called Christians, the nonexistence of god is completely obvious. The reason why they're walking the walk and talking the talk is because they understand the necessity of organized religion and its functions in relation to society (for example, in taking care of people who experience great loss and who have a crushing need to be fooled into thinking the universe is meaningful and that a higher power exists.)

In a sense they can be said to be even more Atheist than most Atheists, because Atheists generally see the subject as something important enough to occasionally warrant discussion, and they at least have the respect for the topic of religion to feel that they need to approach it with honesty.

Zizek is leftist Varg

Slavarg Zi-Kernes

sounds scary desu

I actually wonder if Zizek has ever encountered a genuine, believing Christian.

I heard it's great but I'll read whenever I finally read the NT. I picked this up for free while clearing out my university library and I was like sweet my dudes

Zizek argues that the form of Christ's crucifixion is an altogether more radical sacrifice precisely because it reaches a peak in which the scene is deconstructed from its symbolic and ideological identification. This is for Zizek the moment when Christ cries out "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?). It is in this way that God rebukes himself in realizing that there is no God to answer himself, that there is no longer an objective basis to the hierarchical social relations established by religious morality, and thus by his death there is only the Holy Spirit, or the non-hierarchical communion between others.

I hope I've presented his ideas in a way that aren't totally unintelligible.

>It's a reductive and misleading interpretation, I think, because the real message of the Gita is I would say about the internal struggle with oneself, to wake up and take action against despair, which would seem compatible with some of Z's own thoughts.

what is reductive and misleading is taking a text that markets itself to the individual reader at face-value when it insists on the local effectivity of its prescriptions, rather than negatively describing the modes of collective action such individualism imagines.

can you pl\ explain

in a way that will make sense

to a brainlet

But, wait, hold on, isn't Zizek making the dime-store atheist's mistake? Please tell me he addresses the fact that Jesus is invoking Psalm 22.

>They are both correct because that's just the way reality in relation to humans is like. They both just use different buzzwords and memes, the underlying ''reality" is still the same.

Now That's What I Call Ideology

it is more reductive to blindly agree with a text when it insists that it's only meant for individual philosophy of life or religious practice. doing that is accepting the ideology of the text without really questioning it. one easy way to question these ideologies is to construct the mode of collective society, action, etc, that such a philosophy of life imagines: if a community took the bhagavad gita as its constitution, if everyone in the community followed its prescriptions, what would that community look like?

now, this mode of thought is totally repugnant to positivist-empiricist traditions which have a stranglehold even on our literary studies, because it relies on studying something that in the strictest sense "isn't there." but that is the nature of critique: to expose what something is hiding, what it would rather not have said about it. and a text insisting on individual values would rather you didn't see the community those individuals must become.

kek

ok i get it now i think

still brainlet tho

thx user

Honestly I don't think Zizek is particularly strong when it comes to actual theological scholarship. You have similar hiccups when listening to him talk about Buddhism or Hinduism. For Zizek, I think, the actually construction of the act in terms of its symbolic nature is more interesting to him than its actual minutiae, all in an effort to prove whatever point he is making.

Death of God theology isn't entirely a meme though, I would refer to Blake and Hegel regarding actual serious philosophical discussion. I imagine Zizek is working off a poor form of Hegel's argument in constructing the dialectical methodology.

yeah but if you've already bought the psychoanalytic argument that our logical constructions are always influenced by our (unconscious, disavowed) interests, then you've effectively lightened the load of philosophy by showing how working out the matter is already teleologically determined: philosophers in the past have put on a show at "arriving" at conclusions, but what they arrive it was laid down in advance. with the slag shaken off you can get to the fun stuff, the broad, sweeping conclusions. there is after all a certain jouissance to the texture of zizek's arguments: as if he can't resist going off on a tangent, and can't keep himself from drawing the conclusion before arguing through it.

>There is after all a certain jouissance to the texture of Zizek's arguments

This could be developed and honed into a fine and sturdy shitpost one day, boy. Keep working at your craft. Keep the flame low, don't burn it, and one day that is going to be some really quality bait.

that's exactly the point user: philosophy is the world's greatest, uncooked shitpost

No, not really.

The more you understand about Christianity, its sacraments texts and implications the less you want to be religious.

Why, exactly?

Are you afraid of the monsters under the bed? The ghosts in the closet?

This isn't true. The more I read Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, the more I want to be a Christian. I just haven't met any that are trying to live like these two suggest. Modern churches are often too pedagogical and their offered practicality panders to the lowest common denominator. Maybe I just need to grow some balls and progress alone

>life is a one shot
>practically worthless because following it is an eternity of the worst possible anguish or the greatest possible joy
>vast vast majority of humanity automatically predamned because the contingent circumstances of their existence have cut them off from receiving the gospels
>this essentially makes salvation a lottery (Calvin may as well be right)
>Bible that portrays a God who is thoroughly inscrutable, mercurial and most alarmingly treats humanity as entirely disposable
>vaguely defined terms for salvation. Apostles even seem to be uncertain and in disagreement with each other

Abrahamic faiths are the most nihilistic of religions.

this. seeing intellectuals suffering in/as literature is in a perverse way what attracts certain people to christianity i think

i thoroughly enjoyed this greentext too user

He means that Christianity is much more atheistic in connotation. [And, I assume, in practice.]

so what's zizek's take on Venezuela?

This seems like a neutered Christianity without all its mysticism and supernatural strength.

Zizek is a pseud pop-philosopher. Chomsky was right about him. He is worth less than even Peterson, if you can believe that.

What does Chomsky think about Christianity? I guess I've never heard from him on the subject.

I wouldn't go that far, but yes, he fucks around way too much to be taken seriously.

He doesn't believe in God and is not religious himself, but he has no problem with religion, which I find kind of funny given how his criticisms on things like power, hierarchy, and marginalizing people can all be applied to Abrahamic religion, and arguably all organized religion.

>tfw you weren't born 700 years ago when Christianity was still real
>tfw the only sheep life possible in the modern world is the consumerist life
>tfw Meister Eckhart was right, God dies when we forget Him

The Miracle of the Sun is only a century old, user.

>implying I'm Catholic

700 years ago the Catholic Church was the only Church.

Does that form of Christianity even exist within the bible? That's a Christianity removed from its presumed monopoly on truth and its narratives and dogma. Therefore not really what we're talking about when we typically think of the Christian religion

Pagan detected.

>what is orthodox

If you belong to the Catholic or Orthodox or Coptic Churches, you believe that Tradition has equal weight with Scripture in determining what is and isn't in Christianity.

Atheism, or religious doubts to avoid seeming like a euphoric poster, isn't a christian phenomenon, it's a high iq one. It's just as prevalent in the far east or somewhat ancient Greece/Rome as in modern Europe.

You realize there's lots of supernatural shit in Christianity too, right?

Demonstrably false. There are miracles that are acts of God, but no supernatural pagan mysticism that you speak of. You will not find me a verse that supports your ridiculous claim.

Hold on, I think we're actually in agreement here. When I speak of the supernatural in Christianity, it's precisely to acts of God that I refer. I think we've just got our terms confused.

The story about the dude with godstrength hair is pretty paganesque and supernatural desu

>atheism/non-religion betrays a high IQ
>what is thomism

I bet that pagan dude in your pic related could kick your ass

I said religious doubts, fool. Faith is only valid if someone actually contemplates God and the possibility of no divinity first, the blind faith of idiots is worthless.

I can't awnser everyone, because I'm not smart. But I will say this!

Turn to the Catholic Church, my friends, and pray before a eucheristic adorition (or just a statue of Jesus) and pray just ONE thing and you'll get it - guaranteed!

Ask and it shall be given - but you have to ask!
Knock and it shall be opened - but you have to knock!
Seek and you shall find - but you have to seek!

If Jesus cannot awnser your prayers, he is no God. But to my own experience he has anwsered mine. I wanted to be a writer so I prayed for it one day to angels, saints, mary, christ until eventually I was contacted by a publisher three days later of my prayers - they turned out to be scammers, though, so I don't know what the Lord meant by that, lol. (And while it's true I had contacted them a year earlier - and like the scammers thy are, they tend to recontact their clients, even if they decline) they hadn't contacted me in months UNTIL that one prayer of mine. Make of that what you will.

But if you will believe me - then believe in your own result. JUST ONE PRAYER LADS - that's all it takes to get into the higher life. And when you make it, and things happen (and they will) remember that a CATHOLIC user told you these things. (Make of that what you will)

Also if you want to somewhat maximise the effect of holiness I'd suggest tending to the First Friday Devotions from now on. Tend the first friday mass of nine consecutive months and you'll be in the clear with Jesus in death (plus bonus blessings too, yay!)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Friday_Devotion

Hail to the RISEN LORD!!!
And PEACE to people of GOOD WILL!!!

HOSSANAH IN THE HIGHEST!!!
BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD!!!

HOSSANAH IN THE HIGHEST!!!!

I believe that Christians believe that those who die before hearing Christ's message are saved if they were virtuous

But if you will *not* believe me - then believe in your own result

Sorry lads.

and Go for it :)

Hossanah in the highest!!!

>Bible that portrays a God who is thoroughly inscrutable, mercurial and most alarmingly treats humanity as entirely disposable

what would you expect of an infinite being, user?

If God dies when we forget him, then he never existed

no one is worthless

I appreciate your spirit, user, but it seems like the Lord didn't give you what you asked for.

Well who cares what they think? Its not biblical. And no, most fundamentalists believe the people of the world are going to hell but that's okay because they're "wicked" anyway. That's another thing, Christianity is thoroughly misanthropic.

I don't know but I don't see how there is much point in trying to follow such a deity. Its kind of like trying to negotiate with a Tsunmai. I view the God of the Bible through a Lovecraftian lens more than anything.

Maybe it's different for me as someone who is a believer. I mostly take God's existence as an axiom, and the Bible as a historical account of His dealings with the children of Israel, give or take a few sort-of mythical things. I think it doesn't matter what you think of Him because I consider Him quite real.

Hossanah, freaky little mama...

Eh, that's probably not wrong and I'm not too familiar with Zizek's platforms, but if anything I'd think he means that the personification of any Omniscient being as having the logical, secular interests granted the Christian God is inherently paradoxical and precludes said God from being credible.

>vast vast majority of humanity automatically predamned because the contingent circumstances of their existence have cut them off from receiving the gospels
>Its not biblical

There always has to be at least one flat-out lie in these posts, doesn't there? Though, to be fair, it's most likely just plain ignorance.

you couched your statement with "religious doubts to avoid seeming like a euphoric poster" and i fully understand why—given the barrage of fedora memes you would certainly receive—you did that.

my picture was not intended to meme you, but rather to disavow zizek's connection of atheism with a doctrinal belief system as well as to deny that atheism is a "high iq" phenomenon. you have no right to disdain me for missing points you didn't state in your original post.

atheism (or logical positivism) is quickly becoming the reflexive norm in the west and therefore demands no such contemplation by itself—unless you count watching the big bang theory as such. you must recognize that the worship of god has been replaced with the worship of the state or money in "the far east" today, and atheism was not prevalent there in ancient times. certainly, the philosophical traditions of ancient greece and rome allowed for daimons, forms, and (after constantine) christ-worship [though you used "somewhat" as a weasel word, so i can't pin you to that line of reasoning either].

the fundamental issue i have is that you claimed "atheism ... is a high iq" phenomenon. this is not true in and of itself.

Chomsky believes in judging people by their actions, not by their beliefs. Judging by belief is a step too far for him, and I agree.

Just because you have different beliefs than someone else, doesn't mean you have to right to impose your beliefs on them. The same goes for religious beliefs.
Only when their beliefs cause them to do immoral acts, is when you intervene. Chomsky has called some new-atheists Islamophobes, because they tend to judge people solely on their belief in Islam, rather than their actions.

Replied to wrong post

If you really want to know and don't want to read books, watch this:
youtube.com/watch?v=8Kck_YJQEvs
youtube.com/watch?v=sQ3g2zS6Tuk

Personally, I think he's a bit of a meme/hack/attention whore, so I wouldn't waste too much time with him.

This is what I meant. I'm personally religious and I'm not trying to say atheism is a good thing, but as a phenomenon it's pretty highly correlated with IQ.

Thanks user, I'll take a look.

>but as is the case with all intelligent and articulate commentators even when they create distance between concepts they make them all seem more appealing.

I would normally agree with this, however in this circumstance where Zizek seems to be using elements of catholic theology as a stepping stone to what he sees as a greater truth or deeper physiological understanding, how could a religious person not find this condescending? Surely Zizek's message is that these concepts only have value precisely because we live in a world where god does NOT exist and therefore the message we take from them is completely different then if he did. It seems to me for all the admiration of christian values or theology which he does profess that really because he filters them through the perspective of a godless world he really is on a very different page from the average catholic to who the existence or non existence of god really is a crucial factor that underpins their ideology.

> because it reaches a peak in which the scene is deconstructed from its symbolic and ideological identification. This is for Zizek the moment when Christ cries out "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?). It is in this way that God rebukes himself in realizing that there is no God to answer himself, that there is no longer an objective basis to the hierarchical social relations established by religious morality

Isn't this one of the earliest heresies, though, that of the Sabellians/modalists, thinking that God and Jesus (and the Holy spirit) are different modes of the same entity, and therefore thinking that Jesus on the cross is God "talking to himself"? I understand what is being said here , that Zizek is not a theologian and is interested in symbols, but what he is claiming is thoroughly not a Christian view and has been considered heretical since the late 2nd-early 3rd century. It's like people in the late 60s and 70s saying Jesus was a "do what you feel" early hippie.

Not to mention that, as that other guy said, the whole reason Jesus cries out is to invoke Psalm 22, which ends with God establishing dominion over the whole world.

usccb.org/bible/psalms/22

Even if he's real, that doesn't mean he's not intensely terrifying.

What is biblical about universalism?

"nobody comes to the father but through me"

"How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

Romans 10:14

>how could a religious person not find this condescending?
I understand what you mean. Yes, you're right, it's difficult to be on both sides of the coin at the same time. I suppose because I consider myself to be something of a religious pluralist with a bent towards inclusivity, I'm attracted to the idea of the category of "Christian atheism" if only because to me Christian atheism that allows for dialogue between Christians and atheists is still preferable to atheist atheism which is more likely to be at loggerheads.

>It seems to me for all the admiration of christian values or theology which he does profess that really because he filters them through the perspective of a godless world he really is on a very different page from the average catholic to who the existence or non existence of god really is a crucial factor that underpins their ideology.
Yes, of course. No arguments there.

They are indeed similar in the sense that both are fat and ugly (this is significant)

i wish zizek and the people who talk about him would fuck off forever.