Great point made in the comments to a recent post of mine made by Yves:
… crime and sin are not the same thing. Sin is a religious concept and does not exist for the non-religious person.
We avoid crime because we don’t want to get caught, and because of our sense of conscience. Our conscience has its own set of ethics, which overlaps our awareness of sin and crime but remains distinct from both. My conscience may allow me to commit a crime and a “sinâ€, but may prevent me from doing things which are neither.
What do other people think about this topic? Seems like there are a variety of ways we could pick this apart. Sin seems to have to do with a religious belief in right and wrong action (ethics/morality). Yves makes the point that crime is only avoided because of the fear of getting caught. But doesn’t sin have that element as well? Religious people avoid sinning because they don’t want to be “caught” by God. The fear of getting caught is the same, but the authority and the consequences are a little different in either case.
I think Jesus spoke to this point when he said all that stuff about how you sin even if you only imagine sinning in your mind, but don’t actually get “caught in the act,” so to speak. I believe that it was an attempt to diffuse this fear people have which prevents them from taking certain actions, but that this has backfired into people even feeling guilty for having “bad” thoughts or feelings. (But then, maybe Jesus wanted to make us feel so confused and guilty that we would transcend the whole problem?)
Anyway, this idea of sinning in your mind or heart has been updated in the modern world as “thought-crime.” But the question remains though, is the only reason that non-religious people don’t run around killing, raping and eating one another simply because we are afraid of getting caught? If that’s truly the case, then that paints a horrifically dark picture of human nature. It says that our inner lives are horrendous monstrosities which must be caged at all times or else our perversions will explode into the daylight world and destroy society. Incidentally, this was very close to the Freudian view of mankind as described eloquently in the BBC documentary, Century of the Self (I forget which episode, either 1 or 2). Definitely worth watching.
But is that really the case? If it is, then this may be one of those points where I willingly adopt an inaccurate belief about the world for the sake of my own sanity. Because a world where the fear of getting caught is the only thing preventing us from being total and utter shits to each other is a world which I simply can’t exist in.
Also wanted to throw another piece into the mix, courtesy of the excellent Mosaic Effect podcast series from Alchemical Braindamage. Again, I can’t remember what episode this is from, but he talks about Nietzsche and the morality of the superman. Zac makes the distinction that just because you have transcended morality doesn’t mean you have tossed aside simple human empathy. Instead, it means that you don’t rely on a set of guidelines or rules to make decisions and govern your own behavior. Instead you act authentically and directly in the world, being guided by your heart and by your empathic understanding of others’ situations and how you would feel were you in them. It’s a very provocative point that I’ve not seen anyone else make…
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ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- The Biology of Guilt
- High Tech Crime & Futuristic Security
- The Din of Sin
- “We don’t mean to offend you, but gay sex is a sin, and you’re all going to burn in hell forever.”
- Exchanging Your Bad Harm For Good Harm
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“The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.” –Thomas Babington Macaulay
Fundamentalists often argue that atheism is “immoral” and unworkable because humans who aren’t “saved” would simply not be able to restrian themselves from raping, robbing, murdering, etc.
But I know plenty of moral and ethical atheists. I think this fear says a lot more about fundamentalists themselves, e.g..,
I should change my name to Off-Topic but I remember when I was a teenage boy. I remember the guilt I would feel after master-baiting. I remember telling “God, I am so sorry for being a sinner, for killing a million sperm souls-I won’t do that again” and so it went.
I remember reading the Maine Supreme Court called masturbation a “vile, unnatural and detestable sexual perversion” but they couldn’t declare it illegal. So I was relieved, even if I was caught red handed or (white handed) I wouldn’t be sent to jail.
Anyways, I say the biggest fantasy most religious men have is sex with teenage girls.
Maybe on one psychic level there are Demons, zombies, parasites, mutants, ghouls, vampires, freaks, blobs, graveyards and haunted houses parading around! But perhaps on the other level there are Zen masters, angels, wizards and cozy little bake shops filled with delicious cupcakes!
That’s awesome. The same thoughts have been running through my head recently. I need to check out that post. Freudian psychology is, in my opinion, just a modernization of the old Augustinian notion that human beings are inherently wicked, and that religious morality and God’s grace are needed to contain the hideous, sinful nature within. Fuck that.
Yeah, I would have to say it’s not just religious men. It’s pretty much all men. It’s biologically programmed in men to want to mate with young but sexually mature females. And you know what? That’s okay. If we’re talking about oppressive morality, one of the most oppressive sexual taboos that generates a lot of unnecessary sexual guilt in men is the one condemning them having fantasies which are completely natural. At the same time, the modern media puts teenage girls on this overly sexualized pedestal (Hilary Duff, early Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Olsen twins, to name the most obvious recent examples) and exaggerates those desires; all the while social pressure from all sides insists, “You’re a pervert for wanting this.” It’s fishy.
Nobody else? You didn’t read my posts?
Maybe I should spell out my own view of the effect science has on society. Copernicus accidentally wounded the social principle that some specific person’s claims about God should dominate every aspect of life for everybody. Not that people followed this principle in the Dark Ages, but they mostly seemed to view their actions as wrong and not actually deny the principle. (Even heretics often seemed to think their claims about God should replace those of the guy in the funny hat.) This “morality” started to fade and die as Newton banished it from the rules of modern science (althought the logical consequences didn’t sink in until Darwin) and anti-monarchists appealed to reason or “common sense” to shape government. Since then, attempts (by Victorians and Nazis) to replace the older principle with the more openly stated rule of obedience to society and tradition have failed. The Leninist attempt to replace it with “science”, as society defined it, has also failed. I think the principle of True Will has a good chance to win by default. As for your fears of nihilism, they seems to me like utter nonsense. Humanity abhors a vacuum. Some principle will always fill the void, and in fact we can already see this happening. Every ideology today paints itself as a champion of true will. (If you don’t believe me, just google “true freedom” and islam. You point out that reason can’t force a definition of morality on us, but you don’t seem to realize that when it comes to the definition — the first principles of morality — we’ve already won. The debate concerns practical applications.) Science will do what it does best — reject the false claims and help us laugh them out of existence.
I was raised as a Lutheran, and was taught that sin isn’t so much a matter of rule-breaking as it is a willful separation from God.
After Adam and Eve ate the apple, God comes looking for them in the garden but they’ve hidden themselves from Him. How could an omniscient God not know where they were? They weren’t fooling anyone but themselves! And as long as they go on sinning, they imagine themselves hidden and thus separated from Him.
So the problem with sin isn’t simply that it breaks some rule that God has arbitrarly decreed, it’s what it does to our state of being. It’s a matter of spiritual health. Just as you can abuse your body by eating junk food or never exercising, you can abuse your soul by indulging in sin. In both cases, you’ll suffer the natural consequences. The “rules” are just a way of warning you what’s probably going to happen if you keep going the way you’re going.
In the same way, crime isn’t only a matter of breaking some positive law. What makes a law a just or moral law is whether or not it reflects the conditions required for a healthy society. That’s why the most common question that used to be asked about any behavior was “What if everyone acted that way? What kind of world would this be?”
Anyway, that’s the way I was raised. Obviously, it presupposes that we can have a clear idea of what constitutes spiritual or social health. Nowadays we’re all pretty skeptical on that point, or we all have different ideas about it, and thus we’re often unable to draw a firm line between things which promote health and things which undermine it.
But I still think it’s something that is worth bringing into this discussion, so we don’t get stuck thinking exclusively in terms of rules. Instead, think about the purpose behind the rules…
Another aspect of Lutheranism is its emphasis on salvation through faith rather than good works. Christianity was originally a very antinomian religion: Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law and thus free humankind from it. The idea here is very similar to Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman who transcends all of the moral rules. Oneness with God, faith, is what guides and determines action, rather than a rigid compliance with some rule-book.
The Greek hero aims to make himself a fitting spectacle for the gods. Nietzsche’s superman embodies a Greek kind of virtue: his actions are chosen out of a concern for authenticity, for fidelity with his true being. He is in tune with the Tao, and this isn’t really all that far from what Jesus seems to have meant by faith…
The history of Christianity as a social institution is a story about how the bureaucrats and their rule-books took control, just as they seem to have taken control of every other social institution. But it’s also a story about periodic attempts to recover or restore the original vision. Luther’s attempt ultimately failed — probably because he himself was deeply flawed — but there are still some useful ideas to be found in the Reformation.
Corky, what you said about Lutheranism sounds pretty close to what Eastern Orthodoxy says about sin—the idea that it’s not an act, but a situation of being distant from God. Interestingly, the Orthodox interpretation of original sin denies that any humans bear the guilt of Adam’s original sin; rather, according to the Orthodox doctrine, if I’m not mistaken, through Adam and Eve’s original sin, death and suffering entered the world, and because of death and suffering, sin persists as a chronic condition of humanity. It is definitely a more mystical understanding of the concept of sin and of divine law, and I’ve seen Orthodox writers accuse Western Christians of legalism before.
Still, even with this basic mindset in place, I’ve observed that the emphasis on following rules to avoid sin, and the consequent feeling of guilt when those rules are inevitably broken, is no less a problem among Orthodox than among any other group of Christians. I think this is because the problem does not lie in the framing of the concept of sin, but the fact that it requires us to suppress basic animal impulses that it is vital to the overall health of the organism for it to expose and understand. The insoluble cognitive dissonance between feeling an impulse on the instinctual level and believing it to be wrong on a rational/moral level makes the human bio-machine (to use an ugly and clumsy metaphor) feel like it’s under attack. This basic anxiety/stress, the feeling that you, yourself, are not all right just being what you are, is, IMO, what we experience as guilt.
As an addendum, the fact that we, as a consequence of our “guilt,” feel stressed and under attack, is why one of the first things you have to do in any mystical or magical system is learn how to relax. See Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—basic survival must be taken care of before any other priorities, and when you feel anxious or stressed, it’s because you feel subconsciously that your survival is threatened. Only then can one learn to deeply concentrate, visualize, and do all the other neato stuff.
I think a lot of the frustration people feel at trying to change their behavioral patterns is that they try to just force themselves to behave properly, and we just don’t work that way! You have to change yourself deeper down, towards your being, to effect outer changes.
Blushing is unique to Humans. It’s a simple fact that we feel shame at times. Why?
Corky makes a nice case for the basic Christian understanding. Getting at the root of the SIN concept there are several definitions from the Hebrew scriptures, the most commonly understood is the archery term “missing the mark.” Also there is “getting pushed over the line,” and “willful trespassing.” Many shades of the basic concept express that we are flawed, ignorant, and common failures to a standard. Slaves to Maya. False Gods.
Face it - anyone who is honest - we are constant fuck ups. It’s who we are. Just look around … something’s just not right … people are miserable all over the place.
In contract to the Levitical standards that many still obsess over, Jesus established some very cool - often overlooked - “new commandments” (which no one here has yet to mention), which he says fulfill the old laws completely.
Commandments, if you will for in keeping with 1st century conditions, or a modern legal definition. But looking deeper into it there are no laws to govern LOVE.
Consider Jesus’ 2 conditions: priority #1: Love G-D above all things (thus seeking first the Kingdom of heaven); #2: Love people AS you love yourself, which come back to loving G-D. Really no distinction.
It’s that simple. However too easily we dismiss the first, loosing our position. Left in the desert we end up not loving ourselves that much (or idolizing an ego love), and loving others in the same measure … accordingly that which we mete out is the measure we receive.
This is the prime meditation: our heart’s conscience weighed against our ability to LOVE impartially. That’s the Ma’at, true Tao, and our salvation.
If our lives aren’t about charitable sacrifice, we are failures and miserable sinners. This is the cheif cornerstone, and stumbling block.
without spelling it out, the above answers the question of crime too, I think.
Conscience is a misleading guide, I know, because it can be influenced by so many things. To think, “What if everyone did the same as I am tempted to do?” is a good rule of thumb to guide my conscience.
The other day, I was out walking in the countryside and saw a sign which said “Private, please keep out”. I intended to ignore it. But two things stopped me. One was that some fork-lift tractors were in the adjoining field gathering bales of straw, and they would see me crossing the “private” land. It’s not that they would do anything to me or report me. It’s just that they would see and judge, and I would feel ashamed.
The other thing which stopped me was that if I proceeded, I would disturb a large number of young pheasants, for this area was their designated breeding ground. Even though I knew they were being bred for hunting parties to shoot, I felt it was my duty to preserve an existing order which was important to others and traditional to this piece of land.
At that moment, I understood what “conscience” meant: nothing divine, just my need to think well of myself.
Exactly, this seems to be the crux of controlling people: make them desire something and make them feel bad about desiring it. This paradox is forced below the surface by the conscious mind which simply cannot resolve it. It needs to be brought up and thoroughly examined wherever it occurs though to be able to move forward at all
Man, so many awesome comments here. Especially enjoyed Corky’s and Joe Chip’s conversation above. I wholeheartedly agree with Corky that the way you described sin is the way the concept is supposed to be understood, ideally. But on a practical level, it simply doesn’t play out like that, as Joe Chip counters and as I pointed out in my comment before this. Love this part:
Absolutely brilliant analysis of the underlying social problem!
The more you pile up ethical principles
And duties and obligations
To bring everyone in line
The more you gather loot
For a thief like Khang.
By ethical argument
And moral principle
The greatest crimes are eventually shown
To have been necessary, and, in fact,
A signal benefit
To mankind.
- Chuang Tzu