"Sins"?

[Chad32]

That's the whole point of setting the bar too high to actually succeed. Nothing less than perfection is adequate, and perfection itsself is pretty vague. The second you think something bad, which is not something you can control, you are flawed and thus unworthy. The system is set up to keep you trapped and obedient.

The punishment is also something n one could endure, depending on the denomination. A responsible adult may bravely face judgement for their wrongdoings, because a just punishment is never disproportionate, and you have an eternity to make up for your finite crimes. In order to make it so you HAVE to scapegoat Jesus, they make the punishment an eternity is fiery torture. And still call it just. Even the most righteous and selfless person, who would gladly take a just punishment for their crimes because that's part of what makes someone an adult, but still be convinced to obey through an unavoidable and evil punishment.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Hi everybody,


I'm new here and need your help right at the beginning, even though it might sound a bit strange to you . Some time ago, I left a VERY fundamentalist religious group in which I had been taught that we needed to ask God for forgiveness for each and every little sin we committed, even “guilty” THOUGHTS. As I was a member of that church for quite some time, this always-asking-for-forgiveness became like a pattern. Now I' don't believe in God anymore, but still I kind of feel the urge to ask for forgiveness after each and every little wrongdoing (and even if it's only things such as having an envious thought or driving 60 instead of 55mph.... So I wanted to know what you/”normal people without religion” are doing in situations like those? Just shrug your shoulders, tell yourself that nobody is perfect and go on with life without feeling guilty? I know it sounds stupid, but I'd be happy to hear your answers!!! Thanks in advance,
Sandra

Sandra,

Several have already answered you on this, but it's quite clear that "normal" (as in, non-sociopathic, non-malfunctioning) people evolved as a social species, and the concept of guilt and a desire to heal rifts within our tribes was a massive evolutionary advantage. It's good that you feel bad when you harm someone; that's what makes you good at being a human being! Indeed, I tend to base my evaluation of others on two factors: intellectual honesty (ability to face hard truths and change their minds when called for) and empathy for others. 

Religion, unfortunately, has learned over time how to hijack that brain architecture, like a virus latching onto your DNA, and imprints onto our "social programming" section an additional number of things to feel guilty about: "thought crimes". It then uses that sense of added guilt to badger and bludgeon you into compliance and conformity. This may even have had evolutionary advantages, in the sense that a group religion caused the tribe to have a cohesive identity and purpose, giving that tribe survival benefits over their less-organized rivals. Unfortunately, like many of our hunter-gatherer adaptations (such as our tendency to love sugar and store fat), this has become overblown and harmful in the modern world, with so many people crowded together and almost no humans living in tribes anymore. But to compensate for the trend, religion got better at the guilt-and-shame game.

This (along with a lot of other coding in the Christian faith "brain virus" that is self-defensive, like teaching us to doubt our own reason) makes deconversion difficult and often emotionally painful. Worse, preachers have learned to present atheists as immoral and/or amoral, meaning that if you (like 99% of people) are emotional and able to show empathy, you tend to think, "well I don't want to be an atheist, I'm a good  person!" 

In closing, I'll just leave you to ponder the words of one of my favorite sci-fi authors:

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid.)" - Robert A. Heinlein.

[robvalue]

That was brilliant RS! Fantastic analysis.

[Angrboda]

When I was quitting smoking, I wore a rubber band on my wrist, and every time I'd think about smoking, I'd snap the rubber band and it would interrupt the thought. There's also cognitive behavioral therapy (some of which is self-help, like the book "Feeling Good" by Dr. David Burns). You might also immerse yourself in atheist culture (perhaps by reading Christopher Hitchens' "God is not great" - it's a good read).

Don't know what kind of help you need, but as said earlier, time is a good healer.

[ignoramus]

Welcome Sandra, from Australia!
You sound level headed ...As long as you don't mind a little sexual innuendo here and there for fun, you'll fit right in!
PS, Do you really believe in the FSM! Or are you an impasta? hehe ... catch...

[Sal]

"Sin" becomes a lot easier to tackle once you realize it's a completely made-up concept about guilt-tripping people for imaginary wrong-doings.

Only actions that have an effect on your surroundings count, sin or not, notwithstanding.

[pgrimes15]

That was brilliant RS! Fantastic analysis.

I second that. Superb !!

Grimesy

[Exian]

Hi Sandra!

I was going to fumble my way through something like what Rocket said, but he fucking nailed it.

Instead, I'll tell you what I had to do to get over what is a very common thing (so don't feel silly about it ). I had to reevaluate each sin to separate what was inherently bad from what was just say-so. The difficult part was listing them out. So difficult, I didn't do it. What I did was trained myself to notice when I felt bad for what I used to call a sin, and took the opportunity to analyze the situation. I found that most sins aren't really that bad after all, and the ones that were bad were inherently so.

This took time.

[houseofcantor]

Well, thanks for leaving me something to say, guys! 


At least I've got to release the inner like-whore and hand out the kudos for another brilliant community performance.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I dropped this one in another forum, but I kept it on file because I liked what I managed to type, that day.

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[(OP asked me "Are you sure? To be positive we'd probably have to translate directly from Hebrew.")]

Yes, I'm pretty sure. I've read quite a few books on the subject by Hebrew scholars, and it's why I cited from Young's Literal Translation, as well as citing commonly-known elements of the Patriarchal culture that was ancient Israel. It's really not hard to understand their point of view, for that time and place, but by today's standards, in which women are independent people and full citizens, it's hard to justify (to put it mildly). I'm not even especially mad at the ancient Hebrews for seeing things that way... but to claim that the Holy Bible is a moral guidebook for all time and all peoples, while it contains the Bronze Age values of slavery, females as effective chattel, and genocide by divine command, I'd say it's good evidence that no God wrote that book.

As to the evolved-empathy/morality discussion...you're quite right. Like many concepts which are fuzzy by nature, the notion of morality can break down along the edges. How DO we settle big issues of morality on more than the personal-behavior scale? We developed our sense of moral empathy for a hunter-gatherer tribe of 50-200 people; stretching that sense to include ever-larger groups (including those Others, capital O, we often instinctively fear) can often be problematic. For instance-- my country (USA) is currently bombing other countries in an attempt to kill those who seek to do harm to our people and our allies... but in the process we often, despite our best efforts, cause "collateral" damage. To me, this is clearly immoral. Is it SO immoral that it warrants cessation of the activity? I cannot say for sure, despite my instinctive opinion about it. That is for society to decide as a whole through the democratic process of electing leaders who tell us what they will do about it. My point here is that applying personal concepts of morality to group behaviors gets shaky very quickly, and to me verifies the principle that morality is not objective, but subjective according to each person and each society.

But that brings us to the point about "obey the law or go to jail". It is entirely about the basis of that moral authority. When our Founding Fathers wrote a letter to the King of England, George III, to tell him why we were rebelling (we call it the Declaration of Independence) against what King George and all people before him called "the Divine Right of Kings", meaning that God Himself had supposedly given the King the right to determine what happened to us, we declared, that no... the right to govern comes from "the consent of the governed". Either the People consent to be ruled, or the rulership is tyranny and rightfully rebelled against.

We then spelled out a few "unalienable" (not an actual word, but I love the poetry of it) rights of all men, then defined them specifically a few years later in the Bill of Rights, amended to our Constitution. Since then, other democracies have formed and spelled out similar concepts. An individual may chafe against the rules of his society, but each of us has the power to convince others of the rightness of his cause, and to advocate for change through the power of the ballot box. Each of us has a representative to whom he may complain if a policy or law is deemed unfair. We can and do change laws and expand rights to new groups which were previously prejudiced against silent/powerless minorities, or which prove to be economically or otherwise unfair.

But when it comes to God, as defined in your Bible, you're asking me to take the Bronze Age values clearly enshrined in book form, claiming to be from an eternal Creator of the Universe, and apply it as an unquestionable moral guide. Furthermore, you're claiming that this Bible defines God in a way that allows Him to make moral demands of us that are (to the unbiased, outside observer from any other religion or irreligion) clearly the product of the thinking of one particular tribal culture, and claiming that it is somehow His right to do so at gunpoint. If I take you at your word, that there is such a Being (and not the others' word that Krishna or Allah or Marduk or Thor have particular demands to make of me), then this Being is repugnant to my sense of basic morality. A God that would demand that I guess which holy book is right, that I obey the single book out of the options that I chose to guess is right, OR ELSE BURN, is indistinguishable, to me, from a rapist who claims the right because he is more powerful than his victim. To claim that the eternal Creator of the Universe cares how one species of mammal on one planet out of billions in the universe has sex may have made sense to people in the Bronze Age, when people didn't know what germs were or where the sun went at night, I can understand... but it's astounding to me that people still are able to think this is okay in the 21st century.

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