/lit/ - Literature

>>13448913
Read Pascal

Suffer in solitude. You can't read your way to God if you're starting from zero.

>>13448913
Nihilism is the safest way; you'll have nothing to lose. You'll likely keep your sanity as well, as it holds nothing important, so your fragments won't maintain madness.

>>13448931
Why would you even write that out? What is your motivation? You’re dead wrong.

>>13448913
>christianity
Eww.

I went from atheist to theist when I was in deep depression, so it's definitely possible. Once you no longer fear death it's easiest to accept the horror and despair of God, so you're actually closer to the truth than most.

If you're trying to conceive of faith as something that you can get a way to, you're already doing it wrong. I recommend starting with Kierkegaard and then unironically find the best priest you can.

Religion is a slow and difficult process, and it's not a switch you can flick or an idea you can implant in your head. I can't speak to Christianity because I'm not a Christian, but approaching God is one of the hardest tasks you can possibly have.

Good luck.

>>13448940
This notion of "oh boy, if I just read the right syllogisms maybe I, too, will have Faith" is killing religious discourse.

The guy self-describes as a nihilist, he probably hasn't read a book outside of class since high school. Probably the type to read Fear & Trembling and come back here to complain it's word salad. A book won't save him, he needs to cultivate an inward reality the book can only point to.

pray, or even do silent prayers

>>13448974
Whatever advice OP needs can be found in a book, though.

>>13449007
The sort of process one needs in order to be able to come to faith is not (imo) a primarily intellectual one. Sure, you can read about the experiences and thoughts of philosophers, theologians and rabbis and priests on faith, but faith is (as Kierkegaard recognised) an actual movement. An action, that one needs to partake in.

>>13449007
fair enough, this should help him:

https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/seil/index.htm

>>13449030
Ok, then OP needs a book with similar advice that tells him exactly what he should be doing.

>>13449039
No, because faith requires the adoption of an actual life-view/world-view which one fundamentally cannot cultivate entirely through intellectual means. Abraham wasn't confronted by God on the basis that he realised that God existed, he was confronted by God in the action of faith that he undertook.

Faith will not come to you if you bamboozle yourself into believing in God, which is the best that any book or advice that we could give. Real, authentic faith, which possesses the emancipatory and redemptive quality which OP wants will come through action, and only through specifically and peculiarly religious action. So the book OP's looking for is the Tenakh.

>>13449066
Dude, you’re being really pedantic. Do you think OP could come to the right conclusion without reading SOMETHING?! Hilariously enough, you still recommend a book

>>13449099
>Do you think OP could come to the right conclusion without reading SOMETHING?
Not him, but I believe it is so. Reading can give you good ideas, but expressing and experiencing life has to happen in the life in question. No amount of reading can do it, but there are helpful ideas around.

>>13449099
I don't think it's a huge contradiction in terms to recommend religious texts to help someone come to religion, but that's not the point. I only want to caution against an overly simplistic apprehension of faith that treats it like any other sort of knowledge. That's really all.

>>13449116
I’m not simply suggesting that you ONLY read, with nothing else to it. It’s as if you think I’m recommending Starting Strength to someone who wants to get strong, and I’m only suggesting that they read the book, and not do what the book tells them to do.

>>13448913

3 tabs of acid

>>13448913
Lobotomy

>>13449066
Pretentious retard

>>13449145
Start with the Sumerians

Dostoyevsky

The Heart of Plotinus: The Essential Enneads

You just need to have faith and believe. How to do this, I don't know.

You have to understand yourself to understand religion. You have to open your eyes to the truth. Easier said than done, and the path is different for every fellow.

When I realized what religion I was, it was like a missing part of me suddenly clicked into place. I didn't decide on a religion, I just finished the puzzle. Everything I am, it all pointed to a single truth. And I didn't have to change a single thing once I realized what I was. I've been practicing my religion my whole life, I just had no idea what it meant.

My sexual attraction to the earth, my diet, my refusal to do certain actions...I was always what I was, but I didn't always know it.

>>13452056
>My sexual attraction to the earth
lmao

>>13448913
Drugs.

Either that, or just pretend that God exists. For once in your life, just pretend like everyone else.