I think this belief and claim is a huge problem for Christians. Sin is a Christian concept and to believe sin is true and relevant there are a large set of other Christians assumptions that have to be made.
Absolutely. We discussed some of this in the
thread on the reptile brain (not sure if you participated). I quoted Richard Dawkins and his new BFF Jeff Hawkins. They both separated the thinking associated with the "reptile brain" (the early human brain) with the kind of thought that their other buddy, Daniel Dennett, said came online only in the last few thousand years seemingly in conjunction with theretofore unused parts of the higher brain, the cerebral cortex.
It is the glory of the human cerebral cortex that it -----unique among all animals and unprecedented in all geological time ---has the power to defy the dictates of the selfish genes. We can enjoy sex without procreation. We can devote our lives to philosophy, mathematics, poetry, astrophysics, music, geology, or the warmth of human love, in defiance of the old [reptile] brain's genetic urging that these are a waste of time ---time that "should" be spent fighting rivals and pursuing multiple sexual partners: "As I see it, we have a profound choice to make. It is a choice between favoring the old brain or favoring the new brain. More specifically, do we want our future to be driven by the processes that got us here, namely, natural selection, competition, and the drive of the selfish genes? Or, do we want our future to be driven by intelligence and its desire to understand the world?"
Richard Dawkins, introducing Jeff Hawkins, One Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (bracket mine, based on earlier comment in intro. Last quotation is Dawkins quoting Hawkins).
There's a giant, a huge really, gaping problem with Dawkins, Hawkins, and Dennett's newfound understanding of the new brain since the old brain (which they call the "reptile brain") was, get this, 100% atheist. All atheists are still encased, ensconced, encapsulated, circumscribed within, the old, mammalian, reptile, simpleton, brain. ------Morality, self-consciousness, complex grammar, and God-consciousness, all came online simultaneously with the advent of the human language that another atheist, Chomsky, said couldn't have evolved in the reptile brain since it's irreducibly complex and utterly unique to creatures possessing the new brain. There's nothing like complex human-style grammar anywhere else in all of creation.
Do see the problem? Atheism is universal in the reptile brain. There's no religion anywhere in the world except where the cerebral cortex has come online, and with it, God-consciousness, and it's adjunct, self-consciousness. The selfish gene is reptilian, a-theistic. Only the human mind, come from human grammar, and the cerebral cortex, intuits the reality of the creator-God, and with that, the individual Self.
One of the first products of the human mind is human language. In fact, I conjecture that it was the very first of these products, and that the human brain and the human mind evolved in interaction with language.
Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 11.
The נפש [self-conscious soul/mind], being of Divine origin as part of His Breath, is part of God’s eternity and thus is not subject to death or transitory existence. As the נפש is a result of the very essence of God it is specifically different from and above all that which is on earth. While the souls of other creatures are concerned only for self-preservation and self-satisfaction, the soul of man is concerned for others. The act of love and selfless dedication to others bears witness to the Divine origin of the soul. . . While the animal carries the measure of הי in its accepting and rejection for itself, human life alone is the free, highest realization of the Divine thought of Creation.
Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, Collected Writings, vol. 8, p. 52.
Do you kinda see the problem? Rabbi Hirsch said this something like two-hundred years ago while Dawkins, Hawkins, and Dennett (educated atheists) are only now, in the last decade or two, being forced to concede what Jews and Christians have been teaching, preaching, and evangelizing, for thousands of years:
It is the glory of the human cerebral cortex that it -----unique among all animals and unprecedented in all geological time ---has the power to defy the dictates of the selfish genes. . . We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism – something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p. 200.
No place in nature. Never existed before in the whole history of the world.
Thus I share with the materialists or physicalists not only the emphasis on material objects as the paradigms of reality, but also the evolutionary hypothesis. But our ways seem to part when evolution produces minds, and human language. And they part even more widely when human minds produce stories, explanatory myths, tools and works of art and of science. All this, so it seems, has evolved without any violation of the laws of physics. But with life, even with low forms of life, problem-solving enters the universe; and with the higher form, purposes and aims, consciously pursued. We can only wonder that matter can thus transcend itself, by producing mind, purpose, and a world of the products of the human mind.
Karl Popper, The Self and Its Brain, p. 11.
Poor spiritual pauper Popper. He was smart enough to realize his atheism was a dinosaur of the reptile brain but had nothing to replace it with since he'd already pawned off his soul for the bells and whistle, the dog whistles really, that call the reptile brain to attention.
Aside from God, there is only one other being that is invisible and imperceptible to the senses, but whose individual reality and personal existence are nevertheless absolutely certain to each one of us. That being is our soul, our נפש. The soul that reflects on itself is capable of grasping the real, personal existence of an invisible, imperceptible Being; aware of itself, it also knows God. Just as we are sure of our own existence, so we are sure of God’s existence.
Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Deuteronomy 4:15.
Me as an atheist reject Christian assumptions, and this means I am no sinner. We atheists certain cause Christians headaches. The religion has a lot of ideas that supposedly are true and supposedly apply to all humans. But these aren't facts, there are religious concepts limited to Christians.
According to educated atheists, Dawkins, Hawkings, Dennett, and Popper, atheism is, to theism, as a Neanderthal jumping for joy at using his long dead dad's thighbone to crack a coconut, is to Einstein grinning ear to ear for intuiting that E=MC
2. Atheism is a phenomenon of the old, animal, reptilian, brain. Theism is parallel to the self-consciousness come online at the same time as human grammar. The stupid argument that theism is old-fashioned, that theism is part of early man, a relic of olden times, is now known to be as silly and backwards as atheism itself.
How truly sad that all this coming out of the closet for atheists is happening so late in the game; pretty much when it's too late since as Dylan crooned, the slow train is a comin round the bend.
John