/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19714982]

I've realised atheism/materialism/nihilism is bullshit but I'm not sure where to go from here. There are so many religious denominations and worldviews out there that it's hard to know which to choose. I guess I could just become Christian because that's the religion of my country but that seems rather too narrow-minded. Which books should I read to guide me through this?

[Anonymous No.19715005]

Mein kampf

[Anonymous No.19715010]

im in the same position, not really religious yet, and I too find myself drifting towards Christianity, but specifically for the reason of how it seems to reflect the human experience. I have a bible in the mail and I will be reading it and looking at through that lens, how it reflects the human experience, and I think that will be a major part in how I will go about choosing, along with another major aspect, which is whether or not it really inspires faith

[Anonymous No.19715016]

>>19714982
The Bible.

[Anonymous No.19715020]

>I've realised atheism/materialism/nihilism is bullshit but I'm not sure where to go from here
There is no where to go from here and no thing to do. Read Zen Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.19715022]

>>19715020
Buddhism is essentially atheism and the critiques I have of atheism apply to it as well.

[Anonymous No.19715028]

>>19714982
Bullshit in what sense? Bullshit in the sense that you have no positive reason to belief in it? Fine. But it only makes sense to say that atheism is definitively false in the light of some judgement that theism (of some kind) is positively true. Which you haven't done. Honestly OP it seems like you ought to be a sceptic (in the classical sense) until such time as a particular worldview strikes you as convincing or true. I don't know why you are so eager to jump into a new belief system now that you've given your old one up, and not on the basis that you think it is very probably correct, but because of some other motive, like needing to fill the void

[Anonymous No.19715045]

>>19715028
>Bullshit in what sense?
Materialism is self-refuting because it destroys the possibility of any sort of human inquiry, including empirical science. All fields of human inquiry -- mathematics, science, ethics, metaphysics, etc. -- have to assume certain immaterial concepts like the laws of logic. It is only through the use of these laws that the scientist studying cat biology, eg., can draw any conclusions whatosever.
And yet the laws of logic are immaterial, eternal, and transcendental. They would have existed without us, and will continue to exist even if we dissappear. To prove this is easy. Imagine for a moment that the laws of logic were only "the way our brains work". This would mean that we have no basis whatsoever to assert the superiority of logical thought over other forms of thought. An emotional argument, or even a nonesense one, like "goo goo ga ga therefore God exists" would be just as valid as a logically deductive one. This is because both arguments are simply "operations of the brain", movements of particles, and no movement of particles can be "truer" than another movement of particles. Just like no firework can be "truer" than another firework, no chemical explosion in the brain can be "truer" than another.
This means that atheism leads directly into skepticism (as even atheists like Hume observed), which is untenable. Hence atheism is false.

[Anonymous No.19715059]

You are now ready, OP.

[Anonymous No.19715061]

>>19714982
>>19715010
Okay, listen to me now, and listen good. Ignore all the other anons. I am writing this so that we may not lose two more brains which may actually think something interesting and live better lives: do not go for religions. Do not read the bible, the quran or whatever. Those are books written by idiots in the desert with no formation whatsoever. And were not inspired by god or whatever. Do not fall for spirituality, Evola, Guenon or any of that bullshit. You just came out of a series of positions (materialism, nihilism or whatever) you accepted merely because they where incepted into you, that is, by faith. You don't want to go back to faith and just change its name. If you call it God or matter or science it doesn't matter as long as you merely believe in it instead of thinking about it. Forge your own beliefs and make a thorough and deep study of philosophy. Think for yourself and stop getting stuff spoonfed to you by parents, television, priests or other anons - me included. My advice is that you start with pic related and go through some Plato and see how it goes from there. Think about the problems and move on. You don't need to subscribe to Platonism or any kind of -ism to read this. If you are not convinced, make an argument. Don't just simply believe in certain theories, including those of smart people like Plato's. The difference between Plato and the Bible is that Plato will encourage you to doubt him, like all good teachers. The bible and religious books will do the exact opposite. Please read philosophy for at least two good years and don't become another christian LARPer. If you want further suggestions (for philosophy) I'm here for the day. But please absolutely don't give in to the people telling you to believe in books instead of thinking about them.

[Anonymous No.19715084]

>>19715059
I don't get this. Is he a Hindu or a Muslim or a Toaist or a Christian? I don't like religious indifferentism. If you are going to pick a religion, pick one, instead of trying to meld them all together.

[Anonymous No.19715087]

>>19714982
>>19715010
In the same position as you.

>>19715061
I read the Republic recently and liked it quite a bit. One of my takeaways though was that I should be more open minded to religious and spiritual ideas. As I have not read the bible, but I have read Evola, would you say that you should not even touch these beliefs even though there is defiantly stuff to be gained from reading into them. Or do you just mean to not buy into a blind faith and forgoing reason.

[Anonymous No.19715089]

>>19715045
Have you read Elizabeth Anscombe's criticism of this argument? She was not a naturalist by the way, she was a Roman Catholic. Nevertheless she did not think this refutation of naturalism worked.

>Anscombe argued that Lewis has not shown that materialism is self-contradictory and that it impugns the validity of rational inference. She begins by rejecting his "rule" that "no thought is valid if it can be fully explained as the result of irrational causes." This rule implies that any cause that is not rational is irrational. But that does not follow. There is a distinction between irrational and nonrational causes. Irrational causes are psychological states that interfere with a person's ability to think rationally—for example, passions, self-interest, wanting to see only one side of an issue, prejudicial adherence to the tenets of a particular party or school of thought, and so forth. Nonrational causes, on the other hand, are not psychological states, but physical conditions—for example, arthritis, a tumor on the brain, jaundice, tuberculosis, and so forth. These conditions can interfere with a person's ability to think and act rationally, but they need not. Because of his mistaken equation of irrational with nonrational causes, Lewis was "led to imagine" that if all human behavior, including thought, could be fully explained in terms of causal laws, rational inference would no longer be valid. Anscombe thinks that this is true in the case of irrational causes, but not in the case of nonrational ones.
>To show this, she examines his contention that naturalism destroys the distinction between valid and invalid reasoning. She begins by observing that sometimes he talks about the validity of a piece of reasoning and sometimes about the validity of reasoning itself. She wonders what he means by the latter. What she is driving at is this: If you were asked to explain the concept of validity, the "most obvious" way would be to produce examples of valid and invalid reasoning and explain that (and why) the conclusion follows from the premises in the valid arguments and that (and why) it does not follow in the invalid ones. These examples would serve as paradigms of valid and invalid arguments. But while it is meaningful to ask whether a piece of reasoning is valid, it is meaningless to ask that about reasoning itself. The concepts of validity and invalidity are parasitic on paradigmatic examples of valid and invalid arguments.

[Anonymous No.19715103]

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSzzuYDEQ4KBjMaqwqeYEiLxrRr83xwpi

Read Copleston's history of Greek and Medieval philosophy and pay special attention to platonism

[Anonymous No.19715110]

>>19715022
>the critiques I have of atheism apply to it as well.
Which are?

[Anonymous No.19715113]

>>19715084
He's a perennialist: that all religions are branches from the one truth that have idiosyncrasies based on location (though these are generally accidental and not essential).
He does encourage you to pick one tradition and stick to it. The one you pick should be closest to you in terms of disposition and then you progress from a branch towards the centre. Looking outwards from the centre or origin, one can appreciate the interconnectedness of the branches due to their same underlying principle without suffering from syncretism.

[Anonymous No.19715125]

>>19715061
Many of the best platonists were theists. What about Philo and Origen? Some of Philo's mystical tracts are so beautiful.

[Anonymous No.19715126]

read: "Phänomenologie des Geistes" of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Maybe you will be the first Human to understand it.

[Anonymous No.19715129]

>>19715061
reason and philosophy are ultimately faith based too, my pseud friend. rationalism is just justification for irrationalism, an artificial construct, an illusion to dress up faith. the only reason the western philosophical tradition inevitably devolved into nihilism and materialism in the first place is because reason can only ultimately justify a faith in nothing, because nothing is exactly the maximum extent of our knowledge of existence, and faith in nothingness and meaninglessness is the only sort of faith rationalism can justify without admitting its own true irrationalist faith-based nature which would ultimately undermine itself.

[Anonymous No.19715132]

Look up some Alan Watts lectures on youtube, they are a nice soft intro to contemplative traditions for newbies

[Anonymous No.19715133]

>>19715110
>>19715045

[Anonymous No.19715137]

>>19715110
Science and fedora bad

[Anonymous No.19715149]

>>19715087
No I don't think those ideas, or spiritual ideas in general, are wrong in themselves. In fact, there is much to take from these. But I have problems with how you get to them, and whether the fact that you adhere to certain positions leaves you open to revise your ideas and eventually evolve further or not.
Take Evola, for instance: in the intro of Revolt Against the Modern world he makes it clear and explicity that he's coming from a platonic mindset, making a division between two planes of existence. My problem with his books and Guenon's, as well as with religious books and many, are not taken to be thought about. They often talk as if they were talking to initiates and just pile one ancient authority over the other until it looks like the whole history of religion is agreeing with them. That way, you either buy into their metaphysics or you don't. If you do, you do purely because it looks good to you, much like christianity, or islam, or materialism looked good to you purely for aesthetic reasons (including the aesthetic reason of thinking that your parents are beautiful and right which makes you buy in their beliefs in the first place, as a kid).
So from this point on you can either read things and question them, or you can jump into some other thing you'll blindly believe in until the whole worldview collapses again, inevitably. No one, not even the best philosophers, understood everything, so maintaining a degree of flexibility and being open to revise your worldview is essential to live well. "Beliving" in things, or subscribing to worldviews without doubting them and questioning will make your life either a giant LARPer illusion, where you think you have been isekaid in a world where no one understands you and you are a spiritual warrior with superpowers (Evola), or it will make you suffer incredible pain when the next existential crisis inevitably comes and forces you to restructure everything. The best way to live, at least in my opinion, is to always keep restructuring your worldview yourself, that is, to keep thinking continously and to continously doubt what you think. This includes your most well rooted beliefs. And it means to read people who claim the opposite of what you believe, be honest with yourself, and learn to see the weaknesses that undermine your own theories. Read Plato, and read Nietzsche who thought of his own philosophy as a reversed Platonism. Weigh both, think for yourself, choose which one looks more convincing to you with arguments. That way, when you believe something, you don't take it for its surface value or aesthetic appeal. And you can change your mind, when you need to.

[Anonymous No.19715153]

>>19715113
Lol what. Islam says Jesus is not the Son of God and was not crucified. Christianity says he is and was. These are directly contradictory. You can't say they are substantially the same.

[Anonymous No.19715158]

Colin Wilson, The Occult & Beyond the Occult

Good summaries of most esoteric movements and ideas

[Anonymous No.19715169]

>>19715129
Philosophers have always known that their premises were faith based at least since Aristotle. The difference between them and priests is that they question precisely those premises, as well as the fact that they should be faith based at all, while christian philosophy doesn't. If you read medieval philosophy it looks like one of those Dark Souls run where you impose yourself horrible limitations and try to get to the final boss anyway - the horrible limitation being that what you think must agree with the Bible.

[Anonymous No.19715170]

>>19715089
She's just nitpicking. I didn't ask whether "reasoning was valid" nor did I say that the movement of particles in the brain was "logically invalid." I just said movements of particles possess no truth-value. You cannot say one movement of particles is truer, or better, than another. This is obvious to me.

[Anonymous No.19715177]

>>19715149
kek your entire post literally boils down to "dont actually believe in anything because you might feel bad if you end up wrong!". you probably thought this was so enlightened too, lmao

[Anonymous No.19715183]

>>19715045
>>19715170
I still don't understand how this is pushes you towards religion?

[Anonymous No.19715185]

>>19715183
pushing*

[Anonymous No.19715198]

>>19715169
>while christian philosophy doesn't.
is this a joke? im not even religious myself but god damn man you seriously need to actually fucking READ before you pretend to be an authority on these things. plenty of theologians and general christian writers have been devastatingly critical of christian philosophy. your perception of religion is literally an r/atheism tier strawman. pull your head out of your ass, holy shit dude

[Anonymous No.19715209]

>>19714982
/thread

[Anonymous No.19715225]

>>19714982
I had a similar experience after experiencing based Aristotle and analytic German idealists like Sebastian Rödl, when before I was caught up with sophistic pseudo-thoughts and despicable nihilism and anti-natalism. What also really helped was to employ the "principle of charity" on the things I read. Don't just become something, you have to be truly convinced, after all God could be real but the books, dogmas and traditions could all be a lie or a half-truth. People might laugh about it, but I became convinced with 26 of the one common God after I read the Oxford translation of the Quran when before I had vague pantheist ideas. To make myself clear, I consider my understanding to be mostly in line with Quranism (sola scriptura). Through that I lately also found new appreciation and interest in studying Old and New Testament.

Have a look at pic related, in case your search is more broad.

[Anonymous No.19715230]

>>19715149
Thanks for response. I certainly do consider this. This is somewhat reassuring as I have recently found myself more open to being spiritual but cannot abide myself to a belief system really. But I guess I have recently being desiring the comfort of absolute values that I can abide by in my life which had lead me looking into things such as Christianity.

[Anonymous No.19715235]

>>19715183
Because there's a whole host of immaterial categories you have to presuppose to even have knowledge of basic things. For example, both my curtains and my bedsheets are blue. How do I know this? Through the senses? No; my senses can only give me one blue surface and another blue surface. The association of the two is an act of the mind. If this act of the mind is merely "the way my brain works", then it is not trustworthy. If it is my soul's interaction with the immaterial form of Similarity, then it is. Hence Similarity is another one of these immaterial categories I have to presuppose in order to know anything.

But the existence of these immaterial categories implies a God who associates the material world with the immaterial. The material world alone could not generate the immaterial, much less accurately implant it in our minds.

[Anonymous No.19715261]

>>19714982
Just think for yourself retard you don't have to follow any group specifically. There's no clan requirements in real life anymore....Also start with the greeks

[Anonymous No.19715265]

>>19715061
>Forge your own beliefs and make a thorough and deep study of philosophy.
>Please read philosophy for at least two good years
>Don't just simply believe in certain theories, including those of smart people like Plato's.

Absolutely based. Platon and Aristotle are so unbelievably high up there (much more than e.g. Kant, although he too is edifying), that as a guy who turned religious after starting philosophy genuinely and unironically get the feeling that they or at least Sokrates may have been a prophet.

[Anonymous No.19715272]

>>19715235
Even so, what's it got to do with a Religious God.

[Anonymous No.19715280]

>>19715272
Well I'm not entirely sure that's why I haven't gone into one religion or worldview specifically. I want to find out who this God is if that's possible, and religion purports to establish a relationship with him.

[Anonymous No.19715289]

>>19715084
>If you are going to pick a religion, pick one, instead of trying to meld them all together.
That's exactly what Guenon believed. He chose Islam as his one religion he practiced and believed in. However like the anon said, there are definitely connections between religions, and they have similar truths (or the same truth) they try to convey, e.g. the similarity of daoism's "the way" and Greek "logos" being the reincarnation of the Word of Jesus. Thus it's important to study other religions in order to understand your own

[Anonymous No.19715295]

>>19715061
This is the "thought" spider trying to get you trapped in a web of endless thoughts for the rest of your life. Treat him as you will. Just know that the mind is only an instrument, just like sight and hearing.

[Anonymous No.19715297]

>>19715280
>who this God is if that's possible
You can't
>and religion purports to establish a relationship with him.
They don't.

[Anonymous No.19715305]

>>19715297
You have to make arguments not assertions if you want to be convincing

[Anonymous No.19715335]

>>19715305
How do you think religion establishes a relationship with the Creator?

[Anonymous No.19715354]

>>19715335
I know the most about Christianity so I'll answer from their perspective. In Christianity you can pray directly to the creator. You also have his Church, which orients your life around him and his moral code. Then you have the Eucharist, which is supposed to be the actual physical body and blood of Jesus, the creator who became man, which you literally eat. In the afterlife you take on the creator's divine nature and become one with him.
Whether this is true is another question.

[Anonymous No.19715371]

>>19715354
>Whether this is true is another question.
But isn't that the most important question? You say that you want to establish a relationship with the Creator. Then shouldn't you be looking for a method that you are sure that it works. If you can't find any, you should atleast try every possible method.

[Anonymous No.19715372]

>>19715153
I would agree that it's a contradiction, but the "phenomenon" of the crucification was true according to the Quran though. It implies that people saw it as that ("it was made to appear like that to them"), but it denies it being the noumenal truth. Also interestingly, the fact that Jesus should be considered part of a trinity and son of God was only added and dogmatized trough church and not shared by the initial non-hellenistic christians who used to be jews. Even today there are unitarians who disagree, e.g. the Christadelphians who understand Jesus partly similar to the Quran. The muslim exegete Al-Ghazali from the Middle Ages too understood the Bible (Gospel of John to be exact) to not necessarily be contradictory to the Quran, in his book "The Excellent Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus through the Text of the Gospel "

> Quran 3:59 (Oxford Translation by Abdel Haleem)
"In God’s eyes Jesus is just like Adam: He created him from dust, said to him, ‘Be’, and he was. "

> Quran 4:157
"and said, ‘We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of God.’ They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them; those that disagreed about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him-"

[Anonymous No.19715429]

>>19715372
There's not a single Christian anywhere who doesn't believe that Jesus was crucified. And no honest reading of the New Testament gives you an Islamic Jesus so what's the point in pretending? ESPECIALLY the Gospel of John lmao.

[Anonymous No.19715483]

>>19715429
>There's not a single Christian anywhere who doesn't believe that Jesus was crucified

This is not what I said. Notice I said "partly similar" and additionally refered to what I meant with the first citation. Looking up a group on wikipedia also wasn't too much to ask. If you're not even willing to uprightly read something as short as a comment, I don't know what to say. I just shared some light on the fact that there is differing understanding as well. I did not disagree with your initial comment in case you did not notice, but since it seems there is no point in replying to you, I will bother you no more

[Anonymous No.19715499]

>>19715483
https://youtu.be/nNAS0aaViM4
This video shows that Islam is self refuting. Cope.

[Anonymous No.19715586]

>>19715499
>arguing with a youtube videos

I'm not going to do you the favor of doing your home work for you (maybe next time read at least some secondary literature), just that

- the Injil (arabic word for evangelium) is mentioned in the Quran to be a scripture (singular) that Jesus brought/proclaimed. (19:30 "he said: ‘I am a servant of God. He has granted me the Scripture; made me a prophet") This is in opposition to what the gospels (plural) in the bible are. Not even Christians say that it's a book proclaimed by Jesus. Now what is meant with Injil is indeed a good question.
- Quran 18:27 (timestamp 3:27 of your video) refers to the Quran only, as is clear to all exegetes and through the context
- Quran 7:157 is sometimes understood as to refer to John 14:16. Also there is something similar (reading comprehension help: "similar" not the same) in the old testament, but I won't find it as fast
- As for Quran 5:68 and the other citation I shall only refer to 2:149 "Those We gave Scripture know it as well as they know their own sons, but some of them hide the truth that they know." emphasis on the hidden truth that "they know"

Do and believe whatever you want, mate, hell think of the Quran whatever you want, honestly, I wish you all the best, but don't throw this lowbrow shit at me and maybe refer to written words in the future being on /lit/ and all instead of trusting sophistic video creators who argue unrighteously. Also look up "principle of charity" on wikipedia

[Anonymous No.19715593]

>>19715586
Cope more bud. The Qu'ran exhorts the Christians of Muhhamads day to look to the Gospel and "judge by what allah has revealed" in it. We know what scriptures the Christians of Muhhamad's day were reading; we have manuscripts of them. They are the same as the Christians scriptures of today. I am merely following the Qu'ran's own command and judging the Qu'ran by the Gospel, which shows me that the Qu'ran is false.

[Anonymous No.19715597]

>>19715170
>I just said movements of particles possess no truth-value. You cannot say one movement of particles is truer, or better, than another. This is obvious to me.
So? It seems to me that a human mind can observe (or reason) that one statement has more or less correspondence with the (apparent) state of affairs of particles than another statement. This seems to me to be the basis of reasoning.

[Anonymous No.19715615]

Nu-theism is cringe

[Anonymous No.19715636]

Beyond Good and Evil
Genealogy of Morals
The Gay Science
Thus Spoke Zarathustra

[Anonymous No.19715643]

This thread is so fucking gay

[Anonymous No.19715644]

>>19715597
The point is that if materialism is true then the laws of logic are not objective, transcendental, eternal, and immaterial, but are reducible to movements of particles in the brain. Thought IS brain activity and nothing more. It is really irrelevant whether or not some statements seem intuitive to you, because those statements might not seem intuitive to someone else, as is evidenced by our disagreement here. On a materialist paradigm there is no way of deciding between any two rival thoughts, because both of those thoughts are just identical to chemical reactions in the brain, and no chemical reaction is "truer" than another. Moreover, there is no "you", there is no "mind", and there is no consciousness under a materialist paradigm, so you are not justified in appealing to these things in the first place.
The only options are total skepticism or an abandonment of atheism.

[Anonymous No.19715645]

>bullshit

You haven’t read enough

[Anonymous No.19715647]

>>19715593
I think you're misusing the word "cope" or I'm not getting what exactly I am coping for. As I said, do what you want. If that's your conclusion, that's your conclusion. But if you base your decision on citations taken out of context and are not interested in why people might think otherwise, imho (which does not need to interest you) you're not really arguing with truth in mind, you're just to lazy to read and prefer to take shortcuts. Of course even then one could be right (Even a blind hen sometimes finds a grain..), but imo that's chance, not knowledge.

As I said, I myself struggle to understand what part of the gospels the Injil refers to that one should "recognize" (in lack of a better word), I didn't come in contact with the Quran from a Christian or any religious background. That is something I have yet to study, let me conclude with the following fun fact that might or might not lead in the right direction when it comes to the Torah at least: "Rabbinic law [...] prohibits any direct, public teaching of the secrets of the Torah." (Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides)

[Anonymous No.19715650]

>>19714982
I hate women so much it's unreal

[Anonymous No.19715663]

>>19715644
Do the laws of logic have to be "objective" in some extra-mental sense in order to be functional? I also don't see what the problem is with admitting a sceptical epistemology, and then building upon that with probabilistic reasoning. Just because there is no ultimate, buck-stopping method of distinguishing between true and false beliefs doesn't mean that people can't form general agreements on the basis of reasoning (for instance, philosophical proofs that seem valid). It seems to me that you are rejecting materialism because you want reasoning to be more trustworthy than it actually is. The actual history of human reasoning (and the fact people have not ever been able to form solid consensuses based on certain knowledge) certainly lends itself to a sceptic interpretation. Even a lot of Christian thought often incorporates some degree of philosophical scepticism.

[Anonymous No.19715711]

>>19715663
Any knowledge at all, even probabilistic, falls apart at the seams if it has no universalizable rational basis. It's no longer even an opinion, because an opinion is related to an object, it is just an arrangement of atoms interacting in a certain way. These cannot be related to an object, because they are the only object, so there cannot be knowledge (which would presuppose an object and a subject - concepts that are fundamentally logical and require a logical basis).
>It seems to me that you are rejecting materialism because you want reasoning to be more trustworthy than it actually is.
Reasoning is extremely trustworthy. Mathematics and logic are ample proof of that.
>sceptical epistemology, and then building upon that with probabilistic reasoning
Because it becomes the exact same as a regular epistemology, except instead of "true" the word becomes "probable." Nothing else changes, only the words. There is still a universalizable rational underpinning to every judgement. "Probable" does not even have meaning unless it is related to "probable truth" - ie presupposing the existence of truth.

[Anonymous No.19715714]

>>19715663
>Do the laws of logic have to be "objective" in some extra-mental sense in order to be functional?
Yes. The function of the laws of logic is to guide and temper our thought in such a way that we can attain truth. All our knowledge depends upon the laws of logic. If we reduce them to "the way our brains work", then we can know nothing. Reason becomes just as trustworthy as emotion or nonsense or dreams or anything else in the brain.

This is absurd because one can immediately respond "Do you know that you know nothing?", proving that knowledge exists necessarily.

Besides, as I said before, the laws of logic were just one example. Take Similarity. The senses don't give you similarity. They can give you one black surface and another black surface, but they can't associate the two. That's an action of the mind. If this is "just the way our brains work", then it is not trustworthy (and we know nothing). If it is our soul's interaction with the immaterial form of Similarity, then it is.

[Anonymous No.19715744]

>>19714982
Joseph campbell

[Anonymous No.19715746]

>>19715714
>If we reduce them to "the way our brains work", then we can know nothing. Reason becomes just as trustworthy as emotion or nonsense or dreams or anything else in the brain.
That doesn't follow. Although in that case we have no higher assurances or validations of reason, we see the salutary everyday results of employing reason versus relying on emotion or intuition.
>This is absurd because one can immediately respond "Do you know that you know nothing?", proving that knowledge exists necessarily.
The Pyrrhonian sceptic doesn't deny that certain knowledge is possible. He just says that there doesn't appear to him to be any demonstrably certain knowledge, a state of affairs he communicates via logical proofs. He is open to being proven wrong.
>If this is "just the way our brains work", then it is not trustworthy (and we know nothing).
>If it is our soul's interaction with the immaterial form of Similarity, then it is.
Even if there is, in fact, an immaterial form of Similarity, that doesn't help us because presumably we can still be deceived by immaterial forces or states of affairs. The world might be ruled by a malevolent deity.

[Anonymous No.19715813]

>>19715746
>e see the salutary everyday results of employing reason
No, we don't. There are plenty of ways to achieve results without the employment of reason, ie based on emotion and instinct (in fact, if you read Gustave Le Bon, you would find that much in history is actually accomplished under the action of instinct and not reason, making reason less valuable than instinct and emotion). And "result", by the way, is a type of knowledge. Pyrrhonian skepticism is not relevant to this debate (which would also be skeptical of materialism), we are speaking about actual reductive materialism. This is what my post here >>19715711 was harping on about.

[Anonymous No.19715832]

>>19714982
You should read into the major works of all popular religions and make up your own mind. At this point into the kali yuga I would advise against joining any religious organization, all of them are corrupt.

[Anonymous No.19715836]

>>19714982
Read anything except the shit that is recommended on Reddit and this board. Nobody understands what is meant by materialism/atheism/nihilism anyway, you will be better off if you just started reading any book and treated -isms, or rather concepts, at their depth instead of engaging onions-tier internet discourse/culture.

[Anonymous No.19715980]

>>19715746
Yeah like this anon (>>19715813) says you stepped in here to defend materialism and now you're defending skepticism. Which proves my point that materialism reduces to skepticism.
>He just says that there doesn't appear to him to be any demonstrably certain knowledge, a state of affairs he communicates via logical proofs.
This is the issue. He assumes that logic is true and binding, he assumes that words have meaning, he assumes he is a self and is conscious, he assumes that what he is communicating points to something rational and true, and yet he claims to know nothing. It's absurd.

[Anonymous No.19715984]

theism is nihilism

[Anonymous No.19715985]

>>19715059
PBUH

[Anonymous No.19715997]

>>19715714
>>19715813
>>19715980
I didn't step in to defend materialism from the point of view that it was true, only that I don't think it makes rational activity (as it actually exists) impossible. That rationality does not have an ultimate justification (and that therefore we ought to treat it with some caution) does not force us to give up on reasoning altogether and become irrationalists. I see no contradiction between being cautious about the powers of reasoning and applying reason because it does things for us.
>He assumes that logic is true and binding
To a human mind it appears to be so. Our mind bristles against rejecting the truth-content of what our reason tells us. But we can have that feeling with something that turns out to be an invalid piece of reasoning. There doesn't appear to be a perfect way of validating any piece of reasoning. There is no external sign from heaven to tell us that a piece of reasoning we thought was right was actually wrong. We have to wait for someone else to point out that it was so. But perhaps that person was actually wrong and it can be salvaged. And so on and so on. The logicians in the Middle Ages didn't have access to the analytic arguments of today, and we don't have access to the logical proofs that will exist in the future. But the cumulative evidence of our senses appears to show us that reasoning is a productive activity.

Let us imagine two universes. One in which reason is externally validated and one in which it isn't. The material plane of both universes are identical. The human beings inside both universes both have the same mental makeups, etc. They respond to logical arguments in the same way. What would be different about the utility of reason?

[Anonymous No.19716006]

>>19714982
>I’m not nihilist so I have to join an organized religion
What are you an NPC? You can’t believe something without falsely subscribing to some widely held doctrine and presenting your pseudobelief to society by going to church? Just fucking believe what you believe. Don’t adopt a religion just because you think you’re supposed to, you will just end up trying to twist the religion to fit your beliefs like everyone else

[Anonymous No.19716049]

Buddhism is true in that there is a higher awareness of Nirvana.
Hinduism is true in that Brahman is God. Atman is Brahman.
Christianity is true in that Jesus is the personification of Logos, or Son of God.

Judaism held some truth in that its esoteric mystery school led to to advent of Jesus. Islam is mostly false in that Muhammad copied the structure of Abrahamic religion for the sake of personal power and honor.

[Anonymous No.19716053]

>>19715997
(1) Yes in a materialist world rational activity would be impossible because we would all be unconscious philosophical zombies. Moreover, the laws of logic would be subjective, based upon the physical composition of our brains, and so they would be as meaningless in terms of giving us truth as emotions are.

(2) The laws of logic ARE validated by the impossibility of denying them. If you try to deny the laws of logic you immediately enter into an absurdity, because it is only through the laws of logic that you can make any meaningful arguments at all. For example, if you try to deny the law of excluded middle, then you simultaneously affirm it. We know with 100% certainty that the laws of logic are true and eternal.

(3) You can't appeal to sense-experience because I've shown that even something as simple as recognising that two objects are of the same colour requires you to presuppose the immaterial form of Similarity. "Sense-experience" abstracted from the forms is an idiotic empiricist invention.

[Anonymous No.19716071]

>>19716053
>Yes in a materialist world rational activity would be impossible because we would all be unconscious philosophical zombies.
Proof?
>Moreover, the laws of logic would be subjective
They wouldn't appear to be so to the humans though.

Regarding laws of identity and so on, what about quantum physics?

[Anonymous No.19716108]

>>19714982
Just become a Christian (but not a Catholic).

Most westerners will look everywhere else before looking towards the bible. Avoid perennialism and theosophy at all costs.

[Anonymous No.19716204]

>>19716071
Well I appreciate your consistency in admitting that materialism leads to skepticism. I'm just not sure how to further engage a man who openly believes that reason is subjective and yet is making reasonable arguments and would tell me off if I were to commit a fallacy. So I'll just say, goo goo ga ga therefore atheism is false. This bit of nonsense is just as subjective and true as all your reason-based objections, according to your own view. So the debate is over and I will arbitrarily declare myself the winner.

[Anonymous No.19716246]

>>19716204
I said there's no external validation for reason, or that reasoning doesn't have a mind-independent exist, not that reason is subjective in some free-for-all sense. Yes, there's no God-mind declaring that this piece of reasoning is better than another, but when we reason 'badly' and develop false apprehensions of the reality we're in we suffer the consequences, and adjust our methods.

[Anonymous No.19716255]

>>19716071
Not him but rejecting the law of identity leads to the well-known implosion of almost all systems of logic. It’s getting extremely close to rejecting logic itself.
Then again, if we understand that ‘logic’ ‘rationality’ and such things are mental constructs with no mind-independent reality, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they fail when trying to put the mind aside.

[Anonymous No.19716266]

how to be 100% sure you're going to heaven when you die.

https://bannedpreaching.com/videos/BIBLEWAYTOHEAVEN.mp4

[Anonymous No.19716347]

>>19715045
Lol no, idealism is a spook. The 'laws of logic' are abstracted from empirical observations of consistent relations in our experience. What makes them 'work' (i.e. why they are predictive and constructive) is that they strictly mirror those relations. Yes there is the pre-perceptive component of the architecture of our minds (what Kant called 'pure intuition'), but it would be most parsimonious to suppose that this too is borne out of the behaviours of the world from which it arises.

You've completely lost your own plot when talking about movements of particles. It's not that some behaviours of things are more true than others, it's that there are those behaviours and they're fundamental to the behaviours of any macro-layers constructed upon them. In other words, both emotion and logic rely upon the same fundamental behaviours—they simply represent a spectrum or 'skew' and aren't separable. Consider: What impetus would there be to reason about anything if you didn't first feel some way about it?

As to your final thought, it is empiricism itself—not merely atheism—which leads into skepticism, but it is a limited skepticism. It is simply the admission that our knowledge can never be perfect and full certainty of anything but apodictic truths is unattainable. The radical skepticism you are inferring however, adds to that the unreasonable notion that perfect certainty/completeness are necessary standards for actionable knowledge, which is obviously not the case.

[Anonymous No.19716496]

>>19715335
The Creator has revealed himself and gave us a coherent worldview that explains the relationship between the visible and the invisible. The scriptures and church could not have come up with a coherent and hollistic explanation that accounts for epistemology, metaphysics and ethics if it was a bunch of primitive cave men writing propaganda. It would be filled with flaws.

Additionally, all other worldviews are self-refuting, incoherent, so it's a choice between a plausible model of existence vs a self-refuting one. I don't have to tell you what is more rational to choose.

On top of those two arguments, you also have prophecies.

ex-muslim, ex materialist, after embracing orthodox Christianity everything has become more clear, everything makes perfect sense. Even when I sin, it makes sense, life is not confusing, but that comes with more moral responsibility. I know the difference because I know what it is like to be in both Islam and atheism. I've never been so clear in my head. I have had catholicism and protestanism floating around me all my life, but I never paid attention. Orthodoxy was completely different, completely pure. Maybe it's hard to see this coming from a Christian background. But from Islam, it was clear that this was the right one.

>>19715089
Roman catholicism teaches natural theology, so of course she will argue that "you don't need to justify the use of reason, you can just use it" as if that's an argument.

[Anonymous No.19716507]

>>19715061
>Do not read the bible, the quran or whatever. Those are books written by idiots in the desert with no formation whatsoever.
A fine midwiticism.
>The difference between Plato and the Bible is that Plato will encourage you to doubt him, like all good teachers.
Actually good advice, strive to ask questions and pursue answers. It will make your faith all the stronger when you grow up and awake to the reality of a higher power.

[Anonymous No.19716511]

>>19714982
>I've realised atheism/materialism/nihilism is bullshit
Kys religious zealot/cultist.

[Anonymous No.19716514]

>>19715005
Fpbs

[Anonymous No.19716560]

>>19716347
There are so many errors here I don't know where to begin.

First of all, the raw empirical experience you refer to is a myth. It does not exist. Like I showed before, even something as simple as recognising that two objects are of the same colour requires a prior notion of Similarity or Resemblance which our minds use to interpret the raw empirical data we get from the senses. If this is all merely subjective and "in the brain", then you have NO REASON WHATSOEVER to trust your senses in even the most straightforward cases.

The process of abstraction you refer to is also an action of the mind. In a materialist world, all actions of the mind are simply the movement of particles in the brain, right? It follows that the process of abstraction is NOTHING MORE than the movement of particles in the brain. It is not trustworthy, it is not meaningful, it is not anything but a pyrotechnic explosion in your brain.

You respond by saying that emotion and reason are connected, which is totally beside the point. The point is that all your thoughts, in a materialist world, are reducible to movements of particles in the brain. They are not true. They are not false. They are not meaningful. They are literally just fireworks. Do you understand that you could not even form meaningful propositions if your worldview were correct? -- that's how dumb it is.

[Anonymous No.19716576]

>>19715045
Logic as a heuristic evolves over time, it is not set in stone, and end up being upended by AI that produces effective results that logic cannot explain, simply corroborate and correlate. Furthermore if atheism is false and God is real that is surely a God unbounded mathematics, reason, and logic itself. So, in fact, if one is not an atheist one must logically set aside the supremacy of logic or else discard the reality of miracles, which by definition are events that and do and must defy logic.

[Anonymous No.19716579]

>>19715045
Logic as a heuristic evolves over time, it is not set in stone, and ends up being upended by AI that produces effective results that logic cannot explain, simply corroborate and correlate. Furthermore if atheism is false and God is real then it is surely a God unbounded mathematics, reason, and logic itself. So, in fact, if one is not an atheist one must logically set aside the supremacy of logic or else discard the reality of miracles, which by definition are events that do and must defy logic.

[Anonymous No.19716584]

>>19716511
It is though, at least be an agnostic, faggot.

[Anonymous No.19716598]

>>19716579
>and ends up being upended by AI that produces effective results that logic cannot explain
Hahahahaha

[Anonymous No.19716870]

>>19716560
>requires a prior notion of Similarity or Resemblance which our minds use to interpret the raw empirical data we get from the senses
You can assert this all you want, but it requires more assumption than to suppose that tropes do exist and precede the mind (and our mind as evolved to exploit this facet of reality). You simply assert a real 'discreteness' between the mind and the noumenal, without establishing why this is a more probable explanation. I'd also point out that we can't sensibly divorce the form and content of experience, since no experience is possible without both (meaning your attempts to describe a dichotomy are necessarily convoluted and hyper-abstract).

>It follows that the process of abstraction is NOTHING MORE than the movement of particles in the brain
Yes, essentially. A physical thing.
>It is not trustworthy
Why not? What is your standard here?
>it is not meaningful,
You need to refine up your use of terminology.

>in a materialist world, are reducible to movements of particles in the brain. They are not true.
Is existence itself true? If it is, what is the clear break between it and our 'pyrotechnics'?

>Do you understand that you could not even form meaningful propositions if your worldview were correct?
You simply assert this. Why not? What is your standard of 'meaningful'?

You've investigated these topics far less thoroughly than you think you have.