(April 25, 2013 at 5:41 am)Esquilax Wrote:(April 25, 2013 at 3:01 am)Consilius Wrote: Yes. Thank you. But also, what we consider 'immoral' is also considered by most religions to be 'sin'. They're closer than you think.
To a certain point. But there are certainly things that we today find immoral that, in terms of sin, were merely breaches of etiquette at best; we consider rape to be incredibly immoral, but in the bible it nets you a fine and, depending on where you look, a new bride. Slavery, same deal.
What this shows is that sin and morality might be close, depending on whether you're willing to forgive certain things or not, but that sin as a concept merely co-opts morality that already existed, rather than sin being built into the bedrock of immorality... which is sort of the biblical claim, isn't it?
People in the Bible are weird. The thing is that we interpret the Bible based on the culture of our Western democratic society. You'd be surprised how a lot of the crazy stuff that goes on in the Old Testament can be justified by basically good morals found in ancient Hebrew culture.
