yeah i really was trying to say that when people don't believe in God (any version) then they can;t really believe that there is such a thing as sin. and if God and sin do exist, they ma be sinning without knowing it.
i realize now that whether someone believes in God or not, or sinning or not, they def don;t believe that they are purposely sinning and that sinning is a good thing.
Now there would be things to clarify.
The concept of sins works as an external judge. Other values exist that serves the same function.
The idea that lack of belief in God will lead into a life of depravity is, to be honest, rather generalizing and offensive. I'm glad you realized that, apparently.
Regardless of whether people believe / subscribe to the concept of -sin-, most people have a sense of moral.
Regardless of whether it's a sin or not, people have their sense of right and wrong.
They knew that killing, stealing, raping is wrong (whether by virtue of consequences or by virtue of wrongness). Violence against children are commonly denounced and reviled.
Within a personal capacity, most people know to an extent when/where they are straying from their personal path; when they did something 'wrong' or whether they did something they shouldn't.
Now there are other, grayer areas when people differ. Race and gender equality, for instance; or gay rights, creationism vs science, pot use,...etc, etc
But these differences are not religious/non-religious; between an existence of a belief or an absence of one. They are moral differences, and the capacity to decide whether one thing is right or wrong are independent from religion.
then posters starting saying that i don;t know who God is, or what sinning is. but that wasnt the point of the post. the point was that when people don;t believe God exists, then they are more likely to sin, go against His rules, cuz they don;t think those rules make sense or are worth following. i dont think that's really a ground breaking or new argument to make.
Well, if you are judging someone with a rule they doesn't play with..... you were bound to find deviations from the rule when you look closely. That will happen regardless of the person's maturity and wisdom and virtues.
And for fairness's sake, it's not as if people who believe in God aren't more likely to sin.. there are some sort of twisted 'safety' that often drives them to sin, as if because they go to church every week / donate XXX amount of money to the church / volunteer every day within the church politics, God will save them and they got carte blanche to be douchebags. But I digress.
Yes, it's not a groundbreaking revelation. But can you even blame them?
You do realize that within their rules, it's you who are sinning, no?
/Dirty Trick : mirroring
i used two examples where people become less convinced about the truth in religious texts. one was discoveries in natural science, and the other was findings in studies of human psychology. it seems like the more we know about the natural world, the less we feel we need to look to religious texts for any kind of guidance. because we can figure things out on a out own, we've stopped thinking we need God. it seems that some people feel that the world is simple enough without needing to believe in God to make it all make sense to us.
I honestly think you're looking at the wrong people.
And possibly at the wrong things. I'm going to assume you are mostly talking about ethics and morality here and not, like, classic science like history and/or physics....?
One of the basic beliefs of science is that things can be wrong.
Just because something is explainable doesn't mean they are a)simple, b) right, c) correct.
The world is huge, and complex, and one theory that had run for a long time can be refuted and argued and made obsolete by a new discovery. Just ask Newton.
Old things are being tested, new things are being created. What does that mean?
That there are still questions. That the scientific world as a whole never stops searching...
And what the scientific world never does is to stop and accept an easy answer.
And in a way, they are running against religion, which often provides that easy answer.
But really, you're looking at another sort of people; those people who seeks the same comfort, security, and predictability religion gives...only they try to find it in science. Within a certain degree, it works. But at the core, they have similarities with people who envelop themselves in the warm embrace of dogmatic truths and never straying.
in the case of psychology, the case is opposite. the more diseases we define, the less likely we are to believe that we are just simple people making bad decisions. rather we want to believe we are just so very complex. there is a plethora of psychological ailment listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the standardize manual used by psychologists to diagnose individuals, which expands each edition. Here is an example of why i thinking defining things as disorder sometimes encourages bad behaviour or dare i say, encourages ppl to sin. In the DSM there is a disorder called Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD). It is "defined by the
American Psychiatric Association as a
personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive emotionality and
attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriately
seductive behavior, usually beginning in early adulthood." Common people! okay maybe there are some people where this is so out of control that only medicine will fix them. its just this attitude of "this is who i am" that doesnt sit well with me. To me it seems like these ‘advances’ in psychology encourage people to sin. Cuz they think they have some complex disorder that only complex medicines can fix. And im not debating here whether inappropriately seductive behaviour is a sin or not, assuming that it is a sin, this type of diagnosis just makes it worse.
.....I don't get this one.
