/lit/ - Literature

I like it. Kind of resonates with me, since I'm a pantheist and wish to see society become such. Instead of lamenting over there being "no God", and then living life nihilistically because you feel such, realize yourself to be Divinity, regardless of whether or not there's another one out there. Instead, I see people around me treating their fellow visible beings so cruelly, for the sake of an invisible and unconfirmed entity that clearly needs less of your compassion than those ones beside you do. Irritates me to no end, the idiocy of behavior found of dualistic religion. I have no clue how you'd implement this new "religion" of yours, but it sounds really cool to me and I wish you success with it. You could make it pantheistic too, if you wanted, just leaving that here. Or you could leave it purely humanistic, though I'd obviously encourage the former. Good luck with it anon. :)

How will you do it, though? It shouldn't be hard at all, at a smaller level. Just like there are local churches, temples and similar, so could you start a small group for a new faith, and get yourself a small public space dedicated for it. But beyond this, I don't know how it works.

(also please refer to humanity as "humanity", instead of just "man", I know it's convention, but it's really tasteless convention)

>>12710368
>Our Bible would be human history
i know you're trying to be profound but you need to go back to R*ddit

>>12710368
I don't want to shit on your good will and optimism, but I don't think you really understand what separates religion from ethics. You say that we need to "be able to believe" and the thing about belief and faith is that they are subtle and complex. You say "science would be our salvation", but the thing is that science is not a belief system. Trying to believe in science is like trying to believe in a knife because of its wonderful ability to cleave. (Let me add that I say this as someone who is pursuing higher education in a physical science).

You say "do away with the complications... the cryptic storytelling". Yet I believe that our human nature is to complicate, it is to tell complex stories. If you strip away these things you are only left with banal platitudes.

Sorry friend, I really wish you the best. To me it really sounds like you are just a materialist and a humanist and are trying to make these things into a religion without actually wanting to adopt any of the things that would make them a religion.

op you just summarized pic related. come back when you've read more from the history of philosophy

not literature

>>12710533
>literature
This is the Philosophy and Religion board anon

>>12710368
Absolutely cringe, OP. Although I do think we need a new conceptual framework with which to contextualize human life (ie a religion).

>>12710541
What book is this?

>>12710545
>book
What is this? We discuss Textual Aether here

>>12710553
>>>/x/

>>12710368
People that watch monkeys masturbate in cages and declare that life exists to survive and reproduce are even more lost than you are. And as others have pointed out, you probably don't have a great understanding of the nuances of spirituality.

There's nothing of substance you say here that's not been said better elsewhere, and more thoroughly worked out.

Belief in 'mankind' is not simple. Man is a puzzle we're still working to solve, and nothing you are likely to come up with is going to be as profound as what's already been thought.

Get rid of his theological, literary, traditional and cultural dimensions, and you only reproduce your own shallow concept of man: an empty abstraction floating on unnumbered unexamined assumptions.It is not a fitting object of belief because it is utterly insubstantial. You end up only reproducing your own shallowness, and will appeal only to those as shallow as yourself.

Read history like a 'bible' and you end up unconsciously regurgitating some else's platitudes about the course and aim of history. Science as salvation is both hilariously naive and a category error. Art as prayer is similarly so. You're completely out of your depth, and this is why new possibilities in the Great Conversation cannot be so easily invented.

This stuff was cutting edge when the French were killing their kings, but its sterility and pretension have long been evident.

all these power fantasies
dominating the world in facist regimes
creating a new religion for everyone to follow

this very notion that people have a deep desire that they are special, that no matter what it is they have what it takes.
which is a good mindset to have when evolutionary advantage comes to the best adapted.

but there is that wish that whatever puzzle humanity is trying to solve, that you are that missing puzzle piece.
not that you matter, but you matter so much that you are the fulcrum of the universe.
each one of us assumes we carry the entire wright of the world on our shoulders.
it always seems heavy, but we never seem to acknowledge that each one of us bears its weight upon our shoulders.
post modern subjective interpretation machines bounded by reality tunnels each creates a universe within us.
and reality is just a projection of the universe within on a feedbackloop when it becomes the macrocosm affecting and simultaenously consisting of each level below.


we all want something better dont we.
but hype like faith can let us down.
so its either preparing for shit hitting the fan
or being okay in the status quo of equilibrium in flux.


just start sucking a lot of dick op

You can literally summarize the core of Christianity by quoting John 3:16. Why do you think it's practically a meme? It's the essence of the Christian religion right there, short and sweet.

>>12710368
>and how to believe in the good within us all
No one needs to believe that, because it's nonsense. Christianity doesn't teach it either, but rather that we are all corrupted.

>>12710632
Doesnt John 13:34 fit better?

Go to church anon. A person must have a will in him to believe that he can do good through God, and does so when the will exists. Your described religion is not new; look at Dawkins the cultural Catholic. A cynical approach to religion is not a good one as it does not satisfy the reason to have a will to believe in religion. Real religions suppose a benevolent metaphysical entity that offers an objectively correct view. Belief in a flawed creature capable of being objectively wrong called “man” is not the same offer and so will not confer the same will.

>>12710803
but if the flawed creatures by nature of their flaws can't agree on the will and want of said metaphysical creature, then it hardly makes any difference, if anything it only complicates things by adding an additional and external party that is unable to even be contacted at all into the picture, while also making them the center of our affairs despite actually being extraneous to them. belief in a theistic god brings far more problems than answers, and the realization of that is why much of humanity moved beyond that phase in previous centuries. and if there is a Theistic God, it doesn't seem to care for us enough to actually speak to us in any direct, explicit manner in the first place.

>>12710822
the point to having a religion becuase heirarchies exist
and unless we want an imbalance of power across human dynamic, we do well to not leave any room for humans at the top of that hierarchy but rather save the top of the pyramid for ideas, ideals, gods and demons.
god exists at the top of all power hierachies becuase we need a power at the top that anyone can use to climb to the top.

>>12710368

>>12710368

>>12710368
yes, you're the first fedora to ever want to create a religion, but one that is epic and smart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_of_Humanity

>>12710822
Materialist philosophies haven’t fixed anything. And if the Catholics can have a billion people following its catechism, your problem of the disunified religion seems not so. A human made into a God can substitute for that objective moral base, such as the unbeliever’s Caesar or Jesus, but they would function the same as Zeus and Yaweh. There’s no reason not to have this “external” arbiter God. Our Gods, if made by humans, are our reflection on what is right made permanent. Losing humanity is not a concern at all. What would be beneficial for humanity is simply following the best God, the one that survives the test of time. A religion that like a DNA strand corrects itself of corruption (heresy), replicates itself (evangelism), and capable of instructing the whole body (strong leadership) is a good start.

>>12710871
i agree about putting ideals above ourselves, but ideas are at least knowable through ourselves, and that's totally different from an intelligent being unreachable to us

>>12710368
102:7.3 Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

102:7.4 True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God- ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

>>12710915
I'm not any kind of materialist. I believe that an Idealist spirituality would be ideal for our society, wherein the transcendents of Goodness, Beauty and all the rest are championed above any individual in our world. Divinity would therefore be honored, but without the complications of adding a Will and Intelligence to that Divinity. It's also the most universal of a system, since these Ideals remain true for everyone, unlike Gods/Deities, which are always wrapped up in particular cultures and eras.

>>12710368
Thelema already exists.

>>12710945
>only the I AM is causeless
Yes, and "am" refers to my consciousness, which is indeed eternal and uncreated.

>the fact of religious experience implies God
No, it implies that my nature is to be a spiritual being. There could be a God, but me having spiritual experiences only tells me of my own nature.

>one cannot serve an abstraction
Tell that to Plato, then. This is literally all that our species ever does, actually. When we create everything in the image of Beauty, we're not thinking about some Personal Deity to appease by this creation of ours, we're thinking of Beauty, which is an "abstraction" if you want to call it that, and doing our best to honor it and have our work embody it. Apply the same to the concept of Perfection, Goodness, Justice, anything else.

I understand what he means, but he grossly overestimates the prevalence of a Personal Deity in people's lives. That said, if I do agree with him that many do need and feel drawn toward such a model of Divinity, for the intimacy and accountability it brings to them, I'll still say that it makes no difference if we can't all unanimously agree on which Deity it is, and what EXACTLY they expect from us. There's too many problems, as I see it. Individuals who are all speaking from their own imperfect and finite perspectives, while claiming their perspectives to align with that of a perfect and infinite Being's. It depresses people when they do not receive the hoped-for assistance from said Being, despite their many prayers for it. It directs our attention away from ourselves and our own reality, instead now toward the reality of a Being none of us have ever met before. It orients our empathy and love away from eachother, onto an invisible Being that clearly needs our compassion far less than our fellow humans do. I could go on and on and on. You could try and show me the positives of society holding to a Personal Deity as the mode of Divinity, and that's fine, but I personally see it as having more flaws than virtues.

>>12710945
This is interesting. Thanks for turning this random anon on to Urantia. How much of it is good? Any other interesting fragments you want to share?

>>12710932
isnt that the test to seize greatness?
commit the ultimate blasphemy
sit on the throne of god
until someone takes your crown once again wielding their friery word of god.

thats the trick or the ultimate mystery.
keeping that bit of unknowableness to god just so we dont have a bunch of entitled intellectuals saying they know ultimate virtue.
you need to see beyond the game in a sense to attain higher levels.
and as the ultimate justification of will you need to break all the games rules.
yet you still want to win so you have to convince the loosers that the game still matters. not knowing that it only makes them loosers and you the winner.

>>12711003
The Urantia papers claim to be written by superhuman celestial personalities, so from its perspective God's existence is a fact; if God exists then no godless religion could ever function the same or have as much benefit as a religion that recognizes and worships the Supreme Being (the source and ideal of Beauty, Goodness, Justice etc)
99:2.6 Modern religion finds it difficult to adjust its attitude toward the rapidly shifting social changes only because it has permitted itself to become so thoroughly traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. The religion of living experience finds no difficulty in keeping ahead of all these social developments and economic upheavals, amid which it ever functions as a moral stabilizer, social guide, and spiritual pilot. True religion carries over from one age to another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of the experience of knowing God and striving to be like him.

>>12710950
Platonic forms such as those need an objective justification. A willful intelligence is needed to give the justification. Simply saying the forms exist don’t give credit; has the speaker shown he is of the metaphysical world? Modern mortals cannot do this. Prophets who know why and how the ideals exist do. And for that true universality you are concerned about culture has to stop existing for that religion to be so. The culture the God comes from is irrelevant anyways. Why are Christians in Mongolia and Buddhists in New York? These religions are divorced from folk religions and have been made universal.

>>12711016
Thanks. A lot of the book is good; I've read many religious texts and it is the best so far in that it really seems to come from an otherworldly divine source.


2:7.5 Philosophers commit their gravest error when they are misled into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of focusing the attention upon one aspect of reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated aspect to be the whole truth. The wise philosopher will always look for the creative design which is behind, and pre-existent to, all universe phenomena. The creator thought invariably precedes creative action.

2:7.6 Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor.

>>12711102
I'm not so sure about the second one. Have many men not been happy while they told themselves lives?

>>12711076
None of these points stand up to analysis. I can claim these Forms exist by my direct perception of them, to which most others around would me would agree. If you are to now-introduce another party, namely a Deity, to which they have their origination and location, the onus is now on you to prove not only the existence of said Deity, but their connection to these Forms as well. I perceive Beauty, and so does everyone around me - for you to now claim that essence to be connected to something outside of ourselves, is something you'd need to prove. I could indeed claim myself to be of the metaphysical world, by the very nature of consciousness being such, and these Forms to be the highest ideals inherent to consciousness - but could you, a mortal, prove the existence of a God? How would you do so? Regarding universality, I'm just saying that theism has already been attempted for a while now, and we've already seen all the problems it runs into. If you want to reinstate it into modern society, do so, but you're going to have to find a way to evade all the pitfalls that it's been plagued by in past. To believe in a God, everyone has to have exactly the same conception of said God. And this already brings problems, whether Scriptures are or are not involved. I simply think an Idealist Pantheism would work better for our society, and avoids many of the problems inherent to Theism.

>>12710368
>The basis for this new faith is simple; the belief in mankind
Many groups have already tried that, including Humanists, Positivists, and contemporary Protestant sects like the Unitarians

>>12711124
>>12711124
You induct that your fellows percieve these forms, but now you have to induct that the people who do not percieve your forms are also incorrect. Some claim that murder is universally rejected yet some societies like the Spartans did it despite their stealth practice causing Helot rebellions. Now you have to explain why the Spartans were wrong. Democratic morality? Tyranny of the majority. When you induct God exists, then God will tell you what the forms are. Belief in God takes just one induction and you can have the theological debates about Greek later. Induct the morality itself and now you have to answer infinite “why”s without “because I said so” card Yahweh carries. God belief is simple and parsimonious. An ubermensch requires impossible resources. If you actually are an ubermensch then the work is done; tell me what’s up and I’ll be your bishop. But you haven’t proved yourself as such and that’s why it’s hard to believe you when you say the forms exist. You have no miracles in which us modern men could believe in and enlighten ourselves with to great benefit. What are the pitfalls in modern theism any ways? The two new Abrahamics don’t discern differences between race and class, but definitely do clash against certain political systems. But if the world had the same religion then all the popularly tolerated governments in the world would look the same anyways.

>>12711071
I obviously can't comment on the celestial authorship part, so it's almost a moot point. That said, if God exists, again, how does this instruct us on how to conduct ourselves? I've already been saying that unless we are all on exactly the same page regarding the Will and Want of said Deity, it makes no difference to us whether one exists or doesn't, since we won't know how to behave. We already have the Transcendents within ourselves, of Goodness and Beauty and the rest, and these are what you and any religious person would call "God's Essences". But I have no direct knowledge of any God, only of these essences themselves, and these are what everyone should be following and exalting regardless of God existing or not.

Let me ask a simple question: if there is a God, why have they not directly communicated to our world, and explicitly told us what exactly to do? Do you think any would disobey if such an event occurred? Do you think there'd be any athiests, on that day? When the voice of the Almighty speaks clearly to everyone? Instead, we get a bunch of religious factions, all of them claiming to be true, and all of them having nothing more impressive to show us than a set of paper-documents written entirely by human men to represent the wishes of a supposedly Almighty, Infinite, Omnipotent, Perfect Being - a set of scriptures, written by human men, in a single language, in a single region and culture, and only slowly spread out to the world from there. Really? When a human being desires to change something in society, they write and release a work of literature around it. This then gets spread and read by others in that culture, and possibly beyond it. I'm supposed to believe, now, that this is the same method of transmission an Infinite, Almighty, Omnipotent Being uses too? That when I want something communicated to my fellow species, and the Omnipotent want the same, we both use the same channel of communication? Are my desires of the same weight as God's, that God, desiring something, uses no better a method for obtaining it than a limited creature like myself does? As we speak, there are bookstores near to us which hold Bibles and Qurans in them, works supposedly conveying the Will of the Almighty. And just a few sections away, sit shelves for YA Genre Fiction, and also nearby are some Erotica novels. Is this really the best the Supreme could do, to let their own word be communicated via a book, no different than any of the rest we write? I could mention the fact that Shakespeare and other artists have exceeded them in quality too, therefore diminishing the "divinely inspired" angle too.

I'm not a disbeliever in a Theistic God, but it's really difficult for me to believe in one as represented by the modern monotheistic religions of the world. It's just too bizarre a narrative for me. The Shroud of Turin is the only document which gives the Jesus's Divinity any credence to me, and by extension his words about a "Heavenly Father".

>>12711312
Yet your problem is that even if you "induct God exists", which again is far more ungrounded a deduction than something I and my fellow beings almost universally perceive (Goodness, Beauty, etc), you have to also induct the true morality of that Being, and it can't be different to any peer beside you, since you'd have to then prove that your induction is true and not merely your own projection of your own perceptions. If you and another "inducted" a different morality, then you couldn't have both inducted it from the same source, one of you would have erred, and how would you demonstrate which one did so? Go ahead and believe in God, but you still have the exact same task of proving that all of your statements on absolute realities are not personal opinions of yours but representatives of an Absolute Being itself.

"Belief in God", okay, what if I choose Shiva for that God? And you choose Christ? And now I cover myself with ashes of the dead, and decide that society should be made entirely ascetic, and nobody should live as a worldly person, but be free of all fetters to worldly lifestyle. And you, a Christian, hold to many of the opposite ideals - marriage is a sacred institution, we're not supposed to transcend the world entirely, we're supposed to live within it as brothers and sisters and honor Christ by all our behaviors, and so on.

And why does God get to be the sole holder of the "because I said so card"? Is 2+2=4 only if and because God exists, and makes it so? Do you think most mathematicians would agree with that position? These truths have remained constant throughout almost all societies despite the changing models of Divinity they followed (think of how the Ancient Greeks had no concept of the Single Deity you presently advocate for). It's quite egregious reasoning on your part, to pretend that an extraneous entity like God is more logically grounded than for ourselves to merely speak of absolutes that we know of through ourselves. That Beauty is Beauty is Beauty is Beauty, repeating forever, regardless of whether any God exists too.

>>12711484
Inductions are not deductions. You repeat my argument of greater uncertainty against me. My example of the Spartans are to lead you to that. If the induction of your peers about Beauty and such forms differs from you then how do you prove them wrong? And who are you to prove them wrong? As an excercise explain why the golden ratio creates better architecture than the silver ratio. A God is an ultimate source of these forms and thus a solution.

I understand that you think that ascribing traits to a God is in itself an induction. When you induct that a God exists you at the same time induct the traits assigned to him. What is his scripture, what he likes, favorite food, etc are part of the God’s identity and included with that one induction. Therefore the task is not to check whether the God creates the Forms but whether he exists. Because of that initial induction of existence the believer has no reason to think that the God does not affect or created the ideals.
I believe God exists, from the perspective of a convert, because his religion continues to survive over other religions and irreligion. It survives by being universally applicable, actively evangelist, natalist, beautiful, adverse to waste, rigid, flexible, and so virtuous that it must be divinely inspired. The Christian God is appealing to social darwinists. The fittest religion should be the true one.
Your comparison of objectivity to math doesn’t make sense. Plain math is logic and does not rely on concensus of mathematicians for it to be truthful. Logic is a natural occurence in the universe. 2+2=4 because one deducts so. Also I disagree with your thinking that human aggregate morality stayed the same over history. Our ideas of sexuality, marriage, war, and lifestyle vary greatly geographically and historically. Christians don’t have multiple wives, wars are not fought over the property rights of a monarch anymore, people are gayer but not as gay as Ancient Greece. Humans and their ideas keep changing and a God does not. It’s not egregious at all.

>>12710368
Yea but what happens when people are dicks? How do you explain that to would-be convertees? How would your convertees explain this to their family members? Then you’re into your own “Christianity is too complicated to do it right” pit.

In Nausea, Sartre’s main character argues with a humanist spouting the same position.

Japan has a perfect balance I think, because they have an aggro pantheist religion (Shinto) and an ascetic monotheistic one (Buddhism) at the same time, and people are chill about it.

Bring back the Roman Gods.

>>12711312
>>12711484
Good, thoughtful posts. What did you learn that gave you this clear structural understanding of religious induction?

>>12711896
>>12711896
Untrustworthiness of our senses make me think that the only truths we are certain of are deduced. Therefore it is best to induce the least about reality. Some inductions are more trustworthy than others, such as ones reached through scientific methodology.
I started thinking about my religiousity inductively. For those concerned about the human condition, humans need principles for healthy continual existence and to prevent the results of the rat utopia experiment. It is natural for humans to survive and breed as proven by our status as DNA-ruled organisms. Even chronically diseased and retarded children struggle to survive. Whether a God is there or not we can assume humans wish for continued human existence.
We then turn to objective morals to help guide us. Should everyone have subjective morals we would live like animalistic cavemen: never past 40 due to conflict and raping as much women as possible. Subjectivity does not help humans live in dense populations, and the dense, generally religious ones conquer the sparse. Objective morals help humans survive.
At this point I decide between a God divinely commanding objective morality or finding the morals myself. If I find the morals myself I have to justify them. Since I’m not benevolent and omniscient I cannot say that the morals are objectively correct that way. I can not empirically show the morals objectively exist. So now I have to induce many ways of finding objectivity such as prevalence in history or some other soft evidence that is not certain to mean objectivity.
In contrast, inducing God exists justifies the objective morals exist. I don’t need to show why God is right. My reasons for the God induction are explained; the religion surviving in service of keeping humans from the rat utopia. Thus I induce the least about each moral and my uncertainty is kept to a minimum.

>>12711410
>When a human being desires to change something in society, they write and release a work of literature around it. This then gets spread and read by others in that culture, and possibly beyond it. I'm supposed to believe, now, that this is the same method of transmission an Infinite, Almighty, Omnipotent Being uses too?


I'm sure God could use any number of methods of transmission; but as you point out written literature is effective, there is no reason to rule it out as a legitimate method to reveal spiritual truth.


1:1.3 When you have once become truly God-conscious, after you really discover the majestic Creator and begin to experience the realization of the indwelling presence of the divine controller, then, in accordance with your enlightenment and in accordance with the manner and method by which the divine Sons reveal God, you will find a name for the Universal Father which will be adequately expressive of your concept of the First Great Source and Center. And so, on different worlds and in various universes, the Creator becomes known by numerous appellations, in spirit of relationship all meaning the same but, in words and symbols, each name standing for the degree, the depth, of his enthronement in the hearts of his creatures of any given realm.

>>12710368
Learn what a religion is first. You don't just make them up, they're vast cultural entities. What you suggest is just secular liberalism, which is already a kind of religion.