What is Sin...?

[Bishop Potts]

Many denominations have created a set of rules for their faith, which they call the By-Laws of the Church. In the By-Laws there are certain things that are accepted and things that are not. Alot of things that are not accepted by the church is not nessacerially a sin in the eyes of God... or are they. When does a sin become a sin?

[Sozo]

If you are in Adam, everything you do is sin.

If you are in Christ, it is impossible to sin.

"Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.

[spl_cadet]

Sin is a very tasty dish, especially when you add swiss cheese.

[b488]

...and everything that is not from faith is sin. Romans 14:23b (HCSB)


Ciao! :thumb:

[barryrob]

Many denominations have created a set of rules for their faith, which they call the By-Laws of the Church. In the By-Laws there are certain things that are accepted and things that are not. Alot of things that are not accepted by the church is not nessacerially a sin in the eyes of God... or are they. When does a sin become a sin?
The Bible answer is not to complitated:-

1 John 3:4 Everyone who practices sin is also practicing lawlessness, and so sin is lawlessness [towards God].

Barryrob

[LGM]

When does a sin become a sin?

"sin" is just an emotional, religious term for bad behavior. And since what constitutes “bad behavior” can, and does, change over time, and across different cultures, so do the behaviors that are considered “sin” by any given temporal culture, or subgroup, or individual within that culture.

Is it a sin to work on Saturday? Is it a sin for women to work outside the home, or become well educted, or to preach the gospel in a church? Is a hereditary monarchy a “sinful” government? Is communism or socialism or capitalism sinful economic systems? Is it a sin if you don’t fast or tithe or confess your sins before a priest or take communion before doing so? Is it a sin if you don’t pray a certain amount, attend an "orthodox" Christian church regularly? Is it a sin to own slaves, to have multiple wives, to have sex outside of marriage, to divorce, to drink alcohol, to dance, to be rich, to be proud, to be homosexual, to beat your children, to not beat your children, to lie, to invent mythology, to deny the clear facts of science?

LGM
…the worse sin of all is thinking dogmatically instead of freely…

[Duder]

LGM -

In my humble opinion, sin is synonymous with ignorence and error.

Plato said that no one does evil on purpose, and he is manifestly correct. The doer of an evil deed mistakenly thinks that good will come of it - otherwise he would not do it.

To be redeemed from sin is the same as to experience enlightenment. I think salvation from sin and awakening from ignorence are the same thing.

[Jayrok]

I think salvation from sin and awakening from ignorence are the same thing.
so then realizing that bible stories and proclamations are myths is the same as receiving salvation?

groovy.

[Jayrok]

If you are in Adam, everything you do is sin.

If you are in Christ, it is impossible to sin.



so asking for forgiveness and giving to the poor are sins.. I didn't know that.


I suspect that you say you are in christ.. do you not sin?

[Duder]

so then realizing that bible stories and proclamations are myths is the same as receiving salvation?

groovy.

I do not understand the connection between what I said and your reply.

[Jude3b]

When you boil it all down, one good biblical definition of sin would be:
"SIN IS A WILFUL TRANSGRESSION OF A KNOWN LAW OF GOD"

[LGM]

When you boil it all down, one good biblical definition of sin would be:
"SIN IS A WILFUL TRANSGRESSION OF A KNOWN LAW OF GOD"
Which KNOWN LAW would that be?

...love your neighbor?...or slaughter him unmercifully?...

[LGM]

LGM -

In my humble opinion, sin is synonymous with ignorence and error.

I find your misspelling of the word “ignorance” quite ironic in this context…don’t you?


Plato said that no one does evil on purpose, and he is manifestly correct.

I don’t agree. People can believe their behavior is “evil” by their own or their culture’s standards and still go ahead with the behavior. The evidence is overwhelming… strike 1 for Plato.


The doer of an evil deed mistakenly thinks that good will come of it - otherwise he would not do it.

“Good” is in the eye of the beholder. What is “good” for someone performing a certain behavior may be “bad” for someone affected by that behavior…. Strike 2 for Plato…


To be redeemed from sin is the same as to experience enlightenment.

Becoming enlightened to the fact that our over populated species has, and still is, decimating and polluting our biosphere will not “redeem” us from this “sin”….strike 3 Plato…


I think salvation from sin and awakening from ignorence are the same thing.

LGM
…I think “salvation from sin” and “awaking from ignorance” are both subjective, hubris filled assertions until you give them context. And when you do…you’ll find many who claim that your “enlightenment” is their version of “ignorance”…

[Duder]

I find your misspelling of the word “ignorance” quite ironic in this context…don’t you?

Downright sinful!


I don’t agree. People can believe their behavior is “evil” by their own or their culture’s standards and still go ahead with the behavior. The evidence is overwhelming… strike 1 for Plato.
Not yet . . .
“Good” is in the eye of the beholder. What is “good” for someone performing a certain behavior may be “bad” for someone affected by that behavior….

Right. Understanding that is one of the first baby steps in learning how to be a moral person, as Kohlberg would have pointed out. A babe wants what he wants with no regard for the effect on others. When the babe has learned that what is good for him may be bad for another, he has increased his knowledge and graduated to a new moral level. Again - it's about knowledge.

(The ump rethinks his previous call of "strike")

Now, the babe may know this, and at first fail to see it as important. He needs yet another insight and another leap up the stages of moral reasoning. The next insight is that other people are just as much a "me" as I am a "me". Many criminals have not made this leap. They think they are more of a "me" than I am a "me", and so they mistakenly find it reasonable to gain at my expense.

I maintain that when someone knows that I am a "me" just like him, he cannot commit a sin against me. It is important to realize that people do not really progress in a linear way up a moral heirarchy - they leap forward and they backslide. I sin against my fellow men all the time. When I do it, I do not think (or I do not remember) that they are a "me". But when I do think or remember that they are a "me", I do not sin against them.

It's all about ignorence versus knowledge.

Base hit for Plato.

[LGM]

Right. Understanding that is one of the first baby steps in learning how to be a moral person, as Kohlberg would have pointed out. A babe wants what he wants with no regard for the effect on others. When the babe has learned that what is good for him may be bad for another, he has increased his knowledge and graduated to a new moral level. Again - it's about knowledge.

Guess I’m a bit ahead of you here. I’m talking about adults, and our species as a whole, in an interconnected biosphere and universe. The behavior of babies in general is what is required by them for survival. There are a variety of behavioral strategies for populations, subgroups and individuals in a cooperative/competitive social species.
Thus all human behavior is biologically predisposed, circumstantially temporal, and will have various impact on other members of the species, and the rest of the biosphere, beyond the knowledge and awareness of the human performing the behavior.


(The ump rethinks his previous call of "strike")

The ump has already called you out and is thinking of throwing you out of the game if you continue to question him… :wink:


Now, the babe may know this, and at first fail to see it as important. He needs yet another insight and another leap up the stages of moral reasoning. The next insight is that other people are just as much a "me" as I am a "me". Many criminals have not made this leap. They think they are more of a "me" than I am a "me", and so they mistakenly find it reasonable to gain at my expense.

I maintain that when someone knows that I am a "me" just like him, he cannot commit a sin against me. It is important to realize that people do not really progress in a linear way up a moral heirarchy - they leap forward and they backslide all the time. I sin against my fellow men all the time. When I do it, I do not think (or I do not remember) that they are a "me". But when I do think or remember that they are a "me", I do not sin against them.

It's all about ignorence versus knowledge.

I think your are misspelling that word on purpose now… :twitch:

And I also think you and the rest of our species is way more ignorant of the impact and effects of our myriad, interdependent behaviors than you could possibly think. Our species is famous for shortsightedness, anthropocentrism, procrastination, and a desire to oversimplify behavior into neat little categories, like “good” or “bad” based on our own little bias view of the world.

Clearly biological life and evolutionary processes are about competing and adapting for finite resources. Within a cooperative mammalian social species like we hominids, there will always be a tension between individual and group strategies for survival and reproductive success. This balance is demonstrated in the U.S. Constitution, legal codes and tax laws.

I find your baby analogy and your gross oversimplification of remembering someone else is a “me”, to be somewhat tedious in this regard. I maintain that there are myriad behaviors that perhaps you, or the average Christian, may not consider “sinful”, because you are completely ignorant about the various repercussions and/or cumulative effect of the behavior performed by many over time.
Besides other people, there is an entire biosphere and a finite set of planetary resources, that we “do not remember” when we “sin”.

Interestingly enough, some people consider it a “sin” to teach, and use birth control, in a world that has doubled in population to 6 billion in our lifetime, and no doubt on its way to 10 billion before some of us die. And interestingly enough many people don’t consider it a sin to emit huge amounts of C02 and solid wastes and clear cut rain forests so fat westerners can drive luxury cars with mahogany trimmed dashboards.

LGM
…looking forward to your next turn at bat…

[oldsage_nc]

Sin is simply "missing the mark". in our day and age and in our language 'sin' is only connected to religion. But in a language such as Hebrew it is also a secular word. Sin is just not living up to a standard, not being perfect. God is the standard of perfection and we just do not stand up to that. What a denomination deems as right and wrong is irrelevant when it comes to what God say is right and wrong. Now if you want to be part of that denomination then you should adhere to their by-laws, and if you don't agree with their by-laws, then it is time to find another denomination the is your flavor.

We have what is called just 'sin' in general, which is just missing the mark, then there is transgression which is also sin,but a more serious kind of sin. Transgression is simply a willful breaking of the will of God, then there is guilt or perversion, which is 'iniquity' and that is another kinda of sin.

I am just being real short on what these are because I need to leave and I just had to put my two cents in.

[LGM]

Sin is simply "missing the mark".

What "mark"?
The whole concept that the myriad interdependent, genetic, circumstantial and culturally influenced behaviors of our species could be reduced to a "mark"..., is ludicrous
Its the reason your theistic desire to oversimplify, grossly misses the "mark" of coherence and understanding.


Sin is just not living up to a standard, not being perfect.

The term “perfection” with regards to human behavior is incoherent.


God is the standard of perfection and we just do not stand up to that.

Which God? I assume you are talking about your personal god.
Amazingly, I can forgive and be reconciled with someone without a blood sacrifice. It seems your man made god can’t, and thus is not my standard of “perfection”.


What a denomination deems as right and wrong is irrelevant when it comes to what God say is right and wrong.

:lol:
Oh…of course…tell me…does god speak to you directly? Are you his official spokesmodel?
Why not share with us what he tells you is the REAL right and wrong? That way we’ll be able to clear up all these irrelevant denominations and their silly conflicting ideas on what is right and wrong?


I am just being real short on what these are because I need to leave and I just had to put my two cents in.

LGM
…well…I think you still owe me a penny or two… :wink:

[Duder]

Guess I’m a bit ahead of you here. I’m talking about adults, and our species as a whole, in an interconnected biosphere and universe. The behavior of babies in general is what is required by them for survival. There are a variety of behavioral strategies for populations, subgroups and individuals in a cooperative/competitive social species.
Thus all human behavior is biologically predisposed, circumstantially temporal, and will have various impact on other members of the species, and the rest of the biosphere, beyond the knowledge and awareness of the human performing the behavior.

I can find nothing to argue against in these excellent remarks. Nor do I see in what way they would refute the central point I made. Yes indeed, this is an interconnected biosphere and universe. In fact, things are so closely interrelated that I find the self/other distinction to be a mere convention. It is a very short step, is it not, from "you are a me" to "you are me"? A Hindu expresses the same thing in the phrase tat vam asi - "thou are that".

(The commisioner of baseball has arrived on the scene to examine the umpire . . .)


I think your are misspelling that word on purpose now… :twitch:

Ignorent! Ignorent! Ignorent! :poke:

And I also think you and the rest of our species is way more ignorant of the impact and effects of our myriad, interdependent behaviors than you could possibly think.

Guilty as charged. I am far more ignorent (sic) than I am informed.

Our species is famous for shortsightedness, anthropocentrism, procrastination, and a desire to oversimplify behavior into neat little categories, like “good” or “bad” based on our own little bias view of the world.

Absolutely. But then, how can we escaspe doing this? I mean, chopping the world up into manageable bits and shoving the bits into catagories is what has made our species so successful. My "own little bias" may be more or less sophisticated than your "own little bias", and our respective catagorizing schemes will be useful in varying degrees.

Now, here is the trick. When you take the word "a" out of the sentence "you are a me" , you are in a position to see that all of this human pigeon-holing (black/white, good/bad, up/down, in/out, self/other) is pure convention. My sceme is no more or less right that your scheme. They are both "wrong" to the degree that we attach ultimate truth or seriousness to them. They are, as you point out, survival strategies.

Clearly biological life and evolutionary processes are about competing and adapting for finite resources. Within a cooperative mammalian social species like we hominids, there will always be a tension between individual and group strategies for survival and reproductive success. This balance is demonstrated in the U.S. Constitution, legal codes and tax laws.

Right you are. Since long before the time of Hammurabi humans have had a social contract, wherin I agree not to throw rocks at you, to share the kill with you, and to devote some of my own labor to your well-being. It's another human trick that's contributed to our success (though many other species do it, too). The central insight that "you are a me" is what powers the contract, though many people do not recognize this. They just look at the list of codified no-nos for information about is moral and what is not. But while the specifics on the list of sins change from time to time, the central insight does not.

I find your baby analogy and your gross oversimplification of remembering someone else is a “me”, to be somewhat tedious in this regard. I maintain that there are myriad behaviors that perhaps you, or the average Christian, may not consider “sinful”, because you are completely ignorant about the various repercussions and/or cumulative effect of the behavior performed by many over time.

Not sure how to take that! I can't be an average Christian unless I'm a Christian, which I'm not - so it follows I'm not an average Christian.

If my baby analogy seems simplistic, it is because I was trying to get at the very basis of things. e=mc^2 is very, very simple, but it results in a complex and even psychadelic array of phenomena!

And again, guilty as charged with respect to the cumulative effects of my actions. I do not always make an extensive study of my effects on my environment. But then, there are limits on how sophisticated my world-pigeon-holing strategy can be. If I classify things in too-fine a degree - if I insist that I must fortell every ramification of what I do and aquire a perfect knowledge of my karma, then I become effectively paralyzed, like Zeno's jackrabbit who can't get off square one. Every action requires at some point a leap of faith - and every action entails unknown and unforseen ill effects. "What a miserable sinner I am!" said Paul of Tarsus, and boy, was he right.

Besides other people, there is an entire biosphere and a finite set of planetary resources, that we “do not remember” when we “sin”.

True. But so we will not be paralyzed in our efforts to avoid sin, here comes grace. Grace in intimately tied to salvation, which, as I have told you, is the same as enlightenment. The enlightenment that "I am that" allows me to move and to act, because, while I may cause pain, I am really doing it to myself, and no mythical other. And while this enlightenment gets the concerned human moving and acting, it also gives him compassion to make every reasonable attempt at avoiding unneccesary pain to "himself" or "others".

And I fully understand how repulsive this use of terms like "sin", "grace" and "salvation" will seem to many orthodox Christians. Moreover, I am guilty of the most heinous crime of not maintaining an ultimate division betwen myself and God.

Interestingly enough, some people consider it a “sin” to teach, and use birth control, in a world that has doubled in population to 6 billion in our lifetime, and no doubt on its way to 10 billion before some of us die. And interestingly enough many people don’t consider it a sin to emit huge amounts of C02 and solid wastes and clear cut rain forests so fat westerners can drive luxury cars with mahogany trimmed dashboards.

Yes. Too much sin. Education is the key.

[LGM]

The central insight that "you are a me" is what powers the contract, though many people do not recognize this.

The central insight that certain strategies of cooperative, social and altruistic behaviors increase our genetic surivival and reproductive success is what powers the contract. And historically the "contract" was amongst smaller tibal groups, and certainly did not extend to other tribes competing for the same resources. The same strategies can be seen in countless other species with less sophisticated cortexes.

LGM
...are we still playing baseball?...

[Duder]

Oldsage nc,

I have read that somewhere - that a certain word in the Hebrew that is commonly translated "sin" means to miss the mark. And I think sin seen in this way fits well with Plato's idea of sin as ignorance. Do you remember what the word is?

I am just being real short on what these are because I need to leave and I just had to put my two cents in.

Well, come on back when you can. Always nice to talk things over.

[Jude3b]

Which KNOWN LAW would that be?

...love your neighbor?...or slaughter him unmercifully?...

Dear LakeGeorgeMan:

Your not serious about your statement are you?

Any how, Christians today live under the "Love Law" - The First commandment - LOVE GOD, the Second one - Love your neighbor. If you violate either law wilfully - you are sinning.

[AtheistArchon]

- Sin is just a word for "immorality", however you define that.

Sin is simply "missing the mark". in our day and age and in our language 'sin' is only connected to religion. But in a language such as Hebrew it is also a secular word. Sin is just not living up to a standard, not being perfect. God is the standard of perfection and we just do not stand up to that.

- If this really were the case, then I don't see why anyone needs to be "Saved"; humans are, always have been, and always will be imperfect. What does an unsaved person have to apologize for? "Oop, sorry. I'm human." Nah. No need for Jesus there.

- The more orthodox versions of Christianity place sin as being an evil, external force (mmmmmm... Satan!) that we are tempted by and can succumb to. Evil thoughts are sinful, adultery is sinful, blah blah blah, and when we sin we owe a debt in hell to "pay" for it. BUT! Get Jesus, and get "saved" from your "debt". Presto, instant religion.

[AtheistArchon]

Any how, Christians today live under the "Love Law" - The First commandment - LOVE GOD, the Second one - Love your neighbor. If you violate either law wilfully - you are sinning.

- Jude, I wish every Christian did believe this. :thumb: I'd have nothing to complain about here.

[rdalin]

Any how, Christians today live under the "Love Law" - The First commandment - LOVE GOD, the Second one - Love your neighbor. If you violate either law wilfully - you are sinning.Since you brought it up, I've always had considerable doubts about "love your neighbor." People - theists, that is - say it and leave it at that, as if these three words are so obvious that no explanation is required. However, that isn't true.

First, who is my neighbor? The couple next door? Everyone on the same block? Everyone in my town? Everyone in the state? The country? The world?

Next, how do I "love" these individuals? How does the love manifest itself? I love my wife, but I can't imagine loving other people in the same way. Ditto my kids and grandchildren, and the rest of my family.

I have a number of very close friends. I don't know if I love them, but I'm pretty fond of all of them. Am I supposed to be fond of all my neighbors - however defined - in the same way that I feel towards friends whom I've known for forty years?

So, how do I express this love? I'd do anything I could for my wife and my family. I'd go a long way for my friends. If my neighbor comes to my door, am I supposed to treat him just as I would treat my wife? That doesn't sound very practical. If one of my sons needed money, I'd give him everything I could. Do I have to do that for a neighbor? Do Christians do that? (It seems unlikely.)

"Love Your Neighbor" is nothing more than a bumper sticker. You're going to have to be a good deal more specific than that. If it's the "golden rule," it's no more than something Christianity has in common with many other religions and philosophical systems, and can easily be used as a guideline without bringing Jesus or God into the picture.

[oldsage_nc]

I have read that somewhere - that a certain word in the Hebrew that is commonly translated "sin" means to miss the mark. And I think sin seen in this way fits well with Plato's idea of sin as ignorance. Do you remember what the word is?The word in the Hebrew is "chatta'ah", but there are other words that are sin but have a different meaning, like "pesha" which is translated as transgression. Now while transgression is also a sin, but it is more serious kind of sin. If you look at the "sin offerings" and the "trespass offerings" you can see the difference in the two. Another word used for sin is "avon" which is translated as "iniquity" and that is something like "perversion" or "guilt"

In the greek the word for "sin" is "hamartia" which ranges from an involuntary mistake/ error to serious offenses against a deity. (this definition comes from the BDAG)

Well, I guess that is it for now.

:attn:

[oldsage_nc]

- Sin is just a word for "immorality", however you define that.No, sin is more incompassing than that, say that you were suppose to wash the dishes and you didn't. It isn't morally wrong not to wash those dishes but that would be sin.


- If this really were the case, then I don't see why anyone needs to be "Saved"; humans are, always have been, and always will be imperfect. What does an unsaved person have to apologize for? "Oop, sorry. I'm human." Nah. No need for Jesus there.Before the Fall of man in the Garden they were pefect, from the time that God said that everything was "Very Good". at that point in tme man was living up to that perfect standard. After the fall, man was unable to live up to that standard by his ownself. That is why it says in Romans that we are doomed to die because we are of Adam's seed, and we need to be "born again" under the "seed of Christ" to gain salvation. So, in a sense, yes you need to be saved because you are human.


- The more orthodox versions of Christianity place sin as being an evil, external force (mmmmmm... Satan!) that we are tempted by and can succumb to. Evil thoughts are sinful, adultery is sinful, blah blah blah, and when we sin we owe a debt in hell to "pay" for it. BUT! Get Jesus, and get "saved" from your "debt". Presto, instant religion.No, that isn't quite it, because we are in such a fallen state we can do evil quite independently from Satan. orthodox versions of Christianity have yet to provide a clear definition of certain terms with biblical text to back up there claim, they just proof text with the text that supports their view but they don't even talk about text that uses the same term that means something different.

[AtheistArchon]

No, sin is more incompassing than that, say that you were suppose to wash the dishes and you didn't. It isn't morally wrong not to wash those dishes but that would be sin.

- But that would be a lie. Isn't lying immoral?

Before the Fall of man in the Garden they were pefect, from the time that God said that everything was "Very Good". at that point in tme man was living up to that perfect standard. After the fall, man was unable to live up to that standard by his ownself. That is why it says in Romans that we are doomed to die because we are of Adam's seed, and we need to be "born again" under the "seed of Christ" to gain salvation. So, in a sense, yes you need to be saved because you are human.

- Aha! So every human born today needs to be saved because of the actions of Adam and Eve way back when. Hmm. Do you believe two people can be proper spokesmen for all of humanity?

No, that isn't quite it, because we are in such a fallen state we can do evil quite independently from Satan.

- Yet... it was Satan that supposedly authored the fall of man. Without Satan's interference, Adam and Eve weren't tempted to disobey! They didn't choose to eat the fruit all by themselves, remember.

- Of course, some Christians disagree that the serpent mentioned in the bible was in fact "Satan", but that doesn't make much sense to me... snakes don't talk, and snakes aren't evil.

[Sacrificial Ram]

- But that would be a lie. Isn't lying immoral?



- Aha! So every human born today needs to be saved because of the actions of Adam and Eve way back when. Hmm. Do you believe two people can be proper spokesmen for all of humanity?



- Yet... it was Satan that supposedly authored the fall of man. Without Satan's interference, Adam and Eve weren't tempted to disobey! They didn't choose to eat the fruit all by themselves, remember.

- Of course, some Christians disagree that the serpent mentioned in the bible was in fact "Satan", but that doesn't make much sense to me... snakes don't talk, and snakes aren't evil.
Well, donkey's don't talk either. It is not literal. It never was meant to be literal.

Also, in the Jewish religion, Satan is an angel, and angels do not have
free will, so, if Satan 'engineered' the fall, it would have been at the command of God.

You also have to look at things from a historical perspective. The concept of "Satan" did not enter the Jewish religion until the first disporia, when
Judaism had contact with Persia. The story of genesis preceded that, so the author of genesis did not have the concept of Satan.

[AtheistArchon]

Well, donkey's don't talk either. It is not literal. It never was meant to be literal.

- Okay, no Satan. I can dig that. But then the whole story of Eden is an allegory? If so, then what did Jesus die for?

[shunyadragon]

If you are in Adam, everything you do is sin.

If you are in Christ, it is impossible to sin.

"Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. Little children, let no one deceive you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.
I like the first line. Adam and Eve were definitely set up for a fall. They did not have a chance to do it right.

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
By this definition true believers are perfect.:ahem:

[oldsage_nc]

- But that would be a lie. Isn't lying immoral?No, it isn't lying, I am not saying that someone said they would and didn't but maybe it is a chore that they are to do and say that something came up and they needed to go do that first, well the dishes still didn't get done. Nothing morally wrong about that.



- Aha! So every human born today needs to be saved because of the actions of Adam and Eve way back when. Hmm. Do you believe two people can be proper spokesmen for all of humanity?Well, they are not the spokesmen for humanity, the point is that their nature is what changed and that flaw has been passed down to everyone. The purpose of Jesus is to patch that flaw by getting the soul and spirit back in harmony with one another. It doesn't matter what caused the fall but that it happened, we cannot go back and change the past, so all we can do is work for the future.

[LGM]

Well, they are not the spokesmen for humanity, the point is that their nature is what changed and that flaw has been passed down to everyone. The purpose of Jesus is to patch that flaw by getting the soul and spirit back in harmony with one another. It doesn't matter what caused the fall but that it happened, we cannot go back and change the past, so all we can do is work for the future.

:theist_babble:

LGM
...it doesn't matter what caused you to start talking like this...all we can do is work for coherence in the future...

[AtheistArchon]

Well, they are not the spokesmen for humanity, the point is that their nature is what changed and that flaw has been passed down to everyone.

- Their "nature"? And it's genetic?

- Let me go over it... Adam and Eve are created by god. At this point, what is their nature? Then they are tempted by Satan. At what point did their nature change, and who is responsible? If Adam or Eve could change their nature on the fly, why can any other human not do it... why are we cursed with the flaw?

The purpose of Jesus is to patch that flaw by getting the soul and spirit back in harmony with one another.

- "Soul", "spirit", and "harmony" need to all be defined.

It doesn't matter what caused the fall but that it happened, we cannot go back and change the past, so all we can do is work for the future.

- From my perspective, the story of Eden is a critical element of Christianity. You admit that Jesus' purpose was to correct a flaw that happened in Eden... I'd say that's pretty important.

- At stake is the coherency of the story; Genesis concludes with the implication that mankind is responsible for ruining our own relationship with god, and thus we needed to be "saved" (by Jesus' death)... we are not capable of doing it ourselves. Yet according to the story, not much fault can be laid at the feet of Adam or Eve, much less at the feet of someone born after the fact. If they changed their own nature, then we don't need salvation in order to change it back. If god changed it, then the fall was ordained by god himself.

- We might also ask ourselves exactly why god placed that tree in Eden in the first place. Didn't he know that if he did it, Eve would be tempted by Satan and succumb?

- And did Eve have free will to choose between right and wrong? If not, then it can't be her fault, much less our fault. If so, then what did the fruit bestow upon her?

[Duder]

. . . their (Adam's and Eve's) nature is what changed and that flaw has been passed down to everyone.

This statement highlights how difficult it is to explain orthodox Christianity in rational terms. One wants to know, how exactly does this work? By what mechanism is the defect of sin transmited from one generation to the next?

One hypothesis could be that it is taught. This defect which Adam and Eve aquired manifests itself in thier behavior, and there is really nothing they can do to change it. Try as they will, they cannot model perfect behavior for their children. Their children pick up the habit of sin from their parents' unconscious and non-verbal cues, and sin thus propogates down through the ages as a learned behavior. But orthodoxy has to reject this hypothesis because it is a warped nature that gets passed down. In the old nature/nurture debate, orthodox dogma makes sin a product of our nature. Sin is a natural expression of who we are, and not of the lessons we have learned.

Another possibility is that when Adam and Eve sinned, it caused a mutation in their genes, and sexual reproduction passes these damaged genes on to every generation. How did this happen exactly? Was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil radioactive? By whatever means the genes got damaged, one wonders how the sacrifice of God's son repaired it, since He is not supposed to have had any biological children by which to inject better genes into the pool. Moreover, if sin is a genetic defect, it should be possible in principle to fix the problem through genetic engineering - but again, orthodoxy rejects such a remedy on the basis that Christ's death is the sole solution.

Perhaps it is an ineffable, invisible, spiritual guilt that is transmitted from parent to child, not through any natural means like sexual reproduction or education, but through some supernatural agency that we do not understand. Now, orthodoxy says there are essentially two supernatural agencies at work in the world: God and Satan. Which of these agencies causes the transmittion to take place? If it is Satan, then it appears that Satan cannot be a created being, but an eternal entity almost coequal with God. Satan would have to be pictured as standing behind every delivery room doctor, and at the moment the baby crowns he un-creates God's work and re-creates it as a perverse mockery of the perfection God intends. Can Satan have this much power? On the other hand, if it is God who changes the nature of every baby to something warped and perverted, what can it possibly mean to say that God is a good God?

There is a final possibility that is perfectly reasonable, and could be argued with some authority if not for the vehemence of orthodoxy's rejection of it. I can best express it in syllogistic form:

Adam sinned.
Every man is Adam.
Therefore, every man has sinned.

In this view, there really do not exist seperate and individual people. "Humanity", in its entirety, is one single person - and any apparent discontinuity between one human being and the next is an illusion. This posits a common identity encompassing all individuals in all times and in all cultures, and Carl Jung suggested something like this in his theory of the collective unconscious. If this is right, the reason one man's sin is every man's sin becomes perfectly clear. If Timothy McVeigh blows up a building in Oklahoma, then I, in California, am to blame because I and Timothy McVeigh are the same person.

But orthodoxy rejects this perfectly reasonable solution for a number of reasons. First, the common identity solution comes dangerously close to the heresy of pantheism (as if the mere mention of this dread bugaboo ended the discussion then and there). Orthodox Christianity insists quite strongly that God and every human being are seperate, unconnected, and isolated from one another. Secondly, orthodoxy insists that a person is to blame for his own sins and no one else's - and it is for his own unique set of sins that he is under sentence of hellfire. Orthodox Christianity nowhere suggests that I should seek forgiveness for McVeigh's sins - this is entirely his own responsibility. But this puts us right back where we started! If I am not guilty of another's sins, then how is it that I am guilty of Adam's sins?

[AtheistArchon]

In this view, there really do not exist seperate and individual people. "Humanity", in its entirety, is one single person - and any apparent discontinuity between one human being and the next is an illusion. This posits a common identity encompassing all individuals in all times and in all cultures, and Carl Jung suggested something like this in his theory of the collective unconscious. If this is right, the reason one man's sin is every man's sin becomes perfectly clear. If Timothy McVeigh blows up a building in Oklahoma, then I, in California, am to blame because I and Timothy McVeigh are the same person.

- Meh. I find that notion silly. I am not to blame for the actions of someone long dead before I was born, even IF we stipulate that mankind shares some kind of ESP amongst each other and has some degree of control of the actions of people thousands of miles away. Orthodox Christianity isn't the only thing suggesting human beings are individuals... the personal experience of every living person confirms it.

[Duder]

- Meh. I find that notion silly. I am not to blame for the actions of someone long dead before I was born, even IF we stipulate that mankind shares some kind of ESP amongst each other and has some degree of control of the actions of people thousands of miles away. Orthodox Christianity isn't the only thing suggesting human beings are individuals... the personal experience of every living person confirms it.

We panteists don't go over well with either atheists or fundamentalist Christians, because we disagree with your very similar beginning assumptions. You guys have more in common than you know.

[oldsage_nc]

- =Their "nature"? And it's genetic?

- Let me go over it... Adam and Eve are created by god. At this point, what is their nature? Then they are tempted by Satan. At what point did their nature change, and who is responsible? If Adam or Eve could change their nature on the fly, why can any other human not do it... why are we cursed with the flaw?Adam and Eve when they were created were 'perfect'. Now what perfect is I do not know, the bible simply seems to say that it is those that do not sin. That original nature is what we want to have back. By 'nature' I mean the physical and mental. When Adam and Eve sinned God withdrew from the creation to protect the couple and all else from destruction, because sin cannot exist in His presence, for He is a consuming fire to the sinful.

From the time God withdrew from the active presence of others, creation, including us, started to breakdown. Which is the mutations that we see today and the emotional instability we find in people.

God wants to repair that problem, but all of this started from a lack of trust in God and His guidance.

So before I go too far on a tangent here, the nature of man changed due to the flaw of sin entering in the world, once there they only way to eradicate the problem is through the plan God has laid out.


- "Soul", "spirit", and "harmony" need to all be defined.the Soul = emtional aspect of man, the Spirit is the intellectual aspect of man. They are at times at odds with one another. (knowing to do good but not doing it)


- From my perspective, the story of Eden is a critical element of Christianity. You admit that Jesus' purpose was to correct a flaw that happened in Eden... I'd say that's pretty important.

- At stake is the coherency of the story; Genesis concludes with the implication that mankind is responsible for ruining our own relationship with god, and thus we needed to be "saved" (by Jesus' death)... we are not capable of doing it ourselves. Yet according to the story, not much fault can be laid at the feet of Adam or Eve, much less at the feet of someone born after the fact. If they changed their own nature, then we don't need salvation in order to change it back. If god changed it, then the fall was ordained by god himself.You mention about the word "Fault", salvation is for you because of the fall, not because you personally did something wrong, you are doing things wrong because it is now your nature, but God wants to correct the error of His creation from the beginning and set things right, not place blame on people.


- We might also ask ourselves exactly why god placed that tree in Eden in the first place. Didn't he know that if he did it, Eve would be tempted by Satan and succumb?

- And did Eve have free will to choose between right and wrong? If not, then it can't be her fault, much less our fault. If so, then what did the fruit bestow upon her?This is going along another train of thought and not really talking about sin.

[AtheistArchon]

Adam and Eve when they were created were 'perfect'. Now what perfect is I do not know, the bible simply seems to say that it is those that do not sin. That original nature is what we want to have back. By 'nature' I mean the physical and mental. When Adam and Eve sinned God withdrew from the creation to protect the couple and all else from destruction, because sin cannot exist in His presence, for He is a consuming fire to the sinful.

- Yet... the serpent made it into the garden. Without the serpent, Eve never had a thought to eat the fruit.

- Why didn't god's fire consume him? Seems Adam and Eve, being perfect, would have been something worth protecting.

From the time God withdrew from the active presence of others, creation, including us, started to breakdown. Which is the mutations that we see today and the emotional instability we find in people.

- Wha??

- You are saying that genetic mutation and psychological illnesses are a result of god "withdrawing" from the universe?

God wants to repair that problem, but all of this started from a lack of trust in God and His guidance.

- By one woman tempted by the serpent? Let me ask you this... do you believe Eve knew what evil was before she ate the fruit?

So before I go too far on a tangent here, the nature of man changed due to the flaw of sin entering in the world,

- 'Kay... whose fault was that?

once there they only way to eradicate the problem is through the plan God has laid out.

- But we still see sin, we still see mutations and psychological illnesses. What exactly did Jesus' death accomplish?

the Soul = emtional aspect of man, the Spirit is the intellectual aspect of man. They are at times at odds with one another. (knowing to do good but not doing it)

- Emotions and intellect... I can dig that. Did A&E possess these?

You mention about the word "Fault", salvation is for you because of the fall, not because you personally did something wrong, you are doing things wrong because it is now your nature,

- Evidently it was Eve's nature to sin as well... she did it. If sin didn't enter the world until after Eve ate the fruit, then how did she decide to pick the thing?

but God wants to correct the error of His creation from the beginning and set things right, not place blame on people.

- Then god could snap his godly fingers and do it, no? If mankind isn't to blame, then why not simply banish sin?

This is going along another train of thought and not really talking about sin.

- But they're relevant questions. Whose fault was the fall? And how did Eve sin if she was perfect?

[oldsage_nc]

- Yet... the serpent made it into the garden. Without the serpent, Eve never had a thought to eat the fruit.

- Why didn't god's fire consume him? Seems Adam and Eve, being perfect, would have been something worth protecting.Ok, let me see, Satan wants to be like God, Satan's goal is to be over God. So basically Satan is saying that he can do things better.

Satan rebelled there was a war in heaven and Satan and his angels were cast out of heaven. Now as to why God didn't just snap His fingers and destroy Satan at that time has to do with the matter of trust. Satan said that he could do it better and even the good angels and now us have heard that charge, it God just snapped His fingers and got rid of Satan then that question would still be there. "Is God's way the best way?"

Now the only real way of answer such a question is to let the results of a lack of trust play out and let all of creation see.

Eve may have never thought about eating the fruit because at that point in time she was wholly trusting in God, but then enters Satan, told Eve the first lie, that you can eat the fruit you want 'surely' die, but you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So the Satan gave her a reason to doubt God's word, her trust in God had diminished, and in eating the fruit she basically said, I trust the serpent more than God.


- You are saying that genetic mutation and psychological illnesses are a result of god "withdrawing" from the universe?Yes.


- By one woman tempted by the serpent? Let me ask you this... do you believe Eve knew what evil was before she ate the fruit?No.



- But we still see sin, we still see mutations and psychological illnesses. What exactly did Jesus' death accomplish?The death of Jesus accomplished several things, One - that God is willing to go to any length to bring His creation back in right standing, Two - that we need to rely wholly on God for guidance in what is right. And Three - Jesus died because He accepted the penalty of the broken covenant.



- Emotions and intellect... I can dig that. Did A&E possess these?Of course.


- Evidently it was Eve's nature to sin as well... she did it. If sin didn't enter the world until after Eve ate the fruit, then how did she decide to pick the thing?Sin is again missing the mark, until she did the thing she didn't sin. Just because the idea was planted there doesn't make it sin.


- Then god could snap his godly fingers and do it, no? If mankind isn't to blame, then why not simply banish sin?I basically answered that a little ways up.



- But they're relevant questions. Whose fault was the fall? And how did Eve sin if she was perfect?Yes, they are relevant questions in the since of where did sin come from, but I am just trying to remain with the topic of "Is it a sin..."