Asha'man

Hold on a second, given the typical picture I have witnessed, I don’t think God is at all concerned with sin. After all, any sin can be forgiven. Hell is not a punishment for sin at all, it is only a punishment for a lack of belief in Jesus. Sin all you want!

What about all those hundreds of rules you ask? They don’t really count. Modern Christians have thrown out most of the rules they don’t like. The only ones who really cared about all those rules in the first place were the priests, and they only wanted to make sure they stayed in power, and that we kept sending them sacrifices to eat.

Bumble Bee Tuna

Unfortunately, wildernesse, the idea of just "observing the consequences of your actions" doesn't work. God's definition of sin includes a lot of things that have positive consequences. When I have very enjoyable pre-marital sex, resulting in increased happiness for me and my girlfriend, as well as making us have a closer relationship, I see a whole lot of positive consequences and no bad consequences. So if I went by the consequence standard, I would think that this sin was looked well upon by the G-man.
An even better example would be, say, not observing the Sabbath. I love sleeping in, skipping church, doing fun stuff on Sunday. Great positive consequences for me. But that's one of the ten commandments we're talking about here! Surely I should be overloaded with guilt and regret...but I'm not.

Most people feel guilt when they do something wrong...But not when they sin. There's a huge difference.

-B

winstonjen

The pedophile priests eat little children?!??!??!

wildernesse

I agree. Sometimes these things (wrongness and traditional sin) overlap, sometimes not.

I also don't think that all the things listed as sins (shellfish eating etc) are actual sins--I think that your actions and motivations should be grounded in love for others & God--and what is not this is sin.

So I could say that pre-marital sex with someone you care deeply about would not be sin. Etc.

I do think that guilt and thinking about the consequences of your actions are pretty good zaps--but I think they are easily ignored and manipulated. Do I think they are divine? No. Do I think that the regret/guilt is similar to traditional hell? Not really.

People ignore the strong societal zaps they are trained for--guilt and regre, and I don't know that strong divine zapping of any kind would not be subject to the same treatment .


--tibac

Bumble Bee Tuna

People don't "ignore" guilt and regret over things they do not think are wrong. They simply do not feel guilt and regret.

If God "zapped" someone, they could not ignore it. And if you bring up psychological conditioning to pain, God could get around that, being omnipotent and all that jazz.

-B

Infidelettante

BBT, in fact there is a definition of sin in the NT. Or I should
say the word translated as sin is the definition. One of the
theists could look it up in Strongs' for the Greek but it means
"to miss the mark." Think of the archer who misses the bulls
eye, same thing. To come up short of the target. What is the
target? The very goodness of God. Nice of him to give us a
target we could never reach then hold it against us for eternity.

JT