Are we prisoners of sin

Well, the entire idea of sin is purely religious and theological and, as such, really doesn't mean anything outside the context of religion. Therefore, it doesn't mean anything to atheists and many of the arbitrary rules are not only meaningless for us, but also appear completely arbitrary and serving no real purpose outside of controlling people -- hence some of the response you've gotten.An analogy -- which you perhaps will not understand -- happened at a recent ballroom dance party in which the West Coast Swing (WCS) lesson was given by an actual WCS teacher and not by a ballroom teacher. More than half-way through the lesson, one ballroom student asked whether to use a toe-lead or a heel-lead. The WCS teacher was stunned. In ballroom, whether it's a heel-lead or a toe-lead is an all-important question, whereas in the social dancing world of which WCS is a part that is a very trivial question. The teacher answered that since she uses a lot of Latin moves, then she was using toe leads (general rule is that Latin uses toe leads and smooth uses heel leads). Of course, in ballroom's corruption of WCS, they teach it to be heel leads, but WCS teachers just roll their eyes when they have to deal with ballroom types.Much as religion has corrupted ideas about morality and atheists can do nothing more than to roll their eyes when they have to deal with religious types.Of course morality does exist and is very real and very important. We also see that that religious idea of "sin" really serves very little purpose in furthering morality outside of bullying believers into doing right -- not that that is very successful. Religion has assimilated morality and set itself up as the sole determinor of morality and tied morality with its theological ideas of sin and has thus denigrated morality. More's the pity, especially when religion claims that most falsely that not believing in God releases one from morality.That false teaching has aided the spread of atheism, mostly among the believers. Here's a prime example from a creation-science activist in my area:

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First off, let me share my history with you (don't worry, it will be brief).

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I was raised in Buffalo, New York, and was fortunate to have great parents They took my sister and I to church every Sunday, we attended Sunday school and church camps in the summer. I believed in God, and never gave the issue much thought.

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In sixth grade, I remember seeing a big colorful book produced by Time-Life. It caught my eye, and I opened it up and was pleased to see big colorful drawings. One set of drawings really caught my eye. There was a series of animated drawings that went across two pages. On the far left was a very ape-like character walking on all fours and covered with hair. The character to his right was a little more upright, he had shorter arms, was starting to walk on two legs and had less hair. This progression continued for a few more drawings until at the far right side of the page there was this handsome fellow, a human being! This is called the ascent of man chart that nearly everyone is familiar with.

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In sixth grade, I looked at that chart for a while, smirked, thought it was ridiculous, and went outside and played softball.

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Eventually I made it to ninth grade. While in a Biology class, the teacher was teaching us about evolution and placed the same chart up on the wall. I still remember it. I sat there and studied that chart for a long time. It was on that very day that I recognized a major conflict existed between what this teacher was saying and what the Bible taught. Should I believe my science teacher, who is teaching man has ascended from ape-like animals, or do I believe mommy, daddy, and that book (the Bible) that says God made man instantly from the dust of the ground?" I reasoned that this teacher is a scientist after all, so this must be valid information.

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I had a choice to make that millions of people world wide are faced with. Do I believe the Bible or what is taught as science (please note I did not call it science).

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In ninth grade I chose to go with the science teacher, and considered myself to be an atheist for about 14 years. I took many more science classes in high school and in college (I am a Mechanical Engineer), and none of these classes changed my beliefs, if anything they reinforced my atheist beliefs.

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I assume the majority of you are in college now. Do you understand my story? I am pretty certain you have had several hours of your education dedicated to the teaching of the Theory of Evolution. I would love to hear how this affected you. Has it done anything to your faith? It obliterated mine!

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Question! Why in 6th grade did I think the drawings were ridiculous, but in 9th grade I believed them?

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Was it because I was more intellectual? No. Was it because the Biology teacher explained it so convincingly? Not really. The real reason for my becoming an atheist in 9th grade can be summed up in one word...hormones. In 6th grade I did not have much temptation in my life. Perhaps my biggest sins were a lie here and there, throwing snowballs at the school bus and riding my minibike where I shouldn't.

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But in 9th grade a whole new world opened up to me. The temptation of drinking, drugs and premarital sex presented themselves to me at exactly the same time I was being taught evolution. I knew the Bible said that being drunk and having sex outside of marriage was wrong, but here is my science teacher, telling me the origin of man is completely contradictory to what the Bible taught as the origin of man. I felt excited.....and decided the Theory of Evolution was for me, after all the Bible was scientifically wrong on the very first page!! I considered myself to be an atheist. As an atheist I no longer had to abide by any rules but my own. If I wanted to get drunk, no problem, if I wanted to try to have premarital sex no problem, I now belonged to the evolution "religion" (religion meaning a system of beliefs built on faith) that allowed me to sin without guilt.

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It was not the data that made me an atheist, it was the conclusion, a belief that made me the judge of right and wrong. Those cartoon drawings of ape men did look sharp, but I wanted to believe them emotionally, more than I really believed them intellectually.

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No, what had made him an "atheist" (because he was only a sham atheist, as he later indirectly admitted by stating that he had continued to pray to his god every night) was his desire to sin. Do you see what your idea of "sin" creates? A legalistic loophole. If a believer wants to sin, all he needs to do is pretend to be an atheist. Because he's been taught that if he's an atheist, then he can do whatever he wants to do, sin in any way he wishes to sin, and do so freely.Bullshit! Immoral behavior always has its consequences (as does moral behavior). I pointed out to that creationist that I, as an atheist since the age of 11 or 12 (because I had started to read the Bible and realized very quickly that I couldn't believe any of it) had turned down golden opportunities to "sin" (twice when I was in college married women whom I was very much attracted to had offerred themselves to me, but the morality of that decision led me to refuse them, such that I was a virgin when I married -- remember, I had been an atheist for several years when these offers had occurred; in one case, the woman's sister had tried her best to consumate the liaison while in the other case it was the woman herself, for whom I was extremely hot, who had offerred herself, but by placing myself in her husband's place I could not take her up on it -- does empathy mean anything in your own morality vocabulary?).OK? Hello? For me, the question of becoming a Christian is a moral question. I have been following the so-called "creation/evolution controvery" since 1981. The very first thing I learned was that the creationists are lying through their teeth. Hello? For me to become a Christian means that I would need to accepted proven lies. Hello???? Fuck that shit!!!!!!Becoming a Christian would be a moral issue. And the decision to become a Christian would be the immoral decision. That local creationist continued to engage in immoral behavior, only he did so because he "loves Jesuuuuus!" (that was the reason that he himself gave as his own reason of his immoral conduct).However, you can serve a very good service. I have heard Christians say some really outrageous things about atheists and what they believe. But once on an ex-Christian board I read some actual Bible verses that say the same things. Perhaps you can give us those Bible verses.

It's OK, because I swing both ways: West Coast and East Coast.Well, Lindy actually. And salsa and ballroom and country. I'm an equal-opportunity dancer, except for hip-hop, grinding, and free style.

Now you see, that is precisely the bizaare kind of "logic" that I was talking about Christianity's teachings about morality leading to.And, yes, it is indeed survival of the fittest. Only you do not have any clue what that means. It does not mean, as you are using it here, that the biggest and meanest individual fitness can do whatever he wants. In the case of morality, it's the peaceful, cooperative individuals who are much more fit than the bully individuals. Here's the introduction to the subject on Wikipedia (Fitness (biology) at Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia):

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Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central concept in evolutionary theory. It describes the capability of an individual of certain genotype to reproduce, and usually is equal to the proportion of the individual's genes in all the genes of the next generation. If differences in individual genotypes affect fitness, then the frequencies of the genotypes will change over generations; the genotypes with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection.

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An individual's fitness is manifested through its phenotype. As phenotype is affected by both genes and environment, the fitnesses of different individuals with the same genotype are not necessarily equal, but depend on the environment in which the individuals live. However, since the fitness of the genotype is an averaged quantity, it will reflect the reproductive outcomes of all individuals with that genotype.

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As fitness measures the quantity of the copies of the genes of an individual in the next generation, it doesn't really matter how the genes arrive in the next generation. That is, for an individual it is equally "beneficial" to reproduce itself, or to help relatives with similar genes to reproduce, as long as similar amount of copies of individual's genes get passed on to the next generation. Selection which promotes this kind of helper behaviour is called kin selection.

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The concept is particularly difficult to understand and frequently misunderstood; J.B.S. Haldane when discussing it with John Maynard Smith is reported to have described it as "a bugger".

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Individual humans can have a very tough time trying to survive completely on their own, especially in the wild. It's even more difficult to raise children to maturity so that they can themselves have and raise children, and so on for many generations. The individual who murders and steals and rapes at will is not increasing his fitness, especially since the other humans will band together to stop him.You see, that's what humans do, they band together and work together for the common good. Be cooperative and willing to join the group and work with the others and your chances of survival increase greatly. Not only that, but the chances of your children's survival also increases. The cooperative individuals are more fit because those traits ensure that their genes will be more represented in the population.Yes, it is about survival of the fittest and now you know what fitness actually is. First, "moral absolutes" is a myth. Second, while Christians give a lot of lip service to "moral absolutes", they never practice it. Do you observe every single law in the Bible? No, you do not. Not only do Christians pick and choose which laws to observe (more usually done on a church/denominational level than an individual one, though since everybody builds his own theology based on his misunderstanding of his church's teachings, there is more picking and choosing going on at the individual level than they'd like to admit to themselves), but they also choose to not observe certain laws for particular occasions. IOW, those "moral absolutes" are actually relative rules. The most glaring example that most here are familiar with is the willingness of creationists to suspend laws against lying, which they must justify as acceptable because they're doing it out of their "love for Jesus" (I kept catching that creationist I quoted earlier in one lie after another, even though he proclaimed to me that "nothing is more important than the truth").Morality is relative to the society it's practiced in. One size does not fit all. Each society's situation is different and the conduct of its members must adjust to meet the situation they face. Morality is "right behavior" and avoiding and preventing "wrong behavior". "Right behavior" has the effect of strengthening the group, increasing the sense of membership and security within the group, minimizing the friction of interacting with the others, all of which increases the group's chances of survival and hence the individuals' within that group. "Wrong behavior" has the opposite effects of dividing the group, increasing friction between members, threatening the survival of the group.Please note that that is true even in the absense of "moral absolutes". In other words, your absolutes have no effect on the existence and importance of morality. Who gives them that right? Society does, the group that you belong to. That's how society survives, by encouraging right behavior and discouraging or even stopping wrong behavior. If you don't like the rules, then you may leave society and go off to live completely on your own in the bush. And in doing so your fitness will have gone way down.Because religion is often a part of those early societies, the rules of right and wrong behavior became codified within the context of that religion. The rules of one such ancient society eventually got written down and those writings became part of the canon for another religion. And that is where your "moral absolutes" came from. And now you can see that your so-called "moral absolutes" are really nothing more than the rules of that ancient society relative to the situation of that society.

A common story in our church is of a Baptist Sunday School student doing a class assignment where they are to learn what the other churches believe by interviewing ministers from those other churches. When she learned that Unitarian Universalists don't believe in Hell, she was shocked. "So why be good?" "Because it is the better way."I live in an urban area with 13 million other people. When I drive to and from work and elsewhere, I share the road with a sizable portion of those 13 million people. I have neighbors living all around me. The stores are always fairly full of people. How can we possibly all live crowded so close together and arrive safely to where we're going and get what we need in a fairly timely manner? Because the vast majority of us follow "the better way" of being good. We cooperate with each other -- I will let other drivers make lane changes and I will get out of the way of faster traffic and most of them do the same for me -- and, when a potential problem does arise, we use politeness and courtesy to keep the situation from escalating and we resolve the problem.If you instead want to just be bad, then society will deal with you as it must. Bullshit! Human authority as embodied by society is the only authority we have. Even if something that could be identified as "God" were to exist, the rules we follow and the means by which they are enforced are still solely through human authority.If that's not good enough for you and you want to be just as bad as you can be, then society will deal with you as it must. Not you, but rather society. Morality is mostly about how we deal with other people, so as long as your decisions will impact other people, then what the right behavior is for you is no longer your decision alone. Nobody can arbitrarily decide what good is, in part because very few, if any, people are able to predict what effect that particular behavior will have on society. It takes time for a society to learn what works and what doesn't work.

I respectfully disagree. This topic was opened as a purely religious discussion, even though Cedre might have believed it otherwise.Dan Barker is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He was raised in a fundamentalist family in which practically every day his mother would sing in tongues while doing the housework. He went into the ministry and served as a fundamentalist minister for 19 years until he became an atheist in 1984 (Dan Barker - Wikipedia). He is also a musician and composer and still receives roylaties for Christian songs he had published, though my favorite is still his You Just Can't Win with Original Sin that I only heard once decades ago ("Any god who would damn me would damn you too"). The irony of his experience was that he had grown up, was educated, was ordained and served as a minister, made his journey to atheism, and his church forced his wife to divorce him, all in Southern California. And then he only found people like him by going to Wisconsin. The irony is that I had heard him on the late-80's 15-minute radio show of Atheists United in Los Angeles, where he had gone through his deconversion all on his lonesome. One of the first things he said in his speech at one of their monthly meetings was "Where were you guys when I needed you?". Let's face it, the general religous culture in America leaves non-believers feeling that they are alone.The point is an observation he made in that first speech of his that I heard (quoted from decades-old memory): "fundamentalism is where your theology becomes your psychology." I personally experienced that a few years ago during my divorce. Christians have this DivorceCare program that a friend had convinced me to go through. Complete and utter Christian bullshit! There were some kernels in there, but most of it was buried under mountains of Christian chaff. The recurring theme was that only Jesus can get you through this. That friend had also recommended weekly presentations by a pair of Christian counselors (which fortunately conflicted with my West Coast Swing classes, which were much more beneficial and constructive), which piled on far less Christian chaff than DivorceCare had, but there was still a lot of chaff -- eg, the only reason for trying to improve your condition is because that's what Jesus wants for you. Means a lot for a Christian, but for a non-Christian? WTF? Complete and utter nonsense! And their out-reach and counselling programs. Again, makes sense to a psychology based on Christian theology, but nonsense to any normal. On a singles cruise that included a large Christian singles group (the divorce rate among Christians is higher than in the general population; why do you think that e-Harmony had gotten started?), I met two counselors whose work was to get men away from pornography and back to real relationships with real women, but their entire approach (as discussed one night onboard over dinner) was to get the Holy Spirit engaged in the men's lifes. Fine for those who actually believe in such Christian BS, but what about the rest of us?Here's my point. Sin is a purely religious concept. I think that was firmly established early on in this topic, though I'm sure that Cedric never could realize it and I've not had the patience to wade through all that religious BS. It's a religious concept that has undoubtedly existed in different religions, though the main one we're left with is Christianity. The entire question of "sin" is meaningless to non-Christians, but vitally important to Christians. Their theology is their psychology, even though it's not ours. It's like evolution: there's really no conflict between evolution and a Creator, but when if your theology tells you that there is an insurmountable conflict, then you cannot possibly accept the truth about the world.Yes, this biblical stuff is crap, for us normals. But for Christians whose theology has become their psychology, it is vitally important.Yes, different religious traditions (most of which are no longer extant) have had their own ramblings about sin. So what? Sin is against a god, so if that god is not believed in, then so what?At the same time, morality does exist. In every single society that has ever existed, regardless of theology. In spite of any professed lack of theology. And in the vast majority of cases where morality exists along with a theology, it is never ever the right theology -- for Christians. In the vast majority of those cases, YHWH's "absolute moral laws" are not the ones chosen.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

Don't you mean: "Been there, done that, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."?