Isn't the teleological suspension of the ethical kind of a fucked up idea...

Isn't the teleological suspension of the ethical kind of a fucked up idea? I pretty much agree with Kierkegaard about resignation and absurdity and faith being unexplainable but I just can't really digest this idea that the ends justify the means religiously, I mean I understand that in the context of Abraham's story but I don't understand why Kierkegaard would prescribe people to accept that the ends justify the means in order to live the "highest" life possible. Can someone help me understand this?

One of the many reasons Gnosticism supersedes Christianity if given enough thought.

>I mean I understand that in the context of Abraham's story but I don't understand why Kierkegaard would prescribe people to accept that the ends justify the means in order to live the "highest" life possible.
You're still viewing it from an ethical perspective and not a religious one

Can you frame it in a religious perspective then?

I hope he is. Ethics are an aspect of the Human Spirit - immanent, indestructible, the lived experience of here and now. Religion is a map of that territory. Saying the former should yield to the latter is like saying it should yield to Evolutionary Psychology.

I think he meant that I'm not looking at it from Kierkegaard's third perspective of life, i.e. the religious perspective.
Perhaps it's just Kierke's Protestantism being incompatible with my Catholicism that is giving me problems with the suspension of the ethical.

God is good. Good is God. God's word is good. Good comes from the word of God. God in his infinite power can So-called "contradict" himself and compel us to do something that would otherwise be sin, and it would still be good because he told us to do it. It's that simple.

You shouldn't be worried about it then. The Catholic God is the most forgiving.

No I definitely understand that and it makes sense but I don't see how to transfer that into the real world, I think in the real world that shit leads to ISIS and all that.

Does Kierkegaard make a difference between: Actually Provably God telling a person to do something (unethical, as a test but stops them before they go through with it)

And: Someone saying; "God told me we can do this unethical thing"

This is my main hang up on the subject

>Provably
there's your problem
K is a fideist my man

>tfw did the leap of faith to Gnosticism and the love to the true god healed me from nihilism

I was semi kidding, as that is one particular example of a story and in the story its benefit of doubt God commanded

what you mean by fideist?

it would help if there were multiple examples given regarding this subject,

Fideism basically means that the logical and the reasonable are separate from faith
What he meant by that in context of his post is not really clear to me

...

>gaytheists STILL interpreting the bible literally

It does, but their leap is the wrong one
A leap or a resignation leads to every non-aesthetic viewpoint according to Kierkegaard (or at least some of his pseudonyms)

This post is ridiculous, religion is the salvation of the soul, it absolutely takes priority over ethics in any situation where the two come into conflict--in fact, it is unethical NOT to yield to the religious in such contexts.
You use the phrase "Human Spirit" but it seems strange that you would rather it be limited by earthly ethical concerns than have its chains broken by acting in accordance with the will of God.

>I understand that in the context of Abraham's story but I don't understand why Kierkegaard would prescribe people to accept that the ends justify the means in order to live the "highest" life possible.
That's not the point at all. If that were the case then "Abraham would be lost" and just become another tragic hero. That's the whole point: that's he's not a hero, that what he's doing is absolutely wrong and one step from being completely pointless. But he was still right, by virtue of the absurd.

honestly this is how a religious person thinks - which just illustrates how few of us there actually are. I'm convinced most of the 'Christians' here just think its cool to reference the Bible and don't even believe in the Virgin Birth. We beelieve int he word of God. not human ethics, not philosophy, NOTHING. Only His word. End of story.

But at the same time, we believe God is supremely rational. We believe reason has its origins in God. The whole locus of Christian philosophy and theology is the union of faith and reason. They're meant to work together.

Logos, Reason, Word, all mean the same thing: The active portion of the mind of God which engages with the world and produces the conditions for the existence of lesser things. It is because of its nature as transcending human reason that its ability to discern right from wrong transcends human concepts of ethics: what it discerns to be right cannot but be right. What humans discern to be 'ethical' may not be ethical after all: an ethic is a set of institutional rules, more important than the actual discourse which dedicates itself to the task of providing a framework for human behavior. This discourse has high aspirations but it always falls short on a personal level. An institution benefits from ethics; an individual benefits from conscience. The two are not the same. The latter cannot occur except spontaneously (though it can be encouraged), the former does not occur spontaneously.

Well, I agree with this, at any rate. Any command from God must be followed, no matter what. And any command that can be logically extrapolated from a command from God must likewise be followed. Obedience to God is paramount. In this respect Kierkegaard is definitely on to something. My objection to him is his insistence that obedience to the divine surpasses rationality. God is rational by his very nature, and his commands are likewise rational. There is always a reason for everything God does in the Christian context. The whole story of Abraham and Isaac actually does demonstrate that. You should never have to suspend the rational to obey God, because all of God's commands are rational, or are revealed as such in time.

>My objection to him is his insistence that obedience to the divine surpasses rationality
I object along the same lines, which is why I prefer Thomism or German idealism to fideism.

Yes, I'm Catholic and I don't like fideism either. I believe obedience to God is, and should be, clarifying, not obfuscating. Like you, I prefer Thomism. I also like Augustine's approach a lot.

From what I've gathered, Kierkegaard is the kind of guy who has a lot of really good ideas and understands a lot, but in the same breath also holds some seriously wacky beliefs that not many people will agree with; in this way he's a lot like Nietzsche.

bump

This thinking has many terrible implications. Both the quality of the Creator and that of Creation are called into question. If the Creator is as mercurial as the Materialist Cosmos, and if his ultimate intentions lie behind layers of emergence and require Dennettian Self-denial then such a Creator is worse than the unconscious Materialist Cosmos, since he subjects Creation to endless horror by choice. If Creation is so cretinous as to understand nothing at all and, from from the vantage point of the Creator, be as thinking, as feeling, and as reflective as a stone, then such Creation has no value, neither to its Creator nor to itself.

It isn't about ethics, it's about dogmatics. It's not about Good vs Bad, but Divine vs Sin. Sin has nothing to do with ethics.

>Can someone help me understand this?

just read Girard

yes

I can't tell whether this is anti-theism or not.

Misotheist.

>This post is ridiculous, religion is the salvation of the soul
Stop larping and read the bible

stop reading the bible and start deus vaulting!