did I just buy a book condoning religion? I hate religion. I got this for the screwtape letters. has anyone read this Christian shit? should I read it. I think anyone religious is a nut. will it just piss me off?
I'm not a religious person and loved The Screwtape Letters. It is obviously based in Christian rhetoric and dogma, but the themes are easily understood from a non-Christian perspective. It is more about the general flaws of people, how they arise, how and why they operate, etc. than it is about being a Christianity.
What I also appreciated about it is how applicanle Lewis' points are today. As a basic example, he explores the idea that to corrupt a large number of people, it is easier to corrupt one person with widespread influence (e.g. a political leader or celebrity) rather than corrupt each person individually.
The epilogue is also one of my favorite scenes of anything I've read, but I won't say anything more so you can go into it fresh.
Haven't read Mere Christianity, so I can't comment on that, but The Screwtape Letters I can highly recommend.
>>7987973
Grow the fuck up, if you don't learn about the opinions of those you disagree with you can't intelligently refute them. You should always read authors who have different opinions than your own, that's how you learn.
>>7987973
If you're as fedora as your sound, you'll hateit just by knowing a Christian wrote it. The Screwtape Letters are fantastic, though.
>>7987998
thanks dad
>>7988003
it's a fedora thing to not like religion? I've never met a religious person before. maybe it's where I'm from? my cousins from a small town went to church but that's about the only religious people I know.
Religion makes you live longer according to studies, so really it's just your loss. (see: Blue Zone)
>>7988008
It's fedora to discount the opinion of anyone who is religious, not to hate religion itself. Hard to deny that people who are religious have contributed to science, literature, art, and history (even if you believe that these contributions were made in spite of their religion rather than because of it).
>>7988014
I just think it's silly to belive in God.
>>7988019
>energy out of nothing made universe
>>7988019
That's a totally justifiable belief, but don't discount skilled people in any unrelated profession just because they do.
>>7988025
>>7988040
>The vast majority of people have been idiots compared to my vast intellect. At this moment, I am euphoric.
>>7988025
>I don't understand where everything came from
>Aha, obviously it was one Mesopotamian deity who instead of being one of many gods is actually the only god and has the characteristics ascribed to him the a bunch of desert Jews! It's all clear now.
Or, you could just admit that the world is a big place and to understand any of it in a meaningful way we should proceed methodically and with caution, but sure.
>>7988062
it's funny because that's how I act. your picture is so true. anyone who's religious is retarded. I need to buy a fedora lol.
>>7987973
I have a lot of respect for religion but CS Lewis's smug tone makes me squirm with rage.
>wtf i HATE religion now!
>>7988073
it's a 20th century christian intellectual thing, he's a product of his time
>>7988085
I grew up in the bible belt where everyone is smug as fuck about Christianity and Lewis still stands out.
>>7988089
I think he's referring to the tendency to rub one's intellect in another's face. That's a very mid-20th Century thing, and also kind of an English thing, too. They're smart and they want to make sure you know they're smart.
To be honest it's kind of nice. It's nice to hear from people who seem to genuinely enjoy knowing things.
>>7988106
Lewis's apologetics don't hinge on knowing very much at all though. He just wants to convince you that you're being an unreasonable child if you don't agree with him. Like there's a anti-fedora on his head.
>>7988089
same and i agree with you. the intellectuals are/were the most smug.
Sounds like you are easily angered op
>>7988019
>belive
>>7988066
>strawman the argument
>>7987973
>Can't read about religion without getting pissed off
>Buys a book by CS Lewis
You are not a smart man.
>>7988236
Something hurting your feelings doesn't make it fallacious.
So, tell me, how is belief in a deity more reasonable and less silly than taking a general stance of studying things methodically and cautiously?
>>7988250
>>7988275
>study bible at church three times a week, twice more at home, attend religious school and college
>decide it's fucked and can't be fixed
>go through years of painful denial and questioning
>finally come to peace with it
But yeah, just another fedora.
>>7988299
Maybe you decided it's fucked because you didn't actually read it, because it appears that you can't read what all the anons were saying to you.
You aren't a fedora for being atheist.
You are a fedora for being a militant athiest who actually took the bait and can't handle opinion and belief that trails too far from your own
>>7988071
at least you're self aware
>>7988299
>finally come to peace with it
kek yeah, you seem at peace with it
>>7988317
So what, some things are worth advocating for. I'm saying I've been religious and still think that this kind of open mockery and condemnation is good for some people.
It was good for me. Made me read stuff that challenged my deeply held beliefs at the time.
>>7988330
>hurr anyone who argues for anything must be insecure and probably has a small penis too
“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
>>7988374
>yfw Pynchon and CS Lewis both tried to warn us
“By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.”
This is my last quote. I want this thread to be about the Screwtape Letters, which would interest me. Not about religion in general, of which there are 9,999,999,999,999,999,999,999 on the internet.
“Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is took weak and fuddled to shake off.”
>>7988299
think of it like this: the fedora is a fashion accoutrement. (representing archetypical unfashionableness)
The way things are today, anyone who spends any time on the internet sees someone under 65 years of age wearing a fedora and immediately all of these stereotypes spring to mind of neckbeards and losers- anathema to fashion.
so too, religion is (among other things) an article of fashion.
In particular communities, religion is extremely fashionable. To "go out" without religion would be social doom, similar to the fate for public masturbators in north american societies.
In many many communities, certain kinds of religion is unfashionable.
In a few all religion is unfashionable.
If you want my advice: don't get too caught up in the bullshit, just play the game for what it is.
spirituality/mysticism is not bullshit but fashion is
>>7988352
For a guy who claims to be so studious you sure don't seem to understand why using logical fallacies isn't actually arguing.
Stay at peace, fedora.
>>7988398
Thanks for the advice I already follow. I don't think anybody from my bible belt hometown except my dad knows I'm not religious, but it's just a matter of course where I live now.
The internet is for fighting though.
>>7988395
>I want this thread to be about the Screwtape Letters
>Not about religion in general
It's impossible to talk about CS Lewis' work without talking about Christianity, you dunderhead.
>>7988352
Open mockery is fine, refusing something like a child refuses food because they don't think they will like it, is idiotic and disgusting.
It's also exactly what the religious who make foath look bad do. You aren't any different from goatfucker who wants to burn things because someone drew muhammad
>>7988416
You seem to be implying I was never sincerely religious. This is extremely false. I've converted several people who are still sincere Christians today.
>>7988431
>converting people
>getting mad when you see something you don't agree with
>believing that you've seen the truth of the universe in your short life and you know the answers.
You sound like a goatfucker or a bible thumper to me pal.
>>7988398
expanding on this because I'm baked and rambling and enjoying myself, deal with it nerds
In the same way that the fedora summons the neckbeard archetype to anyone inculcated to memekultur, so too does religion summon up various archetypes which color the persona of the religious person.
Among people who share religious communities, symbols which reveal their shared religious affiliation will foster understanding, trust and cooperation, because they know what to expect of each other and most religions have a positive in-group affect. The tribe-mate archetype.
>>7988446
>converting people to something you don't believe anymore
You might have missed the point of that.
I don't know shit. That's the whole point. Nothing about my experience means there must be or even probably is a Yahweh, and I invite people to consider whether it's the same for them.
>>7987973
The Screwtape Letters is perfectly fine even if you're an anti-theist, it has a lot of themes that are more about human nature rather than religion.
>>7988464
You were right. I did miss the point, excuse me for that.
But if you don't know shit, why not continue to search Christian ideas and people for the answers, the only time that information should piss you off is if its a lie deliberately meant to trick you or if it is condescending and rude
>>7988558
The assumption that I don't still read religious literature is a tad rude and follows from nothing I've said.
It's just that almost all apologetic literature I've encountered is beneath discussion from the perspective of serious philosophy and is almost novelty-tier with regards to the history of religion. Nobody becomes a believer reading that stuff. Conversion is a matter of an emotionally compromised person being offered an attractive deal.
>>7988431
>posturing this hard
No one is buying it, redditor. GO back to your hug box and pander for your virtual shekels over there, slave.
>>7988619
Pray for some salve for your anus.
>>7988414
Don't be boring. I had three big quotes from the book that had nothing to do with Christianity, so yes you can.
And no one would argue that you can't talk about Christianity without talking about The Screwtape Letters. That's what most of the people here seem to want to do. It makes this thread exactly like 10^99 other threads, as I said before.
“Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
>>7988025
>God out of nothing made the universe
It's always important to get a perspective on the other side. There is nothing more pathetic than someone who chooses to live in an echo chamber.
>>7989919
If God exists, by his divine nature he has always existed
>>7989957
>Everything has a beginning
>Oh except G-d because I say so
>>7989984
Not an argument
>>7989988
No, a refutation of your attempt to avoid infinite regress. It's special pleading.
>>7989990
I'll jump in.
God is the non contigent ground of all being.
The universe as we see it is causal and suggests a creation or creator.
I don't see how the idea of a God is any more of a miracle than a Universe that just exists.
>>7987973
Heres a couple more from an atheist turned believer.
>>7990014
>>7990019
>>7990009
A very fine argument for a creating force. A very poor one for the interventionalist and moralistic Christian god and no argument at all for the existence of objective morality or divine punishment/reward.
You can go ahead and call the quantum fluctuations that resulted in the big bang 'god' all you like but when you start using that interpretation to claim that those fluctuations took the form of a burning bush in an illiterate desert shithole to lay out eternal and unalterable (im)moral injunctions to all of humanity is when you take a step too far.
>>7990023
>>7990027
>A very poor one for the interventionalist and moralistic Christian god and no argument at all for the existence of objective morality or divine punishment/reward.
You said the idea of a God is a silly one. Thats where i started.
If God is perfect and works outside of our known constrictions and reality, how can we approach him? Consider the attributes of God.
> Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him, a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
We are remade in Christ, that we may be reconciled with God. This is why the Christian idea appeals to me.
>>7990023
This list is shit. There is no such thing as Christian Tarot.
>>7990052
your argument is the exact same smug bullshit everyone was talking about hating.
you are not a chosen people.
you are not special
you are walking meat
and you shit and eat
and know far less than you think you do.
>>7990009
still special pleading, god doesn't solve the creation mystery just because you attach a special attribute that says "non contingent ground of being" that's literally bullshit.
In fact the only "thing" that I can think of that could possibly be the "non contingent ground of being" is literally "nothing". So we're right back to creation ex nihilo except you scratched out nihilo and wrote in 'god' wow good work choirboy
creation ex nihilo makes more sense
>>7988073
I've never understood why some people think CS Lewis sounds so "smug". I just don't hear it. I think it's largely in your imagination.
>>7992025
I've never understood why some people think God is so "real." I just don't hear it. I think it's largely in your imagination.
How can people who never read plato, yet alone aquinas, kant, hume etc come onto /lit/ and actually act like op.
It's embarrassing.
>>7992094
>yet alone
hahaha oh man, what a moron
>>7992102
hey man im not memeing around here!!
>>7987998
is that the guy from Whitest Kids u Know?
What has he been up too lately? I thought he was pretty damn funny.
>>7987973
You are a nut. You have a religion secular atheism and are too dumb to realise that your faith places you at the bottom of the barrel for idiocy.
There us a reason atheism and vapid intolerance is the mantra of socially challenged neck beards and autistics who are only high functioning on the internet.
CS Lewis is far too advanced for the likes of you.
I suggest dawkins or l ron hubbard is more your taste OP.
>>7992425
I think OP is an idiot for his strong hate just like I think you're a jackass for condescending to OP while using a different kind of hate. Atheism and Religion are both opinions. I try not to hate on religion or atheism, I pay it no mind.
>>7992425
>You have a religion secular atheism
Nah, atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. He's just a garden-variety dick.
>Recommending Hubbardshit for any reason
>>7992425
I know only a handful of sincerely religious people out of the hundreds I met in college. Definitely not all neckbeards.
Try getting out of the Bible Belt one day and you'll find that being atheism is the default in the more productive parts of society and that while they don't go on the internet to bash religion, they also aren't going to give it a second of their time or even accidentally a dime of their money.
>>7987998
There's reading intelligible opinions to challenge your own and then there's the dead end of christian apologetics. Lewis was a doozy of a shit talker so I wouldn't recommend wasting your time op
>>7989957
>what is the ontological circle
Logically moot, go back to Sunday school
>>7992510
This. Christian apologetics are brutally tedious and circular. I know Christposters are going to jump on this and say I'm dumb and just don't get it, but if you're not of the faith, try reading some Lewis apologetics and tell me it doesn't make you want to spit.
I grew up reading a lot of it as a fervent believer, and Lewis actually made me doubt the faith more than I ever had before because he fucked up so badly.
>>7990621
It's good to see some sense on lit. too much ontological baggage for a little spiritual comfort
>>7988317
>militant atheist
Everything CS Lewis ever wrote was garbage.
Chesterton was a christfag, but at least he could write.
>>7992528
He proved nothing and disproved nothing.
>>7992566
That's fine though. I'm perfectly happy not having all the answers, and would rather be seeking honestly than accept bad answers.
At the very least he demonstrated that the arguments he was addressing are weak. Maybe that doesn't prove the answer to life the universe and everything, but it's useful.
>>7992566
Oh, really? The only rebuttal I saw was "muh god is beyond comprehension" which isn't a proper argument, it's what you silence children with in Sunday school
>>7992495
Ah the mantra of the modern lowest common denominator. the millennial militant atheist. So limited in their horizons and cultural perspectives that they think the American Midwest is representative of something other than the American Midwest. Atheists particularly militant ones are of the lowest intellectual calibre, constrained by the ironically their own primitivist faith based dogma.
Observing atheist angst and narcissism as well illustrated by this thread like watching a room full of autistics complimenting each other on their dress sense.
>>7992518
It's probably because you grew up a protestant you became a militant atheist.
They both have an attention seeking and anti-intellectual tinge to them.
>>7987973
Okay so, here's what I recommend you do when faced with something you don't like
>suck it up, pussy
>don't suck it up, pussy
Those are your options, either way you're a pussy for being bothered by ideas.
>>7992762
>I am very very smart look at all my words and totally intelligent generalizations
Kill yourself
>>7992769
>>7992762
>spend millions of dollars and even sacrifice lives to proselytize to every corner of the globe
>accuse anyone who publicly argues that you're wrong of being an attention-whoring narcissist anti-intellectual
Smells like butthurt.
>>7987973
A Grief Observed is one of the most beautiful, stirring portraits of grief ever written. It helped me through my friend's death earlier this year. Lewis is a fantastic writer and, even if you disagree with his theology, he's absolutely worth reading.
God is real.
It is a self evident truth we are instilled with as human beings.
You are just being deceived and mislead by evil.
>>7993153
C.S. Lewis pls go. You're dead.
>>7993153
No, it is not self evident. What we are born with its a cause and effect based thinking and a tendency to assign meaning where there is none.
>>7993165
God is in all of us.
>>7993168
Or perhaps there is.
>>7993172
Or perhaps there is not. What now?
>>7993175
We will never be able to prove either position by an earthly demonstration, not right now anyway.
My point is that if you don't look for it, you will never find it. In order for looking for such a thing to be possible in the first place, we need to believe there is something to be found. That is how progress is made.
>>7993189
>we need to believer there is something to be found
>progress
Can you back any of that up?
>>7993218
There are more things we do not know than things we do know, yes? If so, how do we come to know new things? By asking questions. Questions lead to searching, searching leads to discovery, discovery leads to understanding, understanding is progress.
>>7992518
Honestly I don't know much apologetics. Lewis is introductory material and there is no need to stay with it when you have Augustine, Aquinas, Leibniz and a bunch of others who didn't just defend, but had fully developed philosophy.
>>7993244
This seems to imply that I can't possibly be searching if I so far find it unlikely that Lewis was right about anything.
>>7993249
Those three are still pretty tedious and circular. Loving the implication that anyone who disagrees doesn't read though. I'm sure it's an approach Christ would use.
>>7993250
This isn't about Lewis.
This is about God.
>>7993253
Well considering they are axiomatic and not circular, you for one didn't. They don't use circular arguments.
Tedious is the most useless critique of a philosopher I've ever read here desu.
And yes, Christ would say that everyone who doesn't believe is a fool and a madman. Paul did for one and he is said to be filled by the holy spirit in both his deeds and writings.
>>7988089
I grew up in an atheist household in a largely unreligious area, and I've always thought atheists sounded much more smug than Christians like CS Lewis. It might be associations which taint the way you read Lewis, as they taint the way I read someone like Vonnegut.
My atheist friends and atheist parents are snobs about religiousness in a way that I haven't known Christians to be snobs about atheism (but that may be owing to where I live). If someone is religious in any obvious way, they act like the person is a bit nutty. It's generally thought to be a harmless naiveté at best, and at worst a total sham to mask a volatile mix of neuroses.
>>7988299
I think a lot of the time these things have more to do with our desire for a conversion than any necessity arising from experience. A lot of people around twenty suddenly discover that they've been following the wrong path—atheists turn Christian, Christians turn atheist, and so on. My own conversion seems sincere enough to me, but how can I know what drew me to it? How can you be sure you didn't want to tire of your religion, didn't desire to seek out arguments against it? People are very good at arguing for whichever side they want to be on. I still don't know how I'd answer my younger self's arguments against Christianity. I don't know how he'd answer mine for it.
>>7993279
No axioms are ever provable, that's what makes them axioms.
You can't touch the axiom itself really. As far as theory of knowledge goes, it's all circular, axiomatic or an infinite regression, so calling out something for one of those three is incredibly stupid.
>>7993273
Vonnegut is smug too. It's a common criticism from all sides.
In the south, where Christianity is the only socially acceptable thing to be, atheists are talked about the same way communists and homosexuals are. I've heard people at family dinners clutching their pearls at the mention of someone's second cousin being "avowed atheist." An atheist is not something you become here on a lark.
>>7993288
When it's impossible to prove a system of thought to be self-evidently true, it's valid to criticize someone for claiming they have done so.
>>7993295
I didn't claim it's self evident, or at least not philosophically self evident. Aquinas goes at length to make his system, there would be no need it it was all so obvious
>>7993290
Well, try to remember that Lewis was not from the Bible Belt. What sounds like smugness to you was the voice of a man who wasn't always taken seriously by other academics in his own country, in an age when it was perhaps easier for an academic to avow atheism than to avow Christianity. Consider what Orwell said:
"Within the last few decades, in countries like Britain or the United States, the literary intelligentsia has grown large enough to constitute a world in itself. One important result of this is that the opinions which a writer feels frightened of expressing are not those which are disapproved of by society as a whole. To a great extent, what is still loosely thought of as heterodoxy has become orthodoxy. It is nonsense to pretend, for instance, that at this date there is something daring and original in proclaiming yourself an anarchist, an atheist, a pacifist, etc. The daring thing, or at any rate the unfashionable thing, is to believe in God or to approve of the capitalist system."
I can't stop you from hearing other people speak in Lewis's works, but I hope you'll try to be open-minded about him.
>>7993324
It's called existentialism and mysticism. They are extensively discussed and is worth doing so, but the self evidence of a personal God is mostly meant by this.
The whole " I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. "
>>7993368
Well yeah, Plato and Cicero weren't claiming to be Gods, while Jesus did claim to be God, so of course they wouldn't say something like that and Jesus would.
That's not a very interesting or compelling observation.
>>7993383
Socrates did claim that he was sent by the gods to lead men to the truth and that those who follow his teachings will live in haven... Read up son, Socrates is a messianic figure, just like Jesus.
>>7993399
That's roughly as significant as saying "goddammit" or "god bless you." At most he was vaguely pantheistic, as his deathbed speech in which he discusses what was to happen to him after death makes no mention of a deity, only of a soul.
Thinking you can teach and discover things doesn't make you a messianic figure.
>>7993412
>That's roughly as significant as saying "goddammit" or "god bless you." At most he was vaguely pantheistic, as his deathbed speech in which he discusses what was to happen to him after death makes no mention of a deity, only of a soul.
He mentions a mechanism which assess the virtue of the soul and in tern sends it to it's rightful place, quite similar to Christian judgement day.
>Thinking you can teach and discover things doesn't make you a messianic figure.
Teaching that you can attain salvation of the soul through following of a particular teaching on the other hand does.
>>7987973
>>7992425
How can one man be this based?
