What is sin?

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"You are a wave. Every minute you say goodbye to more than a billion combinations of post synaptic receptors in your brain and replace them with new ones. You do the same with the cells that line your digestive tract and make up your skin. And you constantly shift your mind from one obsession to another. Yet you retain an identity. Something more puzzling than mere substance continues to impose the shifting flicker of a you…..Your identity is a pattern holding sway over a hundred trillion cells that change constantly…….Your self is a dance that uses matter to whisk from the invisible and the impossible into the gasses, dusts, and jellies of reality."

--Howard Bloom

for more details on this, i heartily encourage a reading of his crowdfunded book "the g_d problem". don't let the title intimidate you :3

A does not equal A
1+1 does not always equal 2
Everything falls apart is wrong
Randomness is not as random as you think
Information theory misses the point

here's another taste

 
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Regarding the topic of this thread, "What is sin?", I just came across a quote attributed to the legendary Hermes Trismegistus: "The ultimate sin is to be ignorant of the divine." I couldn't agree more!

For those who don't know, Hermes Trismegistus, the "thrice greatest," represents not so much a person but an ancient Egyptian/Hellenistic School of Initiation, going back to the Greek god Hermes and the ancient Egyptian god Thoth. It goes without saying that this school was a mystical school practicing initiation into the divine.
 
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The old metaethical dilemma: Does a loving God decree a moral rule because the rule is right? Or it is right simply because a loving God decrees the moral rule? If God decrees it because it is right, then God is subject to a standard apart from Godself. If a rule is right because a loving God decrees it, then God's decrees are by definition valid and cannot be questioned or evaluated. To postulate the former, there must be philosophical absolutes apart from God--a nonsensical notion. To postulate the latter is to discount the possibility that we can in principle be "morally superior" to God.
So what is the way out of this dilemma? We must find a way to reduce "ought" to "is," that is, to ground moral rules on the principles that actually govern how the universe works. Such a grounding presupposes satisfactory just consequences and enforced accountability. Thus, atheists can be very moral by conventional standards, but cannot be moral within their own presuppositional framework. For they are forced to invoke social consensus, evolutionary herd instinct, "gut" feeling, none of which can warrant faith in a God and none of which can make morality meaningful within their own assumptive framework. The brutal fact is the Nature does not care about people.
 
Studmuffin said:
The old metaethical dilemma: Does a loving God decree a moral rule because the rule is right? Or it is right simply because a loving God decrees the moral rule? If God decrees it because it is right, then God is subject to a standard apart from Godself. If a rule is right because a loving God decrees it, then God's decrees are by definition valid and cannot be questioned or evaluated. To postulate the former, there must be philosophical absolutes apart from God--a nonsensical notion. To postulate the latter is to discount the possibility that we can in principle be "morally superior" to God.
So what is the way out of this dilemma? We must find a way to reduce "ought" to "is," that is, to ground moral rules on the principles that actually govern how the universe works. Such a grounding presupposes satisfactory just consequences and enforced accountability. Thus, atheists can be very moral by conventional standards, but cannot be moral within their own presuppositional framework. For they are forced to invoke social consensus, evolutionary herd instinct, "gut" feeling, none of which can warrant faith in a God and none of which can make morality meaningful within their own assumptive framework. The brutal fact is the Nature does not care about people.
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Berserk,

could you please, for the benefit of the home viewers, define these terms:

'philosophical absolutes'

'morality'

'care'

'enforced accountability'

'g_d'

?

that'll give people here more structure than just our fun opinion flinging/riffing :3
 
Studmuffin said:
If a rule is right because a loving God decrees it, then God's decrees are by definition valid and cannot be questioned or evaluated.
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No, this case would mean that the rule was put forth by the one doing the defining. Definition is a human action. If some humans define their god as the source of all that is good, then the humans are the ones defining what is good. It would be honest of them to accept their responsibility for that.

Studmuffin said:
So what is the way out of this dilemma? We must find a way to reduce "ought" to "is," that is, to ground moral rules on the principles that actually govern how the universe works.
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In other words, to refuse to understand morality or valuation as they actually occur. Because they occur subjectively.

Studmuffin said:
Such a grounding presupposes satisfactory just consequences and enforced accountability.
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There are several problems with this, but the critical flaw with your argument is that it engages in circular reasoning. "Just consequences" - what defines justice? A just consequence is a moral one. But morality isn't grounded yet at that point, logically, so we have no grounding for justice either - other than our own opinions.

To logically derive an "ought" from an "is", you can't include another "ought" in your premises, or you'll be back at square one. That's not your fault, though; the endeavor is impossible from the outset.
 
I want to expand a bit on a point I made in an earlier earlier post. In the NT, "sin" (Greek: "hamartano") means "to miss the mark" and, by extension, "the condition of being separate or alienated from God." No separation or alienation, no sin! Luke recognizes that Jesus "grew in wisdom and favor with God," and this implies a time when Jesus lacked wisdom and was less in favor with God. Hebrews paradoxically insists that Jesus had to learn obedience to God through suffering, and yet, remained sinless through this whole process. Therefore the trial-and-error learning of human maturation is not in itself "sinful." So the biblical concept of sin presupposes accountability a holy God. If atheists are correct that no God exists, then there is no sin in this sense.

But here is the dirty little secret for the wannabe moral atheist. The alleged virtues of "the good atheist" cannot entitle him/ her to claim to be a moral being. Why not? Because they must find some justification for what makes their right actions "right." It gets them nowhere to invoke social consensus, evolutionary herd instinct, or subjective "gut" feeling about human decency, because such criteria can establish neither the existence of God nor moral absolutes. An atheist's values may serve society well, but functional utility addresses social utility does not imply individual morality. Hence, the question I posed earlier that has not been meaningfully answered: Why shouldn't I harm others, if this makes me feel powerful and brings me pleasure, if I can get away with it? To answer this question, the atheist must postulate the absurd: the existence of philosophical absolutes, which is cognitively meaningful only if there were a God or a system of reincarnational karma.
 
Odd, I was really expecting to come back online to a response from Berserk to my counterpoint. I accept the concession made by the choice to avoid addressing those points, and instead to write a long post in response to nothing in anyone else's posts at all.
 
Azdgari said:
Odd, I was really expecting to come back online to a response from Berserk to my counterpoint. I accept the concession made by the choice to avoid addressing those points, and instead to write a long post in response to nothing in anyone else's posts at all.
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Yeah, I really liked his posts in the old WC
It was like reading wikipedia -- get an overview and then some hyperlinks to various scholars etc
(I wonder if he'll ever apologize for his behaviour to chansen?)
And Azdgari, you're so good & fair at debating here
 
But hey...atta way to pick em' up studmuffin. You're really winning em over, telling atheists they can't possibly be moral beings (what a morally upstanding thing to say) you'll have 'em falling all over you. Way to go!:confused:
 
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Waterfall said:
I doubt the average atheist asks themselves the above question. It seems to be a leading question based on your own agenda.
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Indeed, I doubt the average theist asks this question, either. It would only occur to people who get their kicks from harming others. I don't think that that describes the majority of people, theist or atheist.
 
The deafening silence to this question demonstrates why atheists have no rational grounds for claiming to be moral in any cognitively meaningful sense. And your appeal to a social consensus for not posing the question is no more cogent than invoking a social consensus for God's existence.
 
i think Berserk is writing to himself?

anyway folks, done any good sinning lately?

i took enjoyment in 1st degreeing some weeds yesterday...i totally coveted their demise and didn't forgive them at all
 
Yes. He must be. Because three people have responded, and he's claiming there's deafening silence.

I fantacised about running my fingers through Eddie Vedder's 1992 hair.:oops: Did I just confess that? Well, it's true. He had beautiful hair and I couldn't help but notice.
 
Kimmio, I think you miss the point in x ways: (1) "Simply caring for others" is more moral than "hurting others if it makes you feel powerful and happy" only by some standard of philosophical absolutes. Nature cares nothing about people, only about natural selection, genetic mutation, and the survival of the fittest.
(2) "Deafening silence" refers to respondents' irrelevant allusions to social consensus, evolutionary herd instinct, "gut feeling," etc,--none of which establish morality in any meaningful way any more than they establish the rationality of faith in God. Atheists are inconsistent on this point. None of these address the question of what makes right actions right, except by the arbitrary dogmatism that atheists so disdain with respect to postulating a God.
 
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