Asking an old churchgoer “what is sin”

religiousragings:

“Here goes; the very first instance of sin is in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve disobeyed the direct command of God. This should then be at least the starting place. What is sin? It is doing something that God has forbidden. This in itself, however, is insufficient. In Romans 1:18, the Apostle Paul states that, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” This expands our working definition to all thoughts and actions that go against God’s character or commands. This is reasonable: God, who created everything and the Being in which everything finds its purpose and best interest, who is above all, has set the standard by which morality is to be measured: Himself.”

His reasoning sounds very circular. I wanna know what your thoughts on it are. :)

To be honest, my first inclination upon reading something like this is to simply tune it out.  It is nonsense speculation on a fictional story describing the non-existent condition of sin created by a non-existent deity based on books written by unknown authors who lied about who they were.

Trying to follow the logic of speculation based on such shaky ground is a bit like trying to paint the Mona Lisa on a waterfall, which is to say rather a waste of time.

That said, all this really seems to say is that God defines sin as being anything that God finds sinful.  I wouldn’t call this circular so much as I’d call it useless, but it does seem in keeping with the theistic beliefs of many.  God defines all the rules: obey or suffer.

Which wouldn’t be totally unreasonable for an all-powerful being provided said being actually took the time to explain what the rules were.  Stuff like the morality of abortion and gay marriage simply aren’t mentioned in the Bible in spite of what many theists insist.  So if God has rules about them, He’s leaving it until after we die to tell us.  It’s kind of like letting children play a game without giving the rules for it first and then shooting the children who broke the rules after the game is over.

And that is why using god as a basis for some objective morality is senseless. Even if the rules were more specifically written, it seems to me that human moral judgment is always the means by which we determine guilt based on a mixture of ideals and often complicated circumstances. I’d think that if there were a clear ultimate moral objectivity then we could program robots to administer justice based on the written moral code. Would anyone want their case to be decided by a machine that runs The Bible as its operating system?

(Source: skepticalavenger)