Seven Deadly Sins

Off-topic
21

Thank you. It has been a topic I’ve pondered over for many years. With no decent heavy metal biker pubs, drugs or alcohol anymore what’s a guy to do?

Firstly you missed out Porn, nobody should miss out on porn, it’s free, fun and pleasurable. And if it wasn’t important than we wouldn’t have evolved loving it. /nods

Pride I take special pride I am fantastic for the great British cock up. DIY being my speciality subject, one has to be good at something even if its being bad at it.

Greed and Lust Getting more serious on these two sins both have traditionally been the church’s way of saying you should only have what the man in the sky gives you so be content with what you have. (yeah I read that book) So the Pope in gold robes isn’t being greedy because god gave him that fine robe rather than a sack, you’re only greedyi f you go and get a gold robe by yourself and throw away the sack god gave you. Jesus mentioned god rather you be nakid, like the flowers in the field. Also the church would argue if god wanted you to have more goats he’d give them too you, so don’t lust after your neighbours goats if he has more, but I say it’s a world full of goats and there is no harm in saving up and picking a few more pretty goats from the flock.

Envy I’m not a happy person (medical depression), I envy your happiness (for example) and the things that make you and your friends happy, am I sinning to want to be as happy as you?

Wrath Sometimes you just can’t or will not walk away so you cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war to fight an injustice when you can be bothered. World might be a better place if we had more wrath against real injustices rather than making them up and making everybody else’s lives miserable by persecuting them.

I’ll end on a serious note.

Sin really is no more than a religious term, just like how religion is trying to reclaim the word marriage from the gays because it belongs to the religious. Sin and go to hell, was a bronze age method way define charges that would allow you to punish your fellow cave dweller. I’m inclined to go with Jesus and St Paul on this one. There is no such thing as sin, as one persons sin is not my sin, but the motivation or outcome behind the action was what Jesus and Paul said was all important.

As an atheist, no god means to me no sins as defined by a sky daddy, but instead the question of morality and ethics. Be nice and aim to do good and you never sin in your heart.

22

Anna your last post had some interesting thoughts buried in it so thanks for posting.

The seven sins were associated with the seven virtues (there is a list on Wiki). The virtues help to illuminate what the sins meant to medieval people. To some extent the church seemed to be trying to scare their congregations into being ‘good’ and to my reading it was also trying to exaggerate the distinction between good and evil to people who maybe had indistinct moral boundaries due perhaps to the times they were living through. If you want to see an extreme illustration of this I recommend going to see the mural at the church in Chaldon.

Whilst the concept of sin is perhaps now anachronistic for many the attraction of virtue is still universal. Let’s not take the words too literally- the Lust sin for instance is associated with the Chaste virtue. I think this one was to discourage too much raping and pillaging…there was a lot of it about at the time.

Nowadays there is a recognition that shades of grey do exist and fortunately levels of education are sufficient that most people can formulate their own moral codes and live happily by them.

In our modern Western world we could boil a lot of ‘sin’ down to the consequences of over-population, the frantic pace of life and the modern day sin…STRESS :cool:

btw please don’t drink yourself to death…it does happen.:frowning:

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i think they got pride mixed up with vanity. there`s nothing sinful about being proud. however vanity- now that sucks!! they missed one off as well if you ask me. rudeness should be a sin.

24

Actually LiM rape was ok, god encouraged raping and even gang rape quite a few times in the OT. What was a sin though was a man buying a woman for his wife and finding she’d been done before. It was very naughty so god wanted her stoned to death etc. So better to be chaste says the vicar rather than be chased.

25

oh dear, i might fall into the category of at least 6 :smiley:
someone on my facebook posted this the other day, puts everything into perspective nicely, without worrying about sins etc…

why worry?
you only have 2 things to worry about.
whether you’re well or whether you’re ill.
If you’re well you have nothing to worry about, if you’re ill you have 2 things to worry about.
Whether you’re going to recover or die.
If you recover you have nothing to worry about, if you die you have 2 things to worry about.
whether you go to heaven or hell.
if you go to heaven you have nothing to worry about, if you go to hell you’ll be so busy shaking the hands of all your friends down there you’ll have nothing to worry about
so why worry?
:smiley:

26

Having recently discovered exchristian.net (nice to see I wasn’t the only to be “handed” down faith) I read a nice comment on there, “Sin is a fictitious crime, like blasphemy.”

27

I guess what I was hinting at was that meanings change over time. What ‘sin’ meant in Old Testament times was different from what it meant in medieval times and different again to what it means in modern times. If you are saying that atoning for ‘sin’ in Old Testament times involved persecution of others then maybe you have a point…and Christians I suppose would tell you that all changed with the New Testament…

You don’t have to be religious to recognise the virtues of being honest, just, benevolent, industrious, patient, kind and humble.
Even if you can’t define yourself by them you can at least recognise them as broadly preferable to the alternative.

28

No, what I was saying was the OT was quite clear on it’s meaning, a hierarchal system; god is always right no matter what god does or orders. The only sin is to not unquestionably obey gods will.

A simple blinkered view of life with a god that becomes problematical when you question the moral virtue of some of gods actions or orders. Which was why god normally orders your death if you disobey him.

Quite, as one of the arguments the apologists have are that morals came from god and are inant, but what these same apologists deny is these same morals are found as commandments/instructions/laws outside of their religions written birth by religions or great thinkers who learned to write centuries sooner.

I simply view morals as evolved survival traits over thousands of centuries explained as concepts in words of the time.