Archive for March 11th, 2008

Mar 11 2008

New Sins $9.99, hooray!

Published by Imperadør Hasemörder under Religion

I’ve been trying to fart out a post about original sin for a week now. I focused on the three versions (separation from god, inherited guilt, natural tendency to sin caused by the fruit from the knowledge tree) Christians created and dissected each one. Ironically the post migrated to property, politics and the inequities of past and current social constructs. The whole concept of sin has bothered me since my Catholic school days. Sin in the mind of the believer is synonymous with wrong. In fact sins are the wrongiest wrongs of them all. The reason sin bothered me so much was the same reason all the other things in the church bothered me: the source. It simply was not enough for my young adult mind that, because something was written inside the binding of a book, that it was true, an absolute truth at that. Thus an absolute wrong that had no logical reason absolutely bothered me.

I’ve watched all the believers from all the religions declare what God desires. The Muslims will even say that it’s an insult to God (peace be upon him) to say what he’s all about. Then they’ll happily tell you what God demand of you. The common factor in all religion is faith, that magical leap element used to connect the gapping holes in religious logic. Justice is impossible if we allow for gaps in reasoning though. Right and wrong must be clear and concise or else we’re left letting the men in black robes use their opinion as the yard stick. Principles are the soul source of justice.
I’ve given a great amount of thought into right and wrong. I’ve strived to be a righteous person and needed the knowledge of right and wrong in my journey. That knowledge doesn’t cause sin, it keeps us from it. From what I’ve determined there really are only two sources of wrong. Does it cause explicit harm to another sentient being present or future and does the structure of society contain biases to any group or individual. I’m glad I’m off the righteous band wagon. It doesn’t matter how much good one does if not doing harm is ignored. Not doing wrong is all the right anyone needs to do. There’s nothing new under the hypocritic sun.

The Vatican has recently released an updated version of Capitol Wrongs, the EP of deadly sins. Six of the original deadlies: pride, envy, gluttony, greed, lust and sloth, are rather vague and in many cases don’t really cause harm in and of their self. The new sins are far more specific: Genetic manipulation (I wonder how they can ignore thousands of years of cultivation), drugs (they can ignore red wine), obscene riches (they can ignore their real estate net worth), pedophilia (I’m not even going to go there), causing social injustice and polluting. I’m sure I’m not the only one who sees the hypocrisy in the new god, priest repentable, givens.

I have no problem with people believing in invisible mute sky daddies. I have my own hauntings after all. But it seems to me that there is a real danger when masses are taught that infanticide and pollution are equal to pride or a healthy amount of stimulating envy. I’m trying not to care about other peoples beliefs and would have no problem doing so if I knew that the religious actually thought their beliefs were just beliefs. A belief is something that can be wrong. It is not a truth. A truth is a fact or a logical consistency that is eternal. The believers don’t believe their beliefs are beliefs, they believe their beliefs are facts. I don’t think I’m going to far when I say that a group declaring what I do with myself or the fruits of my labor is wrong, is wrong. Please Zeus, keep the Church out of the State and Philosophy.

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