bubbleguppy
Serial Forum Observer
What are your opinions on this article about this guy's definition of sin?
Sin: A Psycho-Proctologist Seeks an Objective Definition
Sin: A Psycho-Proctologist Seeks an Objective Definition
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What are your opinions on this article from Psychology Today?
- Thread starter bubbleguppy
- Start date
Buddha Dharma
Dharma Practitioner
My thoughts is that it reminds me of the problems with the subjective approach favored in the modern about morals. That moral is whatever one feels it is.
The article struck me as all too terse. Folks nowadays demand complex ideas be reduced to slogans that can be fit on a bumper sticker. I thought the article was an attempt to do that. Regardless whether it was or wasn't, it failed to make much of a case in my opinion. The article was, as my two ex-wives used to say of me, "shorter and less penetrating than is necessary to satisfy a reasonable person".
I think the subjective approach is unhappily forced upon us. However, one doesn't need to be entirely subjective. That is, the moral isn't entirely whatever one feels it is. Some moral claims are more rational and better evidenced than others.
I do deplore the contemporary notion that the moral is merely whatever one feels it is just as much as I deplore the contemporary notion that truth is best discerned by whatever one feels is right or true.
Axe Elf
Prophet
It's largely nonsense. Sin is separation from God; one is a sinner because one is separated from God. Nothing more.
I'd contest that being a 'contemporary notion'.
He wants to stop sin, but his method is faulty. He wishes to stop it by identifying it and addressing it directly, quickly, conveniently. He defines sin as being a butthead, puts forward 4 possible ways of defining a butthead and then argues against each of his 4 proposed definitions. His argument seems to be that the definition of a sinner is elusive, and while he insists a definition is necessary claims it is elusive.
There is no substitute for long term suffering and patience. His idea of combating sin through definitions fails, because it requires no suffering or patience, no persistence. You cannot combat sin just by identifying it or by outlawing it. He is searching for the legendary microwave dinner utopia. Possibly he is letting us know this through his frustration.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Dennis Leary..... You know what you need to do. 1...2...3...
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
We have to make one assumption, that our goal is good order. I think all would agree with that except the minute percentages of despots and anarchists. Maybe we could offer them an island or something where they could kill each other to their heart's delight.
For the rest, its a simple path to the one, universal rule, the Golden Rule, precisely stated here as:
Honoring the EQUAL rights of ALL to life, liberty, property and self-defense, to be free from violation by force or fraud.
That's it! All else is individually determined self-governance, virtue. "Sin", as most religions would have it, is a mixture of the two, and that's where the problems come from. Virtue is subjective. Masturbation is virtuous or not, as you wish for yourself, unless perhaps you disturb the peace by doing it in public. Morality, the code by which we deal with each other, is objective. Murder is immoral. And you forfeit your rights if you violate or attempt/threaten to violate the rights of another.
Morality is very specific, universally objective, and applies to all able-bodied adults. Punishment, however, is subjective.
Another problem is that we acquire these rights at different points in our lives. A one year-old does not have the right to liberty such that it cannot be confined to a playpen.
The most complex moral issue we face is abortion, since it involves the rights of the mother, and at what point the zygote/embryo/fetus acquires the right to life. Subject for another in an endless string of threads.
Here's another article by this author:
Rethinking the Devil
"I’m a psycho-proctologist. I study ***-holes or buttheads, jerks, pigs, people who do way more harm than good."
Good job he explained. I thought at first it was someone talking out of one.
Just replace the word sin with bad (as in behaviour) - tends to clear things up a bit - since invariably as he actually said, we are all often liable to do such. The degree is usually what counts - stepping over a line markedly.
And we can shove the devil in the same place!
Rethinking the Devil
"I’m a psycho-proctologist. I study ***-holes or buttheads, jerks, pigs, people who do way more harm than good."
Good job he explained. I thought at first it was someone talking out of one.
Just replace the word sin with bad (as in behaviour) - tends to clear things up a bit - since invariably as he actually said, we are all often liable to do such. The degree is usually what counts - stepping over a line markedly.
And we can shove the devil in the same place!
