Dont you think that after two thousand years, mankinds sin has been paid for?

Maybe there was interest.

Wasn’t it all paid for the moment Jesus was sacrificed?

@Fred931 Yeah, but it took two thousand years to preach the gospel to mankind. Not everyone knew about it. Now they do.

I wish that I could believe like that…well, maybe not. It might be simpler, but my mind won’t settle for that kind of answer.

What sin?

@MissA Maybe it has to do with the changing of the ages. You know, Pisces to Aquarius?

@wundayatta Original Sin.

Moses bought a set of laws for a bronze age tribe living in a fucking desert. “Mankind’s sin” is therefore meaningless – I don’t consider making a statue to Baal a sin, thank you very much. Dumb, perhaps, but not a sin.

Seriously… how can anyone argue that Jesus paid for the sins of mankind when the “mankind” that wrote the old testament knew of less than 30% of the entire planet’s surface and inhabitants?

@the100thmonkey Its a crazy world.

Quite.

@the100thmonkey I believe the bible is an amazing witness to these ideas.

@KeithWilson Original what?

I don’t think there is such a thing as “mankind’s sin” or “original sin” or anything like that so I don’t think that there is anything that ever needed to be paid for or atoned for in the first place. I think that we are each responsible for our own actions, though there can sometimes be mitigating circumstanced, whether those actions are good or bad and that if there is a god, that god will only hold us responsible for our own actions, good or bad.

@wunayatta Sin. Some people do have it.

@lilycoyote Thats not disagreeable.

Your question assumes a lot of things. I have no idea why you assume them. But I’ll tell you right now I think that the notion of original sin is pretty darn silly, and I can’t believe so many people take it seriously.

@wundayatta Thank you for your statements. Also for recognizing that I do take it seriously. I assume that Original Sin is legitimate, for whatever reason.

I dont assume to know why.

@KeithWilson: It’s pretty clear that you do believe in the witness provided by the Bible. That’s your call. Rather than assume, you should question – your faith might be strengthened by the challenge.

You’re entitled to believe whatever you like. It doesn’t mean that the ideas contained within any book are actually valid.

You assume that original sin is a legitimate concept; I don’t, and I’m in full agreement with @wundayatta in that I think it’s daft. It’s also damaging.

maybe… but we made a whole bunch of new sins…in the past 2000 years

@KeithWilson are you saying that original sin has had a hold on humanity until now?

@talljasperman Some of us.

@liminal Yeah. For the first time in history we a free of it.

There is no such thing as “original sin” & the concept of a parent (even a “god” parent) being willing to allow their child to be killed so brutally is totally unreal. Jesus may or may not have been a real person, but he was not “god” in human form. What he was (if he existed) was a charismatic individual leading a new movement. Every ‘new’ religion needs something to firmly establish their ethos in the minds of the people, so by killing Jesus, the new religion of Christianity was firmly established. The bible was written by mankind – “god” does not exist & did not write the bible. The bible is full of bloodshed & war & cruelty & full of contradictions. Original sin was merely a concept to keep women subjugated.

@the100thmonkey I try to stay open-minded.

@Linda_Owl Thats not disagreeable either.

@wundayatta Yes, the concept of original sin was one of the first big beefs I had with the religion of my upbringing. Even at the age of nine it seemed to be nonsense. I just couldn’t believe that god would hold people responsible for “sins” they did not commit, then would only absolve them of “sins” that they didn’t commit in the first place by making them jump through some hoop, that hoop being to believe in a person and an in event that they had nothing at all to do with. Didn’t make one lick of sense to me, didn’t buy it, even at the age of nine.

Personally, I was on the fast track to atheism before I had a near death experience at eighteen. My belief in God is manifest. I am personal witness to His existence.

@KeithWilson Well, believing in god and believing in any of the various or in any particular one of the doctrines, dogmas and theologies available for consumption are two entirely different things, in my opinion.

@lilycoyote You dont have to be a sucker to believe in this stuff. Pick and choose what is right for you.

the sin is paid for. You only have to accept that He has done that.

@filmfann Better than animal sacrifices.

Abraham and Issac were a precursor to Christ.

@KeithWilson: You said, “Yeah, but it took two thousand years to preach the gospel to mankind. Not everyone knew about it. Now they do.” I disagree very much that. How did you come up with that idea? Personally, I’ve talked to more people than I can count who have no idea who Jesus is/was and know nothing of Christianity. And I don’t understand how everyone knowing about it would suddenly make everyone’s sins paid for…Maybe you could clarify this for me.

Let me get this straight as well: You believe that after 2,000 years the “original sin” has suddenly been paid for? Is that right? How did that happen?

@Aqua Yes. Enough people know now to suffice for official reasons.

@Aqua Also, something has to happen.

Okay, this is the social section, so don’t mind me while I dig in, here.

Being alive is not a crime. Sexual thoughts are not a crime. Wanting knowledge is not a crime. But when these things are not crimes and anyone can do them all willy-nilly, it makes a population hard to control. And you know how some people are, they just want to run things. And what better way to run things and have people give you lots of money (and a tenth of every harvest) than to make it a crime to basically be alive and human? In fact, if you can make the people swallow that, you’ll have ensured buy-in for centuries! Especially if you make “questioning this religion” the most awful crime of all!

So, invent a religion, and make this religion the only way that people can pay for the crime of being alive. Demand sacrifices, demand tribute,and no matter what they give, say it’ll never be enough, because gosh darn it, people keep going back to those evil sinful lives they have. What a scheme! And finally, have a figure that is the ultimate sacrifice, and as long as they believe in him forever and ever and still keep giving money to your religion, tell them it’s okay to be alive, finally, at least if the keep feeling guilty about it. It’s the best insurance mandate ever, and people keep buying in because those damned sexual urges just never go away, almost as if they’re supposed to be there!

And what’s crazy is that the people who buy into this without ever really seeming to question it have a large Venn overlap, at least near where I live, with the people who are So Very Angry about any kind of governmental mandates, such as health insurance. If only all that anger went toward the organizational structure that’s kept them buying in for centuries, then… then… the Emperor’s tailor would finally be outed and yes, the sin would finally be paid off, since people would realize that there never was a sin there in the first place!

Yes, I know it’s a deeper thing than that, it’s all faithy and spiritual and has a lot more to offer than eternal guilt. I know, I really do. But sometimes, looking from the outside in, it sure looks a lot like this. It’s amazing what you can get people to do when you can convince them that their own existence is riddled with sin and error.

@Aqua re: Personally, I’ve talked to more people than I can count who have no idea who Jesus is/was and know nothing of Christianity.

Do you live in a deep, dark rainforest where people wear leaves for clothes?

@laureth Thanks for digging in. I dont mind at all. Interesting to hear what you have to say. All I have to say is that even the apostles are sloppy representatives of the faith. The priests and so forth. Most have no idea what theyre talking about. Doesnt mean there isnt any truth in these ideas. Just bad representatives.

It might seem outdated, but that is because it is outdated.

Oh my Lord. I’m probably going to hate myself for this later. I can clearly see that you have some sort of agenda here that none of us can grasp because none of us is on your “plane of existence”. So barring the fact that a great many of the people on this site are atheists who can, even so, argue circles around you (or me) any day and know the bible a lot better than you,(or me) they give it no credence whatsoever. Barring the fact that I myself can see the fallacy in your initial point. Accepting the idea that according to the bible and doctrine the sin was paid for the moment Jesus died on the cross, or a least the moment of his ascension (for the pedantic in the group); this particulr moment in history is of no spiritual significance at all.
You have once again gotten some idea in your head that makes sese only to you. The very nature of your posts leads me to suspect a traumatic head injury, perhaps even an ABI. Check here, or not.
Do not represent God anymore. He has enough bad press without you adding to it.

@Trillian Great Answer!

@laureth: Nope. I’ve just lived in some very multi-cultural areas, with lots of non-Christians. I’m not saying nobody knew, but there were many who’d heard of Christ but knew little to nothing of the details.

Nice Link….

Yes, it was.

According to the Bible no sins can be paid for through suffering or time. The only way is through accepting Jesus Christ paying the price for all of our sins. According to many fundamentalist Christians we are not suffering here during our time alive (even in the absolute lowest moments of our lives) compared to what our suffering will be like in an eternal hell. No wonder I gave up on Christianity and religion altogether.

i still think some people don’t know about Jesus and yes I think it was all paid the moment he said: It is done. Thank you Jesus

All we have to do to convince people of their sins is to burn them a little; incredibly painful, slow to heal, if there’s healing at all. If there’s anything left but thick scars and dead nerves, there’s always something to be burned, or old wounds to be opened up. There will always be sin as long as there’s someone telling someone else it’s in them; there doesn’t have to be anger or tears, or even words in this. All you have to do is ignore the innocence and wonder and intuition of a person. Simplify them, break them. Make them like you, make them numb. And if they confuse you by refusing to stop feeling just burn them until there’s nothing left to feel.

It’s much easier to believe that you are evil than it is to believe that the people around you are profoundly abusive. It’s easier to believe that sin is what makes do things that hurt you and others, and it’s easier to believe that sin is what makes you do things that hurt yourself and others. The idea that they and you are simply foolish is more terrifying, because that doesn’t have a simple solution. If we didn’t have evil to be afraid of we would have to fear society itself, and that’s too fucking scary.

Hell, forget about mankind! What about the poor animals? If we are to believe the doctrine, they suffer and die by the millions because of sin too- even though they cannot themselves sin, cannot experience redemption, do not have souls and have no promise of an afterlife.

So every red fox writhing in a leghold trap, every dying wildebeest calf being eaten alive by parasites, every raccoon hit by a car that crawls away to a slow death, every deer that starves in a hard winter… they suffer and suffer and suffer to no good end, all supposedly under the aegis of a just God? Billions and billions and billions of lives, all enduring agony for no explicable reason?

The problem of evil is what, in large part, made me an atheist.

Each person should look at their personal sins, instead of dumping that concept on collectivity and hope that it works itself out.

I don’t believe in stuff like that, but I don’t really think things will ever really get any better if we don’t recognize our actions. Or maybe we do, but just don’t care. Yeah I really don’t know, I mean I don’t even know what is, primarily, important?

Life’s not about knowing what’s “primarily important,” it’s about maintaining the ability to ask the question. It’s not a question that a single person can ever hold the correct answer for. But when people stop asking the question and start solidifying overly simplistic answers, that’s when evil is created, because the things that contradict those answers are unquestionably evil. Things that can not exist yet actually exist; what is that if not evil?

When people stop asking the questions and start “finding” the answers, they stop caring, except when they’re afraid. Fear, shame and guilt can discourage specific behaviors in most people, but those things render a person unable to be consistently self-determined regardless of their effectiveness, and that is the only way one can be truly responsible for their actions. There’s not enough responsibility, because people recognize their regrettable actions as sins instead of ignorance, foolishness or illness (assuming their actions should be regrettable at all.) sorry if this is too vague, i’m up too late

Yeah, I like the quest, rather than its outcome. Not denying that, nor do I claim to having found anything. If I did I wouldn’t ask.