Dear Sinners

[munchingfoo]

To give you an idea of what would be expected/accepted, here's my position diluted to the bare details:-

Premise 1: To sin is to act or behave in a way that is contrary to your deity's wishes/desires/commandments.
Premise 2: Atheists don't have a personal deity.

Conclusion: Atheists can't sin.

Rather than try to refute your individual points, which seems to have failed on you, I will disprove your conclusion by simple counter example.



Choice point - is there a god - and I mean in reality. You die, you see god or one of his supernatural minions and they judge you, or you die and see sweet fa.

Yes there is a god -
Athiest A: "I have never sinned"
God (and or supernatural minion of god): "All people are born with original sin and you didn't repent n'tings - for real?
Athiest A: "How can I sin if I didn't believe in a god and therefore had no rules to sin against?"
God (and or supernatural minion of god): "I make the rules buddy - if you choose not to follow them that's your problem"
God (and or supernatural minion of god): "Going down!"

No there is not a god -
Athiest A: "..."

Sins are judged by others, not yourself. On earth some idiots think they have the power to judge if you have sinned, but that's bollocks (IMHO). The only person(s) who can judge you are god(s) and or supernatural minion(s) of god(s).

Personally I believe that no one can sin since quite blatantly, god, or at the very least any undertsanding of him/her/it we currently have, isn't real. That doesn't mean that if I am wrong I cannot therefore sin, I can, AND I WILL!!!

[Humphrey]

I've always been a bit puzzled by that as well. Also, what's with the huge disparity between the morals of the OT and the NT? People like Abraham and Solomon and David and all the other supposedly-godly Old Testament heavyweights seemed to have spent most of their time frolicking with concubines (including the wonderfully-named Abishag in 1 Kings 1) - how come that was all right for godly people then but not later?

I always thought that was the appealing thing about the OT, its honesty. The worst people in it are the guys that are supposed to be the heroes. Its so much better than that Jean-Jacques Rousseau 'man is pure in his state of nature' bollocks; oh no he/she isn't!. Every time in the OT God's chosen people seem to be getting somewhere they mess it up again. Not only does David frolic with Abishag, he also sends her husband off to war so that he gets killed; not exactly a shining moral example. Best of all is what you get nowadays when people judge the OT based on the standards of Judo-Christian morality, I.E, why if we are supposed to 'love our enemies' does God order the Israelites to kill the Canaanites?'.

I think the problem is that its partly a holy book, partly the history of the Israelite people with all the accompanying genocide and shenanigans with the moral teachings of Jesus stuck on the end. The result is often schizophrenic and confusing, and yet its the source of most of our moral principles. Great stuff.

[Anon.]

Not only does David frolic with Abishag, he also sends her husband off to war so that he gets killed; not exactly a shining moral example.

Not that it matters, but that was Bathsheba.

Best of all is what you get nowadays when people judge the OT based on the standards of Judo-Christian morality, I.E, why if we are supposed to 'love our enemies' does God order the Israelites to kill the Canaanites?'

I've sometimes thought that the idea of a God who is quite happy to condemn most of humanity to eternal agony (and indeed presides over the various disasters that happen in the world today) squared much more with the rain-down-brimstone-on-His-enemies God of the Old Testament than the fluffy God-is-love image presented by most Christians.

(Edit for foozled formatting)

[Humphrey]

Not that it matters, but that was Bathsheba.

Goddamnit!

Things have obviously gone downhill since I won the Scripture Knowledge prize at prep school.

[RedCelt69]

Rather than try to refute your individual points, which seems to have failed on you, I will disprove your conclusion by simple counter example.

So you aren't challenging the premises or the conclusions? Jolly good, so you agree that atheists can't sin. Nobody has refuted the individual points... not successfully. And by successfully, I mean showing how they are wrong.

A counter example won't disprove a valid and sound argument. But by all means, let's take a looksee...

Yes there is a god -
Athiest A: "I have never sinned"
God (and or supernatural minion of god): "All people are born with original sin and you didn't repent n'tings - for real?

But God, the sins of the father cannot be passed down to the child. What kind of justice system would allow innocents to suffer? If Adam (spurred on by Eve, foreverafter casting woman as the sex of sin) caused your wrath (an incident you would have foreseen what with you being omniscient) then punish Adam. Don't punish all that will follow him, for they are born innocent. Look at a newborn child, God, and tell me it's ridden with guilt.
As for repenting, how could I know which religion was the one which would lead me to you? There were so many choices... it seemed absurd to accept the one most dominant in the society I was born in to. What if a child in Japan was born into the "right" culture? Or of Kolcatta? How was I to know that Jesus was your son? He was one of many prophets at a time when people were desperate for a messiah to save them from Roman governance. How was I to know, when he left no writings? We had to rely on second-hand accounts of his teachings. And of those teachings, he knew nothing that wouldn't have been known to a Bronze Age son of a carpenter. I mean, he was the son of God... why couldn't he have left a message encoded in his teachings that would be understood many years from now, thus proving that he was genuine? Personally, I'd have couched it in terms that my peers would have understood, but how about something like "The design for all life is written in a language that has only four letters"? Then, being God, you could have made sure that the message was included in the official bible... after the inappropriate gospels were snipped out... so that in my lifetime, it would be understood that Jesus had been talking about the GCTA of DNA. I mean... surely it was reasonable to assume that I was either smarter than your son (thus not worthy of worship)... or you didn't exist?

Oh God, there was just so much choice. If only you could have let us know which religion was the right one. If I stand accused at your feet, I can only be accused of not playing the lottery rather than playing the lottery and risking the wrong religion.

Athiest A: "How can I sin if I didn't believe in a god and therefore had no rules to sin against?"
God (and or supernatural minion of god): "I make the rules buddy - if you choose not to follow them that's your problem"

But God... how can that be called free will? If I obey your rules and do what is necessary to get into heaven, I get into heaven. If I disobey them, I go to hell. If I held a gun at someone's head and offered them pain if they didn't do what I said... I wouldn't think that they are acting of their own free will. I'd say they did what they had to do to avoid pain.

Look. You gave us free will. I freely chose to disbelieve in you. Given the lack of evidence, it seemed a pretty damned rational choice to make. And now I'm going to suffer for all eternity? Gee. Thanks for that.

God (and or supernatural minion of god): "Going down!"

Omnibenificent my hairy aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarse!

No there is not a god -
Athiest A: "..."

Then I go whence I came. Non-existence. My non-existence prior to my birth doesn't scare me, so why should my non-existence after my death? After all, I won't be around to experience such things as thoughts or fears.

Plus I get the benefit of not wasting a significant proportion of that short life by spending it in devotion to something that, after all, doesn't exist.

I don't spend my life burdened by a guilt I didn't earn. I don't spend anxious moments worrying wether I have offended a deity. I don't contemplate entering heaven in a blaze of glory by flying a plane full of people into a building full of people.

All in all, as choices go, I'm happy with the one I made. If it turns out that I'm wrong, I'm happy to accept the consequences. Just so long as I get to judge God once he's finished judging me.

[Humphrey]

Then I go whence I came. Non-existence. My non-existence prior to my birth doesn't scare me, so why should my non-existence after my death? After all, I won't be around to experience such things as thoughts or fears.

As Philip Larkin would say

‘This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anasthetic from which none come round..’

On the plus side, if there is no God then Larkin presumably never had to experience the embarrassment of looking down from upon high as his executers discovered he had amassed the largest collection of hardcore pornography in the western hemisphere; or see his biographers pour through his diaries to find he had written gems like "...I mean like WATCHING SCHOOLGIRLS SUCK EACH OTHER OFF WHILE YOU WHIP THEM". Even eternal annihilation has its plus side.