[Verv]

Sin existed in Judaism long before the concept of after life judgement. The big lie of Christianity is that we somehow owe our moral framework to the Jews / Israelites. The Christian moral frame work is inherited from Platonism and Zoroastrianism, although these philosophies may themselves have inherited ideas about post life karma from proto Hinduism.

This is a misunderstanding - prior to the concept of heaven/hell being showing up in Judaism, people all went to the same pretty bad afterlife, but there was a part of it referred to as 'the bosom of Abraham,' through which a river ran, where good people would go to be with the patriarch of the world and passing their time.

It could also be thought of as sin being viewed as directly related to the prosperity of the entire nation - people who worshiped Baal brought curses upon themselves and their people.

The irony is that it was actually the Nazis who in the West came closest to replicating ancient Judaic / Israelite morality. If you were a guard in a slave labour / death camp and you felt affection towards a prisoner and spared them you were commiting a sin. This is the same as the Israelite genociders, where it could be a sin to spare the life even of an animal of a people targeted for genocide.

This is an insane statement. I think you don't understand anything about the conflicts in the Old Testament.

There are two groups who were to have their men annihilated - the Amalekites and the Midianites, both of whom were engaging in child sacrifice, magic s6x rituals inviting demonic entities to enter the womb, slavery, etc.

Other wars did not include this element. The Canaanites were generally preserved even though they had some of these same practices, but did not practice them with the same zeal.

These exceptional directives were reserved for two occasions only, and bore the context of fighting the Worst of the Worst...

Slavery was completely commonplace at this time, and it was common for slaves in the households of wealthy people to have greater health and opportunity than regular peasants.

IDK, you are so uncharitable to the Bible that you sacrifice the original context of it to just be angry. It's doubtful you'd have a good faith conversation about this, and that's fine... It'd be foolish to volunteer your time to discuss this with someone who's this angry, lol.

[Unthinking Majority]

This comes across to me as being somewhat fatphobic. Let us take a person who is depressed for chemical reasons, and has found solace and comfort in a bag of potato chips and marijuana every evening while they lie in bed watching television shows that make them laugh. Why should this person be made to feel bad about themselves? What is the benefit in condemning them and forcing them to get motivated, go to the gym, be physically fit? If a person is living their life to the best of their ability and that life is not to your personal standards of how a life ought to be lived, why should your standards (which have little understanding of their life-struggles) reign supreme over their relatively harmless mode of existence? I just don't comprehend why it should matter to anyone else how that person chooses to spend their free-time. Of course we can say that ideally every member of society, in the best of societies, would be the supreme version of themselves that they can be, but why does that seem a bit disturbing in an 'ubermensch' sort of way, when thinking about how it would practically be applied?

I've not mentioned anything about applying standards to others or judging or shaming anyone else. I'm talking about guidelines for ourselves on how to live the best lives possible, be physically and psychologically/emotionally healthy, and to treat others with basic respect without unnecessary harm/cruelty.

There are obviously certain behaviours that are harmful vs healthy, and some more than others. Religion often uses fear tactics to scare people into compliance (they will go to hell, or feel the wrath of God/Satan etc). Probably useful in some ways in terms of population control, but not necessary.

[froggo]

if that's the case, then 'a concept of sin with superstition removed' is simply morality is it not? Can you elaborate a bit about what, in your eyes distinguishes 'a concept of sin with superstition removed' from morality?

[wat0n]

How is this "concept of sin" different from any social norms?

[Unthinking Majority]

... But what is the point without God?

"Hey guys, Unthinking Majority wants to live in a society that he finds morally pleasing - knock it off."

Of course, what you are saying is true: some sins do provide an obvious backlash to the sinner. Gluttony can make you fat. Addiction can kill you. Addiction can make you impotent. But if you've spoken with an addict, you'll also understand how these things can be acceptable sacrifices or you'll hear how they actually are managing the problem reasonably well (a lie much of the time).

There's also just the situation of a person like Hugh Hefner - addicted to booze and fornication with a limitless supply of cash. What reason does he have to stop? Because it sets a bad precedent? There are many people who can be functioning alcoholics, functioning addicts of narcotics or s6x, etc.

And it's not our business, right?

People who choose to not have families and choose a path through life that is self-centered have no reason to give up any vices. Their vices are their escapes.

There's also no real basis for moral growth but "philosophy."

How many people do you know in real life who are big into philosophy? Not that many in comparison tot he number of people you know overall, and you likely know more people into philosophy than most because I imagine you tend to be friends with people like yourself.

St. Just Martyr would point out that philosophy cannot save - rather, Christianity does, and thus is the greatest philosophy.

The point without God is that with or without belief in a God, we're still a bunch of human beings trying to get through life and deal with our personal struggles and each other.

I treat Christianity just like any other philosophy. There are things humans aren't in control of (such as the actions of other humans, and other things in their environment), but humans are in control of their own actions, which means we can greatly affect our own fates via the decisions we choose by our own free will.

[Verv]

The point without God is that with or without belief in a God, we're still a bunch of human beings trying to get through life and deal with our personal struggles and each other.

I treat Christianity just like any other philosophy. There are things humans aren't in control of (such as the actions of other humans, and other things in their environment), but humans are in control of their own actions, which means we can greatly affect our own fates via the decisions we choose by our own free will.

That is right... and that is beautiful, even in a godless world, I get that. I get how there are very many ethical atheists that try to do the right thing, who strive to do good for goodness' sake. I believe you are one of them - I would be shocked if you weren't.

But there is the sickness unto death. And this sickness (spiritual despair, existential anxiety), it consumes even those who believe. Without God, the world can collapse around you...

I say this because I was there many times when I was quite religionless, and I find myself sometimes there while still in religion, and you hear a call to base pleasures to erase the feeling, and the more you resist that call, the more your hollow body swells up with emptiness. Not because the booze or the fornication would actually "fill" you, but because they would distract you from it.

I have spent many hours walking by myself on streets, at night or during the day, just walking toward something I couldn't reach, and walking away from something I couldn't escape...

But no matter how much good you do and how much of yourself you give away, you are still inside of your own head, in a decaying & restless body, walking to Nowhere, coming from Nowhere, passing through Nowhere, standing on the graves of a 100 billion people who lived & died before you.

There is no reason for you to not pick up the bottle. There is no reason to not throw yourself into a one night stand or enter the door of the harlot. In fact, if you have given so much of yourself away alraedy, that justifies your vice.

Everybody always sympathizes with the Protagonist because, in their own mind, nobody is ever the Antagonist. And I'll tell you, there aren't 8 billion protagonists in the world....

In Korea we have the concept "Naero Nambul" (내로남불) - it is an abbreviation for "내가 하면 로맨스, 남이 하면 불륜" - When I do it, it's Romance; when others do it, it's adultery."

This applies to every vice. The drinker, the gambler, the man who gets into fights, the woman who stirs up drama; the adulterer, the overweight man who can't stop eating, the impossibly vain woman who is trapped staring into her hand mirror trying to become the perfect embodiment of beauty... All of them are protagonists that are doing something Romantic that is part of their Story about who they are. they are just people trying to get by... They will never see the "limit" to it until they want to.

It is with Jesus Christ that this can begin to stop... We are now people who are from Somewhere, going through Something, to get Somewhere, and we stand on the graves of the Saints and the whole of the human family who accompany us in the cloud of witnesses... We are immortal souls.

And without this great narrative... We are dancing on our own graves beneath the night sky among the doomed. We're just a small link in a great biological chain running itself into the ground that birthed it.

[Rich]

IDK, you are so uncharitable to the Bible that you sacrifice the original context of it to just be angry. It's doubtful you'd have a good faith conversation about this, and that's fine... It'd be foolish to volunteer your time to discuss this with someone who's this angry, lol.

I'm not angry. Its interesting how Christians see statements of what should be the bleedin obvious as anger or hatefullness. I will repeat my assertion.

Judged by the moral standards of modern liberal democracies in 2024, some of the behaviour of the ancient Jews / Israelites in the Bible is worse than the Nazis.

This is a statement not made in the heat of anger, but an assertion I'm happy to defend in the cold light of day. Its easy to defend because there is no underlying moral outlook that underlies the Biblical documents.

[Verv]

:lol: I'm not angry. Its interesting how Christians see statements of what should be the bleedin obvious as anger or hatefullness. I will repeat my assertion.

Judged by the moral standards of modern liberal democracies in 2024, some of the behaviour of the ancient Jews / Israelites in the Bible is worse than the Nazis.

This is a statement not made in the heat of anger, but an assertion I'm happy to defend in the cold light of day. Its easy to defend because there is no underlying moral outlook that underlies the Biblical documents.

OK, so do you deny my interpretation of the rationale for attacking the Midianites & Amalekites?

[Deutschmania]

I believe the imperative to 'do good works' can be dangerous to the mind. An individual who has an expectation of themselves to act in a certain manner is more prone to taking a tiny moment of weakness/deviance, and turning it into a bubble-walled room of guilt bouncing around and coming back to whack them over and over again, until the sheer frustration at ones weakness results in a fuck-it attitude which momentarily permits them to enact all the sins they possibly can in a short little time until they wake up the next morning and repent repent repent, just to do it all over again next week. If you can, instead, have 'impure' thoughts, and devise 'impure' plots and be lenient on the self, acknowledging these 'impurities' but treating them in a neutral manner and not energetically feeding them, you would be better off than if you become accustomed to a cycle of self-condemnation. So essentially, no, superstition has nothing to do with it. Guilt is a mechanism of control, which is why religions find it so handy, and why religious practitioners are often so corrupted. If you called condemnation another name just because it doesn't use superstitious parables, it would still have the same effect on the followers of your condemnation. There are better ways to live your life, such as learning from your mistakes and not letting your mistakes eat away at you.

An example of what i mean is as follows; a normal person is walking down the street, and a 'disturbing' thought appears in their head; a vision of their mother nude, spreading her legs in a welcoming gesture... the person shakes it off, and tells themselves its fine, its okay, just a random harmless thought, and then they keep walking and get on with their day.
Another person who has been told to be pure and without sin on the other hand, would be walking down the street, and have the thought of their naked mother and think 'oh no! theres something wrong with me! im sick! ew! go away thought! get out of here! im such a sick disgusting person!' but the more they try to force the thought away, the more enticing their mother acts in the vision, and then the person is there with the mother doing 'horrible' things which exacerbates the self-disgust... later that night the person ends up masturbating to the thought, having futilely tried to fight it off, and afterwords is so disgusted with themself that they can barely cope with existence, they consider themselves a failure, what would their saviours think of them?... eventually this becomes a habit, and the thoughts get worse and worse involving the father, the sister, the son, the daughter, whatever... it graduates into deeper degeneracy because the person didn't realize they could have just let the thought go initially and just kept walking and continued their day without turning it into a criticism + condemnation of the self. It is situations like these which are more likely to occur in someone controlled by guilt, which lead to the worst kinds of degenerate perpetrators.

I have noticed this to be true , in my own experience . For some background , I had grown up in such Holiness churches as the Church of the Nazarene , which believes that a person can sin in regards to ones thought . One Sunday , another teenager had cornered me in the church restroom , and did unto me as allegedly at the time Arkansas Gov. Clinton did unto Paula Jones , and then requested that I reciprocate . I refused , as I had considered it try be of a homoerotic character . He countered by claiming that as we wouldn't be touching , merely looking , it wouldn't count as homosexuality . And besides he already had the pastor's niece to give him hand jobs , and so wouldn't need me to service him in this manner . I still declined him , until in time he let me leave . But afterwards I felt dirty and guilty , wondering if there might have been anything I had done to entice him to lust after me . Also my mind became fixated on sexual themes , such as the memory of seeing his genitalia . Which further fed into my sense of shame , and fear of losing my salvation , and winding up in hell. I later learned that this is what is known as scrupulously OCD . Eventually , after my condition had progressed to a mortification called anorexia mirabilis , I became disaffected with evangelical Christianity , or more accurately what I had been led to believe was evangelicalism , altogether , and even went through a period of being an agnostic atheist , in response .

You are too naive, @Potemkin. The greater the moral violation, the greater the thrill. Adulterers and pedophiles don't become priests in order to provide cover for their transgressions. That's only a side benefit. They become these things so that when they do transgress, the pain and sense of betrayal inflicted on their victims will be all the sweeter.

Could this be the actual reason why the other teen boy had chosen the pastor's niece to be his girlfriend / sex worker , and me to be his would be dirty secret , because it would be considered especially transgressive for those of us brought up in the Church , which teaches the doctrine of Christian perfection? Whoa , that's really messed up , if true . Well , I didn't expect to have a makeshift therapy session , but thanks to you two both anyway .

[Saeko]

I have noticed this to be true , in my own experience . For some background , I had grown up in such Holiness churches as the Church of the Nazarene , which believes that a person can sin in regards to ones thought . One Sunday , another teenager had cornered me in the church restroom , and did unto me as allegedly at the time Arkansas Gov. Clinton did unto Paula Jones , and then requested that I reciprocate . I refused , as I had considered it try be of a homoerotic character . He countered by claiming that as we wouldn't be touching , merely looking , it wouldn't count as homosexuality . And besides he already had the pastor's niece to give him hand jobs , and so wouldn't need me to service him in this manner . I still declined him , until in time he let me leave . But afterwards I felt dirty and guilty , wondering if there might have been anything I had done to entice him to lust after me . Also my mind became fixated on sexual themes , such as the memory of seeing his genitalia . Which further fed into my sense of shame , and fear of losing my salvation , and winding up in hell. I later learned that this is what is known as scrupulously OCD . Eventually , after my condition had progressed to a mortification called anorexia mirabilis ,

You are now also learning that this is what's called sexual assault. I'm so sorry that this happened to you Deutschmania. And your response to it is fairly typical and normal.

Could this be the actual reason why the other teen boy had chosen the pastor's niece to be his girlfriend / sex worker , and me to be his would be dirty secret , because it would be considered especially transgressive for those of us brought up in the Church , which teaches the doctrine of Christian perfection? Whoa , that's really messed up , if true . Well , I didn't expect to have a makeshift therapy session , but thanks to you two both anyway .

Yup.

[Saeko]

But no matter how much good you do and how much of yourself you give away, you are still inside of your own head, in a decaying & restless body, walking to Nowhere, coming from Nowhere, passing through Nowhere, standing on the graves of a 100 billion people who lived & died before you.

Ok, first of all, this is poetic and beautiful, and I love it.

I say this because I was there many times when I was quite religionless, and I find myself sometimes there while still in religion, and you hear a call to base pleasures to erase the feeling, and the more you resist that call, the more your hollow body swells up with emptiness. Not because the booze or the fornication would actually "fill" you, but because they would distract you from it.

It's worth pointing out that all of us are wired a little differently and that sometimes even our most fundamental "truths" do not carry over to other people.

In contrast to your experience, I've never been able to enjoy anything when there is a pressing concern that I haven't addressed. Trying to distract myself when I know I should be doing what needs to be done only makes me feel worse.

[Saeko]

This just came up today on reddit:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog ... eeling-bad

In short, I was pretty much right. Cheaters (and probably other types of scumbags) cheat not because they are under the sway of some overpowering emotion or attraction that they can't control, but because they WANT to cheat and don't actually see anything wrong with it.

In short: NEVER forgive a cheater or an abuser. They are NOT sorry.

[Verv]

Ok, first of all, this is poetic and beautiful, and I love it.

I appreciate that greatly - I put effort into these posts, lol. Well, not all, not all, not all... But some.

It's worth pointing out that all of us are wired a little differently and that sometimes even our most fundamental "truths" do not carry over to other people.

In contrast to your experience, I've never been able to enjoy anything when there is a pressing concern that I haven't addressed. Trying to distract myself when I know I should be doing what needs to be done only makes me feel worse.

I've noticed this over the years, particularly when trying to give advice to people who worry. I actually feel like I can relate easily to people with anxiety as I have my own unique mental profile that results in me over-analyzing things and being obsessive... There's a lot of parallels between myself and someone who has anxiety or obsessive worry, so I feel like I can speak to them...

But you are right.

Some people never allow themselves to be distracted and they go through a very hard time until the issue is resolved. I swear I have even seen people torpedo a situation because the stress was too much and, as opposed to going through a longer, more uncertain process with a favorable income, they just shot themselves in the foot to get it over with. I witnessed someone do this with their academic career and it blew my mind.

Of course, there are many less dramatic instances, and some people don't do that at all... They will just suffer. They let their nerves get the better of them and spend weeks, months, even years, as functional zombies being tortured by their own nerves. I am not saying you are that bad - I doubt it, but I know someone who is like this, and no matter what I say, of course, I can't help him.

He's a smart guy that reasons his way out of solutions to his problems.

[Yaqum]

God’s biblical kill count: 2,559,449
Satan’s biblical kill count: ~10

Who’s the bad guy?

[Unthinking Majority]

That post is off-topic. This is not a general discussion about God.

[Unthinking Majority]

This just came up today on reddit:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog ... eeling-bad

In short, I was pretty much right. Cheaters (and probably other types of scumbags) cheat not because they are under the sway of some overpowering emotion or attraction that they can't control, but because they WANT to cheat and don't actually see anything wrong with it.

In short: NEVER forgive a cheater or an abuser. They are NOT sorry.

We all have free will. We are all responsible for our own actions.

[Potemkin]

We all have free will. We are all responsible for our own actions.

Indeed. But how many of us accept that responsibility?

[Yaqum]

That post is off-topic.

Not completely off-topic. The concept of sin must be removed from superstition in order for it to be useful. An ideology that worships a serial killer isn’t fit to judge what is sinful.

Sin is in practical terms, moral wrong doing, and that can only be determined through reason; reason that determines what is to the benefit of humanity, both on the individual and group level.

[Potemkin]

Not completely off-topic. The concept of sin must be removed from superstition in order for it to be useful. An ideology that worships a serial killer isn’t fit to judge what is sinful.

Sin is in practical terms, moral wrong doing, and that can only be determined through reason; reason that determines what is to the benefit of humanity, both on the individual and group level.

So you’re a Utilitarian then? If so, how would you resolve moral dilemmas in purely rational terms?

[Yaqum]

So you’re a Utilitarian then? If so, how would you resolve moral dilemmas in purely rational terms?

I’m not fully familiar on what a utilitarian is.

You’re also going to have to be a little more specific on what kind of moral dilemma you’re talking about.