A question about original sin.

[Cinjin]

There's a thin line between a fine upstanding citizen and a criminal.

Are you stating this as a hard true fact Frodo?

It strikes me as an obvious exaggeration to aide you in making your point. I wonder if you could elaborate a little more on this sentence.

A "thin line" implies a certain pre-disposition to committing crimes that we're all barely avoiding. I don't think that is the case for MANY people.

[Anomalocaris]

Kudos for showing some life Kay

I didn't deviate from the subject, you did. Sin is a totally man made thing and flaw means defect, fault, or imperfection, especially one that is hidden and should not be applied to human beings. You might have quoted me exactly, but you missed the point. I'll be the one waiting for you to take a handfull of chill pills

And by the way, it's not only your eyes that deceives you, some here might argue that your mind is in the same boat..

'Sin' or human fallability /referring to the fall/ the human condition is man made in as much as 'man' makes up words to describe things. Of course it apples to f'in people! If you don't see a natural potential in yourself to do bad stuff then you might be the alien here. There's a thin line between a fine upstanding citizen and a criminal. You're not so stupid that you go against the norm to get what you want. You're also not so stupid that you don't do what would be morally wrong to get what you want either.

Were you not a Christian, I would have been astonished by the shallowness and wish thinking that oozes out of those sentiments. But you are a Christian, so I can only congratulate you for having actually missed one or two points where you faith could have made you slightly shallower still.

[Kayenneh]

Kudos for showing some life Kay

'Sin' or human fallability /referring to the fall/ the human condition is man made in as much as 'man' makes up words to describe things. Of course it apples to f'in people! If you don't see a natural potential in yourself to do bad stuff then you might be the alien here. There's a thin line between a fine upstanding citizen and a criminal. You're not so stupid that you go against the norm to get what you want. You're also not so stupid that you don't do what would be morally wrong to get what you want either.

Sin is just a as any other, but the idea behind it is something I cannot agree with. And I do recognize the potential in me to e.g. harm other people by words or actions. The difference being, I don't ask a deity for forgiveness when I've done bad shit, I actually have the guts to go and apologize to the person I've wronged.

Showing some life? Have I seemed like a corpse before?

[The Grand Nudger]

Reminds me of one of Hitchens' more compact arguments. "Created sick and then commanded to be well."

[Anomalocaris]

Reminds me of one of Hitchens' more compact arguments. "Created sick and then commanded to be well."

That's by Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brook.

              1 Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
              2 Born under one law, to another bound;
              3 Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
              4 Created sick, commanded to be sound.
              5 What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?
              6 Passion and reason self-division cause.
              7 It is the mark or majesty of power
              8 To make offences that it may forgive;
              9 Nature herself doth her own self deflower,
            10 To hate those errors she herself doth give.
            11 For how should man think that he may not do,
            12 If nature did not fail and punish too?
            13 Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,
            14 Only commands things difficult and hard,
            15 Forbids us all things which it knows is lust,
            16 Makes easy pains, unpossible reward.
            17 If nature did not take delight in blood,
            18 She would have made more easy ways to good.
            19 We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
            20 With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
            21 To teach belief in good and still devotion,
            22 To preach of heaven's wonders and delights:
            23 Yet when each of us in his own heart looks
            24 He finds the God there far unlike his books.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah I've been sourcing his stuff for a bit as a personal hobby, the man likes to quote folks. Good to have another level down the rabbit hole for a quote I enjoy, thankya.

[fr0d0]

There's a thin line between a fine upstanding citizen and a criminal.

Are you stating this as a hard true fact Frodo?

It strikes me as an obvious exaggeration to aide you in making your point. I wonder if you could elaborate a little more on this sentence.

A "thin line" implies a certain pre-disposition to committing crimes that we're all barely avoiding. I don't think that is the case for MANY people.

Hardly a "hard true fact" Cinjin. But a fact nonetheless. See you needed to cite an extreme example to make any point.

All people are where they are due to circumstances and influence. Something may happen to you today that changes your entire perspective, making criminality, for example, a viable option for you. The balance is perilously near and we mostly live in ignorance of it, until it gets shifted.

Most 'criminals' are victims of their circumstance.

Sin is just a as any other, but the idea behind it is something I cannot agree with. And I do recognize the potential in me to e.g. harm other people by words or actions. The difference being, I don't ask a deity for forgiveness when I've done bad shit, I actually have the guts to go and apologize to the person I've wronged.

Showing some life? Have I seemed like a corpse before?

Dunno what your 1st sentance was meant to say.

I think you're interpreting 'sin' personally. Of course if you do a person wrong, it's them you need to put things right with. What about things you do to yourself? What about things to do to an impersonal other?? How do you reconcile those? Are you left with loads of issues as a result of that lack of resolution?

We only need a deity to forgive what we done wrong to said deity. In this case we recognise our fallabily; reconcile that and get on with living without anything not reconciled.

---

Yeah dead from the neck up

[Judas BentHer]

I am new to all this religious debate about God and Christianity, I have a hard time understanding this omni- stuff that you assume God is so as to prove a contradiction with how things are in this world in which what is perfect(God) is not with us and yet choice alludes you...

God’s “omni” Attributes

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast (Psalm 139:7-10, NIV).

... He gave us a chance to be perfect...

Choice and free will does not elude the atheist. Atheists know that they are responsible for their actions and they either enjoy the fruits of their choice, or they suffer the consequences. However, no Devil made us do the wrong thing. Our sinful nature was not responsible for our wrong choice. It was our rational or irrational decision that let things come to pass.

And no, god did not give humans a chance to be perfect. He created them in his image and likeness. In other words, they were replicas of their creator who, if perfect, could have created nothing less than perfect beings.

Now some argue that they were innocent, not guilty of any wrong doing at all, the first of our kind Adam and Eve. Well of course, that goes without saying. They were newborns who did not possess the intellect to exercise free will, rational discrimination between choosing good or wrong behavior, or disobeying what they would be incapable of understanding.

We know this because god planted the tree of temptation in his garden paradise. The tree of knowledge (Gnosis) of good and evil. The fruits of which god forbid the first couple to eat of. And yet, in order to disobey that command even at the behest of the serpent Satan, Eve, and later Adam who was persuaded by Eve to eat too, would have had to understand what it meant to discriminate and make a conscious choice between good, obeying god, and evil in obeying Satan instead, in order to exercise their own volition. Which they didn't have because they did not possess the capacity to rationalize the consequences of choice, because they did not yet possess an understanding of virtue or immorality.

But god did. It was his tree, planted in his garden of paradise by his volition, that could not have truly been paradise because the garden contained the one tree that bore the fruit that would denote the very antithesis of paradise. The fruit of evil. The fruit that would bestow within those who ate of it a conscious understanding of immorality. As well as a conscious understanding of virtue. But that fruits of evil flourished in god's creation, a god that is omniscient, knows all things from before time unto infinity, makes paradise flawed for the presence of evil therein.

That tree of good and evil was the temptation of the first humans that the serpent exploited in order to initiate the fall of humankind. Which could not have been done if god had not created the tree in the first place. And not only with the fruit of that tree, but with the presence of the serpent Satan that gained entry into paradise, in the midst of omnipresence. Meaning god's all knowing all powerful (Omnipotent) presence is everywhere at all times and thus knows all things that occur.

So no, in the presence of omniscient omnipresence, when the Bible says not even the highest Heavens can contain god, omnipotence, in the beginning, humans never had a chance to be perfect. Because they weren't made perfect in the first place, when they were made flawed due to their following the path of their gods manifest destiny by eating of the fruit that brought evil into the world, by god's own devices.

I tell you the bible gives claims to facts or you can just know your gonna die for certainly that is your hope.

The Bible gives claims to that what inspires faith. God is not a fact. If god were a matter of fact, religions dedicated to honoring and worshiping god would not be known as religious faiths. Instead they would be referred to as institutions promoting and honoring spiritual facts. Faith precludes fact. Faith is hope that all that is held sacred is true.
The supreme being of the Bible, holding the title of god, must be perfect. And yet, his own words, "god's breath", the Bible inspired by him as it's believed to be, contains scripture that declares god is not perfect.

He tempted the first of our kind by design, allowing evil into his paradise and then set a rule for occupation of it that evil should not come to the awareness of Adam and Eve, that they should not eat of the fruits, knowing full well that they would.
He watched, as Satan, his antithesis, slithered into the garden and into the very tree that was more in keeping with his characteristics, so that he might tempt those who did not possess the intellect to understand what that meant.

Throughout the Bible god exhibits an evil demeanor. An immoral character. That what in us, is considered a sinful nature. God get's angry, hates, seeks vengeance, murders men women the unborn and children. Every short coming humans have, god exhibits throughout the Bible. If god hates sin, then why did he create it to come into being? To come into the world, through his own omniscient omnipotent machinations?

Yes, I shall die. Amid all the conflicts and chaos that ensue in the world over this one topic alone; religion, death is the one common factor amid all people involved in the debate. However, I shall not have lived holding faith in a god faith that calls me sinner, when the Bible chapter and verse proves if that is true then I am indeed created in the image and likeness of the universal transgressor.

[Anomalocaris]

I've come to the conclusion that intelligent conversation with a devoted Jesus cultists about the subject of his devotion is about the same as intelligent conversation with a tomato plant.

People of questionable judgement and repute assures me that talking to the tomato plant makes them grow better. But I've managed to uncover no evidence whatsoever for that. In any case, unlike a tomato plant, Jesus cultists are incapable growing anything worth consuming. So I stop talking to them.

[Cinjin]

Hardly a "hard true fact" Cinjin. But a fact nonetheless. See you needed to cite an extreme example to make any point.

All people are where they are due to circumstances and influence. Something may happen to you today that changes your entire perspective, making criminality, for example, a viable option for you. The balance is perilously near and we mostly live in ignorance of it, until it gets shifted.

Most 'criminals' are victims of their circumstance.

Perhaps you have a valid point with some unknown percentage of people, but the large majority of my friends and family would not resort to criminal actions regardless of any shifting parameters in their daily existence. Yes, most criminals are victims of their circumstance, but more often than not, they put themselves in that circumstance and barricade themselves in excuses to justify actions that are self-promoting and only further contribute to their own laziness.

For me personally, I certainly feel no draw to commit criminal acts of any kind - nor would I want to if an earthquake knocked down all the police departments in the area and there was no one left to enforce the law. Yes, criminals are made during desperate times ... but so are heroes. I'm confident many (like me) would choose the high ground.

Claiming that there is a thin line between all moral law-abiding citizens and criminal activity is just a fabrication. True of some perhaps, but certainly not the majority.