Why are so many normal things considered a sin?

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My own case, exactly, and I have spoken from experience.


... nothing changes.

Because I consider your attitude toward discussion to be fairly ethical, and I have realized that I never really cared at all whether other people believed in religion or not. In fact, it's entirely circumstantial and incidental that I have developed a sophisticated worldview with which it is incompatible.

I am highly confident in my conclusions about the world and privately have a sense that they should be as obviously true as "grass is green" and "water is wet," but it is as useless conversationally for me to say that to you as it is for you to say the same to me. I can lambast and castigate a person who is immoral, dishonest, more cagey than intelligent, etc., but I don't intend to confront you on a subject that you probably couldn't sincerely consider to be up for discussion. You are more interesting and probably more likeable if we discuss less controversial subject matter.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 10 Jun 2011, 5:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

Which part actually?


Huh?


What's the mechanism by which you believe this happens? If you are talking about not having enough semen, that would happen if you do it a lot and complete ejaculation is hardly necessary to achieve satisfaction. Neither are your mates always existent or available.

I don't know, I mean, it's not my cup of tea, but for some couples it could be very romantic.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cLHBwvMVow[/youtube]

I had meant to be asking why you do not allow me to also skirt/avoid the matter/question of inerrancy.

I don't see how I don't. When I say that the books where we find these purported laws are actually more logical if we try to consider why such laws were made and the conditions these lawmakers were living under, I leave it as a non-issue whether you think they got these ideas by "divine revelation" or any such horse feathers.

I am not meaning to take you to task here, but you had said this:

"... if you want to go on believing that the books are inerrant ..."

I maintain no such position, and I am hoping we can have conversation/discussion/debate without those kinds of rhetorical assumptions being made.

It would have been perfectly acceptable if you had, though.

But why didn't you tell me that you felt that I was trying to pigeonhole you? I meant to do no such thing at all, and I apologize if that was how I came across to you.

No problem between us here, and I had just assumed -- -- my response would make it apparent I had felt pigeonholed. Pigeonholing often is the case here in PPR, and it becomes very tiring when other people's "arguments" actually do include that (and for purpose/s other than actual argument).

The thing is, there are parts of the Bible that are barely even relevant in modern times. For example, the Book of Numbers contains a bunch of outdated and probably inaccurate census information. However, the book as a whole does show just how brutal their life really was.

Numbers 5:1-4 is ample evidence that they did not have the luxury of behaving with doting compassion toward the sick. There was no sure way to tell whether a discharge or blemish was entirely harmless or the potential start of a plague that could have wiped them all out. And, of course, they didn't have our modern concepts of hygeine then.

But 5:11-30 presents us with something fascinating, and I think it is a more than adequate presentation of how much value there is in seeing these priests as being prone to human foibles. According to Numbers itself, the priest is actually working some sort of magic here, and the characters written on the scroll are what causes the woman to miscarry. Well, if we were to choose not to entirely trust the priest here and use the idea of an unreliable narrator, a simpler interpretation would be that the Israelites routinely aborted any conception occurring out-of-wedlock.

But that's where it becomes important to study this stuff in context. On one hand, Numbers 5:11-30 could be used as a justification for abortion. However, Numbers 5:1-4 tells the same people they should exile anyone suffering from infectious diseases. In modern times, we neither force women to abort if they are suspected of conceiving out-of-wedlock nor send the sick and infirm off to die.

Well, wouldn't that then serve as ample support for the claim that the New Testament effectively rewrote the laws that once governed Israel? However, if you read through the Old Testament, I think I can recall various places where Jesus is trying to point out a lot of the things that I am here, which is that the laws given to the people of Israel were intended NOT as a service or sacrifice to God but as a means of helping these people to survive during a very difficult time.

In my own case, because I look more at principles than at precepts.


On that, we can definitely agree at least in relation to principles.

WilliamWDelaney"

Cruising through here again, spotted this:

"Coming in to edit again later, I think I just realized that this propensity for getting sentimental about hypothetical people might be an outcropping of the fact that processing human emotion in order to form the most appropriate reaction to it is something that I have to do at a cognitive rather than precognitive level."

Very interesting. I spent my life in academia aftger growing up in a family where one member occasionally came up with an emotion other than anger. I can and do process emotion if I have lots of time and no stress. But it does not come easy, and I do not read emotions or signal emotions at all well.

I don't think I have encountered your try the emotion of for size technique before.

I can't say masturbation by a non-christian or someone who hasn't been confirmed is a sin. It's those who have devoted themselves to Christ (via Confirmation), and promised to suffer with him, who are committing a sin. The point of the Church is to suffer with Christ. And if we intend on suffering, we have to overcome worldly desires. Any person who succeeds at not masturbating at least once in their life must be a saint, but if a Catholic makes it a regular thing like everyone else, they have a bit of a problem. It's like breaking a promise or an oath with Christ. And the same thing goes for not fasting and abstaining on days appointed, not being charitable, etc.

This isn't exactly the official stance of the church. This is my personal conclusion.

To commit a sin is, for someone religious, to feel guilty. It is to the organized church's great advantage for people to feel guilty so that the church can get money and obedience from its adherents. It's money in the bank for the church since only the church can forgive sins and very frequently forgiveness come at a high price. Ordinary things are sins because then everybody finds himself committing sins and the church gets the payoff. If the only sin people could commit would be playing a saxophone to entertain cockroaches the church would be very poor.

No, that's not true. According to the Christian faith everybody sins, theists and atheists alike.

No, that's not true. Suffering is not the goal, of being a Christian.

I hope not, but I'm curious as to how you have come to this conclusion. It's unlike any version of Christianity I've heard of, and doesn't match up with the bible.


No, even the church can't forgive sins. Only God can. You don't even have to be inside a church or in front of a priest, or within 1,000 miles of the nearest human being in order to be forgiven, but you do have to ask God for it. Fortunately, forgiveness is free of charge. That is, so far as I understand, the official stance of the Christian faith. In fact, free forgiveness is one of the defining features of Christianity.

To deny that the church has a role in intervening between the adherent and God is to be totally blind to reality. And the immense wealth of many divisions of the churches of various religions is also not facing reality, whatever the ideals may seem to be.