Thread 24737027

In 2018 or so I read The Confessions and it sent me into a huge spiral of doubt about Christianity and its place in The West. Then about a year and a half later I read Nietzsche's Antichrist and it fully cemented what I was already thinking about Christianity, or as I now like to call it: Christcuckery. Listening to pic rel fag whine about Virgil and Homer was enough to make me disgusted with the whole religion.

Burke and Chesterton.

>>24737027 (OP)
Saint Augustine calls Virgil "our poet," all the time though. His attitude towards Pagan learning is quite nuanced. It's pretty clear in the Confessions though that he saw it as a direct path towards truth (the part on his reading Cicero or the Platonists for instance). Saint Basil has a more direct treatise on Pagan learning.

>I studied the history of Christianity and then found Nietzsche's reading of all Christian history, East and West, from warrior cultures who worship a cult of bodily relics, etc. to the Desert Fathers, as basically the same thing as Nietzsche's own19th century German bourgeois Protestantism with its assertions of victimhood and hatred of the body.

You didn't study the history or didn't read it deeply at all. Even Nietzsche's big supporters allow that his history is pretty much a creative writing project. The assertion of victimhood for status is nowhere in Beowulf, the Song of Roland, the Commedia, Everyman, etc. It isn't a part of Christian culture. It emerges with liberalism, capitalism, and mass politics. Trying to claim victimhood as a positive status makes no sense in something like Boethius' view of Lady Fortuna's wheel lifting people up and down without merit. It's the supposed "meritocracy" of capitalism that makes victim status salient.

Yes, Christianity always involved renunciation and it always involved the poor being lifted up. It didn't always celebrate victimhood nor did it always hate the body. Pagan philosophy, which emerged almost entirely from the aristocracy, is far more skeptical of the body than the religion of the Incarnation, Transfiguration, and Resurrection. Later Franciscian other worldlyness and Protestantism gets painted onto ancient and medieval culture because Nietzsche has no idea what he is talking about.

Also, the insufficiency of human virtue is all over Homer, and even clearer in Virgil who elevates pietas as they key virtue and gives striving a teleological orientation grounded in justice. But Virgil is not a Christian but a Pagan elite. His history is falsified everywhere. The Jews were not even historically slaves. They were exactly the bronze age warriors he is fetishizing early on.

>>24737027 (OP)
Pic related has helped to solidify in my mind that atheism or agnosticism is not rational or based upon actual relation to reality. A position I already held but had done so in relation to other information. The book explains that basically every stance against religion in reality has religious roots and is often derived from a Christian religious schism that has been warped to fit a new narrative. And that the atheist positions are predicated upon some invented arbitration tool that is lied about being the only way to truely relate to reality and invented false dichotomies predicated upon word games.

For example natural vs supernatural is a dichotomy largely made up in the 18th and 19th centuries and didn’t even exist until then. In every other context in which the dichotomy seemingly appears the worlds are in reality used to mean entirely different thing in an entirely different context in which things ultimately came from the divine.
Another is that arguments for the existence of god until the early modern period were not actually about proving gods existence but were rather spiritual exercise to be able to better relate to the divine.
Something similar goes for pre modern philosophy as well. Nobody was a secular rationalist, including almost all of the important modern era figures until the 19th and 20th century. Philosophy was seen as a different path to become more like god and live in a more spiritually enlightened manner.

The atheist positions are always predicated upon false dichotomies, word games, and arbitration methods that don’t actually relate you to reality better. They all also are always predicated upon saying something is more powerful than god and lying about his nature. Said positions are also usually derived from Christian underlying assumptions and schisms.

>>24737125
Thing is medieval chivalric culture is about as actually Christian as modern day McMegachurch Christianity is. Real Christianity is the Christianity of the early church, visible with the New Testament and the church fathers. And it does indeed go all the way with challenging power, wealth, violence and the body while giving spiritual weight to impotence, poverty, pacifism and the spirit. Nietzsche directly points this out when he says there was one Christian and he died on the cross (though imo this is unfair to how faithful the early church actually was, the cope came later)
>The Jews were not even historically slaves
That’s a problem for Christianity then. Because it would mean the Mosaic covenant never actually happened and in truth the first five texts of the Bible are bullshit.

>>24737125
>Beowulf
>the Song Roland
>Christian culture
Stopped reading here. Sorry you wasted your time typing all that

>>24737125
>Nietzsche only talks about protestantism and had never heard of the desert fathers or saint cults or anything pre-Luther
Maybe you should try reading him lmao

I don't remember any book that had a dramatic effect on me like that.

>>24737125
Victimhood masturbation is endemic to both Christianity and Judaism, with the latter revolutionizing the concept with the falsification of their own history during the composition of the Old Testament in the Hellenic period. Nietzsche talks about the Johannine Apocalypse as the ultimate Jewish revenge fantasy from a deranged lunatic. The early church Fathers and later Thomas Aquinas perfected the Judeo-Christian revenge fantasy.

>>24737125
>It didn't always celebrate victimhood nor did it always hate the body.
It's categorically the exact opposite, Christians invented mass identity politics in a way their Jewish predecessors could only dream of. Sure, Christians of the past were more masculine and killed and fucked more than modern Christians, but you could say the same about the communists of the early 20th century compared to today. It doesn't make it not intrinsically dogshit at its core.

>>24737146
That actually seems interesting. A rare good post in a thinly-veiled religionthread.

>>24737027 (OP)
Aristotle. Prior to that I had mereological views of reality

>>24737027 (OP)
Your picrel looks like Yakub

>>24737177
If that's true then why do atheists claim they're under fire by "deplorable religionists" in the west? They have this imaginary sense of persecution by people that literally have no political power and are threatened by the fact that some didn't want the government forcing vaccinations on them. Oh, that's so terrible! Maybe they should live in Saudi Arabia instead.

>>24737027 (OP)
Bro you're retarded. When you grow up in a couple years you will go through the exact same 180 degree change again. Stop adhering to a reactionary worldview and actually try and engage with classic works in of themselves. Both Augustine and Nietzsche are worth reading. Drop the terminally online larp it's genuinely embarrassing.

>>24737159
Give a source. I am quite familiar with the Patristics. Nietzsche's description is alien to them. They were ascetics, but not with the justification he ascribes to them.

>>24737160
>>24737168
>>24737177
>The ancient and medieval Christendom wasn't really Christian. Real Christianity is Protestantism.
Aside from the no true Scotsman here, it also isn't doing much for the thesis that Nietzsche escaped Protestantism if he has to claim that the ancients and medievals weren't "real Christians."

How about this, show me one instance of this psychology in the Commedia, widely regarded as THE epic of Latin Christendom. Should be easy.

>>24737564
>If that's true then why do Christians claim they're under fire by "amoral atheists" in the west? They have this imaginary sense of persecution by people that literally have no political power and are threatened by the fact that some didn't want the government forcing religion on them. Oh, that's so terrible! Maybe they should live in North Korea instead.

>>24737184
>It's categorically the exact opposite, Christians invented mass identity politics in a way their Jewish predecessors

Sure... 1,500 years later...

>>24737785
>>The ancient and medieval Christendom wasn't really Christian. Real Christianity is Protestantism.
Fucking deranged strawmanning lmao

>>24737785
>The ancient and medieval Christendom wasn't really Christian. Real Christianity is Protestantism.
Nobody said this.

>>24737800
Maybe read the epistles dummy

>>24737146
>The book explains that basically every stance against religion in reality has religious roots and is often derived from a Christian religious schism that has been warped to fit a new narrative.

I'm not familiar with that work but John Millbank's famous Social Theory and Theology goes over this in exhaustive detail. An irony is how a certain sort of athiest will defend the language of "science" in terms of there only being "natural laws" that are "obeyed" by particles, and not realize that the language of law and obedience comes from Reformation theology, as does the empiricism and mechanistic world view, that scientific findings were then crammed into. Millbank is very dense though.

Charles Taylor's A Secular Age covers the same thing but from the angle of mass society. It's quite accessible and a great read. He shows how the mechanistic universe and anti-metaphysics is more of an aesthetic stance than anything else.

Pic related or Gregory's the Unintended Reformation does more to show how the Reformation still dominates modern science and ideas of freedom. This is why freedom today is largely defined in terms of "the ability to choose anything," while the ancients from Plato, to Aristotle, to Epicetus, to Saint Augustine looked more at being unified and understanding why one acts, looking to self-determining action rather than undetermined action, with an eye to not being ruled over by the passions and appetites.

The charge against Nietzsche I find most damaging is the charge that his thought ultimately bottoms out in arbitrariness because it accepts the modern, liberal view of freedom (and yes, I know he is a fatalist in ways; this theme is still strong in his work). D.C. Schindler's Freedom From Reality is really good on this.

>>24737146
Right, in the Patristics, particularly the Eastern Fathers, the goal is to return to our natural state. Man is inherently oriented towards theosis and diefication. Although, I think the nature versus super nature distinction goes back, in less strict form, to high scholasticism, although there it is limited to types of illumination vis-á-vis intellectus.

The Orthodox East has no such distinction though, except as imported later from the West.

>>24737801
>>24737803
Still unable to provide one (1) ancient or medieval source to back up Nietzsche's thesis. You mentioned the Church Fathers. Surely you can point to one weaponizing victimhood.

>>24737820
>Or if we wish to hear a stronger tone, a word from the mouth of a triumphant father of the Church, who warned his disciples against the cruel ecstasies of the public spectacles—But why? Faith offers us much more,—says he, de Spectac., c. 29 ss.,—something much stronger; thanks to the redemption, joys of quite another kind stand at our disposal; instead of athletes we have our martyrs; we wish for blood, well, we have the blood of Christ—but what then awaits us on the day of his return, of his triumph. And then does he[Pg 52] proceed, does this enraptured visionary: "at enim supersunt alia spectacula, ille ultimas et perpetuus judicii dies, ille nationibus insperatus, ille derisus, cum tanta sæculi vetustas et tot ejus nativitates uno igne haurientur. Quæ tunc spectaculi latitudo! Quid admirer! quid rideam! Ubigaudeam! Ubi exultem, spectans tot et tantos reges, qui in cœlum recepti nuntiabantur, cum ipso Jove et ipsis suis testibus in imis tenebris congemescentes! Item præsides" (the provincial governors) "persecutores dominici nominis sævioribus quam ipsi flammis sævierunt insultantibus contra Christianos liquescentes! Quos præterea sapientes illos philosophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erubescentes, quibus nihil ad deum pertinere suadebant, quibus animas aut nullas aut non in pristina corpora redituras affirmabant! Etiam poetas non ad Rhadamanti nec ad Minois, sed ad inopinati Christi tribunal palpitantes! Tunc magis tragœdi audiendi, magis scilicet vocales" (with louder tones and more violent shrieks) "in sua propria calamitate; tunc histriones cognoscendi, solutiores multo per ignem; tunc spectandus auriga in flammea rota totus rubens, tunc xystici contemplandi non in gymnasiis, sed in igne jaculati, nisi quod ne tunc quidem illos velim vivos, ut qui malim ad eos potius conspectum insatiabilem conferre, qui in dominum scevierunt. Hic est ille, dicam fabri aut quæstuariæ filius"

>>24737835
Tertullian is who he's quoting btw, before you ask because you're too lazy to google

>>24737785
>Nietzsche's description is alien to them.
Remind me his description again?
>>24737820
>Nietzsche's thesis
Could you explain Nietzsche's thesis to me? The one you're arguing against?

>>24737816
>An irony is how a certain sort of athiest will defend the language of "science" in terms of there only being "natural laws" that are "obeyed" by particles, and not realize that the language of law and obedience comes from Reformation theology, as does the empiricism and mechanistic world view, that scientific findings were then crammed into.
What's the evidence for this claim? "Obey" attributes animacy to the particle and makes it sound like it's being compelled towards a given state, which is something scientists take much care to avoid.