Got Sin?

(These threads never seem to stay on topic. Those who are interested in discussing it should make a thread specifically about religion and God's existence. Simply mentioning your opinion of sin briefly and then delving into something else is not a valid way to show respect to the creator of the thread. Not that the topic isn't fascinating and hasn't been very politely handled by the individuals posting about it, but I've been through the topic literally more than a hundred times. It's my experience that this topic leads only to disagreement, (albeit maybe polite disagreement). Despite that, I'd like to add one more off-topic response to what I've read. I'll return to the topic of sin and judgment later maybe.)

There seems to be real confusion about where we can find truth and understand the true identity of God. In my opinion, if there's anything worth discussing with regard to which view of God is correct or whether none at all are it's this: Divine personal revelation.

If what the Bible says is true, if there is an all-powerful, all-seeing, immutably perfect, loving, wise, just Creator (organizer of matter and energy)... and if he once communicated with prophets telling them in their native tongue as plain as day things like, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him," then, as sure as he exists, He WILL communicate with us too if we prepare ourselves fully for his counsel.

I've used hypotheticals for those who doubt, but please know that, for me, these things are as real as the moon and the sun. I'm not 99%, not even 99.999999% certain. I'm ONE HUNDRED PERCENT sure. You probably don't believe that or think that I'm mistaken. I wouldn't believe me if I hadn't experienced what I have personally, not through hearing such experiences from someone else, and not through trying to reproduce the results like in lab. It is the power and role of the Holy Ghost to convey to the hearts and minds of people what is true, and to withdraw it's influence when someone's heart clings to what is false. By that power every person, whoever they may be, can know with absolute certainty the true power and identity of God.

Num. 11:29
And Moses said unto him, Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!

We are not all prophets because, if we heard or felt God's voice and disobeyed it, our action or inaction would condemn us. We must be sincerely committed to doing his will. He loves us too much to ever take away our free will, even if we hurt ourselves. So if he were to give us light, saying, for example, "Go here," or "Live by this principle," and we didn't have our hearts set on obedience, he wouldn't stop us from bringing far worse consequences on ourselves than if He simply hadn't revealed to us what's true. It's like if your friend asked you for directions and then intentionally went the wrong way, only more serious. One of the biggest challenges individuals face when asking God for truth and guidance is that they start out (often unintentionally) wanting to try and convince God to do something or tell God what is right or wrong. You can't reasonably call your friend and tell him that, in order to get to his house you think you should go to one address when you should really go to another. You can also compare it to the parable of the talents. You wouldn't waste a gift-card to an expensive restaurant (like talents) by saying to yourself, I'm going to hang on to this and see if it appreciates in value at all. With personal revelation, you go out and enrich your life and the lives of others, especially when it seems hard, otherwise you've defeated the purpose of even asking for it, other than to make yourself responsible for not doing what you could have with that gift. This is why God doesn't just give insincere people signs, and why it's dangerous to ask for them even if you are sincere.

Chances are, most of you have experienced some form of divine communication in your lifetime. If you've ever felt the urge to help someone pick up their books after they spilled in the hallway, that is the light of Christ (Acts 26:23), and counts, certainly, as divine revelation. There is a more subtle, more powerful, more peace-bringing revelatory source in the Holy Ghost, and it operates on some of the same basic principles as your conscience/the light of Christ, but it requires humility and determination to pick up on. You can recognize it's influence as quiet unprompted thoughts enter your mind and you feel what's described below

Galatians 5 (I like the New International Version here better than the KJV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

If anyone feels pricked or strangely enthusiastic about this, that feeling may very well be divine communication as well. If not, do what you will with this message. I've tried my best to keep it simple and straight forward. If there are questions please ask.

You're right S3 they don't.

Stay on topic guys otherwise what's the point of keeping it open ?

ItaLuv wrote:

dbx wrote:Exactly how I see traditional religion. Not only a form of control, but also offers to the not-so-critical-and-scientific person who doesn't question, things like hope, being part of something greater and purpose in life by picturing that God is great, helps you and is always there for you, you just have to believe in it without any empirical evidence. Due to how the mind works, a lot of people will find great pleasure and strength in believing that there is something. People by nature despair if they find out that no one gives a $#%^, no one's there and it doesn't matter what happens in their life because in the end it's not important at all. Such people get from believing in a God as pictured by religion the strength, meaning, hope or whatever in life. It is a psychological thing, as I said earlier.

Cheers. You've got a good head on your shoulders, my friend.

I think a lot of it has to do with inner strength, too. People who just haven't been through a hard time don't have it, and so they rely on "God" to give it to them. It's sad, really.

I've always been critical about religion. I grew up in a pretty religious family and every time my grand parents will tell me stories about God and religion, there was always something in me that said "it doesn't add up. There's something terribly wrong with what they say". It was like a splinter in your brain that rejected this. Of course, at that age I couldn't figure out what since I was a child, but as I grew older, my logical and critical parts of my brain developed pretty well and began to see how contradiction and full of logical problems religion is. I think some people are just not compatible with religion and thus the seductive way of religion doesn't work on them.

I have no problem with others believing in whatever they want but for me, religion is just not compatible with my way of thinking and I won't change my way of thinking just so I can please a bunch of people who believe in something they have no way of proving or disproving. Religion sounds like a fairytale to my ears

I'd like to mention I once had a near religious experience.

I had just heard the song bleeding love and it 'touched' me while I was starting to turn delirious I was lost in Torino in Italy and had the song stuck in my head I started to bleed in my fingernail. That quickly stopped the song in my head.

I don't know how to explain it but that's the closest I've been to "god."

--->This<--- is an interesting article regarding better living under a religion.

ItaLuv wrote::shock: Oh wow, huge walls of text. Too long; didn't read (despite how interested I am in this kind of thing).

lmao....
i tried
oh damn did i try to read the wall
it almost all went over my head
*sigh*
maybe i'm just tired...

I'm genuinely curious. Do our resident cynics believe that if a religion only ever were to teach justice, judgement, and the consequences of sin, but never preach hell-fire or use guilt to persuade it's followers, if instead that religion used the rewards of righteousness as persuasion and insisted rather that forgiveness of others and one's self is key to salvation, would that religion fall into the trap that's been described here, of trying to manipulate it's followers with guilt? Where do you as an agnostic, atheist, non-denominational Christian, etc., draw the line between standing for something, gently but firmly persuading others to do good, and trying to control people?

S3 wrote:I'm genuinely curious. Do our resident cynics believe that if a religion only ever were to teach justice, judgement, and the consequences of sin, but never preach hell-fire or use guilt to persuade it's followers, if instead that religion used the rewards of righteousness as persuasion and insisted rather that forgiveness of others and one's self is key to salvation, would that religion fall into the trap that's been described here, of trying to manipulate it's followers with guilt? Where do you as an agnostic, atheist, non-denominational Christian, etc., draw the line between standing for something, gently but firmly persuading others to do good, and trying to control people?

Maybe it will, maybe not as it depends on how it executes these things. Religion controls people by using something (a story) it can never prove, no matter how much it tried, and psychologically manipulates (which is a form of control) people to accept it as the absolute truth and blindly believe in it. The control comes from actively and pervasively persuading people in following it and uses churches, religious gatherings, masses, preaching, advertising, etc for that by using these things to draw attention and if you buy it and go there, it teaches its stories without giving you any testable proof. Now, I have no problem with religion teaching good things like compassion, love, kindness, etc but honestly one does not need a doubtful story to do that (which is also full of contradictions and logical problems and has more holes in it than Swiss cheese), it can be very well shown with real-world behavioral facts how love, compassion, kindness, etc have a positive effects (in the case of love, mostly... as love can also destroy lives) on our society and how hate, destruction ,etc have a negative and possibly damaging effect.

At the core of religion sits a story which possibly can never be verified. This makes a lot of people uneasy and question its claims, specifically those how humans and the world came to be, how one will go to Heaven or Hell and who, what or how God is (that is if he exists in the first place and is as pictured by religion), because religion does not provide any means of testing these claims, it just says that it is so, so you better believe it. The problem with belief is that it is not an absolute and does not offer empirical evidence. As I mentioned earlier, I can believe as much as I want in my own invented story that, for example, a squirrel is responsible for exploding stars, this will not give it the possibility to magically appear from nowhere and become an absolute verifiable truth and suddenly change the known process of how stars explode so it can be responsible for that. Further, as our world has many different religions and they all claim that they are the right ones, these religions compete with each others in the way by trying to persuade as many people as possible in following them and their unverified stories/ideas (which is also a form of control). Also, many religions try to brutally resist empirical evidence, even when shown to them over and over, just so they can keep their story from falling apart, even though they have no way of verifying their story but try to make it appear to be true by saying that faith/believe makes it so, even though, as shown above, belief will not make something to appear out of nowhere. There are many examples how religion tried and still tries to do so. To give example, in the middle ages, religion ruled with an iron fist and everyone who tried to question its teachings was either thrown in prison or executed for something that can never prove its claims to be true, because it relies on a belief system which as shown above is not an absolute and moreover, it does not provide any other means than the belief system in proving its claims. Religions wage wars (which is also a form of control) because of competing ideas about who God is and how he intended us to live. But how can you wage wars about something you have no way of proving or disproving? Even if you win the war, this does not give you empirical evidence that your story and teachings are true. It will not magically give you a test system where you can confirm with absolute truth that your teachings are the right ones. You just believe it but as said believe is not empirical evidence until tested and proven or disproved. This is what science does. It creates an idea/theory and works towards proving or disproving it by doing tests over and over again. If the idea/theory does not match observable evidence/data, then it is thrown out. If it does then after thousands or more tests it is accepted to be true. However, science is not static unlike religion (which sticks to its story and defends it with every means but at the same time does not offer the possibility of testing), meaning that even though the theory may have been confirmed by observation, as science builds upon it, one day it can find out that even though the theory was accepted as correct in the past, it may no longer be as new evidence has been found that makes it invalid or incorrect. Science does not only offer the possibility to prove or disprove something, but also is dynamic in nature and constantly validates, improves, creates, disproves, etc current theories as more new data comes in. Of course, science is no where near in proving or disproving many things because we are just at the beginning of modern age and only now have the needed tools to do a lot of research that was not possible in the past, but the beauty of science is that it offers a test, a system of proving or disproving its own claims as it progresses, unlike religion.

As for your question on drawing the line. When I think a specific way is good, I will show that to others but will not try to push my story and many of them may agree or disagree with me. As this happens, I will re-evaluate my thinking/idea and probably improve it as new thoughts from others come in. I will not try to manipulate people by saying that only my way is the correct one, and others are wrong. If someone comes with a better idea and can prove to me to be it more efficient or whatever by showing me examples combined with facts I can test or know to be true from experience, I will probably drop my own idea and go for his. As I do this, I'll work towards proving or disproving it. If outcome was positive, then the idea was successful, if not it will give me more insight as to why it failed and how to do things in a different way and try to avoid a similar bad outcome. This is exactly where religion fails. It has a book and so blindly believes in it to be the only way and absolute truth that it never revises it, hence its content never changes. Not only that but it also doesn't question itself for the possibility that some things may not be true. In absolute basics, religion says: "Here's a book with everything you need to know. Don't question it but believe it to be true", which is a form of manipulation/control by trying to make you not think and not question what the book says, but just follow it because it said so. BUT if you question it, it has absolutely no way of proving to you because it solely relies on a belief system, which as mentioned earlier is not absolute empirical evidence. How do you test if God not only exists but is like the specific religion says? You can't currently but one day you may be able to but it won't be religion which will offer the answer as it doesn't test things. It says that something is, so it must be true. Only something like science can test this. BUT science is not obligated to prove or disprove anything when it comes to this specific subject (although it works on it but only out of interest in proving/disproving things), because science doesn't claim that God exists or doesn't and that God is like this or that. Religion makes the claims, so it must prove them but can't for the many reasons mentioned above.

As people see that science offers a much better system for proving/disproving/testing, religion often is forced by this to change its views because empirical scientific evidence has shown it to be not true, and religion cannot disprove it since it doesn't have a way of doing it. As said earlier in this thread, religion had to change its belief about Earth being the middle of the universe, because science one day came and proved over and over and over again that this is not true, so religion had to adapt its teaching and story to this evidence in order not to lose followers and still maintain its delusional story. I am absolutely sure that as we and science progress, religion will have to change many times parts of its stories if (and I think it's only a matter of when) science empirically shows specific ones not to be true.

You've done a fine job reiterating your opinion, but I don't understand your answer, "Maybe [a religion] will [fall into that trap of manipulation/abuse of power], maybe not as it depends on how it executes these things." So far I understand that you believe the scientific method and openness to change is one way (Do you insist it's the only way?) to avoid "controlling" people or tricking them into believing things, but I'm really interested in hearing your opinion about how teaching morality, "good things like compassion, love, kindness," is best done whether by parents or in a religious setting where the aide of science simply stops. Take for example these simple questions: "Why shouldn't we cuss around all of our friends/colleagues who do it if we know how to stop and no one else hears it?" "Why should government support married couples and not people who simply live together?" "Why should we mourn a mortal enemy's death?"

I think you agree that science doesn't yet explain everything. The answer to these questions, you argue, could one day be explained maybe. I agree, in fact, I believe I've run across some research that does start to explain certain parts of morality's benefits, though it's mostly psychological or sociological, and, as you know, these sciences have less base in empirical evidence. What about questions that won't ever be answered? Does an all-powerful, all-seeing entity exist who hides himself from us in order to test our faith in him? Do we each have an eternal identity, a soul, that continues after death and existed before we were born? Is there, or why should there (not) be balance, justice, and order, to our human emotional and spiritual experiences?

You admitted at the beginning of the previous post that a religion might not fall into the trap of manipulating people depending on the execution of it's persuasive techniques, but then you generalized religion, saying that all of it manipulates people. You've focused mainly on the history of Catholicism as an example of the abuse of power that it seems you fear with regard to organized religion. Your fear is valid. So why not try to understand religion from another perspective to allay that fear?

dbx wrote:religion does not provide any means of testing these claims, it just says that it is so, so you better believe it.
...
How do you test if God not only exists but is like the specific religion says?

You might not like my answer. Spirituality is beyond the scope of our science, meaning that we don't have sufficiently accurate instruments to prove to one another, even indirectly, which principles are true. All we have is the Holy Ghost for proof, and he works exclusively on an individual to individual basis.
You might to have missed my explanation about how to find out spiritual truth, here. Please let me know if you read all of it and if you'd like more explanation.

S3 wrote:You've done a fine job reiterating your opinion, but I don't understand your answer, "Maybe [a religion] will [fall into that trap of manipulation/abuse of power], maybe not as it depends on how it executes these things." So far I understand that you believe the scientific method and openness to change is one way (Do you insist it's the only way?) to avoid "controlling" people or tricking them into believing things, but I'm really interested in hearing your opinion about how teaching morality, "good things like compassion, love, kindness," is best done whether by parents or in a religious setting where the aide of science simply stops. Take for example these simple questions: "Why shouldn't we cuss around all of our friends/colleagues who do it if we know how to stop and no one else hears it?" "Why should government support married couples and not people who simply live together?" "Why should we mourn a mortal enemy's death?"

Virtually every system invented can be used to control people or things, one way or another. Take science for example. Science was not "born" to develop the atom bomb, science was not invented to develop biological weapons and science definitely was not invented to put any suffering on people. It were powerful humans with not so kind thoughts/ideas who abused science and scientists by forcing them to develop the atom bomb. It were the same people who abused things science produced or discovered and used them for developing biological weapons or other deadly things. Many of those were also (very) religious people, but how can you follow the words of your religion and at the same time give orders to build mass destruction weapons which can be used to kill millions at a time? Most religions preach good things and virtually non of them encourage/preach any form of hate or destruction, and point out what will/can happen if you do these things. How can such people justify their actions for being good from the point of religion? How can they say that from their perspective, what they do does not interfere with what religion teaches? How can they say that their perspective matches the one of "God" when they have never ever seen him and do not know what he will think about this? Obviously, these people are either hypocrites (which we all are to some extent) who do not really believe in any religion but make it appear so, or if they do believe strongly, religion failed in educating them how they should live/act in a compatible way with the words of "God", that is if those are his words in the first place.

As for morality, that's very tricky. I will not go into that because its a very difficult subject and I do not have time at the moment to write a very long reply explaining my view on it. Maybe another time as I also need to think about that myself.

I think you agree that science doesn't yet explain everything. The answer to these questions, you argue, could one day be explained maybe. I agree, in fact, I believe I've run across some research that does start to explain certain parts of morality's benefits, though it's mostly psychological or sociological, and, as you know, these sciences have less base in empirical evidence. What about questions that won't ever be answered? Does an all-powerful, all-seeing entity exist who hides himself from us in order to test our faith in him? Do we each have an eternal identity, a soul, that continues after death and existed before we were born? Is there, or why should there (not) be balance, justice, and order, to our human emotional and spiritual experiences?

As said, these questions cannot be answered as of now but I don't think it is our task to define who God is and how he should be because we have no way of finding out and not only that, but if he exists in the first place. Everything that we think to know so far is pure speculations and assumptions because it cannot be proven. Who says that God must be someone who sits outside and watches over us and judges our actions? Who says that God is not nature and the universe itself and we are part of it/him as elements of the whole? Who says that there must be someone who created the universe just because from our own daily experience everything has a begin/creation moment? Who says that God must have an awareness and actually cares about what happens on a tiny planet at the very end of a small galaxy consisting of billion of stars in a universe which consists of billion and billion of galaxies each on its own consisting of billion and billion of stars and possibly planets? Who says that the universe and everything in it must have a meaning and/or purpose just because we by nature assign meaning and purpose to our things and life? And the one who says some of these things, where is his proof for that? By proof I mean hard real evidence and not faith/belief because one cannot rely on it to provide testable evidence

You admitted at the beginning of the previous post that a religion might not fall into the trap of manipulating people depending on the execution of it's persuasive techniques, but then you generalized religion, saying that all of it manipulates people. You've focused mainly on the history of Catholicism as an example of the abuse of power that it seems you fear with regard to organized religion. Your fear is valid. So why not try to understand religion from another perspective to allay that fear?

dbx wrote:religion does not provide any means of testing these claims, it just says that it is so, so you better believe it.
...
How do you test if God not only exists but is like the specific religion says?

You might not like my answer. Spirituality is beyond the scope of our science, meaning that we don't have sufficiently accurate instruments to prove to one another, even indirectly, which principles are true. All we have is the Holy Ghost for proof, and he works exclusively on an individual to individual basis.
You might to have missed my explanation about how to find out spiritual truth, here. Please let me know if you read all of it and if you'd like more explanation.

I very well understand what religion does. Religion has a great positive power on the mind to many many people and has the power to bring them together and make them feel that there is something/someone who listens/supports/loves/whatever. It has the power to give more meaning and deepness to their life. This is all due to how the mind works by nature. As said earlier, people despair and get depressed or whatever if they found out that no one's there, no one cares or no one loves them. It is hard-coded in our nature to need someone or something so it can give us meaning/love and other basic things we by nature desire. We may think of us as intelligence, understanding, etc but in reality we are tiny creatures who constantly fail in understanding many things in our world and the universe. Not only because of difficulty in finding out but also because our tiny minds cannot grasp and are not meant to understand many things because of incompatibility and limitations. Not one of the quantum physicists fully understands the quantum world not only because of more needed data in order to get it, but also because our minds fail to fully truly understand it and its meaning. How can you not understand, or are incapable of, your own world but fully understand and know God which is something far more bigger than everything you know, and not only that but you've never seen it and don't have any way of proving its existence?

Such questions as to why the universe is as is and why it chose this particular way of development cannot be really answered or fully understood at present time. Example: why did God or the universe "chose" matter over anti-matter and not only that but why was there slight imbalance at the beginning in matter over anti-matter so in the end matter "won"? Of course, if God or the universe "chose" anti-matter instead of matter, the universe and everything will be different but you can still re-arrange and adjust the anti-matter and forces in a way to produce a stable, albeit very different universe, that can produce life, maybe not as we know it, but still one that can think and question/understand/etc. Why did the universe produce life in the first place and what is its meaning/purpose inside of it? One can have very different designs that can produce the exact same outcome, but why was this design picked over any other? Now if you can answer these questions (and probably others I left out), you will truly know why it is as it is. But the answer of God existence still remains hidden. You may fully understand how the universe functions and why things are as they are, but why there HAD to exist something in the first place still remains open. And if God does exists and created everything, who created him or it? If you say that God always existed and has not been created or that God created himself, then a similar thing can be said about the universe and it can also be said that the universe itself is what we call "God". further, how do you verify that it is aware of whats going on and actually gives a damn when it comes to us? I don't have a problem of a God existing but how do you find out what you believe in is actually true? in order to do that you have to test it, but how do you do it? Faith/believe is not a system that can create something out of nothing just because you had an idea/thought and started to believe in it, so it appeared. If we all had faith/believe at the same time for many centuries that the moon will get bigger AND turn purple on a specified day set somewhere in the future, will our faith/believe change the laws of physics and make it so when the day comes just because we had faith/believe? Highly unlikely, I'd say impossible. If we all believed there is a dragon outside of our universe, will this make it appear just because we believe in it? Where is the proof that justifies your belief to be true

I don't fear religion but I think that religion should not be used to wage wars between different incompatible views, it should not be used to kill people just because they choose not to believe and are labeled as "non-believers" and less worthy (example; fanatic Islam), religion should not brutally resist empirical evidence from science and religion should not be seen as something harmful all of the time because it isn't if you look at how manipulative some of them are that not only try to "trap" you in believing their stories but also use force to prove a point that can never be proven since religion doesn't prove but relies on trust/belief/faith with is not proof.

Anyways, I will not participate anymore is this topic because I've done it many times in the past and not one of them has come up with empirical evidence that God exists, is like it is as pictured by religion, that God doesn't exist, etc so in the end such topics always end inconclusive and non of the sides that participates can provide evidence for its claims that can be tested/verified by all humans. If people want to believe in something, great, and if it makes their life more full and gives them hope, more power to them. If people don't want to believe in religion or if they believe in something according to their own views which may or may not be correct, more power to them. I cannot disprove nor can I prove existence of a God and how he is or isn't. This is similar to a scientific theory, one that is just created in a pure form without influences from other factors. Because the theory is not confirmed or dismissed, it remains in an uncertainty state, until empirical data comes in and proves or disproves it. This doesn't mean the theory is correct and false at the same time. it means that its true state is unknown because of more data needed to tip it over into the correct or false state. I know some of my arguments may be weak but I did not take the time to think much about it and provide better ones, because as I said, I have to be somewhere tonight which happens not so often considering I live for 9 years totally fully isolated from the outside world, as a recluse.