The Original Messages of Religion

[genkaus]

I shall start arguing by not arguing it's not going to happen.

I don't subscribe to any religious teachings, merely an observer of them

If you didn't subscribe to them then you wouldn't regard the concepts of sin and sacrifice as virtues.

I have nothing to prove, no claims to defend, they are what they are. I am not here to debate this, to be scrupulous until you feel satisfied, I am here to offer ideas.

Your ideas are the claims you you need to defend. If you offer them here without justifying them, then your offers are summarily rejected.

I am concerned that your being here isn't for an interest in unbiased dialogue but rather to promote a long held view you already had.

Promotion would require me to go around starting threads about my views. I haven't done that in a long time. And I agree - my dialogue here is biased in favor of rigorous logical standards.

Ironically, you are the one starting threads which makes you the one with the agenda of promoting your view.

Your comment on sacrifice for others beings says such, we humans have
at times been forced to sacrifice each other so that we might survive, say a group is lost in the middle of nowhere they need food but there is none to be found and so eventually they draw sticks to see who is killed so that they might eat.

Such villainous characters to you are these men who were forced to do by their own need to survive?

Yes. Most certainly. Though still less villainous than Jesus.

The sacrifice of Jesus is not different, according to Catholics and perhaps other Christians it happened so that we humans could live,

The difference is that while the aforementioned group was a victim of circumstance, the requirement of sacrifice was necessitated by their god. The difference is while that group had an imminent threat, this sacrifice did not. The difference is that while that group would eventually feel guilty and ashamed of the sacrifice they had to make, the Christians celebrate theirs.

All that makes them much, much more worse than that group.

and one of the larger reasons of the success of religion is probably due to the human instinct to survive.

As an imaginary solution, that is.

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Sin gives us a name to lump all immoral deeds in one name, that is why I like it.

And what's wrong with "immorality"?

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I still do not know why you want to engage in a fruitless, frivolous, time consuming ARGUMENT about what a virtue is. But I hope in the future you will focus on more important things than such tripe.

You think that discussing and debating what a virtue - something we claim to live our lives by - is, is frivolous?

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As for sin, it does have it's own definition in the bible, but it can be used secularly. I use it all the time.

Don't confuse the two. The secular meaning has nothing to do with salvation.