/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11198041]

What authors helped you grow out of Atheism and mature as an honest human being?
For me it was CS Lewis, Tolstoy, Schuon, Guenon, Evola, George Macdonald, Chesterton and Kierkegaard.

[Anonymous No.11198064]

>>11198041
Note the morpholical features of this individual of undetermined sex. Note the thin upper lip and the lack of a philtrum. Clearly a case of fetal alcohol syndrome. Interesting to consider also the effect ethanol has on male sperm. Often the progeny of drunkard parents, even if the mother abstains from drink during her pregnancy, come out defective. It is better if they had never been born.

[Anonymous No.11198068]

Terry Eagleton.

[Anonymous No.11198073]

>>11198041
Simone Weil, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Kant.

[Anonymous No.11198081]

>>11198073
>Simone Weil

[Anonymous No.11198137]

Why did it take so many authors? What did you grow into? Did a newfound humbleness and faith come into it, or were you entirely convinced to drop atheism through reason?

Listening to Mozart's Requiem a few years ago convinced me that reason and bitterness were insufficient to capture the essence of life. Ironically, I can't stand most music, even art stuff. I've read Chesterton, Kirk, Guenon, Voltaire and Paine against atheism, but none of them seem to do the same kind of convincing that aesthetics does naturally. Being out in nature and away from these crabbed places helps give a sense of spiritual presence, too. Ave, anon.

[Anonymous No.11198145]

>>11198041
>evola, lewis, tolstoy, chesterton
absolute fedora pleb trash

augustine, aquinas, spinoza and kierkegaard is all a man needs

[Anonymous No.11198149]

>>11198081
wtf does that mean lol

[Anonymous No.11198153]

>>11198064
He has a pretty clearly defined philtrum

[Anonymous No.11198190]

>>11198041
>he grew out of atheism
lol wut

[Anonymous No.11198198]

>>11198190
I genuinely don’t understand humans anymore.

[Anonymous No.11198259]

>>11198041
*tips mitre*
I am now an enlightened soul, with Chesterton and Lewis in my arsenal, I am quite the intellectual opponent. Just try to debate me, you hedonistic atheists.

[Anonymous No.11198263]

>>11198041
Unironically Spot the Dog

[Anonymous No.11198265]

No one did. Your list just took the fedora off my teenage atheist head a decade ago. Luckily I haven't replaced it with a Christian fedora.

[Anonymous No.11198278]

>>11198265
>Luckily I haven't replaced it with a Christian fedora.
you loss

[Anonymous No.11198279]

>>11198064
It's also pretty weird that he has 4 heads sticking out of his face
Could it be a rare genetic mutation? We may never know

[Anonymous No.11198855]

>>11198041
I'm glad you managed to beat down your logic and revert to your early childhood indoctrination, OP. I'm happy that you've managed to delude yourself that this is some kind of progressive enlightenment, rather than a sad failure to overcome your family superstitions. Good for you, son.

[Anonymous No.11198858]

>>11198263
I wish I had a dog. A dog like Spot.

[sneed No.11198867]

>>11198064
based

[Anonymous No.11198885]

>>11198855
Hahaha I'm not OP but my family is totally against religion and I went from total agnostic to christian agnostic.
I don't go to church or take part in the community but I do live out the most fundamental christian values. I try to keep my mind open for any spiritual school and mostly follow my intuition about what to persue and what not.

[Anonymous No.11198891]

In Europe atheism is not a big deal. My parents and grandparents didnt believe in god either.

[Anonymous No.11198933]

>>11198041
Funnily enough, when my faith began to waver I turned to authors such as the ones you mentioned to reaffirm my belief in God, but ultimately their specious arguments drove me away from God, strengthened my doubt. These were supposed to be the men who made the strongest cases for God, and yet it was apparent their belief was at its core predicated on pragmatic concerns, if not outright wishful thinking.

[Anonymous No.11199130]

>>11198041
Nietzsche made me understand that atheism and religion are actually two sides of the same coin and they have more similarities than differences.

[Anonymous No.11199158]

[Anonymous No.11199193]

>>11198041
>For me it was CS Lewis, Tolstoy, Schuon, Guenon, Evola, George Macdonald, Chesterton and Kierkegaard.

[Anonymous No.11199218]

>>11198855
hella frickin epic

[Anonymous No.11199251]

>>11198885
>from total agnostic to christian agnostic
Wow, what a massive leap. Show me someone raised literally atheist, by a completely irreligious family and school, who then became religious. It happens, but it's uncommon. Much more common is the "I was baptized and went to Sunday school or church some of the time, and then "became an atheist" as a teen, and then magically reverted to religious a few years later. In the latter scenario, they were never really an atheist, they were having an identity crisis that failed, not much different than a goth or emo period. People who are really raised from birth with no fuss about religion in their household or schooling generally have no reason or interest in taking on superstitions as an adult.

[Anonymous No.11199258]

>>11198855
you have to at least be 16 to post here anon

[Anonymous No.11199262]

>>11199251
>superstitions

Or maybe they evolve past a child's understanding of religion like what you're displaying here, have you maybe ever considered that

As if two thousand+ years of religious striving is just what can be communicated to a child before they turn 10. Pathetic. The absolute state of moderns. Read a book you cretin

[Anonymous No.11199273]

>>11199262
The whole christian argument is based upon faith. How do you explain this concept to someone today who relies more upon observation and evidence?

[Anonymous No.11199275]

>>11199262
Stop taking the bait you fucking faggot

[Anonymous No.11199281]

>>11199273
There are higher things than what you can see, and there are higher ways to live than basing it on what only you can touch. You'll grow out of it.

[Anonymous No.11199293]

>>11199262
"Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man."
Worship is a habit, and it works best when started early. Children usually acquire the religious views of their parents, although they may also be influenced by others they communicate with such as peers and teachers. This is the underpinning and structure of organized religion. The "evolution" you speak of comes best when it's grounded on claims fed to children before they have any ability to critically engage with or question it properly.

[Anonymous No.11199299]

>>11199281
That's a Job of an argument.

[Anonymous No.11199300]

>>11199281
And yet you have no evidence, it's just what you like to believe to make life easier on your fee fees :^)

[Anonymous No.11199306]

>>11199293
you're threatened by the fact someone might want to take up religion in their adulthood, but can't reconcile this with your kindergarten understanding of what religion is supposed to be so you keep spouting bullshit about arrested spiritual development or something. Stop.

[Anonymous No.11199313]

>>11199300
Authentic religion is born in suffering, it's not a reaction-formation against it.

[Anonymous No.11199319]

ITT fedora atheists and fedora Christians are doing their identity politicking again. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially the nu-Christians who should actually be striving to emulate Christ. Disgraceful plebs.

[Anonymous No.11199324]

>>11199300
Well if i humble myself to the christian standard tell me why god would care about me?

[Anonymous No.11199329]

>>11199306
Threatened? By what? Anon, I don't give a shit what you believe or don't. I gave an opinion on common behavior, and you took issue with it. We're not debating the existence of God here. Most people end up the same faith as their parents, or reject it. This whole thread is bait, in case you hadn't noticed.
https://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/78-of-u-s-religious-nones-were-raised-in-religious-homes

[Anonymous No.11199339]

>>11199329
Your opinion is trite garbage that demonstrates only the most superficial understanding of what you're trying to pontificate about. You're just regurgitating talking points. And I called you out on it.

[Anonymous No.11199343]

For me it was Dostoyevsky. I remember crying when Sonia read the Gospel story of Lazarus.

[Anonymous No.11199364]

>>11199339
>>11199339
You called me out with what? A few lame insults? You offered absolutely no refutation of anything I said, and haven't demonstrated any knowledge of anything, let alone religion.

[Anonymous No.11199373]

>>11199364
Simone Weil, one of the greatest spiritual minds of the 20th century, was raised in an irreligious household

[Anonymous No.11199377]

>>11198041
William Blake and Frederick Douglass, weirdly enough. I think a lot of atheists don't actually hate the idea of a God itself, so much as the things carried out with "God said so" as a justification.

>“…for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference--so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.”

[Anonymous No.11199407]

>>11199373
Yes, she's an interesting case, though wealthy agnostic Jews still probably gave her some structural religious grounding, and she was raised agnostic, not atheist. Weil had apparently mystic revelatory experiences that led her into her own unique explorations. But that's hardly the common path, is it?
This thread started with an assertion that atheists can't be "mature honest human beings," which is horseshit, and if people want to stand around patting each other on the backs for being religious, it's worth pointing out that most of the time, they're religious for exactly ONE reason: because they were trained to be as children.

[Anonymous No.11199415]

>>11199407
And you're patting yourself on the back for going after low-hanging fruit. No ones impressed by blowing the fuck out a couple Walmart fundies. Apply yourself.

[Anonymous No.11199596]

Daily reminder it has been empirically proven religiosity stifles scientific innovation.

https://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Religion%20December%201g_snd.pdf
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21052.pdf

Daily reminder the overwhelming majority of leading scientists are atheist

https://www.nature.com/articles/28478

Daily reminder religious people are less intelligent according to dozens of studies.

http://diyhpl.us/~nmz787/pdf/The_Relation_Between_Intelligence_and_Religiosity__A_Meta-Analysis_and_Some_Proposed_Explanations.pdf

Daily reminder religious people are less educated

https://www.economist.com/news/international/21623712-how-education-makes-people-less-religiousand-less-superstitious-too-falling-away

Religious people are literally a lesser breed of human

[Anonymous No.11200553]

>>11198041
>CS Lewis
imagine being this much of a brainlet. Which one of his shit arguments convinced you?

[Anonymous No.11200560]

>>11199596
muh studies

who cares. daily reminder we're all going to fucking die

[Anonymous No.11200572]

>dude atheism is bad
>dude religion is bad

[Anonymous No.11200587]

>>11198064
OPs pic is pretty fucked too

[Anonymous No.11200603]

>>11200553
the one where he says god exists because being kind feels good

[Anonymous No.11200722]

>>11198041
Actually by the time I read the major canonical works and finished the early christians up to Boethius I checked myself out of Catholicism. It feels wonderful to be free from pretending to be an intellectual for subscribing to an unfashionable antiquity. Augustine said it right, that faith is by nature that of the humble philistine, and he saw the problems of attaching reason to faith. His struggle was his reasoning getting in the way, and the only way he could escape was conforming reason to faith and upend the contradictions. All these anons have this struggle, and if you're not Augustine you have to jettison either faith or reason eventually. I had no faith and couldn't be reasoned into faith, so the choice was obvious, and I think I'm better for having explored it rather than fedora tipping for eternity.

[Anonymous No.11201369]

i know that "being christian" is a subjective idea, but i will bet money that none of you fuckers practice what you preach
you treat religion like an accessory
t. atheist

[Anonymous No.11201393]

>>11201369
Ye, I don’t make it to mass every week. Bite me.

[Anonymous No.11201399]

>>11201393
as long as you're not a sanctimonious prick like OP or some of the other people in this thread, i couldn't possibly care less. i just dislike the feigned attempt at superiority despite having no actual devotion to your beliefs.

[Anonymous No.11201506]

>>11198041
Oh boy it's just another of those christicucks vs atheists thread...
This is like Guns, Flath Earth or Climate Change, it's only a matter of debate in AmeriKKKa
You fucking racemixed and retarded mutts.

[Anonymous No.11201518]

>>11201506
add circumcision to that. Half of the males in that country are in denail that they were mutilated at birth

[Anonymous No.11201599]

>>11199596
>Daily reminder it has been empirically proven religiosity stifles scientific innovation.
Because religious people were having families and living their live instead of pursuing their own technocratic ambitions.
>Daily reminder the overwhelming majority of leading scientists are atheist
The Enlightenment killed our ability to talk about God, so what the hell do you expect? Everyone is overwhelmingly atheist because intellectually we shot ourselves in the foot.
>Daily reminder religious people are less intelligent according to dozens of studies.
a.k.a mid-wits who were smart enough to doubt the authenticity of the established faiths but not smart enough to overcome those doubts, as the brightest minds can.
>Daily reminder religious people are less educated
he doesn't know that historically religious-run schools have been the gold standard of education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alumni_of_Jesuit_educational_institutions

[Anonymous No.11201601]

>>11198885
>agnostic
>Don't go to church or engage in any Christian activities
These are the """""Christians""""" who post on /lit/

[Anonymous No.11201612]

>>11199251
>Show me someone raised literally atheist, by a completely irreligious family and school, who then became religious.
Literally me. My family actively hates religion, and so did I until I saw the light.

[Anonymous No.11201616]

>>11201599
BTFO

[Anonymous No.11201636]

>>11201599
pointless post

[Anonymous No.11201643]

>>11201599
Literally Cope: the post

[Anonymous No.11201647]

>>11198041

Jordan Peterson, unironically

[Anonymous No.11201653]

>>11201647
Cringe

[Anonymous No.11201664]

>>11198190
For a lot of people on here, religion (or lack of it) is just sort of a personal identification. They don't care about the faith, the experience, the rules or the theology and philosophy, they care about staying ahead of the curve and not being cringey by internet standards.

[Anonymous No.11201680]

>>11198041
How do you reconcile Guenon with Evola?

Should become patently obvious that Evola is obsessed with the martial form of manifestation

[Anonymous No.11201681]

>>11198041
>What authors help me LARP as a based kekistani anti-fedora DEUS VULT christian on public forums?

[Anonymous No.11201685]

>>11199251
Me.

And to OP my answer is Phillip K Dick. VALIS.

[Anonymous No.11201690]

>>11201681
How is your idea of religion so retarded? Are you actually the kid in OPs pic?

[Anonymous No.11201712]

>>11201690
yeah this. atheist brainlets here don't seem to understand that God is about a profound surrender of the self in order that we may, God willing, retrieve that very self that, before God, we had never truly grasped since the self is only grasped in that very failure in the act of grasping what is only tantalising in its loose and mute appearance of utter ungraspability.

Dawkins and Hitchens don't even understand this position though.

[Anonymous No.11201718]

>>11201712
GOLDEN lol

[Anonymous No.11201720]

>>11201690
As an Agnostic, I have a positive definition of religion as the majority of my family are Christians. I do this despite not full believing in it myself.

It's my idea of disingenuous people who post anti-fedora memes in such a close proximity to Jordan Memerson and /pol/ content that I picture in my head as mentally impaired.

[Anonymous No.11201721]

>>11201712
No atheist brainlet does. Faith just is its impossibility.

[Anonymous No.11201726]

>>11201718
>>11201643
>>11201636

embarrassing

[Anonymous No.11201727]

>>11201720
based oberstein poster

[Anonymous No.11201736]

>>11201720
What is wrong with you that you see people talking about God and think of Jordan Peterson and /pol/?

[Anonymous No.11201740]

>>11201720
>>11201727
This is the single most obvious samefag I have ever seen in my life, and it will never be surpassed.

[Anonymous No.11201750]

>>11201736
Don't play dumb, you know perfectly what he means

[Anonymous No.11201755]

>>11201720
Based

[Anonymous No.11201764]

>>11201740
lol

[Anonymous No.11201772]

>>11201750
I know what he means, and he's a retard.

He's equating religion itself with reactionary youth subculture.

[Anonymous No.11201773]

>>11201764
We're down to shill tactics now are we?

[Anonymous No.11201783]

>>11201772
>He's equating religion itself with reactionary youth subculture.
In all likelihood, I'm actually equating reactionary youth subculture with reactionary youth subculture.

[Anonymous No.11201796]

>>11201773
>>11201764
>by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

[Anonymous No.11201802]

>>11201796
META

[Anonymous No.11201806]

>>11201750

See? >>11201783

[Anonymous No.11201811]

>>11201783
I actually didn't get into god until after I got into Marx, and I'm 30.

t. PKD poster

[Anonymous No.11201821]

>>11201399
I’m disappointed in the sin fullness of modernity, but I largely keep it to myself.

[Anonymous No.11201837]

>>11201806
I still think you don't appreciate that I'm not so much constructing arguments against theism moreso than I am just personally calling you a misrepresentative lying troll and I see through your faggoty intentions.

Anyway, God Bless you friend :^)

[Anonymous No.11201838]

>>11201518
circumcision isn’t mutilation you dumb fucking faggot, its proven (with studies in the last 5 years) to lower rates of HIV and HPV transmission and to cause less vaginal bacterial infections. The Egyptians, Aborigenes, Jews, Babylonians, Nubians and other African races all practiced it to prevent against disease and infections. Its not done to cause desensitization because there is the same fucking amount of nerves in your foreskin as your elbow. Again all studies done in the last 10 years show its safe, has absolutely minimal effect on sexual performance or experience (null) and does benefit populations with high rates of STI’s. In fact its probably that lower rates of circumcision are one of the factors contributing to rampant STI revival in the US, with immigrants, thotdom and birth control being the other major causes.

and again, women prefer cut men over uncut men this is why pornstars will go out of their way to get adult circumcisions done. its the same as men demanding women get their labia clipped, it looks more aesthetic. we are not made in god’s image (ironic because of the religious reason behind circumcision being a sign of jews being in the image of god), you do not need large portions of your biology.

[Anonymous No.11201855]

>>11201837
what the fuck

[Anonymous No.11201866]

Well apparently unlike 99% of /lit/ I didn't affect atheism as a "fuck you" to my parents in my teens and then grow out of it. I just never believed in god in the first place since I was raised agnostic and never went to church. Religion seems nice, I'd like it to be apart of my life, but unfortunately I don't see any compelling reason to believe it and pretending to do so to fit in would make me a hypocrite.

[Anonymous No.11201871]

>>11201740
UM
>>11201796
wait hol up

[Anonymous No.11201875]

>>11201871
It's a web extension editor.

Or something.

Idk, it's funny though.

[Anonymous No.11201879]

>>11198041
>seeking this hard for validation
Arrogant, churlish. Stop embarrassing yourself, OP.

[Anonymous No.11201881]

>>11198137
The Requiem is an absolutely supreme work of art. I doubt any genuine art can emerge out of atheism.

[Anonymous No.11201887]

>>11201875
yeah it's got me laffin

[Anonymous No.11201890]

>>11201881

[Anonymous No.11201897]

>>11201890
Save the brainlet memes for when you prove him wrong faggot

[Anonymous No.11201898]

>>11198137
The fact that you define absence of faith as "reason and bitterness" just shows me you weren't ever really atheist. You were just bitter about life and wanted God to come into it to prove to you that grace did exist. And wow look at that, it happened just like you secretly always wanted. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Anonymous No.11201899]

>>11201881
>maybe if i hang a crucifix in my bedroom i will write better!
>i hope mom lets me nail it to the wall

[Anonymous No.11201923]

i think atheists are right a lot more than some christians i heard growing up. i'm going to start going to mass again and have been spending an hour daily on spiritual reading and prayer but i still like sam harris or music like bad religion. dawkins seemed sort of confused about what he was arguing and i didnt read hitchens. i get mad because certain christian seem to care more about trying to make their interlocutors sound like a fools with dishonest verbal traps instead of dialogue (my baptist dad was like this etc)

[Anonymous No.11202078]

>>11201881
>I doubt any genuine art can emerge out of atheism.
Better start weeding your shelves of heretics, there, anon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheist_authors

[Anonymous No.11202087]

Friendly reminder, if you're still a materialist, you're a fucking moron.

[Anonymous No.11202126]

>>11202087
You don't have to be a materialist to be an atheist, if that's what you're suggesting. Theists often seem confused about what's implied by atheism. Being an agnostic atheist (and essentially all atheists are to some degree, in the sense that some stunning proof of a deity's existence--Thor landing in front of them with lightning blazing, etc.--would cause them to rethink their views: atheism is largely a desire for evidence that isn't forthcoming) just means I don't see enough proof that any deities exist, and so choose not to believe in them. It doesn't necessarily mean I believe in evolution, Big Bang, or any other theory. It doesn't mean I read Dawkins, worship science or even think the world is round. I can believe in ghosts, UFOs, elves, the Loch Ness Monster, and Atlantis. Literally the only requirement is that I don't believe in any supernatural beings that I consider holy or sacred. I don't have to explain the fossil record or the history of the universe. It doesn't mean I hate religion, or churches, or want to see the end of anyone else's faith. It has nothing to do with whether I give to charities, try to be moral or ethical, or obey the law. It doesn't mean I think life is meaningless, or care what anyone else believes or thinks. I just reject theist explanations for lack of compelling evidence, just as theists reject other faiths.

[Anonymous No.11202130]

>>11201898
No, I never traded in reason and bitterness for faith. I was made aware of another dimension of understanding through art, which I had not been aware of before. I wish. If God could just descend unto me and take away all the bitterness and doubt like evangelists claim he would, then I'd probably not be reading 4chan anymore.

Does having realized the self-fulfillment of chaotic generation and the manifested improbability of reality while simultaneously not formally recognizing any deity qualify me as having been an atheist, or do I need to have read Sagan, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc.? Or maybe there is some euphoric ceremony of affirmation I hadn't been aware of?

[Anonymous No.11202143]

>>11202130
>Or maybe there is some euphoric ceremony of affirmation I hadn't been aware of?
As long as you formally renounce the works of Chesterton and pay your annual membership dues on time, you're fine.

[Anonymous No.11202148]

>>11202078
>kafka
>atheist

[Anonymous No.11202155]

>>11198279
hahahah
Those where added in via a photo editing program like photoshop or gimp.
He doesn't really have 4 heads growing out of his face. lol

[Anonymous No.11202158]

>>11198041
God

[Anonymous No.11202173]

>>11202148
Heh. I knew some silly person was going to start hunting through the dozens of names on that page looking for ones they disagreed with. His name has seven sources cited: go argue with them. I don't care if Kafka was an atheist.

[Anonymous No.11202320]

>>11202087
>Friendly reminder, if you're still a materialist, you're a fucking moron.