If you say values are the necessary mirror images of sin you get no argument from me. Just like left needs right and dark needs light.

But could heaven and earth not be opposites as well. So one can indeed go to heaven and still be meaningfully sinless. I don't think heaven and earth can exist without the other. There are even some interpretations of the Bible which do state that our world equates hell.
In fact I equate heaven and earth(or rather the physical universe) with the timeless and timefull* aspects of reality as I see them.


*why is it that metaphysics always forces me to invent new words?

Heaven is not a duality of earth. Heaven is an opposing duality of what our minds perceives of the Earth at certain times.

Then what is the reality of Earth other than a perception of the mind. Or is that entirely to solipsist a thought?

But, more to the point:
In what way would you say does the 'real' Earth(or physical universe if we scale it up a bit) differ from the perceived Earth and in what way is that relevant to the heart of the question if there is a duality of Earth versus Heaven?

The key point is that the physical, actual Earth is rather constant. Our mind drives different perception and emotion providing ever changing meaning of the Earth. And from that meaning comes the opposing duality meaning of heaven which causes heaven to look the way one 'perceives' it.

"Sin and values are symbiotic. Without one of them, the other doesn't exist. They cause one another."

It is one thing to say that sin and "values" (i.e., the opposite of sin) are logical opposites in thought, and entirely another leap of argument to say that they "cause" one another, in thought or in reality. As if left "caused" right.

And the, admittedly brief, argument further implies that unless one acknowledges "sin" then one cannot have (presumably good, unsinful) "values."
"Sin" being the willful transgression of divine rule, if one rejects divine rule, one must a forteriori also reject sin, as do most atheists and agnostics. Is the argument then that these two groups have either no values, or "bad" values?

Look at it this way:

A child steals something, but does not know it has done the wrong thing.
An adult explains that it is wrong, but the child does it again.
So the adult 'steals' something of the child's to show the child what it feels like when someone steals something of yours.
But, the child does it again.
Eventually the child gets sent to bed without its supper (theft in a sense), and suffers quite badly, and learns his lesson.

Later in life, the child grows up and goes to work, where it embezzles the entire nation's savings and retires in some rotten country that happily takes the stolen money and refuses to give it back.

So the country that has lost everything, facing starvation, sends an invasion force to the rotten country, and defeats its army, many millions die, and they finally confront the 'embezzler' who says :

'We have to steal, because without sin there would be no good behaviour to contrast it with'.

So the invaders wipe out the rotten country and the embezzler. They write a book which tells this story, and give it out to teach people why such things happen. They realise that it is certain types of people that just refuse to be taught the difference between right and wrong that always are the people that do this sort of thing. People that think that men and men having sex is perfectly functional behaviour are a prime example of such people. So they make a great effort to write books and stories and warn of such corruption of the basic idea of right and wrong.

And, for some time, all is well, but people get comfortable, and say things like 'that story was long ago, and the world is differrent now, we have lots of fancy gadgets, so stealing is ok, and sodomy is ok'.

The descendants of the invaders start to get worried. They realise that the same problem is going to happen again. Before long, someone is going to embezzle everything they own, and they will face starvation and war.

So they find the greedy people who try and justify their theft and corruption with sayings like :
'We have to steal and sodomize, because without sin there would be no good behaviour to contrast it with'

And they make every effort to point out, that, yes, sometimes people make mistakes, and sometimes they learn from those mistakes.

But, people who refuse to learn from their mistakes,
People who wilfully do wrong, when they know its wrong,
cannot be allowed to destroy the nations wealth.

In fact, to allow such people free reign, is itself, just as big a problem as the problem itself.

And, those that have the power to prevent it, but just shrug and say "don't worry", are probably themselves involved in the embezzling and are themselves thieves and such corrupt people.

My question is:

Where do you draw the line?

An Explanation as to Why Sin and Values are Mutual and Why they Cause Each other


Firstly, I think it might be confusing for some to consider that I was refering "sin" and "values" always perceivably opposing dualities. It is just easier for a fundamentalist to grasp it this way I would imagine.


The point I'm trying to make is that these can only both exist, or both not exist. Not to mention, these are both not mutually exclusive phenomenon to the mind. And the people who I am really wanting to read this are those who believe in absolute truth, because it is the aspect of absolute truth that destroys the reciprocity of these two themes, which is a real problem. Without the reciprocity, would logic not concur that the themes would instead be mutually exclusive in the times of perceivance as opposing dualities? Yet at the same time absolute truth seems to be required for the elasticity of the two themes, like a balance. Seems paradoxical, , oh well. I may just be confused. Well now wait... ok absolute truths are equivalent to one's suppositive truths; others can follow them or choose to not, and make other truths, truths.

I suppose we might want to get out of the way that ways in which we should act is not expressed as truths, let alone absolute truths, unless the "should" can also be expressed as a truth, let alone an absolute truth. And of course, this is impossible to purely have because we react to the reality we all individually have. Each person's reality is different, so there can be no proper, should-be-basis 'truth'. Unless we want to be ignorant, sordid people, we must conclude that there can be no absolute standards for our reactionary natures that can be considered 'divine' (though I'll leave it open to negative interpretation for what divine could mean to all fundamentalists out there).

Also, I never ever said that sin and one's values are the same thing. They enact eachother's existence sort-to-speak.

For example, lets say I value my family. Well I can't ignore science in this one so I ask myself how? Logically, or emotionally? And I'll say both ofcourse. And keeping in mind that...

1. Emotion trumps logic in terms of how perceive for our reactions.
   
   
2. Emotion only affects emotional value, logic only affects logical value.
   

So when I can say emotion trumps logic I mean that when somebody is going to act, (perhaps act in response to value and priorities), emotion will trump the logic. (or perhaps logical value doesn't exist and it is only an indirect cause for value in which in order to get to value, logic sets the emotional path in which emotion is still in the way in order to get to the value, but it's irrelevant right now)

So when I hold logical value or reflection I suppose of what virtues having a family has, then I get the directed emotional value based on the perceivable logical traits. And then the reactionary nature towards my family will be reflected upon the emotional value. This'll determine whether I argue or obey my parents, or whether I get along with my brothers. So sin is just a definitive context (relative too, for the non-fundamentalists, guests) of the reaction or response in comparisson to what I should do. And what I should do is complementary to the virtue of whatever I choose. This can be the ten commandments, or in virtue to the family; whatever self interest comes to mind (hopefully virtue and not indifference) or is felt to have the highest priority, perhaps differing from situation to situation (as it does).

So sin, it's context, requires preliminary values. This is obvious. But they are mutual when we do not base these values off of 'absolute truth'. And then they become a disadvantage to eachother when absolute truth is implied.

This is obviously due basically to the relativeness of everything we can perceive and interact with conflicting with the 'tried' absoluteness of supposed truths (which again, are not really so).

Sin worsens values or rather, makes values and the reactionary nature not really rectifying eachother like they should when there is absoluteness. If I always obey my parents, does that always fulfill the should? What is the should, besides the instruction to obey thy father and mother. What is attained by doing this? Not sinning? A seeming purity in order to go to heaven? :nonooo:

Better question which seems more righteuous to me what with the altruistic theme here. What is attained for my parents by always obeying them? What can this God attain that allows it to instruct us on what we should do? Ofcourse, I can't question that in the paradoxical situation involving God, because anything I can point out about it can just be refuted with, well... God is divine, explanation is not required.

They say religion is the why and science is the how. Well this particular divine isn't. It just instructs. It doesn't make suggestions. With instructions, you hardly get the idea from its definition that an explanation is coming with it. You just do as follows. But when we get suggestions, the context of suggest (IMO) also implies a little bit of a why. All explanations are not empirically proven you see. Well to be fair, I guess I shouldn't say all, that'd be cynical. There's wisdom in the bible that can't be ignored when read.

It just seems to me that the motives of absolute reactionary responses implies a selfish motive, maybe just maybe because the bounds of the reactionary nature in response to the reality are not purely objective, but primarily subjective.

Anyways, I suppose now we can understand that the meaning of 'sin' must change when the absoluteness picture is taken out. No longer can sin be considered reactioning in a tangent to the should-be basis (ex. ten commandments) when the "relative" aspect comes in.

Sin is now an action defined by immoral. And morals are relative so...(relative + relative)... this quantifies in a direction, a nature or pattern of one's reactions.

And therefore, sin is ethical because it mutuates (can you believe that's actually a word) for values, which we adhere to for meaning in life, in our definition of living.

The real sin is not questioning the absolute way to act as if every situation has this monistic purpose to it that you yourself who is the one experiencing and doing the actions, are not to propose revisal of said truths.

Kant said we must constantly evaluate society. But since this God is divine and takes the highest priority, I'm still forced to surrender.:surrender: So, fundamentalists, don't you see the paradoxical flaw that takes advantage of the public's mind?! Don't you see the childish scenario here with taking a spiritual priority and making it a physical priority too, as if they can peacefully adhere to the same flawlessness?!

I'm not saying that faith is bad, or that spirituality is insane. I'm saying that to justify any one's standards as priority to all else's is inevitably promoting an immoral resultant towards society. So what if God is "divine". The standards that are evoked upon the physical happen to be human language, so they would have a hard time delving into the realms of the standards of divinity. (Not that I'm saying we can't figure it out for ourselves ofcourse, a much more optimistic approach to life if I might add)

I mean, it would make much more spiritual sense if these standards were invoked by such experience, like qualia to all human minds. Still irrational though.

Hello Holiday

Good post and understandable. If I might offer my thoughts.
Sin is ethical? Perhaps it can be understood that evil (sin) is understandable, but ethical? I think, if we acquiesce and adopt the notion that "evil" is just a requisite part of life, I think we will gradually become accustom to greater pain as we recognize "lesser" pain a "good" thing, as our quality of life slowly sinks into the abyss. It seems to be a lot easier to rationalize "evil" than to do what is necessary to take those measures that will eliminate it or at least minimize it. Inequity causes evil, IMO. It's about balance and the more "out of balance" our reality becomes, the more "evil" we can expect.

It is easy to blame socio-economics for the evil in this world. Well, change the socio-economic structure. Just how bad does it have to get before we do something. We live behind burglar bars, alarms, wrought iron fences, armed guards, security cameras and those are the lucky ones as if there is nothing we can do about it. Just how "out of balance" does it have to get before we at least effort to achieve a more balance global arena. It is the reason for all our wars, hate and plagues that have ever occurred in our existence.

To say "we need evil" to appreciate "goodness" IMO is a cop out, in all due respect. I totally understand how such an assumption can be made in that is the way it has always been, but resting in that resolve will only exacerbate the problem and guarantee it's exponential worsening as time goes on. The entire universe has a "balance" to it, and we are the only ones who are out of balance, as I have often said it "par for the course" as we come to the understand all are needed to maintain that balance.
It easy to assume evil is that catalyst that spurs us to "do good" in that it has always been that way as we rationalize the inequity and label those who are less fortunate in that they do not have the money, intelligence, money, status, color, or beliefs to rate in this so very "mixed up" world. Does it always have to be that way? I, for one, think not. IMO.

Call me nuts, idealistic, optimistic or just a wishful thinker, I like the way I think as I refuse to think we are not culpable for the mess we find ourselves. Rather than to observe our past and admit to our mistakes, we rationalize them and take those measures to "make" them fit into today as we continue to arm ourselves from that "evil" that surrounds us. As long as our being is in "survival mode", man will resort to anything to maintain that survival and to the degree that we maintain that "evil" is innate, we will continue to lose all of what "living" is all about as we will eventually become to define "good" as a lesser pain from a greater pain. When it could be just the opposite as we become to know evil as just a lesser good as we venture into tomorrow looking forward to a greater good.
Reeling back in now. That's my two cents worth.

William

You`re absolutely right. I shall change the premise to be instead of sin is ethical, I will say sin is not unethical.

Ha. Now that makes it all better.

William

I think the way we can view sin is very dependent on the absoluteness of our point of view. From the viewpoint of omniscience and omnipotence where you are dealing only in absolutes you might consider good and evil equally valid choices.

Sadly, such a viewpoint is meaningless for us who have to live our everyday lives. As long as we accept sin as something that just "goes with the territory" of being human we will never eliminate suffering. So the continued fight against sin and evil remains a worthwhile, even essential, pursuit. We may never be able to, yet we must always act as though we can abolish sin altogether.

I don't see how your concepts can exist on a spekulative imagination.

Granted your "absolute truth" exist, it still doesn't explain anything about the conjunction of the other 2 concepts.