Les Adieux

Oftentimes (I see it a lot on these boards) Christians argue that all mankind is sinful, and because God is infinitely just, he MUST punish them, and it's lucky for us that the whole Jesus thing works as a substitute for punishment. But no Christian around here ever seems to offer any reason to accept this, and no one calls them on it either.

My question: why does sin necessitate punishment? More broadly, why does anything necessitate it?

In the real world, we could offer these reasons for punishment:

1. The criminal ("sinner") is a menace to society and needs to be rehabilitated or separated from the rest of us

2. Punishment deters other criminals from committing crimes

3. Punishment deters the person in question from committing crimes

4. Punishment makes the victims feel better, as well as some of the law-abiding onlookers.

However, none of these reasons apply to the matter of sin. In order:

1. Clearly not, since we're all hanging around on earth, mingling with each other. Furthermore, substitutional punishment doesn't eradicate this reason (in the same way that a criminal can't get someone else to go to jail for him and think that the menace to society is eliminated), though according to Christians, it eliminates the need for punishment.

2. In reality, people can observe that crimes really do have legal consequences. No one can discover by observation that heaven and hell exist -- that's why faith is needed.

3. Same as above. Furthermore, in these situations, the threat of punishment will work just as well, and would be better, because the punishment itself is gratuitous (since it's unobservable until it's too late). So perhaps the Christian God is just blowing hot air?

4. Because no one can observe it, it does not suffice for this either. Anyone who feels better, imagining sinners burning in hell, is doing just that -- imagining -- because, whether it happens or not, it's never seen by the imaginer until the point at which it can make a difference has passed.

Are these the only reasons? Well, some people might suggest another one:

5. It's "for their own good."

This is more interesting, and more plausible than any of the above. However, we should consider the case of Plato, who thought that punishment was for just that. He says that punishment is a way to cleanse evil from the soul, and since no one wants to be afflicted by evil, any person who commits a crime should immediately and proudly confess it, and rejoice in their punishment, since it benefits, rather than harms them. Contrast this to the Christian view, where hell is a threat, and not just bitter medicine. Besides, it's hard to imagine that eternal pain and suffering do much for the character/soul. No mortal punishment lasts forever, and Plato's view is a bit more rational for that.

I imagine that many Christians will say, what about:

6. Punishment is, by definition, a required response to sin. Moral transgressions require punishment by their nature.

Well, maybe. But this is the crux of the matter. Can you justify it?

(I know that Magus55 mentions it occasionally, so I'd particularly like to hear what he has to say.)

Bree

I find the statement "all of mankind is sinful" to be quite laughable. God apparently doesn't care to differentiate between sins - murder is the same as theft, which is the same as loving another person of the same gender as yourself, which is the same as eating shellfish. Sure, all mankind is sinful, but has everyone committed murder? No, but it's all the same to God!

Les Adieux

The whole self-abnegating "all humans deserve hell" thing weirds me out, in general, regardless of the particular sins that make it so. I like to assume that the people who chant it, chant it mindlessly as just another bit of dogma, rather than as something they've actually thought about and consciously accepted. Usually it's only people who are severely depressed that believe the entire world is lower than dirt!

I suspect that the reason that God gets uniformly angry over a multitude of different sins is that they all fall into the category "disobedience" -- submission is what's important, and not the content of behavior outside of that. Many Christians on this board seem to believe that God can make anything moral or immoral, purely by fiat, so I think they implicitly agree with this assessment too.

I always thought that Christianity could easily have become a mystical-ecstatic religion based explicitly on the "good news" that everyone is saved. I think I read once that some form of Unitarianism embraces some similar ideas (God is too good to damn people to hell / humans are too good to deserve it). Can anyone confirm that?

Les Adieux

No one else has something to say?

winstonjen

Don't forget the worst sin of all time - unbelief!

:boohoo: :boohoo:

Talk about thin skin!

Biff the unclean

I think the reason that all men are sinners is the Messiah problem. Most religions that had a Savior Demigod were polytheistic. So your good God could save you from the bad God. Like Mithra would save you from nasty Angra Mainyu.
But when you try to turn a monotheistic religion like Judaism into one where you have to be saved by the hero Demigod there's nobody to save you from. You wind up being saved from God, and that doesn't make any sense. To fix this the believers themselves are portrayed as being the bad guys. They are told from birth that they aren't worth while, they're sinners, they don't deserve anything good by their own merits, they are 'fallen'.
You really have to wonder what sort of sick mind thought this up to begin with.