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Author | Topic: Are we prisoners of sin | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I think that the notion of sin is just a scam invented to keep people under the boots of priests. In human affairs, the concept of crime is surely sufficient.
I suspect that the idea of sin was invented to make sure that people live in a permanant state of anguished guilt and dependant on religion for relief. I have recently spent some time listening to christian radio stations while I commute, from curiosity. My impression is that anyone who took that stuff seriously would be at great risk of serious mental illness. It amazes me that anyone would fall for such an obvious scam.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I have found that in many cases it is not intellectual hurdles that keep someone from believing in God rather it is more spiritual than that. People just don’t want to give up their sinful ways, because they love being in sin so much, they are enjoying themselves to the fullest and the thought of having to give up all of these pleasures just isn’t thinkable for them. My opening post deals with the problem of sin. Sin is enjoyable but it has a huge downside, and that is death, spiritual death that condemns the doer to hell. Do you not see how vicious this is? Do you not see that you are the victim of a system that uses your own humanity against you? People like the things that they like for what are (or at least once were) good reasons. What people do is for them to decide in their societies. The idea of sin merely hands power to those who contrive to tell others what things are sinful. If you could present real evidence that your god even exists and that hell or, for that matter, anything spiritual (whatever that means), exists, one could take your ideas seriously. Otherwise, why should one?
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I don't think that you are justified in making this quote but you are entitled to it anyway, God gave us a freedom and no one but you can deny yourself that freedom, but about the words we utter, God does say in Mathew 12:36 And I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. You need to learn that bible verses are not legitimate in public discourse. To everyone but the followers of a few religions, the bible is just an old book written thousands of years ago by ignorant savages. Only the followers of those religions have any obligation to accord it any authority at all.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
But the question still remains why should I try to keep the peace, why should anyone be punished if there are no absolutes. Looking back into time, if people had not kept the peace, there would likely not be people here now. As it is, people have a tendency to keep the peace etc; it comes with being human. Remember the idea of crime. Crime is breaking of laws or customary rules. Societies punish crimes so that people can live peacefully. As far as the individual goes, avoiding crime is at least partly a matter of practicality. If the only reason you would behave decently is from fear of a (possibly only hypothetical) god, it seems that religion has degraded your innate moral sense.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
(please excuse off-topic item)
"emancipatory marxist" That really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? What is it? I tried searching for it but got a bunch of postmodernist screeds written in a style that makes my brain ache. Is there a description around that is written by someone who actually wants to be understood?
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I do apologise, I've been reading social research again No apology is needed at all! It is a neat phrase and expresses your idea very well. It's too bad that the writing one finds searching online for it is so incredibly dreadful. You must have a "great mind", since there are clearly others thinking "alike" with you.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
so why do we have police and law courts. Surely we do all believe in sin which is a breaking of law whether they are Gods laws of mans. As I understand these ideas, crimes are defined by societies. Breaking a law is a crime. Sins are supposed to be defined by supernatural authority. Breaking a religious commandment is a sin. So, if one were alone on an island (ie not in a society), for example, one could sin, but could not commit a crime. A given action might be a sin, or a crime, or both, or neither. If it is not established that there is/are god/gods, the idea of sin is null. That is why religious taboos are not transferrable to unbelievers. Edited by Woodsy, : Simultaneous post with purpledawn's.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
you cannot tell me I mustn’t tell untruths, for even if I lied it would make no difference, seeing that it’s nowhere forbidden to lie. Sure I can. I can also refuse to do business with you (for example) if I find that you lie, since societies would be impossible without trust.
Things such as slavery, torture, or political repression are regarded as immoral regardless of your background. These things are regarded as moral in some places. They are even promoted by certain kinds of religion! Check the recent news from Afghanistan!
If lying is a common and acceptable practice in a certain culture then not lying would be the immoral thing to do. I have been told that this is exactly the case in the middle east, in some contexts. That is why people there make extravagant threats that they have no possibility of carrying out.
there are things that everyone from all around the world agrees to be moral and immoral. Those things would be the minimum required for people to live together at all, surely? What you are doing is applying the standards of your own culture to everyone. Those who live in other cultures would no doubt like to apply very different standards to you. An interesting phenomenon is the constant change in what I have seen called the moral zeitgeist. That is, the majority moral consensus. For example, slavery used to be generally accepted (see the bible for examples). These days, slavery is mostly disapproved of. Personally, I hope that with worldwide travel and communication a common moral zeitgeist will become much more generally accepted.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
Unless you can demonstrate the existance of your god, and that it has the properties you ascribe to it, no-one is obliged to pay your religious notions any attention. We can simply dismiss your god-based terrors as a sort of intellectual malaise.
Faith is not legal tender in the marketplace of ideas.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I am curious. Do you and the others here who talk about what Adam and Eve did and said really believe that these are things that actually happened in the real world?
In the face of what we now know about the real world, do you really believe that these things happened?
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
What are you trying to do? Recruit people to your religion by inflicting some kind of mental illness on them?
Anyone who is at all aware of other people knows that your statements are utterly false.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I am amazed at the speciousness of this style of thinking. It seems that, if you can rummage around in your old book and find bits and pieces of text that support your ideas, you think that validates those ideas. You also seem to think that these quilted constructs are preferable to simple clear thinking.
I have encountered just this style of thinking among muslims. They too seemed incapable of thinking for themselves and could only rummage around in their old book. These so-called holy texts seem to me to be a great danger for humanity.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
The chief peril is that using old books gives people a false sense of certainty and an appalling arrogance. They are empowered to justify any bigotry at all, provided they can find some musty bit of text to support it.
If you don't think text-based religion leads to bloodbaths, you must not be following the news these days. I am not impressed by your your bits of text about love. One can easily find vile bits of text in the same book.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
As a follower of no religion, why should I take your word for it that Christianity is any more valid than Islam etc? They look like pretty similar enterprises to me.
Please provide evidence and reasoned argument. Please note: you may not assume the existence of any deity nor its properties. Those, too need to be substantiated. Please note also: biblical texts do not count as evidence unless evidence can be given that supports biblical authority. As for an example, the current campaign of the catholic church to promote overpopulation and the spread of AIDS looks pretty bloody to me.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3404 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
But getting back to your question if I understand it correctly, God is a spirit being our faith is also spiritual, and we are partly spirit, with all of these in mind I think that we can experience (see) the spiritual without ever seeing a physical manifestation of the spiritual realm. What do you mean by spiritual here? What evidence do you have that there is any such thing as a "spiritual" being? What evidence do you have that so-called spiritual experiences are not by-products of physical events? If you cannot produce such evidence, an outside observer can conclude only that you suffer from some malady of the intellect.
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