Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Maybe better suited to the culture war thread, but I just had a long phone call with my friend from college, let's call her Caroline. Very atheistic, but fairly middle of the road politically. Went to Catholic School growing up, but was raised in a Jewish family (something to do with the school system in Phoenix. Recently has been getting more and more into Christianity both because she's dating a quite Christian man, and because she feels like we need God (and implicitly the Christian God is the only thing that works). I have a lot sympathy for this position, as I am a Catholic convert myself, although I haven't been to mass recently, as I no longer believe in many aspects of the faith. However this line of thinking, which is also espoused by many RETVRN posters on this forum, seems rather... myopic, both historically and just in general. Not only does 2/3 of the world's current population live without the Christian God, historically we have very successful nearly atheistic civil societies (Rome and Confucian China off the top of my head, although perhaps calling Republican Rome atheistic is a stretch). Perhaps you could argue that Christianity is better suited to the Western temperament, as it is the religion of our forefathers. This is what initially drew me into Catholicism, as Buddhism, despite being more intellectually appealing, couldn't connect with me on a cultural/spiritual level. Yet as @Hoffmeister25 has argued before, so is Germanic and Hellenic paganism, and those were violently destroyed nearly 1500 years ago.
So my question for all the RETVRN posters on this form (and also for those who agree more closely with myself) is thus. What is your best argument for why we need God as a society, and why the Christian God in particular? What were/are the flaws in previous/current societies that had at least surface level success (outside of the Modern West) that could be remedied with Christianity? For those of you who aren't Christian, I'd like to hear more about what your own spiritual/moral system looks like, and what your own vision of the future of society going forward is.
What my mind knows to be true at the level of rational, propositional judgement: There is no meaning. There are no morals. All value judgements are nothing more than subjective sentiments. The world described by fundamental physics is the only world there is.
What my "soul" knows to be true via perceptual, lived experience: There is such a thing as meaning, and there is such a thing as "The Good" that exists outside of us, although saying anything about it in concrete terms is virtually impossible. It is the height of arrogance to think that The Good would allow itself to be encapsulated in straightforward principles like "justice" or "fairness" or "duty". The Good is a trickster; it delights in doing strange things and keeping people on their toes. The only way to know anything of The Good is to humble yourself, be quiet, and listen closely to what each individual moment is telling you. After a lifetime of cultivating this practice, it is possible that one may obtain something that could be called "knowledge", but it will only ever be one piece of a larger whole.
It'll continue to muddle on as it always has. Different races, civilizations, forms of life are always constantly ascending or declining, this is nothing new. I do believe that it's possible for the universe as a whole to reach a "bad ending", although how likely this is to happen is anyone's guess.
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