What is Sin?

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

f it had a beginning, it is only obvious that it will have an end.

How does that follow?

In what little I remember from math class, LOL, there is a difference between a line (infinitely going on both ends) and a ray (has a definite beginning but then continues infinitely)....

 

[Ben Avraham]

How does that follow?

In what little I remember from math class, LOL, there is a difference between a line (infinitely going on both ends) and a ray (has a definite beginning but then continues infinitely)....

I am aware of the abstract concept of a line infinitely going on both ends. If you bring it down to the conscious level of reality, the analogy will point to the Primal Cause Who never had a beginning nor will ever have an end.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

I don't believe in a Primal Cause. I think it's illogical and stupid.

 

[12jtartar]

Years ago, I was told that sin is "an offense against God". That seemed pretty simple and straight forward to me, but now and then I have heard people speak of sin as an offense against other people. So I'm wondering if they are mistaken about the nature of sin, or if sin is both an offense against God and other people, or what? That is, is sin an offense against someone, and if so, who? And more broadly, what is sin?

This question is mainly for Abrahamics, of course, but anyone can offer their views.

Sunstone,
Sin can be against God or man.
The Bible seems to put it simply as flling short of the glory of God. That would men doing something in a way, not as God would do it, Romans 3:23. That is why we all sin every day, even though we may not know it, 1John 1:8-10.

 

[viole]

As soon as you finish with your jokes, how about answering my question about who or what caused the universe to exist? Because, since the universe is composed of matter and the last time a checked on matter I found it to be mutable and not eternal. If it had a beginning, it is only obvious that it will have an end. So, who or what caused the universe to exist?

I told you, your question is not applicable, for what we know. It is like asking the color of a number. And even if we found out that the question is applicable, I bet on Mother Goose. Or Thor, I mean, He looks great. Why not? Does the particular flavor of God you happen to believe in, probably because of some accidents of birth, have enough evidence to exist? If yes, why do you need cosmological arguments at all?

And what jokes are you talking about? Seriously, if I disappeared for a couple of days on Mount Pilatus in Lucerne and, on my return, told you that I have a very important message from someone claiming to be, what would be your reaction?

Would you say something like: good, that is a good start, for I would not take seriously messages from anyone claiming not to be?



Ciao

- viole

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

http://www.desiringgod.org/messages/whatever-is-not-from-faith-is-sin

 

[Ben Avraham]

I told you, your question is not applicable, for what we know. It is like asking the color of a number. And even if we found out that the question is applicable, I bet on Mother Goose. Or Thor, I mean, He looks great. Why not? Does the particular flavor of God you happen to believe in, probably because of some accidents of birth, have enough evidence to exist? If yes, why do you need cosmological arguments at all?

And what jokes are you talking about? Seriously, if I disappeared for a couple of days on Mount Pilatus in Lucerne and, on my return, told you that I have a very important message from someone claiming to be, what would be your reaction?

Would you say something like: good, that is a good start, for I would not take seriously messages from anyone claiming not to be?



Ciao

- viole

Do you know who or what caused the universe to exist? Just answer my question and every thing will be alright. Your lack of a response only indicates that you must be hiding some kind of weakness which you are afraid to bring it to the light.

 

[Ben Avraham]

I don't believe in a Primal Cause. I think it's illogical and stupid.

No problem if you can tell me who or what caused the universe to exist. Would you give it a try?

 

[viole]

No problem if you can tell me who or what caused the universe to exist. Would you give it a try?

I told you, the question is not applicable. For I don't think the Universe had a cause. And I explained the reasons why I think that. So, it is your burden now to refute my absence of causality when applied to Universes, before begging a possibly meaningless question.

But let's suppose it had a cause, just for the sake of discussion. Then, I would not have the slightest clue. I claim complete ignorance.

I can make up a few possibilities that share the same evidence, if you insist

1) your God,
2) one of the other thousands of gods invented by human imagination
3) a god not imagined yet
4) an invisible giant turtle
5) mother goose
6) a quantum fluctuation burp from another universe
7) a previously contracting universe
8) aliens teleported from another dimension
9) a retroactive collapse of a quantistic wave induced by us
10) a blue fairy called Marta. A garden variety fairy that loves carrots so much that she fined tuned the Universe, so that they can exist
Etc

I could go on for ever. I can make up so many independent alternatives so that the probability of each one being the true one becomes arbirarily small.

But you did not answer my question: do you have independent evidence that your particular brand of god (and not Apollo, or Marta, for instance) exists?

If yes: why do you complicate your life with cosmological "proofs", relativity, inflationary physics and all that? That evidence should suffice. I would expect.

If not: why don't you believe in Apollo, or Zeus, as the creator of the Universe instead? Or Marta, maybe?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Ben Avraham]

I told you, the question is not applicable. For I don't think the Universe had a cause. And I explained the reasons why I think that. So, it is your burden now to refute my absence of causality when applied to Universes, before begging a possibly meaningless question.

So, you don't think the Universe had a cause! What does it mean, that the Universe has always existed? Tell me, are we part of the Universe or are we not? We have been caused to exist and we will cease to exist some day. It goes without saying that the same method is used with the rest of the Universe. Our parents caused us to exist; and so their parents and so all the way back to the Primal Cause Which you have been trained not to believe as a result of some preconceived notions which you have been raised on. At least for the sake of Logic, do you see any Logic in an eternal Universe composed of elements with beginning and end? It does not make any logical sense to me, I assure you!

 

[Glaurung]

Years ago, I was told that sin is "an offense against God". That seemed pretty simple and straight forward to me, but now and then I have heard people speak of sin as an offense against other people. So I'm wondering if they are mistaken about the nature of sin, or if sin is both an offense against God and other people, or what? That is, is sin an offense against someone, and if so, who? And more broadly, what is sin?

This question is mainly for Abrahamics, of course, but anyone can offer their views.

1849 Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as "an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law."121 CCC

Simply put, to sin is to fall short or act contrary to the holiness God expects of us.

 

[viole]

So, you don't think the Universe had a cause! What does it mean, that the Universe has always existed? Tell me, are we part of the Universe or are we not? We have been caused to exist and we will cease to exist some day. It goes without saying that the same method is used with the rest of the Universe. Our parents caused us to exist; and so their parents and so all the way back to the Primal Cause Which you have been trained not to believe as a result of some preconceived notions which you have been raised on. At least for the sake of Logic, do you see any Logic in an eternal Universe composed of elements with beginning and end? It does not make any logical sense to me, I assure you!

It does not because you subscribe to a traditional ontology of time. Namely the A-series of time. You, like most people, think time flows. At one second per second, I guess. That there is such a thing as past, future, present. That things that belong to the past do not exist anymore, and things in the future are yet to exist. Obviously, like Einstein would say, that is a stubborn illusion that conflicts with our intuition. Our intuition: a hard wired mechanism geared toward survival, and not necessarily truth.

The problem with this ontology is that is nowhere to be found in the laws of relativity as we know them. That was Newton interpretation, and it died with Einstein. Check out the B-series interpretation to see what I mean, if you want an interpretation more consistent with relativity. Or read Greene, Carroll, Hawking, Davies and others.

If Einstein is right, then spacetime might be laid out in its entirety. It is an eternal surface puntuated with events. Me writing this post is not an event that disappears from existence when I press the "reply" button. It is still an event that exists at a certain location on that surface. It will belong to my past, but to the present or future of someone else, for all these concepts are in the eye of he beholder and, therefore, not absolute. The same with the Big Bang, the dinosaurs, my birth, my death, what I am going to do tomorrow, etc.

What is absolute is spacetime. Unchanging (obviously), immutable (obviously) and eternal (if eternity makes sense for a-temporal things).

I think that is enough to put in question the necessity of a cause when we talk of the whole Universe.

Ciao

- viole

 

[jonathan180iq]

Years ago, I was told that sin is "an offense against God". That seemed pretty simple and straight forward to me, but now and then I have heard people speak of sin as an offense against other people. So I'm wondering if they are mistaken about the nature of sin, or if sin is both an offense against God and other people, or what? That is, is sin an offense against someone, and if so, who? And more broadly, what is sin?

This question is mainly for Abrahamics, of course, but anyone can offer their views.

Sin is a fabricated social and cultural construct that has been given too much validity by the weight of the history associated with it. Modern believers will attach much more value to the idea of "sin" than anyone not of their philosophical affiliation.

It doesn't exist - it's just as fluid and fleeting as the idea of objective morality.
Any modern conversation about sin attests to this - The pious either don't believe their own claims or they purposefully ignore their holy book's teachings on the subject. Either way, it's telling.

 

[Politesse]

Years ago, I was told that sin is "an offense against God". That seemed pretty simple and straight forward to me, but now and then I have heard people speak of sin as an offense against other people. So I'm wondering if they are mistaken about the nature of sin, or if sin is both an offense against God and other people, or what? That is, is sin an offense against someone, and if so, who? And more broadly, what is sin?

This question is mainly for Abrahamics, of course, but anyone can offer their views.

We were made in love, and to love; to sin is to fail to love when one might have. Whoever told you that it was about "offense" against some feudal lord-esque deity is stuck in the Dark Ages and can safely be disregarded as an expert on spiritual matters in the present.

I assume you wish a scriptural argument since you placed this is scriptural debates, so I will suggest two key passages in the two scriptural traditions I know best:

From the 1st epistle of John, the 4th chapter: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us."​

Thus is sin - that which separates us from God - atoned for and erased. Jesus did not come to punish for offenses like some divine policeman, but to teach us how to love and in so doing tear away the veil that prevents us from seeing God's true nature.

Islam does not define God as love, but it is careful in how it defines obedience, and thus contrasts the life of sin. The sinful accumulate things and love falsehoods - the faithful love God, his message, and their fellow men, and they value truth maybe above all. So you could perhaps see sin as anything that turns one aside from the truths of God, with the effect of crippling one's ability to love others.

From the second Sura: "It is not righteousness when you turn your faces towards the East or West; but it is righteousness -- when you believe in God and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Message, and the Messengers. Righteousness is to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your family, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer, and to practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts which you have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. Thus are the people of truth, the God-fearing people."​

 

[Ben Avraham]

It does not because you subscribe to a traditional ontology of time. Namely the A-series of time. You, like most people, think time flows. At one second per second, I guess. That there is such a thing as past, future, present. That things that belong to the past do not exist anymore, and things in the future are yet to exist. Obviously, like Einstein would say, that is a stubborn illusion that conflicts with our intuition. Our intuition: a hard wired mechanism geared toward survival, and not necessarily truth.

The problem with this ontology is that is nowhere to be found in the laws of relativity as we know them. That was Newton interpretation, and it died with Einstein. Check out the B-series interpretation to see what I mean, if you want an interpretation more consistent with relativity. Or read Greene, Carroll, Hawking, Davies and others.

If Einstein is right, then spacetime might be laid out in its entirety. It is an eternal surface puntuated with events. Me writing this post is not an event that disappears from existence when I press the "reply" button. It is still an event that exists at a certain location on that surface. It will belong to my past, but to the present or future of someone else, for all these concepts are in the eye of he beholder and, therefore, not absolute. The same with the Big Bang, the dinosaurs, my birth, my death, what I am going to do tomorrow, etc.

What is absolute is spacetime. Unchanging (obviously), immutable (obviously) and eternal (if eternity makes sense for a-temporal things).

I think that is enough to put in question the necessity of a cause when we talk of the whole Universe.

Ciao

- viole

All these above and nothing of what I asked of you for an answer is not there. I know you don't believe that the Primal Cause aka HaShem caused the universe to exist. At least, tell us your personal opinion about what caused the Universe to exist. I want to continue this dialogue and you won't let me!

 

[viole]

All these above and nothing of what I asked of you for an answer is not there. I know you don't believe that the Primal Cause aka HaShem caused the universe to exist. At least, tell us your personal opinion about what caused the Universe to exist. I want to continue this dialogue and you won't let me!

It is not that I won't let you in, but, as I said, the question makes no sense from my pont of view. It is not only that I do not believe that HaShem, whoever that is, caused the Universe. I don't think that anybody created the Universe, because, as I explained, the Universe does not have a cause, if my relativistic ontology of time is correct.

It is like asking me who made the Universe drunk. Since it is reasonable to assume that the Universe is not drunk, also this question is equally meaningless.

So, how can I answer a meaningless question?

I can try. Maybe by using an answer in the same category as the question.

What about dfhbfjnvutngutngrjfn?

Better?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Reggie Miller]

Years ago, I was told that sin is "an offense against God". That seemed pretty simple and straight forward to me, but now and then I have heard people speak of sin as an offense against other people. So I'm wondering if they are mistaken about the nature of sin, or if sin is both an offense against God and other people, or what? That is, is sin an offense against someone, and if so, who? And more broadly, what is sin?

This question is mainly for Abrahamics, of course, but anyone can offer their views.

According to Merriam Webster sin is defined as:

1a : an offense against religious or moral law b : an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible <it's a sin to waste food>c : an often serious shortcoming : fault

2a : transgression of the law of God b : a vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God

 

[Ben Avraham]

It is not that I won't let you in, but, as I said, the question makes no sense from my pont of view. It is not only that I do not believe that HaShem, whoever that is, caused the Universe. I don't think that anybody created the Universe, because, as I explained, the Universe does not have a cause, if my relativistic ontology of time is correct.

It is like asking me who made the Universe drunk. Since it is reasonable to assume that the Universe is not drunk, also this question is equally meaningless.

So, how can I answer a meaningless question?

I can try. Maybe by using an answer in the same category as the question.

What about dfhbfjnvutngutngrjfn?

Better?

Ciao

- viole

You are either not serious at all or afraid to venture into the issue. If my question is irrelevant, let me put it on a different way. You know we exist, otherwise we would not be talking to each other. You know that the Universe exists because we are parts of the Universe. What's the problem with letting me know that the Universe always existed without a cause or that it caused itself to exist? I am sorry if this does go through and I apologize for barking on the wrong tree.

 

[viole]

You are either not serious at all or afraid to venture into the issue.

I am very serious, and not afraid at all. Why should I be afraid? Even if you managed to go from causality to your brand of God, I would be happy. I do not feel afraid to be convinced of God, obviously. If I believed in Him once, I can easily believe in Him twice. I would be thrilled to be a born again and again. Lol.

The problem is that you have a marathon in front of you with several milestones:

- make sense of causality for the universe under a relativistic regime
- make sense of causality in a universe without a macroscopic arrow of time
- prove that this cause is a god (I already listed a small list of possible alternatives)
- prove that this god is your god and not some other god or gods

In other words: you are still stuck at the starting line.

And that is why it is probably faster for you to justify your faith by showing evidence that your God (and not, say, no god or the great Juju at the bottom of the sea) is true.

I am sure you have enough evidence, in terms of prophecies, miracles, personal relationships, amazing revelations, etc. that would make any appeal to cosmology perfectly redundant and a useless complication.

Have you?

If my question is irrelevant, let me put it on a different way. You know we exist, otherwise we would not be talking to each other. You know that the Universe exists because we are parts of the Universe. What's the problem with letting me know that the Universe always existed without a cause or that it caused itself to exist?

Well, that is implicit. Since my ontology of time demands no evolution whatsoever of the Universe, ergo of its spacetime fabric, then verbs like "always existed" make no sense. There is no always nor tensed verbs that can describe it.

I am sorry if this does go through and I apologize for barking on the wrong tree.

You do not need to. The block Universe interpretation of time, B series, and the related ontologies do not go through most people, including atheists, scientists, etc. And that is why Einstein called our perception of time (and the related ideas that there is a present, a past and a future, or a flow of time) a stubborn idea. And it is stubborn because it is wired in our innate belief system, namely intuition. Alas, our innate truth belief systems are geared towards survival, ergo, they are unreliable, as theologian Plantinga correctly noticed.

And it could be that I am wrong. But for sure, that should be enough to call in question any idea of causality when applied to spacetime.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Ben Avraham]

I am very serious, and not afraid at all. Why should I be afraid? Even if you managed to go from causality to your brand of God, I would be happy. I do not feel afraid to be convinced of God, obviously. If I believed in Him once, I can easily believe in Him twice. I would be thrilled to be a born again and again. Lol.

The problem is that you have a marathon in front of you with several milestones:

- make sense of causality for the universe under a relativistic regime
- make sense of causality in a universe without a macroscopic arrow of time
- prove that this cause is a god (I already listed a small list of possible alternatives)
- prove that this god is your god and not some other god or gods

In other words: you are still stuck at the starting line.

And that is why it is probably faster for you to justify your faith by showing evidence that your God (and not, say, no god or the great Juju at the bottom of the sea) is true.

I am sure you have enough evidence, in terms of prophecies, miracles, personal relationships, amazing revelations, etc. that would make any appeal to cosmology perfectly redundant and a useless complication.

Have you?

Well, that is implicit. Since my ontology of time demands no evolution whatsoever of the Universe, ergo of its spacetime fabric, then verbs like "always existed" make no sense. There is no always nor tensed verbs that can describe it.

You do not need to. The block Universe interpretation of time, B series, and the related ontologies do not go through most people, including atheists, scientists, etc. And that is why Einstein called our perception of time (and the related ideas that there is a present, a past and a future, or a flow of time) a stubborn idea. And it is stubborn because it is wired in our innate belief system, namely intuition. Alas, our innate truth belief systems are geared towards survival, ergo, they are unreliable, as theologian Plantinga correctly noticed.

And it could be that I am wrong. But for sure, that should be enough to call in question any idea of causality when applied to spacetime.

Ciao

- viole

What about if I promise not to mention a single word about God or religion but only Logic and Physics, would you answer my questions about the Universe?