Pretend God exists because...uh...just do it, ok?

Delusion helps create purpose but it doesn't reveal the truth of reality nor is it useful everywhere. Think of the radical Muslim who wholly believes in Islam and is willing to kill himself for his god.

That's called a being a cynical retard. You don't actually believe in it you just pretend to cause you want some sort of higher satisfaction

What does that have to do with whether you chose what you believe or not?

Don't deflect. Address the core question.

No. I didn't say "Pretend to believe", I said "Actually believe."

You know the difference between the two, right?

>What does that have to do with whether you chose what you believe or not?
Because what you're doing is essentially delusion. You're creating a reality that doesn't exist. It's a useful tool sometimes but ultimately it's not a good enough belief in life.
>Don't deflect. Address the core question.
You choose what to believe or not, the question is whether that belief is valid.

you can't just "choose" to believe, if you actually think this way you're delusional, even actual believers struggle with their faith, it could take one a lifetime to fully commit to his faith.
yet according to you faggots you suddenly became believers overnight because you chose to? this place is filled with larpers

>Delusion
That word is already implying you know what isn't delusion. The point is you don't, you only believe in what you think is not delusion.

>the question is whether that belief is valid.
Which is itself a belief. Are you starting to get it?

According to Aristotle, choice presupposes deliberation, so yes, one does not just suddenly "choose to believe" without significant deliberation beforehand. That is irrelevant to what is being argued about.

You're implying that reality is subjective and it doesn't matter what is real or not because everything is based on faith. I base my beliefs off of my current experiences. I do understand the whole platonic cave problem, but I'm not going to believe in something that doesn't make sense in my current understanding/schematic of reality.

I also did that except I did go back. My life was awful when I followed Christianity. You have to deal with the fact that 1. the first human in the sense that we are, as in born to a mother, Cain, murdered his own brother 2. God arbitrarily brings suffering on people (no explanation for why he accepted Abel’s blessings and not Cain’s, no explanation for Job either) and then expects you to still act as if everything is great (Jesus is the biggest example) 3. God created a weak race prone to sin and then cursed them when they fell to temptation 4. the source of human sin in Christianity is self knowledge, which is necessary for philosophy and other cool pursuits 5. God prescribes forgiveness but practices none himself, for he condemns many people to hell for their sins or unbelief and hell, being never-ending torment, coming after all things, can have no utility in correcting one’s behaviour for the future 6. basically says listening to women is what caused the fall, Adam listened to Eve and ate the apple, and in Paul’s letters he uses this as a reason why women shouldn’t speak in church and are forbidden to teach over men 7. it encourages you to focus on your redemption and getting into heaven more-so than achieving worldly goals which saps motivation, and 8. it tells you to turn the other cheek and love your enemies which is a childish and naive attempt at creating world peace because, while the logic is that an eye for an eye simply multiplies suffering through revenge while forgiveness ends the cycle of hate, what really happens is when you forgive someone they continue taking advantage of you and pushing you further so it would have been better to stand your ground and push back.

You think you're out of the cave and holy/wise but in reality you're still in it with the rest of us.

You chose to believe. Then you question the validity of that choice. Then you chose whether to believe or not again.

This is extremely basic stuff that everyone with a slightly interesting life experiences. People question the validity of their choices and commitments all the time - "Am I doing the right thing by studying this course? Should I change?"

Come on, man. You're not so much of an NPC that you simply do not have a frame of reference for this type of thing, right?

the thing is everything to do with science is literally beneath the scope of understanding god. think of it like a simple subcategory, we are everything within god's realm, and then we understand everything within our realm, as a hierarchy god is at the top and we can't reach that, and nor can we understand what is above us, but only below us in the hierarchy

>You choose what to believe or not, the question is whether that belief is valid.

Look at the first response to my post. The topic was whether or not you chose to believe. But, if you want to move it to whether the belief is valid, then I'll just restate it:

If you have an experimental frame of mind, where you want to carry out experiments based on different premises, why are your beliefs not also a valid grounds for experimentation? Everyone has foundational beliefs that they chose not to discard, which they personally cannot prove, but assert as true for one reason or another.

The experiment is, add "Belief in God" as one of them for a month, and see what happens.

I read Crime and Punishment once and it already had this effect on me. How does he do it?

>it tells you to turn the other cheek and love your enemies which is a childish and naive attempt at creating world peace
Christianity is not aiming at world peace... It's aimed at perfecting the soul so you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The world by its nature will never be at peace, and the sinners will always reap the fruits they sow.

There's a lot to unpack in what you've said, but the Christianity you rejected is not the Christianity I believe in either. I'm an Orthodox Christian. For example, we don't believe that God created a weak race "prone to sin" - we believe that God created man with free will, and with his free will the first man chose to sin, *which then* makes his descendants prone to sin. That sin is an inherited infection.

A God making the first man inherently prone to sin and then judging it for sinning, you rightly identify as psychotic. I always rejected every Christianity that presented that as one of their core beliefs.

>The topic was whether or not you chose to believe. But, if you want to move it to whether the belief is valid, then I'll just restate it:
What's your problem? I think that beliefs are chosen. I stated my position, and you seem to be in agreement? Why do you thnk I'm avoiding the topic?
>Everyone has foundational beliefs that they chose not to discard, which they personally cannot prove, but assert as true for one reason or another.
This is the whole crux of the problem. We cannot prove our qualia is correct or even real, but I act like it is because this is the only method of knowledge I have found ever since I was born. Science apparently shows that there are patters to this qualia and they are repeatable. This is why I don't believe in the Abrahamic god, because there is no way to prove his existence. However, I believe there might be something like an encompassing "essence" that cannot be proven. But there's no point in thinking about that, because we'll never touch it.

Thus I conclude my arguments.

Those were assertions, not arguments.

>Science apparently shows that there are patters to this qualia and they are repeatable.

Gave you consistently thought through this idea to any depth at all? Do you want to actually explore why science cannot, by itself without any other assumptions, actually show that there are repeatable patterns to qualia?

>This is why I don't believe in the Abrahamic god, because there is no way to prove his existence
*Using qualia

>Christianity is not aiming at world peace... It's aimed at perfecting the soul so you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
That’s exactly why it’s a retarded doctrine to follow. You’re wasting your life trying to gain entry to heaven which, in all probability, doesn’t exist, instead of focusing on the world we know does exist and using your time here to improve it for your children and further descendants.

>Those were assertions, not arguments.
You want to have arguments without using qualia. You are trying to do something that ia impossible. You're trying to argue through platonics and I cannot do that because it cannot be sensed.
>Do you want to actually explore why science cannot, by itself without any other assumptions, actually show that there are repeatable patterns to qualia?
What is "science by itself?" This is essentially what I said previously, you want proof without using our sense of existence. It is impossible.

which part of it had that effect on you

If he had free will and chose sin then he was prone to sin. God should’ve known that, according to scripture he knows every hair on our head and everything we will do or whatever.

Also, it’s hilarious how EVERY SINGLE TIME I criticise Christianity I have a reply saying “that’s only protestants, I’m catholic!” and “that’s only catholics, I’m orthodox!” trying to shift all of the negative aspects of Christianity onto a specific denomination that is not their own.

My criticisms come from the Bible, my understanding of it when I read it, and therefore, as far as I know, it applies to all denominations which, I assume, believe in the Bible.

How often did you pray during this month?

I should add, we already know what God looks like

I related to Raskolnikov as a a meaningless self-important midwit who thinks a lot and accomplishes nothing, and I was touched by how he was able to find a higher purpose. I'm not religious but I've started to put a lot more thought into what I believe would be a higher purpose worth living for, and I think it's changed me for the better

>That’s exactly why it’s a retarded doctrine to follow
Only because you're interested in political and social dogmas, not meaningful ones. Christianity is not about trying to achieve the impossible, it is saving the only person who is important to you and uniting them with God.
>You’re wasting your life trying to gain entry to heaven which
So you never believed in Christianity at all then. Why even bother making that post if you just reject all of its core beliefs from the bat? It looks like you're just here to push your belief in what's real or not.

>You want to have arguments without using qualia.

Look man, if you just straight up have no idea how to have a conversation, and just want to assert things, and put words in my mouth, you can do that by yourself on a blog.

Not all denominations have the same interpretation of the bible. You do know that you can interpret the same thing in different ways to reach different conclusions, right?

Why would you assume that you, an atheist, believes in the same interpretation of the bible as a group of Orthodox believers?

Typical christcuck. You want belief without basing it off of consciousness. If you don't want to argue, I don't care.

Most mornings and evenings, and I've been increasing the duration of them over time. I went to the pascha services at my local church, and did many of the readings.

>You want belief without basing it off of consciousness

See? You keep putting words in my mouth, and you're arguing against positions that I don't hold.

How is this at all related to having read anything Dostoevsky ever wrote?

>See? You keep putting words in my mouth, and you're arguing against positions that I don't hold
Those are my interpetations of your earlier posts and by continuously not stating anything of substance I can only guess what you aim to achieve in this discussion.

Implying you can choose what to believe is stupid. There's only one truth and that's the one that fits better with our experiences and emotions. You can't just go around saying.: today I'll believe in this, tomorrow I wont. That's an actual NPC way of thinking

for me it's Sonya's unconditional forgiveness that really moved my soul, it really reminds me that I'm not too far gone, I have no former prostitute gf but I guess she was supposed to be an allegory for God's forgiving nature.

>There's only one truth and that's the one that fits better with our experiences and emotions
Correct, which is that God exists.

>You can't just go around saying.: today I'll believe in this, tomorrow I wont. That's an actual NPC way of thinking

It's schizophrenic way of thinking, not NPC way of thinking. Schizos are crazy, but they're definitely not NPCs.

>There's only one truth and that's the one that fits better with our experiences and emotions

So every person shares exactly the same experiences and emotions? If not, then there would be as many truths as there are people - and any claims at there being "one truth" are refuted by that.

>*which then* makes his descendants prone to sin. That sin is an inherited infection.
But why? That's unfair that we should be prone to sin just because of Adam and Eve's choice. Why didn't God make two more human beings and have them be our ancestors instead of Adam and Eve so that we wouldn't have inherited the proclivity to sin?

You're right, it's not fair for your descendants to suffer the consequences of your actions. Whose fault is that? Yours, not God's.

God created Adam and Eve to be the first of humankind, and for all of humanity to descend from them. They knew this, and sinned anyway.

>So you never believed in Christianity at all then.
No, I did at the time. What I wrote just now expresses my current beliefs which do not align with Christianity.
>you said you don’t believe in Christianity so you never believed in it!
Lmao. Also, yeah, I do believe social and political dogmas are more important than imaginary dogmas about getting into a made up afterlife because they actually impact life on earth which concretely exists.

The difference in interpretation is they believe it’s the divine inspired word of God and their confirmation bias prompts mental gymnastics to avoid the obvious conclusion that they’re simply words scribbled on scrolls by schizophrenic Jews who lived thousands of years ago.

>You're right, it's not fair for your descendants to suffer the consequences of your actions. Whose fault is that? Yours, not God's.
This is the most retarded thing I have ever read.
>You’re right, it’s not fair to suffer the consequences for something you had no part in, and it’s your fault that it’s not fair.
Not only is this logically incoherent but it is more pessimistic than any atheistic point of view.

>Whose fault is that? Yours, not God's
It's ultimately God's fault, because he gave Adam and Eve the capability to reproduce and thus spread their proclivity to sin. As I already mentioned, if God so wished, he could have made two more human beings and have them be our ancestors instead of Adam and Eve. Why didn't God do this?
>God created Adam and Eve to be the first of humankind
And because of his omnipotence, he already knew what choice Adam and Eve would make, yet he still made them be our ancestors. This whole situation is ultimately God's fault, he could have fixed this situation, and have made a human race without a proclivity to sin, but he didn't.

*omniscience

“ITS ALL YOUR FAULT FOR BEING THE WAY I CREATED YOU AND DOING WHAT I KNEW YOU WOULD DO! I’M SO MAD AT YOU FOR THIS I’M GOING TO HAVE YOU BURN IN SULPHUROUS FLAMES FOR ETERNITY!!

Why would I need to pretend?

How do you know God exists?

"Imagine: A life of utter subjugation and servitude. All for him who is the Shepherd. And we, a flock of worthless, miserable beings. Less than sheep. Less than alive, only existing at the mercy of superior force. An irony, is it not, that a shepherd’s duty is to protect the herd until the day of slaughter?"
- The Devil's Apocrypha - John DeVito

I'd say if there is a guuuud, It'd be like in that book.

I have been informed.

How to believe that God created the world in six days, and that man comes from clay?

By learning how hermeneutics works.

By who?

I have been asked not to reveal it.

by believing that God created the world through the scientific processes but that ancient Jews couldn't understand the totality of those processes when Genesis was written

>scientific prprprpr
Ngma

accepting God's empirical testimony for how he made the world, instead of random guesses made by people who were not there