Sin. What is it? - by Gray
Renzatic on 18/11/2019 at 04:09
Total aside here, but doesn't it make a fuckton more sense to have the new year start when all the leaves and crap start blooming in spring? Why end it smack dab in the deadest ass part of winter? Usher in the new year when the weather starts getting warm again, I say!
demagogue on 18/11/2019 at 04:23
Well this is an interesting topic, but I'd need more time than I have to give it any justice. I would divide it into maybe three things, 1. what sin is supposed to mean in Protestant theology, at least as I learned it (we could try to see how much it shares with Catholic & Orthodox views, or views from other periods. I'm not actually too sure how the concept of sin in Catholicism differs from Protestantism once you get deeper than the superficial stereotypes); 2. what sin means culturally in Western societies (Western guilt vs. Eastern shame), and 3. the emotions people feel related to sin, guilt, and shame, which I think get packaged into narratives by culture, but aside from that I understand that they're real emotions people have confronting their own limits in keeping themselves free from behavior that they regret.
At its root, I think it's that self-hating and ashamed emotion a person gets when they can't help themselves doing what they don't actually want to do, but they feel the temptation is too strong and their will power is too weak. That feeling has some universality to it (I think), and I think it's such a compelling emotion that it's going to get worked into the culture one way or another, because what else are people going to make of confronting emotions like that?
So the punchline would be there's a pyramid here, with the emotions at the base, the culture built off of that, and then the theology that packages the whole thing into a narrative which people understand. If I actually had time, it'd be an interesting project to tease out the whole structure of the thing over each level, and, e.g., how European Christians do it differently than say Buddhist Chinese or Thai. I think there are so many cultural and religions concepts that would do well to get that kind of treatment. The world would make a lot more sense if somebody did IMO.
Nicker on 18/11/2019 at 04:38
Quote Posted by Gray
Right, I should have realised before posting this thread it could descend into various religious arguing.
Sin is religious term, so yeah, it will be argued in religious terms. Sin is a value judgement emboldened with religious authority. It's more than just a bad thing, it's a SIN! Fortunately there are many, cherries to pick from in the faithful's fruit basket.
If you don't believe in the supernatural, these sins are called morals and every social creature, even arthropods, have them. So it depends if you want to discuss the blurry, religious concepts of sin or the reality of them, I guess.
Pyrian on 18/11/2019 at 05:40
As an agnostic, I've always kind of liked the description of the holy trinity as a mystery. Like, seriously, how the heck
would we know why three different things are one thing? I mean, it's not really
that big of a deal, is it? A single coin has two sides. Why
can't a frikken deity have three? Of all the crazy assertions that come from religion, "god has three distinct aspects of a single entity and we don't know how that works" seems almost plausible in comparison. Like, if there
is a god, I'm quite certain that one thing that is true about it is that
we don't really understand it.
Here's one way it could work:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/NXd3vZ1.jpgI think it would be interesting if "original sin"
was the knowledge of good and evil, that prevents humanity from being innocents like animals.
Sulphur on 18/11/2019 at 05:48
Quote Posted by uncadonego
Sulphur
Con=
with + science(knowledge) ; right and wrong implied. I don't think we need to be taught that we are doing something wrong when we steal from another person, we know.
Thanks for the etymology breakdown, but it's unnecessary. You most definitely were taught that it's wrong to steal growing up, probably while you were figuring out object permanence and the rest of your semantic universe as an infant. Biological instinct is fundamentally different from conscience, though it might seem like the same thing.
Pyrian on 18/11/2019 at 05:50
Mmm, I don't think so. Conscience is deeply linked to empathy, to the point where people deficient in the latter tend to lack the former. And empathy is innate, not taught. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, because "conscience" isn't actually all that well-defined and people will use the term for a variety of personal experiences.
Starker on 18/11/2019 at 05:55
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Total aside here, but doesn't it make a fuckton more sense to have the new year start when all the leaves and crap start blooming in spring? Why end it smack dab in the deadest ass part of winter? Usher in the new year when the weather starts getting warm again, I say!
It did, apparently, until Romans screwed it all up and added two extra months.
Sulphur on 18/11/2019 at 06:04
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Mmm, I don't think so. Conscience is deeply linked to empathy, to the point where people deficient in the latter tend to lack the former. And empathy is innate, not taught. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, because "conscience" isn't actually all that well-defined and people will use the term for a variety of personal experiences.
Having empathy isn't the complete equation though, is it? Empathy doesn't tell you whether
your action or inaction is good or bad by itself, you have to learn how to use it in the context of, say, swiping another kid's toy. A conscience develops over time with interaction in your social environment - and societal expectation. Religion's a big example of how elastic moral inferencing in relationship to your conscience can be.
Starker on 18/11/2019 at 06:07
Might be what we call conscience is just a product of human self-domestication.
demagogue on 18/11/2019 at 12:44
I can add another small part to my take. There's all this real emotional baggage that humans can't help but confront. In my understanding, the roots of sin aren't conscience but self-loathing confronting the limits of one's self control. Whenever one is struck with that emotion, I think there's great pressure to grasp on to something in nature that reassures you, it's ok, you're human, you're imperfect, you have weaknesses. You're not an evil person. Try to do better next time. If a person doesn't come to that realization, I think they could really consume themselves in unwarranted guilt and self-loathing.
Now here's a punchline to that. I have an idea that many people come to that kind of realzation one way or another just to cope with their own weaknesses. And I think in many cases it might not actually matter what you name that realization. You could call it overcoming samsara through dharma or call it accepting the sacrifice of Christ that paid for your sins (I'd add other religions' equivalents if I knew them better), the job of either of which is to extinguished that guilt at its cosmological constitutional roots.
Those narratives are vehicles to get you there. If one is an atheist tackling the same issue, it's doing the same thing with a different vehicle, the same work of Jesus or dharma in different words.
Ok, some caveats. I wouldn't want to go too far down that line because there are also important differences between, e.g., following dharma to overcome samsara and following Jesus as Christ that that framework glosses over. But at the same time, I think there's a tendancy among some self-described non-believers or atheists to just say of those kinds of emotions, oh they're just hormonal or just in the head. They'll say there's nothing supernatural about it, but I get the feeling what they mean is there's nothing serious, or real, or more deeply meaningdful about them, which I think is a dismissive and regretable approach one may take towards the so-called spiritual emotions. Ok, so you don't like these classic vehicles to confronting them. I get that. But I think it's still worth confronting them on a spiritual level and to struggle to find vehicles for that confrontation that take them as real and deeply as they can go.