Old Testament:

kys

Mocking him first for being a "christfag" and then for being a "fedora"

>Strawmanning God as a Being
Clever 13 year old detected

>people actually trust this guy

>it's another "let's judge God using limited human intelligence and men-made moral codes" argument

meh this is getting stale, specially since I have to go out of my way to defend the christians

>God says he's the most high and all benevolent
>we're just supposed to take his word for it when all we can know is that he controls our immediate reality.

>not worshiping METAGOD
pseud

you're not taking god's word for it you retard, you're taking the word of someone who claims to speak for him.

>WOAH! Dude he is so divine and stuff, we mere mortals can't comprehend him

Well, yes, this is actually one of the great strengths of the Christian God as a concept, and why he manages to avoid the pitfalls that the old pagan gods fell into when logic was applied to them and their tawdry escapades. It's why Judaism was so attractive to so many Roman intellectuals.

God is an abstracted ideal just like Justice.
Taking something literally like the concept of God is a mistake that shows the most puerile intellect.

>Not embracing the schizophrenia of our milieu

> It's why Judaism was so attractive to so many Roman intellectuals

I have another explanation Josephus

>Old Testament
DO AS I SAY FOR I AM THE LORD. WHAT?!?! YOU HAVE DISOBEYED ME?!? I CAST YOU OUT, AND I SHALL GIVE YOU A BILLION RULES TO LIVE BY AS PENANCE FOR YOUR ORIGINAL SIN. STUFF LIKE NOT BEING GAY, NO EATING SHELLFISH, ETC.
>New Testament
I AM THE LORD, AND I MAY HAVE MADE A MISTAKE. BUT I CANNOT BE WRONG, THEREFORE I WILL SACRIFICE MY ONLY SON AS A ROUNDABOUT MEANS OF FREEING YOU FROM ORIGINAL SIN.

>Well, yes, this is actually one of the great strengths of the Christian God as a concept, and why he manages to avoid the pitfalls that the old pagan gods fell into

The incomprehensable creator deity is really a Pagan thing that comes from Plato. After the Jews were exposed to Platonism people like Philo of Alexandria tried to make the arguement that his god was his own god. The early form of the Jewish god was very comprehensable. He is described as having physical features, emotions, he even walks around a garden in Genesis. It is only later theologians like Maimonodes that tried to put forth these passages as entirly metaphorical. Likewise the Pagan religions were equally compatable with the Platonic god, there were plenty of theologies that took the literal descriptions of their gods and turned them into metaphors for the incomprehensible Monad.
>It's why Judaism was so attractive to so many Roman intellectuals

I've never heard of Judaism being popualr with Romans. The Greco/Romans were a conquering people and this is reflected in their gods, the Olympian Deities didn't create the world, they killed the origenal creator gods and took it for themself. It wouldn't make sense such people would care about Yawheh, a deity who's people were the conquered ones. Likewise they wouldn't think being the creator god automatically meant he was the right anymore than the Titans were the right gods.

>the human condition has evolved for the past billion years: we moved from dangerous and unpredictable nature to some kind of civilization
>OMG why would the concept of God shift? checkmate atheist
When you live under constant threat, then move into somekind of Government, the concept of God must represent that too.

Well if you are a guy in the Roman world the Jewish and Christian Gods aren't nessiarially the same thing. Consider that Paul wanted wanted to remove the Old Testament cannon entirly.

Solidtary between the Jewish God and the character of Jesus is a much later concept and I think it makes sense even now to consider them seperate deities. The Jewish God is only concerned with his chosen people while the Christian God loves all people equally. These are two very different deities and are incompatable value systems.

God is in fact actually real, you fucking Spinozan shitter.

Depends what you mean by real. God is real like Justice, not real like your confused ass.

>God is an abstracted ideal
Wait a sec... You mean god is made up?

>implying 90% of Veeky Forums aren't Catholics.
Are you new here?

Fug me, i neber thod of dad

Demiurge theory is pretty fun, but really Jesus was a pseud and the gospels are all revisionist propaganda.
OT God isn't even God, he's a myriad collection of mythological interpretations of God's will that were redacted into a hierarchical collection of secular laws and ethno-nationalist thinkpieces by tax collectors. The entire literary and cultural monolith built on them is constructed on a foundation of sand.

No, I mean that He is actually real and is responsible for the world and everything in it, and even interacts in history to this day.

>I don't know what abstraction means
An ideal can be more true than reality. Just like a book can depict things that never happened but are more real than your pitiful life.
Think about it like that: take the greatest people over 10000 year, extract their qualities into a fictional character, tell a story about that guy. That's Christ.
It's metatrue, not made-up, you brainlet.

A great many things only exist as abstract concepts. For instance language. The words we type don't refer to real things, they are a system of classifying a big collection of various atoms.

>all the dualism in this thread

Still fucking well-written though

>Jesus was a pseud
i have never read anything more Veeky Forums than this

My man! Find a way to prove that, put in on Youtube and win at Life. I'll be the first subscriber and I'll donate money.

Until then, I won't change my mind.

>gods live on the other side of the mountain
>no gods here, just some mountain goats
>the gods live atop the clouds
>nope, no gods here either
>wait, did I say gods? I meant god. all the other gods don't exist, only the jewish one
>okay... and where is he again?
>god is beyond this world
>well why would I take your word for it then
>DUDE GOD ISN'T REAL IT WAS AN ! IDEA ! ALL ALONG

i hate this fucking revisionist trash. people thought and still think god actually exists

If you think that God is acting like a dick in the Old Testament you're not understanding what you're reading. You're reading the bible in a very stupid way.

>I don't understand how a concept that is beyond human reach is always moved beyond human reach.
Moron. Like the stock market is always changing and cannot be modelled, the concept of God is an ideal of the human condition that is ungraspeable.

Let's say that you find awe at watching in the distance. Then the ideal of awe is the furthest possible, even if we get telescope and shit.

>implying they are
>not even mentioning the protestants
Are you new here?

Indeed, God is a bitch like gravity will kill you if you go off a cliff.
Blaming gravity for dying is not sophisticated thinking but that's what atheist like to do.

Is there a stupider way of reading the Bible than as a thoroughly accurate historical account?

This

Yes, a purely literal reading.

it's so obvious you're parroting jordan peterson, I watch him too you know.. his rhetoric falls apart in text.

look at the retards here all offering their ideas of what god is supposed to be while simultaneously claiming they can't understand god. we're all trying to make sense of this world but theism is just fucking pathetic.

I would argue that disregarding theism is way more pathetic than studying the Bible seriously. But what do I know?

Why the Bible? Why not the Koran or any other 'holy' text?

>he hasn't studied multiple holy texts

You should just read Augustine.

nice post desu.

Nice dodge pham

>Why the Bible? Why not the Koran or any other 'holy' text?
Good question. I am currently going through the Tao Te Ching and I read some Sufism.
Unfortunately, there is something extremely weird with text that is not aligned with your culture.
To me, Islam for instance seems to be the best way to live for countries that are not those of cold harsh winters. Similarly Taoism is not as useful in an Occidental setting where there is a lot of individualism.

Reading other holy text is a good idea, it just requires extremely carefulness not to read it with an Occidental mindset, which is very hard.

Revelations has hinted at what would be a model of civilization which would utilize a universal language.
No one is working on a single tower whose focus will lead to people spontaneously start speaking different languages.
People will never supercede 120 years, because God said no one will live beyond that point. Regardless of what ambitious technology men say about the future in technology, I think they will hit that 120 year ceiling.
The sea levels will rise, but never rise enough to cover most of today's mapped surface land.

It seems that you have trouble grasping abstract concepts. The experience religious people have: visions, hunches, overpowering emotions. All of these actually happened to them but they lack the ability to explain them very well. These are not metaphysical or magical events but psychological events. Yawheh is basically a personifaction of moral guilt.

It's not 'revionism' it;s trying to explain things people couldn't understand. At first they must they could say is that their god is an animal or a man in the clouds. Plato improved it by saying that the animal/man in the clouds is just a metaphor and it's a metapysical realm. Jung improved it again by saying that metaphysical realms are actually just Plato trying to describe the subconscious. So the Gods are real, they are psychological forces. That's not something to despise.

Religious texts make perfect sense if you know how to read them.

>These are not metaphysical or magical events but psychological events

Prove it. Prove it in some way that doesn't involve you essentially saying, "Well OF COURSE magic and metaphysics aren't real."

Not him but Peterson's ideas are not unique. The stuff he talks about what was done by Jung, Campbell, Nietzche, Hegel, all sorts of people. Peterson just has his own interpretation and there is nothing wrong with someone expressing the same opinion.

If you think Peterson's ideas are no good you should actually try to rebuke them rather than just shitpost.

Kill yourself you fucking Neo-Pagan.
Christ is not a "psychological event", he is everything

the whole of reality is magical and ultimately escapes explanation

>Nietzche, Hegel

lol that hack does not understand Nietzsche much less Hegel

The "easiest proof" is the Hero's Journey. Otherwise, I'm worried that you'll have to read a lot of Jung (especially Aion) to make sense of that.

>[shitposts loudly]
fascinating

Please keep your cute little RPG slogans out of serious theological threads

>I am too much of a brainlet to understand Jung
You have to go back

>Jesus was a level 9 Warlock
>Going on the cross gave him spirit XP that let him reach the next spirit tier

Woah incredible stuff

>he doesn't carry the desert inside of him

have you not had monasteries
have you even read The Red Book?

Really funny. Not sophisticated in the least, but really funny. 6/10 for trying.

Well the reason there is no magic is because magic is essentially things happening through chaos. Everything we know of in the universe is ordered. Magic can only happen in a world where there is no order. Even the smarter theologians started noticing that nature works according to laws of nature and so there cannot be any miracles because miracles violate the laws of nature. That's when the smarter theologians eventually started concluding that the stories about miracles cannot be literally true. Amusingly these smarter theologians are actually the ancestors of Spinoza who destroyed the entire theological cannon of the middle ages.

The reason there are no metaphysical realms is because the idea was made because Plato and his crew thought concepts were 'real things'. If there really is such a thing as circle than it must have an existence in of itself. He reasoned since we only see examples of circles, not circle in of themself, they must exist in another realm. However we know that concepts do not actually exist, they are just ways out brain intepretes the atoms around us. There are no circles there is only a mental concept of circles so there is nothing to inhabite these hypothetical metaphysical realms.

Its all Jung is, he gives a way of reducing nuanced and contingent texts and figures into Autistic class types like "Hero" or "Dragons" that turn them into cute fables that are easy to understand for manchildren
Its no wonder greasy /v/edditors like yourself love him

>anything other than christianity couldn't possibly be The Truth because I'm not familiar with it

how is it that people in the past didn't understand god but now you do? you've accepted the fact that gods don't actually exist but on one side you're saying "oh it's just an idea, everybody has their own gods" but then you say my conception of god is misunderstood.

he's literally copying his exact sentences verbatim.

I'm not a Neo-Pagan. And I agree with you that God is "everything" but that "everything" is psychological in nature. It is not even possible to experience sense data without processing it pschologically.

Events like Paul seeing Jesus on the road to Damscus did happen but they happened due to psychological conditions. The same is true for when a Hindu see's his God or when someone dreams about their dead grandfather giving them advice. This is simply the unconscious mind choosing a symbol to represent itself.

I actually had an event very similar to what Paul had on the road to Damscus including the part about losing my balance and being assaulted with 'divine light'. The mind can make you experience powerful things.

I never said Peterson was smart, just that many other people have his ideas. I also think Peterson doesn't understand Jung or Nietzche.

It's funny how people bounce off Jung. It's almost like they can't go deep enough and have to ressort to the most hysterical opinions.

that's a ftm tranny.

>lmao Paul was just schizophrenic and is just as legitimate as some Poo in the Loo meeting Elephantman but for no reason at all I'm going to assume they have meaning

Just stop it, you're a retard

>anything other than christianity couldn't possibly be The Truth because I'm not familiar with it
Are you retarded? It's like saying I can understand Russian authors better by reading the translation. Of course that Christianity is easier to understand when you leave near Christian churches.

>leave
live for fuck sake

that we view everything through the lens of psychology does not mean that everything is psychological in nature
everything is of itself in nature
psychology is of the nature of everything
and our perception of everything is colored by psyhology

this doesn't mean you can explain everything away as psychological quirks
Real Weird Shit can happen

>the truth of theology is determined by climate
That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

>reading works in translation is no different from reading the original

Well the reason we understand "God" better is because we simply know more things.

I remember thinking, when reading Plato's theology.

"No Plato. The reason people can know things without being taught them is because we are born with 'instincts'. These come from genes not the metaphysical realm."

I'm not saying our concept of God is 'perfect' just that it's more advanced than the other concepts. God=psychological sensations is the best we currently have. In fact if you beleive that all the old religious texts make sense. When the Christian says "Yawheh knows I sinned and might send me to hell. I need to pray so he forgives me" it actually makes sense, the psychological reading is "My conscous is telling me to feel guilty and I'm regretting it. I need to resolve to not do that bad thing anymore."

>evolutionary history of harsh winters is the same as evolutionary history of people living in sands
Try again?

user are you quite sure you're alright.

>evolutionary history has any effect on the truthiness of truth
try again

>user, why did you tell people I was merely a psychological event akin to Thor?
>Did you not grasp my love for you?

That's it? Your holy book is just another novel to you? Admit it, you are an atheist.

>You can civilize sandniggers, niggers, white trash and jewish scums with the same truthiness.
The Logos don't work with Abbos and muslims. Why? I don't know the best explanation we have is evolutionary history, IQ who are linked to climate (for denial of gratification).
You might think that it is stupid, but I don't think you have thought this enough.

Well schizophria IS a psychological condition. And the voice the schizos have DO have meaning. Part of the treament for the condition is trying to figure it out. Maybe they have childhood trauma and the voices in their head are residual agony.

Paul really beleived in what he say. I don't know if you are aware of his history but the guy destroyed his social life, his reputation, and got himself a death sentence because he genuinally believed in what he was doing.

>truthiness is the same as civilisation
try again

>thinks the spread of Christianity can be described as a mere facet of Biological Evolution

Nu-Pagans are disgusting

I was talking about the language and the translation and the underpinnings of the social grounding.
The Bible is not just a book, but it is a book.

>I don't know if you are aware of his history

Only a Memerson fuckwit could say this. I'm talking with a child

>he doesn't know what truthiness means
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

>The Bible is not just a book, but it is a book.

>Only a Memerson fuckwit could say this. I'm talking with a child
Only a Memerson fuckwit could say this. I'm talking with a child

Civilization is built on the basis of religion (truthiness if you will)

>I don't know shit about evolutionary biology

Stop posting old fat man, you'll get him killed.

I'm an orthodox Jungian, so I think dreams and visions are basically the subconscious trying to communicate something using symbols. This includes all religious visions. If someone told me they had a vision where an angel gave them advice I'd beleive they should listen to the angel but understand that the angel is not some guy living in the clouds but a part of their mind.

>Civilization is built on the basis of religion
Parts of it, none of it theological.

Therefore not concerned with truth. Yes, drinking camel urine might be a decent idea in early medieval Arabia, but that's not the important stuff of any religion.