Sin

[Her]

For the purpose of this topic, sin is defined as a moral transgression of any kind, not specific to any one deity or belief system. This way we can talk about more than just the Abrahamic definition of wrongdoing, such as karma or your own moral law. However, you may talk about sin/moral failures as you please.

- Do you believe in 'original sin', a Christian thought that humankind is inherently flawed due to Adam & Eve's rebellion? Do you not believe this but agree with other parts of Christian doctrine relating to sin?
- Do you believe in karma? Do you think that this is a more 'just' way of viewing moral failures?
- Do you have your own moral law? Why? What are some examples of your moral law?
- How do you think sin should be removed, or forgiven? What are steps we can take to bettering ourselves?

These are just starting questions, you may discuss as you wish.

 

[DarkSkys]

I grew up in a religious family, I was told that we're all born with sin and the only way to rid it is by accepting the spirit, son & father into our hearts.

 

[Kanzler]

I don't follow a belief system, so whatever moral system I have has to be internally justified. I think my conception of "sin" or moral wrongdoing revolves around several key concepts: harm, waste, falsehood, and malice. Other than these basic principles, I don't have a "moral law" because much of how I morally approach things is situational. It's important to weigh a situation justly and adequately consider the concerns of all stakeholders. As for removing and forgiving "sin", I suppose that it can be done by rectifying those moral flaws that I have outlined.

As for karma, I believe in the very barebones idea of cause and effect - in short that bad actions now can cause bad things to happen later. Because we don't live in a social vacuum, the bad things that you do will reflect on you depending on the people you have wronged and the people who find out. Furthermore, if you get away with "witnessless" wrongdoing, you still have to deal with that action yourself and that affects your self-perception and your habits. I don't believe that karma is a deterministic system of justice (I don't believe that what goes around must come around), nor do I bother with any of the spiritual, reincarnation aspects that are accepted by eastern religions.

 

[Tek]

Yes! I love this topic. Is that weird? Bah.

Anyway, I do have a multi-faceted conception of sin within an AQAL framework, but I can express the core of it quite simply: as best you are able, don't be a jerk. The rest pretty well follows from there.

It's not a coincidence that the highly-evolved individuals who shape our world are overflowing with kindness and compassion. Love is the basic principle of existence. Those who are truly plugged in to the All become a conduit for loving Divine energy, an Axis Mundi of sorts.


Another issue related to sin that has my attention is the overuse and misuse of guilt within the Christian tradition. It is a good thing to learn how to feel guilty for causing harm. It means you are becoming aware of how others feel.

But too often, I see our Church leaders keep on with the guilt, year after year, which retards further interior growth, drives people away, and just generally makes people feel shitty without any benefit. Which is a thing you should try not to do if you're avoiding sin.

 

[Esper]

I'm not religious, was not raised religious, and the ideas of spiritual/religious sin seem unrealistic to me.

I don't follow a belief system, so whatever moral system I have has to be internally justified. I think my conception of "sin" or moral wrongdoing revolves around several key concepts: harm, waste, falsehood, and malice. Other than these basic principles, I don't have a "moral law" because much of how I morally approach things is situational. It's important to weigh a situation justly and adequately consider the concerns of all stakeholders. As for removing and forgiving "sin", I suppose that it can be done by rectifying those moral flaws that I have outlined.

As for karma, I believe in the very barebones idea of cause and effect - in short that bad actions now can cause bad things to happen later. Because we don't live in a social vacuum, the bad things that you do will reflect on you depending on the people you have wronged and the people who find out. Furthermore, if you get away with "witnessless" wrongdoing, you still have to deal with that action yourself and that affects your self-perception and your habits. I don't believe that karma is a deterministic system of justice (I don't believe that what goes around must come around), nor do I bother with any of the spiritual, reincarnation aspects that are accepted by eastern religions.

I like the way you worded this. It's not overly simple, which causes arguments about definitions of words and what they constitute, (like "be a good person") or overly arbitrary, which is hard to justify (e.g. "follow the Bible's teachings").

I rather like that you mentioned harm. I consider the core of my own belief system to based on an idea of reducing harm. For me that includes harm to other people (physical, emotional, etc.), harm to one's self (including self-destructive habits), harm to the world, and so on. I come at it from a view that if the harm is unnecessary it's "immoral". And so how I react to it is to try to stop, or to encourage people to stop, whatever they're doing that's causing the harm. If that's done with punishment it's because that's the best, more effective course of action. But like when you have someone who's, say, getting hurt by an emotionally abusive partner there's different approaches that one should take with each of the two people because you don't want to say to them "Hey, stop letting them do this to do" and making it seem like it's their fault.

 

[Asariond]

Up until recently, I was a Methodist, although I never took a particularly Biblical line towards sin or theology in general - I thought logic, meditation and experience could tell you far more about God than any book or collection of writings written by people who don't know you and don't care about you over a millennium ago. I've realised that I'm actually more of a cold Deist than a bona fide Christian, though. At any rate, I was never a very good Christian.
All that taken into account, I have never considered the possibility that Adam & Eve's rebellion was literal event. It could have been allegory, to show that the original cause of each individual sin is greed, pride, and/or giving in to temptation, but I reject the notion that there was a traducian or 'original' cause of sin as a factor in morality. Being able to choose any of these desires over what is right is an ontological part of any being with free will, and the idea that there needs to have been an event to cause sin to exist is unnecessary, logically speaking.
As to what constitutes sin, I remember listening to a talk by Peter Vardy, who argued that the purpose of human existence was to be the best you, personally, could be; that is, filling the role that you are naturally supposed to fill. That resonated with what I'd always believed, and since then I've realised that it always has been, or perhaps it's become, the central part of my moral philosophy. The source of 'sin' or evil is not simply in actions committed, but the qualities person who commits them. If they act with selfishness, arrogance, careless pride, ignorance, or any other evil trait, they ultimately end up causing harm to other people. The fact that all people, by virtue of the consciousness they've been granted by God, deserve respect means that deliberately harmful acts against them is going against our individual purposes. We exist to improve ourselves and become better than we were, and in doing so, I believe we come to understand what it means to love life, thus drawing ourselves closer to God.
Karma's an intriguing concept, although I'm agnostic about whether or not it would constitute God interfering unduly in his creation, unless it's a preset law of the same inviolability as physics. At any rate, arguing about whether or not we receive retribution for our evil actions or rewards for our good ones distracts from the overall principle that the reason we should act morally is because morality is a vital part of our existence and purpose.
As to forgiving or removing sin, I'd argue that it's more of a symptom than a problem in and of itself. You cannot simply remove sin alone and say that the problem is done with, just as you cannot give someone medicine for a cough and tell them that their 'flu has been cured. We don't commit evil actions because we are 'sinful'. We commit them because we lack temperance, or desire material possession more than we respect other people or forms of life, or any other negative traits and qualities. Only by overcoming our own weaknesses do we weaken the potential to cause sin, and one of those weaknesses is bitterness; letting go, and forgiving, is a vital part to fulfilling your potential.

 

[Somewhere_]

- Do you believe in 'original sin', a Christian thought that humankind is inherently flawed due to Adam & Eve's rebellion? Do you not believe this but agree with other parts of Christian doctrine relating to sin? I believe this.

- Do you believe in karma? Do you think that this is a more 'just' way of viewing moral failures? I do not believe in karma, but I do believe negative actions may lead to negative consequences down the road. But that is not really karma. Karma is more abstract, with no true force behind it- so how could karma truly work?

- Do you have your own moral law? Why? What are some examples of your moral law? I do not have my own moral law because I get my morals from the Bible.

- How do you think sin should be removed, or forgiven? What are steps we can take to bettering ourselves? How could us as humans remove sin and be perfect? We can't, without the help of a divine being because sin is almost natural. Sin should be forgiven, no matter what it is or how hard it is to forgive. However, that doesnt mean you should hang around a murderer and trust them. I believe to better ourselves, we need to recognize our faults and deal with them as they come. For example, if I am a liar (which is not true) and I recognize this, then the next time I want to lie, I come out clean. And learning from consequences also can help deal with sin. I do believe to be saved from our sin, we do need to repent to God.

 

[twocows]

- Do you believe in 'original sin', a Christian thought that humankind is inherently flawed due to Adam & Eve's rebellion? Do you not believe this but agree with other parts of Christian doctrine relating to sin?

I don't believe man is inherently flawed, but I also don't believe man is inherently good or inherently evil or inherently anything. I think mankind is made up of a lot of different people with different natures and that for the worse natures, some people overcome them and some don't. I don't think this is something we do well to speak generally about, I think it's something we should judge on an individual basis.

- Do you believe in karma? Do you think that this is a more 'just' way of viewing moral failures?

I don't, not for any of the various versions of it.

- Do you have your own moral law? Why? What are some examples of your moral law?

More or less. A lot of the common ethical theories are very, very general and there's a lot of nuance in any particular moral dilemma.

For instance, let's say you're forced into a situation where you must either allow four people you know/like/value highly to die or twelve people you don't know to die. Among the group of four, two are willing to sacrifice themselves to save the twelve and two aren't. You know nothing in particular about the group of twelve; they could be convicted murders or they could be scientists approaching a cure for cancer or anything in between and you aren't given the chance to gather more information on the subject. Attempting any other solution will universally result in both groups' deaths.

Utilitarians are stuck because they can't make a clear utility calculation due to lack of complete information (a common problem with utilitarianism). They might complain that there needs to be more information in the problem, but in real life, you often don't have all of the facts available when something goes down.

Another school of moral philosophy might suggest trying to save both groups, despite this explicitly resulting in everyone's deaths. They might then go on to argue the problem isn't realistic because in real-life situations, there are always other options, but while that's a nice sentiment, the reality of it is that we aren't perfect and that sometimes we get ourselves into situations where there really is no "best" option.

As for what I would do... I think I would have to make a judgment call based on the information I do have and do the most I can to help the people I believe to be the most important, by whatever metric I use for "importance." I guess that means I've moved toward some version of utilitarianism in recent years.

- How do you think sin should be removed, or forgiven?

I generally believe in the idea of repentance. If you've done something wrong, I think it usually makes sense that you should be able to overcome your past transgressions through good actions.

 

[Esper]

I generally believe in the idea of repentance. If you've done something wrong, I think it usually makes sense that you should be able to overcome your past transgressions through good actions.

I wonder - and I'm not trying to single you, it was just what you said here that made me think of it - how people feel about the idea of "unforgivable sin", that is, something so bad that it can't be forgiven, forgotten, whatever the person does after to repent.

Because I think that there are some actions that are unforgivable. Or rather, actions taken under certain circumstances or mental states. Like, murder can be forgiven, I think, even if it's not self-defense if the murderer devotes their life to bettering the world, and still faces extra scrutiny and restrictions on their actions to make sure they don't do something bad again. But of course this all takes into account their state of mind, their personality, who they are at their core, because if they were just a young, confused, angry person and didn't realize the consequences of their actions that's a lot different from someone who kills because they think it'll be fun or because they see no value in other people's lives. So I guess the reasons or motivations for people are important, as difficult as it can be to understand what motivates people.