the badness of sin
“Please, turn away from your sin – all of your sin ..”
I’m a self-evolved atheist. What I mean is, I was born into a Christian family and accepted their religion as the ‘natural’ state of things, but as I grew up, and read the Bible as a young adult, I could not resolve the harsh words and ideas it presented, with the society I lived in and the humanity I felt. So I wasn’t converted by the ideas of others, and I feel my intellectual atheism is probably out of touch. I say all this as a precursor/apology to what is coming, as I expect it’s all been said before and a million times more clearly! (I’m saying it here to vent my rant.)
The concept of ‘sin’ that is bandied round by Christians is a disturbing psychological assault that hits hardest those who face lives that are more complex than the Western mainstream. Contrary to what their faith tells them, the ethical and moral compass of the average human that has evolved in this society, naturally contains many of the basic elements of Christianity. We have evolved and progressed on the back of characteristics that favour a peaceful and loving society for those around us – our family, our friends – and which, for survival, extends as far beyond our circles as we dare to include. Everyone of every faith and culture wants a world that treats their offspring well – this does not need to be programmed into our heads by an imaginary deity.
When the root of your religion tells people that you and all those are around you are intrinsically ‘bad’ and you need to fight all the urges you have to be ‘bad’ and that an evil, unseen creature is trying to trick you into being ‘bad’, you use irrational fear and guilt to mess with the basic moral compass of human nature. When your religion tells people that innate characteristics that bring no harm to others are ‘bad’, that one gender or race is superior to another, you promote discrimination and misery within your society. When your religion tells you that people who commit serious crimes are simply ‘bad’, you overlook the real, earthly causes of criminal behaviour and encourage the cycles of poverty, neglect and abuse that are, without exception, at the root of these behaviours.
I have so much to say on this subject but in the interests of keeping my posts concise will finish with this: guilt and fear generated by this harmful notion of ‘sin’ are the root cause of more unethical and immoral behaviour than would otherwise naturally occur.
Nice post. Religion certainly is an enigma wrapped in a riddle (i.e. good and evil occupying the same space-time). However, have you considered the possibility that the stories in the Bible could be about man’s creator(s) but not necessarily about God? As Voltaire said, “If God didn’t exist, it would have be invented.”
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Thanks for your input! I guess if I were to entertain the concept of a benevolent deity or deities, I would be rather concerned if they thought the often brutal and quite petty stories in the Bible were a good guide for living! As for Voltaire (I’m sure this has been said a million times before), if Santa Claus didn’t exist, he wouldn’t have been invented; if fairies didn’t exist, they wouldn’t have been invented etc.
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That’s assuming God is at all interactive in the world and assuming, even if God is interactive, that he doesn’t have a reason for it that ultimately benefits mankind (which we would never be able to fathom). Logic is to no available in assessing the question you pose. God, if he exists, is outside of space and time and beyond man’s ability to perceive with his limited senses and understand with his finite mind.
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Oh yes, I totally agree! If there does exist a deity figure who created the universe, it’s perfectly possible that everything about it is beyond the human mind. However, the very notion of a benevolent being who creates creatures with puny minds who are designed to behave ‘badly’ and the majority of whom are destined for everlasting torment, defies even the simplest logic of my puny mind.
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Since you’ve read my post “Genesis Revisited”, you may be able to get a glimpse of what my thought process looks like. I didn’t write “Genesis Revisited” to be entertaining, I wrote it because it’s history – our real history. The one that’s not in our history books or religious texts (at least not appropriately translated as such). As for Santa Claus, he doesn’t exist and so he had to be invented and as for God, at least some entity capable of Intelligent Design which is beyond our ability to even contemplate, may well exist. However, man is never satisfied with the abstract and so it humanizes God and then describes him/her/it as benevolent – and then wonders where evil came from.
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Ah, there was a typo in your Voltaire quote, which led me to my seemingly illogical Santa Claus comment. I remember believing what you express when I first started my untanglement from Christianity. Okay, so I don’t agree with the idea of the Christian god but surely something did all this, and we’re just not intelligent enough to get our little heads round it. It was like a halfway house to the seemingly unprotected void of atheism. But in the end, if there is a mysterious entity running the show that is “beyond our ability to even contemplate”, I would suggest there’s absolutely no point in wasting any time or energy using our poorly created minds to think about it …
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Contemplation is never an issue as long as we don’t take ourselves too seriously. Thus, the problem with religion.
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That kept me stuck in religion for so long: the fear of the outside world and its intrinsic badness. Curious how there’s one true verse in the Bible: And the truth shall set you free.
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Yes, it’s an amazingly persuasive device that now seems utterly ridiculous from the outside looking in. Thanks for stopping by, I really like what I’ve read in your blog, you’re a great writer!
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Excellent observation.
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Came back for a second read. I know realize where all the photos are. Ho hum…tis the end of the week.
Some are very pretty but are too small to do them justice.
Maybe make a separate folder and blow them up a bit?
I also notice you have a ‘like’ from Prayson. Oooh, he’s a one, you’ll LIKE his take on religion. 🙂
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Thanks for liking my pretty pictures! You’re now officially my favourite blogger. 😉
Yeah, I’ve noticed the Prayson character lurking round other atheist blogs. I tried reading his blog at one point but dozed off.
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Sorry I missed the photos before, but you have managed to hide them in plain sight!
Yeah, Prayson..Prize nit wit. He will argue every leg off of a donkey and then still expect it to drag itself home.ZZZZzzzz….as Wham once sang…Wake me you before you go…go…Unfortunately there are times when I cannot resist a challenge. Futile, but that’s me. Lol.
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