Sin and Choice

[Az]

Sin as described by the dominant Christian sects is a deliberate choice to turn away from God. Much of the problems that face Christians on moral issues these days come from the fact that we are finding that many things are not actually choices. The two that spring to mind immediately to me are homosexuality and atheism (or belief of any sort other than Christian). One does not choose what one believes. We come to realize what we believe. But we cannot choose it. And of course we are all hopefully familiar with the idea that homosexuality is not a choice but rather simply how a person is wired.

So how do these issues impact Christianities claims of moral authority. Do they simply gloss over the fact that these things are not choices? Or do they rationalize them away. If you hold to some doctrine and find that it is at odds with reality then how do you reconcile it?

[Kiouni]

1. if you don't believe in hell their can be no

salvation. Your logic is hits the nail on the head. I strongly recommend you read Atheism: the case against god by George Smith. He very clearly lays out how their thought process is futile.

this is from pg. 104
"Why does the Christian employ two concepts, reason and faith, to designate different methods of acquiring knowledge, instead of just using the concept of reason itself?

I also would like to reiterate that while I don't agree or support anything that comes out of the fundies I do respect tolerance and sometimes i think tolerance for others is lost in this forum.

[Kiouni]

2. one more thing

from Smith, "to abandon reason in favor of emotion is to surrender responsible decision making to whim." pg. 188

and

"the man who seeks truth calls on reason; the man who seeks conformity calls on faith." pg. 307

[Ilsa]

5. That first phrase is one reason why

I quit going to Baptist churches even though I had been raised in one. I found most were too emotional, and I felt like surrendering emotionally blocked true understanding.

My path has been changing, though. I have very deep concerns that I am becoming an atheist -- losing my belief in God the way it was, maybe completely. Not that disagree with religion and the teachings of Christ and others. I hold my beliefs in what Jesus taught as fundamental to compassion.

[Kiouni]

7. don't lose faith

just change the way you feel about the importance of christianity and its ideals. Christianity in packaged form is an elementary concept. Not to be bad mouthing christians on the contrary i support and encourage christianity. If something bad happens to you, your initial reaction is to blame an outside force. When you realize that you brought the negativity upon yourself you can change that. the second insight is an advanced thought process; you can't do the second without the first. So hold your christian beliefs firmly and continue your own path.

good luck.

[Az]

3. The book is in my library

And just as an aside I have debated with George before.

[Kiouni]

6. I'm glad you've read

it and I am very interested in you opinion of the book and of George himself. I personally felt that while the whole book was persuasive and well thought out at best it was promoting agnostic concepts and fell short of truly capturing what Atheism is and why it is plausible. I do not personally support some of his conclusions because like I said before they fell short of their goal and that he did not fully capture the importance of religion to people. Even atheism is religion in that it sparks community involvement and interaction on a higher level.

Please tell me what you got from it.

[Orrex]

4. As a tangent, don't forget that God is *explicitly* Pro-Choice

"For God so loved free will that he risked the pinnacle of His Creation in order to preserve the ability to choose." Or something like that. Anyone who argues otherwise needs to explain Genesis to me.

[cyborg_jim]

9. Well...

The fact is that there has been several thousand years of theology and a whole butt-load of new ideas grafted onto stories which almost certainly their authors didn't intend for them to have.

Genesis firstly is the fusion of several different stories - that much is quite obvious with a cursory reading. Secondly the god of Genesis has characters and qualities quite unlike that most people would consider that god to have today. Free will? Yeah, whatever. God was stupid - he didn't know what was going to happen. He really didn't want Adam and Eve to eat from the trees lest them become as gods (which is a henotheistic rather than monotheistic view). And so on...

Anyway the basic point is that new ideas have tended to be grafted onto the Bible under the simple assumption that these hidden layers of meaning actually exist because there was a god who helped author them who put them there.

[murray hill farm]

8. I dont know about the moral superiority part, but

sin is also described as "missing the mark" or making a choice that is not one of kindness and caring or for good or such. So, we can choose to question what we are taught to believe or not, to look inside of ourselves for truth or to not, to find our own truth or not...these are choices. This also would apply to homosexuality since the question is not the choice to be heterosexual or homosexual, but the choices we make in how we live our lives..being true to our believes and to live our heterosexual or homosexual lives with goodness and kindness and caring and love for ourselves and others...or not. We are, really...the choices we make in our lives.

[kwassa]

10. I disagree: I think we do choose what we believe.

[Az]

11. Really?

Try it.

[bryant69]

12. This is an interesting distinction

Because of course an Atheist will usually affirm that he or she came to her religious position via a rational process - i.e. they choose to be Atheist. This argument comes close to saying the reason Atheists are Atheists is because God has denied them the capicity for spirituality? Or nature?

I may not be understanding it.

Bryant

[Az]

13. Rational process?

Not really. I just don't feel/think there is a God. Reason and rational thought are tools the mind turns to when it is in doubt about things and needs to leverage it's feelings about a subject. But if there is little doubt then what you believe is all about the emotional state of your mind and the things it accepts as true.

[bryant69]

14. What does the phrase "leverage it's feelings" mean?

I use reason and rational thought to understand the universe - or I try to at any rate.

Do you think atheism is true for everybody - i.e. it's an objective truth that there is no God, or is it simply a subjective truth for you?

Bryant

[Az]

16. Its about how the mind works

The mind is an emotional engine. That is our ideas and thoughts are stored via emotional relevance. We constantly have a struggle going on within our mind determing what we accept as true of the world around us. This struggle is carried out by comparing the emotional weight of the opposing notions and its supporting ideas. Whichever idea carries the most weight is what we believe to be true.

Doubt occurs when there is a balance between opposing ideas. At such a time the mind begins to experience stress and anxiety. Such states of balance make it impossible for the mind to make descisions (ie make up its mind). Thus at such times the mind turns to various tools it has developed. Some of these tools are things such as looking for signs, supersticion, turning to peers, and various other methods. Reason and rational thought are just such tools the mind (via society) has learned to develop in order to leverage such emotional stasis.

What reason and rational thought do is help add or remove emotional weight to one side of a position or another. They do not form the basis of a belief but they can tip indecision within the mind. This is what I mean by saying "leverage it's feelings".

As to what I believe. Since I do not believe there are god(s) then this would imply that I believe it to be an objective condition. That is we are in the same universe and I believe that those who believe in gods are mistaken. I do not presume I have to be right. But if you ask my honest opinion then I feel they are wrong and I am right. Which is of course true of anyone.

[kwassa]

15. Disagree again.

People rationally examine their beliefs all the time; the best are arrived at through examination. People change their beliefs all the time.

I am using "belief" in the broad definitional sense, not in the narrow way it gets used in discussions here sometimes. Those conversations usually end with people talking past each other, because each is using a different definition of the word "belief".

Theists use "rationality" all the time, as well. Theists are also "free-thinkers". Just to get those buzz words out on the table.

[Az]

17. Of course

As I suggested in the response to the other post there is a constant struggle going on in everyone's mind. Not just about gods and religions. But about everything they accept to be true. The mind creates an internal construct of the world in order to better decide what actions to take in the real world. It constantly updates this with information it recieves via experience and adds it to its memories based on the emotional relevance of the events.

Normally most things find themself quite satisfactorly overbalanced in one direction or another. That is we have little doubt about these things and our minds are quite clearly made up. In such positions the mind has no need to call on tools such as reason. It is only when the mind cannot clearly feel the distinction between two positions that it starts looking about for more things to pile on one side or the other. This is when rational thought gets to add its input to the process.

This process is the same for atheists and theists alike. Its the human condition. Not the skeptics condition.

[kwassa]

28. Reason is always part of the process

It doesn't get added in at the end. Rationality is used all along.

What may be shaky is the original premise, which could well be decided on emotional need, or a mixture of emotionality and rationality. From that point on, everything else in the thought process can be quite rational.

[trotsky]

18. Quite the opposite, for this atheist at least.

My rational and moral observations of the world left me no choice but to reject belief in god(s).

[bryant69]

19. Well aren't you special

But seriously - I understand what you are saying - but obviously any believer can say "the hand of God reached down and touched me - I had no choice but to accept his reality." Does that really absolve a believer for his beliefs?

Or does this particular grace only touch atheists?

Bryant

[Az]

21. Oh absolutely

In fact many theists say just that. The trick is the mind doesn't always interpret its experiences accurately.

This is human nature. Not atheist nature. We all form our beliefs the same way. We just have different experiences and learn to rely on different tools to shift the balances.

Atheists for example are less likely to see signs of portent around them as indicators of what to believe. Instead we are likely to dismiss such things as anamolies of the environment. But to someone that has a prediliction to see patterns in events indicating significance such a thing would guide their descision making process. To them signs would be the hand of God telling them what to believe. And as you can imagine such a thing would carry a very strong emotional relevance and thus provide a great deal of weight to one side of the balance and shift their belief accordingly.

[bryant69]

22. So to what extent are we responsible for our beliefs?

Or do we even have any control over them?

Bryant

[Az]

23. Choice

Choice is about what we do. The actions we take. THe choice you have in matters of belief is in what events and ideas you expose yourself to. Even that is a limited control as you cannot make yourself believe the things you expose yourself to. But eventually repeated exposure to ideas builds up emotional support for them. This is why Churchs meet on a weekly basis (or more) in order to reassert the particular beliefs. It is why music makes up a large part of many religions as music provides a strong emotional impact thus reinforcing a particular sermon or idea.

[bryant69]

27. In other words if I stopped going to church

Took that test proposed a while back and just declared myself an atheist, and cut myself off from my belief, eventually my emotional center would shift and I'd actually become an atheist?

Actually that makes a lot of sense, regardless of our belief as to why it happened (my theory would be more along the lines of if you cut God out of your life, purposefully and forcefully, your light will start to dim so that youw ould no long have the spirit of God with you).

Bryant

[Brentos]

39. Interesting...

Actually, I think you may. God is always looking at us, but when we look away from Him (by choice) we cannot see Him, and thus lose our way. That is the danger of the slippery slope of sin. On little sin, you look away a little, two little sins, a little more...

I've come close to this in my life, and understand how easy it could be to slip away. I made a conscious decision to fill a void in my life by turning back to-wards God, and... He was there for me.

Thus, layeth my belief... :-)

[trotsky]

24. Naw, I'm not that special.

I don't claim that the supreme being of the universe has an active interest in how I live my life. You'd have to think you were pretty darn special to believe that, I'd say.

Anyway, for my specific case, I would compare it to this: could you "choose" to believe in wood sprites? Or unicorns? And by "choose" I don't mean entertain the idea, I mean genuinely sincerely believe those things exist.

[bryant69]

26. Interesting

for your first paragraph, I don't claim that God has an exclusive interest in me only a personal interest - God cares about each of his children, not just the ones who believe in him and certainly not just me. So I'm not sure how that fits in with me thinking I'm special - except insofar as everybody is special. Even you.

It is an interesting conondrum - because your very lack of belief would seem to be a proof that God doesn't exist. You posit yourself as incapable of belief. If belief in God is a requirement for salvation (as many, but not all, religions teach), and if God has chosen to leave out that part of you that would permit belief, doesn't that prove that God is either cruel or uncaring?

Bryant

[trotsky]

31. Oh it doesn't have to be exclusive interest in you.

Just believing that an all-powerful, etc. god WOULD actually be interested in you (and every other human being) as a person has struck me as a bit arrogant, both at a species level as well as individual.

Anyway, if as you note, many religions teach "belief in God is a requirement for salvation" then it would appear I have a built-in aversion to that requirement. But just as many believers think homosexuality is a sin of choice, I assume that I would be likewise expected to deny that part of my being so as to please god. Many early theologians cautioned against the evils of reason. Some bible verses do too.

That the god of people who think like that is cruel and uncaring is pretty obvious.

[bryant69]

32. Your case and the homosexual cases are distinct I would say

I am required to believe that everybody who truely seeks God will find him; and the implications of that are true, if hurtful, I admit. Possibly more hurtful than the implication that the God I believe in is as silly as the Easterbunny.

Bryant

[trotsky]

33. I don't see how they're distinct.

In both our cases, we would be required to deny a fundamental part of ourselves or our being in order to "receive" god.

Of course, your way out of this quandary is to simply declare that I never really sought god. That could be possibly the thousandth time a Christian has claimed to know my mind better than I do, sadly.

[bryant69]

35. Well those are the implications of my belief

Just as it is an implication of many shades of atheism that there's something childish about people who continue to believe in a Supernatural being the've never seen and can't prove exists. I suppose I could forebare stating it, but even if I don't the implication is there, isn't it?

Yes in order to become a theist you would have to stop being an atheist. I don't see any way around that. The parrallel with homosexuality is muddy for a couple of reasons - 1) there are some churches which teach acceptance of Homosexuals. 2) There is alos a distinction between homosexual acts and homosexual desires in some religions - in other words it's ok to have homosexual feelings or passions; the sin is in acting on such passions (cold comfort I would assume).

Bryant

[Az]

36. Yes, there are many atheists that take that route

They are of course wrong. This issue of God has been around for as long as humanity has been. Some of our greatest minds have wrestled with it. Admitted we do have an advantage of standing on the shoulders of our prediscesors. But I do not dismiss a person's reasoning just because they believe in a god. I may think they are wrong but I expect they happen to think the same of my position. Heck, most people think everyone else is wrong on some issues. Thinking other people are wrong is part of human nature too. THing is a further element of human nature is a desire to correct others in order to help them. So arguments and discussions ensue.

[trotsky]

37. There are some churches ok with atheists.

UUs come to mind.

As far as the other distinction, as you note, it's a pretty lame distinction. After all, isn't "lust in the heart" as bad as the actual act adultery? Check with Jimmy Carter and let me know.

I don't think that people who believe in god are childish, they just choose to disregard certain information.

[bryant69]

38. Well I checked in with Jimmy Carter

It took a while to explain the whole thing to him - he asked a lot of questions. At the end he said not to call him anymore. So thanks a lot. I got my Carter Calling privileges revoked.

I'm glad that you don't think that, but certainly you've seen posts from time to time that have implied that.

Bryant

[Az]

34. And everyone that truly seeks to rid themself of a belief in god will

If you truly seek God this implies that you to some degree believe in God. This is almost a tautology.

How bout if one honestly seeks God? Do you think this is the same? Putting aside your doctrine do you think that all honest searches for God result in finding God? I am not an apostate. I am not an antitheist. I am merely someone who's goals are to discern the truth to the best of my ability. If that means finding God then I do not dismiss such a thing. But honestly to date I have found nothing to sufficiently support the claim for God and in fact much to discredit the claim for God.

Keep in mind that the mind is able to build constructs of the world within itself by which it understands the real world. We don't actually live in the real world to be technical about it. Everything we experience, that bears repeating, everything we experience is the result of our brain recreating the input of our senses moments after they actually occur. And it is not a raw feed of reality we experience. Our brain filters and modifies the sensory data coming in based on our emotional biases. Ever been in a noisey room having a conversation? Your brain filters out the bulk of the background noise and allows you to focus on the specific voice you are listening to. What you hear is not reality but a recreation of it in your mind.

Now consider what affect actively trying to believe in a God will have over time. Actively wanting there to be a God. It is going to shift the emotional bias of the mind and everything is going to begin to pass through it with a bias to supporting this particular belief. There is a saying. If you are taught that elves make it rain then rain storms become proof of elves to you.

If you bend your mind to it you can eventually come to believe anything. If instead you focus on discerning the truth you come to find what may be.

[Zhade]

40. Wait - are you gay, trotsky?

Did I somehow miss that over the years?

(You know I'm queer, right? I think I've mentioned it enough, lol!)

[trotsky]

41. No, you didn't miss it - I'm terminally straight. :-)

I just went back though and saw how awkwardly I phrased that post. I was still just trying to compare my atheism with someone else's homosexuality. But you know, every time I do that, I think of how much worse it would be to deal with the double whammy like you, Buffy, and many many others do.

[Az]

20. This issue is speaking to the process of how the mind works

Not the validity of a person's logic or any other such qualities. Let us say you had been raised in such a way that you had a very strong belief in God. If such were the case then there would be little to no doubt in your mind concerning the existance of God. Thus when offered logical/rational reasons why there could not be a god they would find no purchase or foothold within your mind. They would be stored as inconsequential notions.

Now every day we live new things get added to our mental construct. Emotional weights shift over time. Ideas which had been long discarded can find allies showing up and lending support to their side over time. Ideas that support existing notions can take hits and lose significance as well. In this way our beliefs can lose their hold over us until eventually we find ourselves in balance. And that is when we turn to whatever tools we have learned to rely on to settle such matters.

If there was not doubt in your mind already concerning the existance of God then the rational problems you percieved simply would not seem as significant to your mind. But since your path had lead you to a position where your belief in gods was not overwhelming and your emotional reliance on reason as a tool was sufficiently strong this causes a shift in your mind that toppled belief in gods and raised a belief in the things you now find yourself believing.

[trotsky]

25. Boy, I don't know.

As a child I sure had a strong belief in god. All the way up through most of high school. At that point I don't think I could have "chosen" to NOT believe in god. Were there cracks in my belief? Yeah, definitely. But probably not much more than the typical believer has. As I read more, and life experience started accumulating, I found my belief in god was incompatible with the evidence I had collected. Hard to say what the tipping point was.

[Finder]

29. I too had strong beliefs...

and have to say I did not even know there were alternatives until I was older and actually studied religion rather than just participate in it. Even then, I tried to fit my beliefs to the facts...gotta love them apologetics.lol

[Az]

30. Learning and life experience add weight to the scales

Eventually your reliance on reason and rational thought in addition to all the things you had experienced overwhelmed your theistic beliefs. This would cause a catestrophic failure of your beliefs and a cascade of rejection of them as more and more notions collapse due to no longer supporting each other.

[Igel]

42. Anger is not a choice in most cases.

When I spoke back to my father he didn't pause, rationally evaluate whether or not to get mad, and then put his fist through a wall. He was like that when he was 3, and 5, and 12, and 45. He learned to control it; if he got mad, he learned to shut up and turn away. The son in the family next door to ours didn't learn to control his temper; he was hauled away when I was a kid for shooting somebody.

Nor, always, is greed a choice. Overeating is wrong, but evolution made it preferable for humans to eat more than necessary in times of plenty to store fat. Primates are, by and large, very tribal--so are humans, unless culture teaches that it's wrong (and then you find people fighting the inb-born tendency); genocide was the name of the game in some tribal areas. Our sex drives and fertility peak in our teens; we acknowledge that having most kids born to teenagers is probably a bad thing, although (outside of considerations of marriage) we don't typically think of it as a 'moral' issue--but we could.

Most of morality is at odds with nature, strictures imposed to make society tolerable. Nature is brutal; morality seeks to curb it. Rousseau had it backwards.

I'm trying to teach a toddler to be moral, and not greedy, selfish, demanding, short tempered.... He might figure this out for himself, but many of the undergrads I'm taking a course with haven't.

[Az]

43. The emotion is not a choice, but

what you do with it is a choice. Choice is in action. You may feel anger. But putting a fist through a wall is an action. WIthout dipping into issues of whether freewill exists we can safely say that there is a certain amount of choice in putting that fist into that wall.

Thing is we learn how to react to our emotions. So people who put their fists through walls have learned to do so. They can also learn to redirect that anger and do other things with it. They can learn new ways of how to choose what to do relative to their emotions.

In time by reeducating themself as to how to deal with their stronger emotions they can even begin to discern layers and other emotions that are present in circumstances. In this way they can learn to act on a range of emotions they are feeling at a given time. Anger will always be there. Its part of who they are. But they can also find out that desire for approval or control are also part of their emotional make up and that these may be what is leading to their anger. And instead of acting on hurting the wall they can act on figuring out what they are really angry about.

[ulysses]

44. hi Az.

Good to see you posting again.

I never took the concept of sin to *require* a deliberate choice, although it could certainly involve that, but rather more often a weakness. (the spirit is willing, etc.) Then again, I grew up Methodist, with more an "easy grader" mindset toward the whole idea...