It used to get shilled here a bunch because it’s such a brutal and stark work but IQfy is still full of summergays so the only thing we care about right now are the dozen GR and IJ threads.
its a little surprising to hear you say that because so far, it doesnt seem all that brutal or stark to me. as long as there isn't some crazy twist in the last 50 pages, i cant see how somebody would get depressed reading this. if anything, it feels liberating and uplifting
>In the head of the adoring male is the illusion that sublime beauty "is all head and wings, with no bottom to betray" it. In one of Swift's poems a young man explains the grotesque contradiction that is tearing him apart:
>Nor wonder how I lost my Wits;
Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, shits!
>In other words, in Swift's mind there was an absolute contradiction "between the state of being in love and an awareness of the excremental function of the beloved.
People laud it as some sort of harrowing blackpill. But it's such an uneven, question-begging, lazy work that i don't understand how anyone can take any message from it, let alone a pessimistic one.
When Becker's not padding whole chapters with passages from Kierkegaard, he's relaying inane gossip about Freud and Jung.
most accurate comment. so repetitive. I read it, hoping to get some new ideas about death, but I found that I get more insightful and interesting answers to "what's the point of life," and "how should we deal with death," out of random drunks on the street. I do literally ask people these questions, point blank. kinda strange but pretty fun.
Good summary. Becker is so full of biases and suppressions himself it's almost like he's trying to convince himself to deny death because he has such existential dread and wants to believe in order to have the spiritual armor of religion against death anxiety but can't seem to actually bring himself to do so. Just a sad mess of a book really.
It's trash and it's theistic cope through and through. Becker tries to claim that Freud fainted a lot because he didn't believe in God while, towards the end, has to admit Jung also fainted a lot even though he did believe in God. The whole book is a mess, not to mention Becker voicing his opinion that the highest human form is a woman with a penis (yes, I'm serious, that's in the book).
pg 223 and 224 in my edition:
"The “reason” is that the female genitals prove the reality of castration and awaken the horror of it for oneself. The only way to triumph over this threat is to “give” the woman a phallus, however artificially and symbolically"
"The hermaphroditic symbol is no mystery after the writings of Rank, Jung, and many others. The problem has been, again, to strip it of its narrow sexual connotations; it is not a sexual problem but a human problem. The self finds itself in a strange body casing and cannot understand this dualism. Man is aghast at the arbitrary nature of genitality, the accidentality of his separate sexual emergence. He can’t accept the impermanence of the body casing or its incompleteness—now male, now female. The body makes no sense to us in its physical thingness, which ties us to a particular kind of fate, a one-sided sexual role. The hermaphroditic image represents a striving for wholeness, a striving that is not sexual but ontological. It is the desire of being for a recapture of the (Agape) unity with the rest of nature, as well as for a completeness in oneself. It is a desire for a healing of the ruptures of existence, the dualism of self and body, self and other, self and world."
9 months ago
Anonymous
>The self finds itself in a strange body casing and cannot understand this dualism. Man is aghast at the arbitrary nature of genitality, the accidentality of his separate sexual emergence. He can’t accept the impermanence of the body casing or its incompleteness—now male, now female.
Jews have a really nasty problem of projecting their own neuroses onto humanity at large.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, he takes for granted that all sex is guilt ridden and all people who poop do so in the greatest of shame and horror at their own bodies. I read this book actually mostly while shitting and I had the immediate thought that I generally have the opposite experience. When I poop, I am grateful that my bowel movements are smooth and healthy. There is a certain satisfaction to bodily functions being executed without complication. In fact, the act itself is literally called "relieving yourself". To be ashamed of such a natural and healthy and necessary act being conducted in private can only be a neurosis.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Who is the "he" you are referring to? Becker? Freud certainly didn't see it this way. From Freud's perspective some people are highly conflicted about anal activities and some people are able to more or less enjoy them as you describe (they allow for a higher degree of pleasure in their compromise formations).
9 months ago
Anonymous
I was referring to Becker. Similar to what
[...]
Becker believed that we have an animal nature and a symbolic nature. When we do certain activities, we're reminded of our animal nature and mortality, which he believed we're trying to escape.
said, Becker believes every human's soul/mind/consciousness is deeply ashamed and horrified that it exists within an animal body, thus every expression of a natural bodily process is stamped with animalness which is not only degrading but also a reminder of the mortality of this animal shell, a reminder of death. In my opinion, this says far more about the neuroses of the author than about man in general.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Who is the "he" you are referring to? Becker? Freud certainly didn't see it this way. From Freud's perspective some people are highly conflicted about anal activities and some people are able to more or less enjoy them as you describe (they allow for a higher degree of pleasure in their compromise formations).
Becker believed that we have an animal nature and a symbolic nature. When we do certain activities, we're reminded of our animal nature and mortality, which he believed we're trying to escape.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>As anal play is an essential exercise in human mastery, it is better not interfered with. If the adult anxiously cuts it short, then he charges the animal function with an extra dose of anxiety. >It becomes more threatening and has to be extra-denied and extra-avoided as an alien part of oneself. This extra-grim denial is what we mean by the "anal character." An "anal" upbringing, then, would be an affirmation, via intense repression >Penis-envy, then, arises from the fact that the mother's genitals have been split off from her body as a focalization of the problem of decay and vulnerability. Bernard Brodsky remarks about his female patient: "Her concept of woman as fecal greatly stimulated her penis envy, since the lively erectile penis was the antonym of the dead, inert stool" >Phyllis Greenacre--outstanding student of the child's experiences--had already remarked on this same equation in the child's perception: penis = movement, therefore life; feces = inertia, therefore death
>Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man's utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant female beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out-the eye that gave even the dry Darwin a chill; to do all this, and to combine it with an anus that shits! It is too much. Nature mocks us, and poets live in torture
>With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes denying what the anus represents; that in fact he is nothing but body so far as nature is concerned.
What the frick is wrong with these people?
9 months ago
Anonymous
ikr frick that pervy shit just read PURE A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE
yeah that's how ive been feeling, a lot of the psychoanalytic concepts could go either way with whether they are "true" or not, but some of the insights in it do feel true to MY experience of things. at the very least, its an interesting lens to look at the world and do some self exploration through
it sounds like an angsty teen discovering that he's mortal. like yeah, death is the foundation of philosophy and literature. he isn't saying something new. not to mention most people aren't really scared of dying, they are scared of aging and becoming husks of their former selves.
You're giving the book an emotional view that isn't there. The concept of death copes also predates both Becker and Freud, like by hundreds of years.
Most people aren't openly afraid of death until they feel it close. It's after decades of irredeemable mistakes that death becomes more than a subconscious fear, when you finally hear it knocking on your door, that's when even geniuses are afraid. Though I believe there's more to creation than Thanatos' shadow.
The idea of the second death was invented to deny death
more like to justify eternal suffering for all human garbage in a schematic that already denies death through resurrection
makes u think maybe john didn't get christ's message tbh
Cursive has been on the decline in school curricula for over 20 years.
it baffles me how many adult men have laughably childish handwriting kek
literally backwards E in crayon tier
Ironic that you didn't bother to use proper grammar while criticizing hand writing. It's almost like in an informal setting the only thing that matters is the conveyance of ideas, not the perfection of the form of the vehicle.
I read it a couple of years ago, I remember two things:
-The "creation is a nightmare spectacular" bit near the beginning
-Everything is copes for the fear of death, aka terror management/hero project
-Bunch of psychoanalysis shit that made both me and the guy who underlined the copy I was reading fall asleep
-This homie literally thinks feet are the most disgusting part of the human anatomy and cannot even conceive there could be a fetish for it
-The ending was uplifting in the same way finding out you have cancer so you don't have to worry about paying your debts is
Only atheists need to "justify" belief in God. Even if Becker managed to overcome his atheism at some point, DoD is 100% an atheist book. The problems he describes simply do not exist if you believe in God.
An atheist by definition says there is no justified belief in God. Also, you falsely assume that people who profess a belief in God don't have doubt. Theists make outlandish claims to try to comfort themselves because often they secretly know it's all cope and desperately need to reassure themselves. Atheists dispense with all this and acknowledge there is no justification in believing any religious claims about God.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Atheists dispense with all this and acknowledge there is no justification in believing any religious claims about God
There are clearly justifications (Ontological, cosmological, etc). You don't need to find any of them persuasive, and many people don't, but don't be in denial about their existence.
9 months ago
Anonymous
Yes, if you aren't concerned with reason, evidence, or consistency, I suppose you could invent "justifications". You could even appeal to social utility as a "justification" for believing something. I meant a reasonable justification, grounds to reasonably believe the claims about God are true, which even your references fail to meet.
9 months ago
Anonymous
> I meant a reasonable justification, grounds to reasonably believe the claims about God are true, which even your references fail to meet.
I don't know what you mean by "the claims about God" here - whether you refer merely to the tenets of bare theism or the much more numerous worldly claims of the world religions. If you mean the tenets of theism, then those arguments are indeed "reasonable justifications", being as they are justifications for the tenets of theism that operate through reasoning. Now obviously if you don't find the arguments persuasive you won't be personally minded to refer to them as "reasonable" or "justified", as that would imply you were being unreasonable or unjustified in failing to accept their conclusions, but that doesn't stop them from being so.
9 months ago
Anonymous
If I say something is an unjustified belief, it means I don't find the belief to have a legitimate reason. It's true that something is either logically sound or not regardless of any person's apprehension of the soundness or lack thereof, but if you wish to advance a belief as reasonable, it's up to you to demonstrate the justification, not simply assert it is so. Of course, the claims about God and "the tenets of bare theism" differ literally from person to person and from theist to theist.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Of course, the claims about God and "the tenets of bare theism" differ literally from person to person and from theist to theist
Fair point - here's a modified definition I got from Britannica which should clear away some ambiguity: "The view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one necessary, supreme and ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms".
>something is either logically sound or not regardless of any person's apprehension of the soundness or lack thereof
You have introduced the notion of "logical soundness" into the discussion here as a synonym for reasonableness or justification without my consent. The idea that logically deductive validity can be used not just to model reasoning and justification for the purpose of philosophical investigation but to exhaustively describe the nature of reasoning and justification is a pipedream of analytic philosophy. In point of fact, as we all know, a negligibly small proportion of the reasons and justifications we actually have for the things we believe fall into the category of a deductively valid series of syllogisms.
>it's up to you to demonstrate the justification, not simply assert it is so
Are you asking me to explicitly state some arguments? They can be found everywhere online, but ok, here's a couple, copied and pasted sic erat scriptum:
Contingent beings exist.
All contingent beings that exist must have an explanation for their existence.
There is an explanation for contingent things that exist (from P1 & P2).
Contingent beings are explained by themselves or by something else (from P3).
Contingent beings are not explained by themselves.
Contingent beings are explained by some other being(s) (from P4 & P5).
The other being(s) that explain(s) the existence of contingent beings must be either contingent or necessary (from P6).
The other being(s) that explain(s) the existence of contingent beings cannot also be contingent because more contingency by itself will result in something existing inexplicably, which conflicts with P2.
There must exist at least one necessary being the explains the existence of contingent beings (from P7 & P8).
---
"For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number seven, for example, can’t cause any effects. So if there is a cause of the universe, it must be a transcendent, unembodied Mind, which is what Christians understand God to be."
To put the reasoning in such an analytically structured form inevitably betrays the real nature of the justifications, but it's all we have.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>which one may also speak in personal terms
This really is the rub. Why does it say "may"? Is this optional? Is this a tacit admission there isn't strong grounding for the personal aspect of the first cause? >You have introduced the notion of "logical soundness" into the discussion here as a synonym for reasonableness or justification without my consent.
If you wish to be illogical, that's your choice, but if you choose this, then you aren't bound by anything. All reasons and justifications should be grounded in a valid logical reasoning, this does not mean an absolute, but a calculation of the odds of something or the recognition that the knowledge is not yet available to us and the best we have is conjecture. Are you saying you concede statements about God are conjecture? >Contingent beings
This logical applies within time. Cause and effect. Dependency. If there is such a thing as outside our universe, outside of time, then we really have no way of saying what those conditions are like. There could simply be unthinking parallel universes, from which our universe spawned. This is a logical possibility which would not require a mind or a personal being. In fact, I'm curious what the exact definition of "beings" is that you are referencing. Also, do you reject the idea that there could be (that even a tiny possibility exists) parallel universes with fundamental natures different from our universe's? In which case there may be a "transcendent" cause without it necessarily being a "embodied mind" (I suspect the definition of "mind" would be tricky here anyway). But we do run into a bit of a problem here, because if you opt to be like Spinoza, and define God as strictly logically and reasonably as possible, you must admit to the fact that "he" may simply be unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes.
My main takeaway is that there is a great mystery regarding the origin of our universe, of existence itself. This mystery may end up being completely barred off from our investigation, thus it is ripe for conjecture. To me, I see people filling this mystery with age-old projections of a fatherly figure whom one can form a child/parent relationship with. The vast majority of Theology is, to me, more interesting for it's psychological aspect than any of it's metaphysical claims or philosophical ones. I do appreciate your rely and your decorum, you certainly rise above the norm for IQfy posters.
9 months ago
Anonymous
>Why does it say "may"? Is this optional? Is this a tacit admission there isn't strong grounding for the personal aspect of the first cause?
It may well be a tacit admission of something like that, yes, but the idea comes from the irreducibility of consciousness, intentionality, reason, will, etc, to any mechanical activity of non-conscious, non-intentional (etc...) component parts of material reality. As such, these things are fundamental aspects of the contingent reality, which must receive an explanation for their contingent but irreducible exemplification in reality within the nature of the necessary existent.
>If you wish to be illogical, that's your choice
The logical and the illogical is a false dichotomy par excellence as applied to the operation of human reason, is the point I was making above. Is solipsism reasonable? Clearly not, but you will not discover why within the domain of deductive logic.
> All reasons and justifications should be grounded in a valid logical reasoning
What is your valid logical reasoning for this?
>There could simply be unthinking parallel universes, from which our universe spawned. This is a logical possibility which would not require a mind or a personal being
But such universes would be yet more contingent beings.
>if you opt to be like Spinoza, and define God as strictly logically and reasonably as possible, you must admit to the fact that "he" may simply be unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes.
"He" has to be necessary and sufficiently explain every contingent reality, including the contingent reality of irreducible consciousness. "Unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes" cannot do that.
I am sure you will have more questions to ask in response to these answers. It is the perennial nature of the discussion. Sooner or later my patience will wear thin or yours will, and then discussion will end without resolution. I merely wished to point out to you that justifications for theism do exist (much like justifications for atheism exist), and it is unnecessary and undesirable to deny that.
>As anal play is an essential exercise in human mastery, it is better not interfered with. If the adult anxiously cuts it short, then he charges the animal function with an extra dose of anxiety. >It becomes more threatening and has to be extra-denied and extra-avoided as an alien part of oneself. This extra-grim denial is what we mean by the "anal character." An "anal" upbringing, then, would be an affirmation, via intense repression >Penis-envy, then, arises from the fact that the mother's genitals have been split off from her body as a focalization of the problem of decay and vulnerability. Bernard Brodsky remarks about his female patient: "Her concept of woman as fecal greatly stimulated her penis envy, since the lively erectile penis was the antonym of the dead, inert stool" >Phyllis Greenacre--outstanding student of the child's experiences--had already remarked on this same equation in the child's perception: penis = movement, therefore life; feces = inertia, therefore death
>Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man's utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant female beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out-the eye that gave even the dry Darwin a chill; to do all this, and to combine it with an anus that shits! It is too much. Nature mocks us, and poets live in torture
>With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes denying what the anus represents; that in fact he is nothing but body so far as nature is concerned.
You can tell that it must be wrong for how openly everyone on IQfy embraces the main message after just a few chapters, which structurally undermines Becker's claims.
I've been thinking of reading this, but my suspicion, considering it's a book of interdisciplinary anthropology and I've heard it frequently quotes Freud, is that it's not really evidence-based and will rather be happy to rely in the overwhelming main on "come on bro it's just obvious isn't it?"-type reasoning, like most work inspired by Freud.
Over time I think about it a lot. While I find the pseudo-Freudianism both annoying and unconvincing, I think he's on to a fundamental truth. It's kind of a shame it's an ostensibly cult psychology book because I think it's really important philosophy that should be adopted more in the mainstream.
I think he's right everyone has a "symbolic" or transcendent side that is at odds with the bitter scientific conception of cold mechanical mortality. We all feel it, but we don't have words for it so it's not openly discussed. Why else do people say and think things like "why me?!" if they don't have some innate conception of being more special than any lived evidence gives them right to believe? Why is the Heroes Journey so popular? This must have consequences for mass psychology and society too, as he suggests.
I personally don't buy this is all down due to a straight fear of death though. I would say it's more people fear and are driven mildly insane by the idea that normal mortal life will rob them of their "specialness." That even if you really want something you might just be fricked over. Take for example someone having a hard time accepting a major breakup because they can't conceive of being normal and happy without their SO, and also can't bring themselves to believe reality would conspire to not give them another chance at happiness in their relationship. So they constantly try to go back to the relationship or beg for it to continue.
It used to get shilled here a bunch because it’s such a brutal and stark work but IQfy is still full of summergays so the only thing we care about right now are the dozen GR and IJ threads.
its a little surprising to hear you say that because so far, it doesnt seem all that brutal or stark to me. as long as there isn't some crazy twist in the last 50 pages, i cant see how somebody would get depressed reading this. if anything, it feels liberating and uplifting
>it feels liberating and uplifting
>In the head of the adoring male is the illusion that sublime beauty "is all head and wings, with no bottom to betray" it. In one of Swift's poems a young man explains the grotesque contradiction that is tearing him apart:
>Nor wonder how I lost my Wits;
Oh! Caelia, Caelia, Caelia, shits!
>In other words, in Swift's mind there was an absolute contradiction "between the state of being in love and an awareness of the excremental function of the beloved.
People laud it as some sort of harrowing blackpill. But it's such an uneven, question-begging, lazy work that i don't understand how anyone can take any message from it, let alone a pessimistic one.
When Becker's not padding whole chapters with passages from Kierkegaard, he's relaying inane gossip about Freud and Jung.
most accurate comment. so repetitive. I read it, hoping to get some new ideas about death, but I found that I get more insightful and interesting answers to "what's the point of life," and "how should we deal with death," out of random drunks on the street. I do literally ask people these questions, point blank. kinda strange but pretty fun.
Good summary. Becker is so full of biases and suppressions himself it's almost like he's trying to convince himself to deny death because he has such existential dread and wants to believe in order to have the spiritual armor of religion against death anxiety but can't seem to actually bring himself to do so. Just a sad mess of a book really.
spirituality by and for atheists in order to hide they are dead inside
you know it's garbage
>Freudian
atheists don’t believe in pseudoscience.
It's trash and it's theistic cope through and through. Becker tries to claim that Freud fainted a lot because he didn't believe in God while, towards the end, has to admit Jung also fainted a lot even though he did believe in God. The whole book is a mess, not to mention Becker voicing his opinion that the highest human form is a woman with a penis (yes, I'm serious, that's in the book).
>the highest human form is a woman with a penis
zozzle, page?
pg 223 and 224 in my edition:
"The “reason” is that the female genitals prove the reality of castration and awaken the horror of it for oneself. The only way to triumph over this threat is to “give” the woman a phallus, however artificially and symbolically"
"The hermaphroditic symbol is no mystery after the writings of Rank, Jung, and many others. The problem has been, again, to strip it of its narrow sexual connotations; it is not a sexual problem but a human problem. The self finds itself in a strange body casing and cannot understand this dualism. Man is aghast at the arbitrary nature of genitality, the accidentality of his separate sexual emergence. He can’t accept the impermanence of the body casing or its incompleteness—now male, now female. The body makes no sense to us in its physical thingness, which ties us to a particular kind of fate, a one-sided sexual role. The hermaphroditic image represents a striving for wholeness, a striving that is not sexual but ontological. It is the desire of being for a recapture of the (Agape) unity with the rest of nature, as well as for a completeness in oneself. It is a desire for a healing of the ruptures of existence, the dualism of self and body, self and other, self and world."
>The self finds itself in a strange body casing and cannot understand this dualism. Man is aghast at the arbitrary nature of genitality, the accidentality of his separate sexual emergence. He can’t accept the impermanence of the body casing or its incompleteness—now male, now female.
Jews have a really nasty problem of projecting their own neuroses onto humanity at large.
Yes, he takes for granted that all sex is guilt ridden and all people who poop do so in the greatest of shame and horror at their own bodies. I read this book actually mostly while shitting and I had the immediate thought that I generally have the opposite experience. When I poop, I am grateful that my bowel movements are smooth and healthy. There is a certain satisfaction to bodily functions being executed without complication. In fact, the act itself is literally called "relieving yourself". To be ashamed of such a natural and healthy and necessary act being conducted in private can only be a neurosis.
Who is the "he" you are referring to? Becker? Freud certainly didn't see it this way. From Freud's perspective some people are highly conflicted about anal activities and some people are able to more or less enjoy them as you describe (they allow for a higher degree of pleasure in their compromise formations).
I was referring to Becker. Similar to what
said, Becker believes every human's soul/mind/consciousness is deeply ashamed and horrified that it exists within an animal body, thus every expression of a natural bodily process is stamped with animalness which is not only degrading but also a reminder of the mortality of this animal shell, a reminder of death. In my opinion, this says far more about the neuroses of the author than about man in general.
Becker believed that we have an animal nature and a symbolic nature. When we do certain activities, we're reminded of our animal nature and mortality, which he believed we're trying to escape.
What the frick is wrong with these people?
ikr frick that pervy shit just read PURE A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE
Early life section
it has a point tho
yeah that's how ive been feeling, a lot of the psychoanalytic concepts could go either way with whether they are "true" or not, but some of the insights in it do feel true to MY experience of things. at the very least, its an interesting lens to look at the world and do some self exploration through
All Christians willingly walk into Death with Baptism. What one should fear is the Second Death.
The idea of the second death was invented to deny death
it sounds like an angsty teen discovering that he's mortal. like yeah, death is the foundation of philosophy and literature. he isn't saying something new. not to mention most people aren't really scared of dying, they are scared of aging and becoming husks of their former selves.
You're giving the book an emotional view that isn't there. The concept of death copes also predates both Becker and Freud, like by hundreds of years.
Most people aren't openly afraid of death until they feel it close. It's after decades of irredeemable mistakes that death becomes more than a subconscious fear, when you finally hear it knocking on your door, that's when even geniuses are afraid. Though I believe there's more to creation than Thanatos' shadow.
more like to justify eternal suffering for all human garbage in a schematic that already denies death through resurrection
makes u think maybe john didn't get christ's message tbh
I'm pretty sure no one here actually read the book
Your comment made me go and grab my copy to share some notes I jotted down while reading it
Based toddler handwriting
It's legible, what else matters?
Cursive has been on the decline in school curricula for over 20 years.
Ironic that you didn't bother to use proper grammar while criticizing hand writing. It's almost like in an informal setting the only thing that matters is the conveyance of ideas, not the perfection of the form of the vehicle.
Mutts really don’t write in cursive?
it baffles me how many adult men have laughably childish handwriting kek
literally backwards E in crayon tier
Promised a lot, delivered nothing. I wish I hadn't lost so much time reading this shit.
>God isn't real. have a nice day, ya dumb goy.
Uh...no?
I read it a couple of years ago, I remember two things:
-The "creation is a nightmare spectacular" bit near the beginning
-Everything is copes for the fear of death, aka terror management/hero project
-Bunch of psychoanalysis shit that made both me and the guy who underlined the copy I was reading fall asleep
-This homie literally thinks feet are the most disgusting part of the human anatomy and cannot even conceive there could be a fetish for it
-The ending was uplifting in the same way finding out you have cancer so you don't have to worry about paying your debts is
It's ok
Ernest Beckers early life explains everything
Amazing book, it's the logical conclusion of atheism. If you're looking for a cure, read All Things Are Possible by Lev Shestov.
Becker was not an atheist, he spends most of the book trying to justify a belief in God. Admit it, you never read the book.
Only atheists need to "justify" belief in God. Even if Becker managed to overcome his atheism at some point, DoD is 100% an atheist book. The problems he describes simply do not exist if you believe in God.
An atheist by definition says there is no justified belief in God. Also, you falsely assume that people who profess a belief in God don't have doubt. Theists make outlandish claims to try to comfort themselves because often they secretly know it's all cope and desperately need to reassure themselves. Atheists dispense with all this and acknowledge there is no justification in believing any religious claims about God.
>Atheists dispense with all this and acknowledge there is no justification in believing any religious claims about God
There are clearly justifications (Ontological, cosmological, etc). You don't need to find any of them persuasive, and many people don't, but don't be in denial about their existence.
Yes, if you aren't concerned with reason, evidence, or consistency, I suppose you could invent "justifications". You could even appeal to social utility as a "justification" for believing something. I meant a reasonable justification, grounds to reasonably believe the claims about God are true, which even your references fail to meet.
> I meant a reasonable justification, grounds to reasonably believe the claims about God are true, which even your references fail to meet.
I don't know what you mean by "the claims about God" here - whether you refer merely to the tenets of bare theism or the much more numerous worldly claims of the world religions. If you mean the tenets of theism, then those arguments are indeed "reasonable justifications", being as they are justifications for the tenets of theism that operate through reasoning. Now obviously if you don't find the arguments persuasive you won't be personally minded to refer to them as "reasonable" or "justified", as that would imply you were being unreasonable or unjustified in failing to accept their conclusions, but that doesn't stop them from being so.
If I say something is an unjustified belief, it means I don't find the belief to have a legitimate reason. It's true that something is either logically sound or not regardless of any person's apprehension of the soundness or lack thereof, but if you wish to advance a belief as reasonable, it's up to you to demonstrate the justification, not simply assert it is so. Of course, the claims about God and "the tenets of bare theism" differ literally from person to person and from theist to theist.
>Of course, the claims about God and "the tenets of bare theism" differ literally from person to person and from theist to theist
Fair point - here's a modified definition I got from Britannica which should clear away some ambiguity: "The view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one necessary, supreme and ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms".
>something is either logically sound or not regardless of any person's apprehension of the soundness or lack thereof
You have introduced the notion of "logical soundness" into the discussion here as a synonym for reasonableness or justification without my consent. The idea that logically deductive validity can be used not just to model reasoning and justification for the purpose of philosophical investigation but to exhaustively describe the nature of reasoning and justification is a pipedream of analytic philosophy. In point of fact, as we all know, a negligibly small proportion of the reasons and justifications we actually have for the things we believe fall into the category of a deductively valid series of syllogisms.
>it's up to you to demonstrate the justification, not simply assert it is so
Are you asking me to explicitly state some arguments? They can be found everywhere online, but ok, here's a couple, copied and pasted sic erat scriptum:
Contingent beings exist.
All contingent beings that exist must have an explanation for their existence.
There is an explanation for contingent things that exist (from P1 & P2).
Contingent beings are explained by themselves or by something else (from P3).
Contingent beings are not explained by themselves.
Contingent beings are explained by some other being(s) (from P4 & P5).
The other being(s) that explain(s) the existence of contingent beings must be either contingent or necessary (from P6).
The other being(s) that explain(s) the existence of contingent beings cannot also be contingent because more contingency by itself will result in something existing inexplicably, which conflicts with P2.
There must exist at least one necessary being the explains the existence of contingent beings (from P7 & P8).
---
"For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a non-physical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number seven, for example, can’t cause any effects. So if there is a cause of the universe, it must be a transcendent, unembodied Mind, which is what Christians understand God to be."
To put the reasoning in such an analytically structured form inevitably betrays the real nature of the justifications, but it's all we have.
>which one may also speak in personal terms
This really is the rub. Why does it say "may"? Is this optional? Is this a tacit admission there isn't strong grounding for the personal aspect of the first cause?
>You have introduced the notion of "logical soundness" into the discussion here as a synonym for reasonableness or justification without my consent.
If you wish to be illogical, that's your choice, but if you choose this, then you aren't bound by anything. All reasons and justifications should be grounded in a valid logical reasoning, this does not mean an absolute, but a calculation of the odds of something or the recognition that the knowledge is not yet available to us and the best we have is conjecture. Are you saying you concede statements about God are conjecture?
>Contingent beings
This logical applies within time. Cause and effect. Dependency. If there is such a thing as outside our universe, outside of time, then we really have no way of saying what those conditions are like. There could simply be unthinking parallel universes, from which our universe spawned. This is a logical possibility which would not require a mind or a personal being. In fact, I'm curious what the exact definition of "beings" is that you are referencing. Also, do you reject the idea that there could be (that even a tiny possibility exists) parallel universes with fundamental natures different from our universe's? In which case there may be a "transcendent" cause without it necessarily being a "embodied mind" (I suspect the definition of "mind" would be tricky here anyway). But we do run into a bit of a problem here, because if you opt to be like Spinoza, and define God as strictly logically and reasonably as possible, you must admit to the fact that "he" may simply be unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes.
My main takeaway is that there is a great mystery regarding the origin of our universe, of existence itself. This mystery may end up being completely barred off from our investigation, thus it is ripe for conjecture. To me, I see people filling this mystery with age-old projections of a fatherly figure whom one can form a child/parent relationship with. The vast majority of Theology is, to me, more interesting for it's psychological aspect than any of it's metaphysical claims or philosophical ones. I do appreciate your rely and your decorum, you certainly rise above the norm for IQfy posters.
>Why does it say "may"? Is this optional? Is this a tacit admission there isn't strong grounding for the personal aspect of the first cause?
It may well be a tacit admission of something like that, yes, but the idea comes from the irreducibility of consciousness, intentionality, reason, will, etc, to any mechanical activity of non-conscious, non-intentional (etc...) component parts of material reality. As such, these things are fundamental aspects of the contingent reality, which must receive an explanation for their contingent but irreducible exemplification in reality within the nature of the necessary existent.
>If you wish to be illogical, that's your choice
The logical and the illogical is a false dichotomy par excellence as applied to the operation of human reason, is the point I was making above. Is solipsism reasonable? Clearly not, but you will not discover why within the domain of deductive logic.
> All reasons and justifications should be grounded in a valid logical reasoning
What is your valid logical reasoning for this?
>There could simply be unthinking parallel universes, from which our universe spawned. This is a logical possibility which would not require a mind or a personal being
But such universes would be yet more contingent beings.
>if you opt to be like Spinoza, and define God as strictly logically and reasonably as possible, you must admit to the fact that "he" may simply be unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes.
"He" has to be necessary and sufficiently explain every contingent reality, including the contingent reality of irreducible consciousness. "Unthinking aspects to our universe or other universes" cannot do that.
I am sure you will have more questions to ask in response to these answers. It is the perennial nature of the discussion. Sooner or later my patience will wear thin or yours will, and then discussion will end without resolution. I merely wished to point out to you that justifications for theism do exist (much like justifications for atheism exist), and it is unnecessary and undesirable to deny that.
>As anal play is an essential exercise in human mastery, it is better not interfered with. If the adult anxiously cuts it short, then he charges the animal function with an extra dose of anxiety.
>It becomes more threatening and has to be extra-denied and extra-avoided as an alien part of oneself. This extra-grim denial is what we mean by the "anal character." An "anal" upbringing, then, would be an affirmation, via intense repression
>Penis-envy, then, arises from the fact that the mother's genitals have been split off from her body as a focalization of the problem of decay and vulnerability. Bernard Brodsky remarks about his female patient: "Her concept of woman as fecal greatly stimulated her penis envy, since the lively erectile penis was the antonym of the dead, inert stool"
>Phyllis Greenacre--outstanding student of the child's experiences--had already remarked on this same equation in the child's perception: penis = movement, therefore life; feces = inertia, therefore death
>Excreting is the curse that threatens madness because it shows man his abject finitude, his physicalness, the likely unreality of his hopes and dreams. But even more immediately, it represents man's utter bafflement at the sheer non-sense of creation: to fashion the sublime miracle of the human face, the mysterium tremendum of radiant female beauty, the veritable goddesses that beautiful women are; to bring this out of nothing, out of the void, and make it shine in noonday; to take such a miracle and put miracles again within it, deep in the mystery of eyes that peer out-the eye that gave even the dry Darwin a chill; to do all this, and to combine it with an anus that shits! It is too much. Nature mocks us, and poets live in torture
>With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. But like all philosophers he is still bound by it, and his main task in life becomes denying what the anus represents; that in fact he is nothing but body so far as nature is concerned.
I like when he describes a human as "god who shits". Now I think about Becker every morning.
>half of the book is just Becker shitting on Freud
amazing
Nobody hates israelites more than other israelites
birth and death of meaning is objectively 10000x better
You can tell that it must be wrong for how openly everyone on IQfy embraces the main message after just a few chapters, which structurally undermines Becker's claims.
everybody in this thread is shitting on the book. can you read?
I've been thinking of reading this, but my suspicion, considering it's a book of interdisciplinary anthropology and I've heard it frequently quotes Freud, is that it's not really evidence-based and will rather be happy to rely in the overwhelming main on "come on bro it's just obvious isn't it?"-type reasoning, like most work inspired by Freud.
yeah, it's like Becker had this intuition "Culture is driven by the Denial of Death" and the whole book is just how that intuition could be true
Psychology destroyed philosophy
Over time I think about it a lot. While I find the pseudo-Freudianism both annoying and unconvincing, I think he's on to a fundamental truth. It's kind of a shame it's an ostensibly cult psychology book because I think it's really important philosophy that should be adopted more in the mainstream.
I think he's right everyone has a "symbolic" or transcendent side that is at odds with the bitter scientific conception of cold mechanical mortality. We all feel it, but we don't have words for it so it's not openly discussed. Why else do people say and think things like "why me?!" if they don't have some innate conception of being more special than any lived evidence gives them right to believe? Why is the Heroes Journey so popular? This must have consequences for mass psychology and society too, as he suggests.
I personally don't buy this is all down due to a straight fear of death though. I would say it's more people fear and are driven mildly insane by the idea that normal mortal life will rob them of their "specialness." That even if you really want something you might just be fricked over. Take for example someone having a hard time accepting a major breakup because they can't conceive of being normal and happy without their SO, and also can't bring themselves to believe reality would conspire to not give them another chance at happiness in their relationship. So they constantly try to go back to the relationship or beg for it to continue.
>I haven't seen it mentioned here.
lurk moar newbie
I stopped denying death
first book from IQfy i read that sucked ass. to me it signals the beginning of the decline.