Calling Anyone a Sinner is Slanderous
GOD BELIEF BLAMES US FOR EVIL
If there is an all-good God, then he is not to blame for
suffering and evil. We must be and we must have caused it by sin. Sin is doing
what is wrong and forbidden by God and doing it of your own free will. It's a
crime against God who is understood as judge and king.
In the light of the fact that beliefs should help us and
direct us to the truth and give us tools to find it, we have to say that blaming
people for evil so that you can believe God is innocent and good is mercenary
and evil. It is judgemental. It is tactical. You need outstanding evidence that
God exists and has given free will before you can accuse. All Christian worship
offends sensible atheists for they know the worship reflects a bad attitude
towards people. Christians degrade themselves by calling themselves sinners and
want to spread this degradation to others.
SIN IS IDOLATRY
The Bible in Romans chapter 1 states that all sin is
really a form of idolatry. The intention is to put some created thing before
God. What is so bad about idolatry? It is giving devotion or honour to what is
not perfectly good. This could be money or even some pagan god like Krishna who
likes promiscuous sex. The Bible speaks of exchanging the truth of God for a
lie. It blames sin on our disconnectedness with God and says that
disconnectedness is essentially idolatry. Paul says we are in Adam. We have a
spiritual relationship with Adam. This relationship is destructive for us and
leads to us losing our lives as God decrees we must die for our sins. This means
that a sinner is not really an individual and part of something bigger. If it is
slander to call somebody a sinner that is making it worse!
SIN REFUTED BY UNFREE WILL
We have no free will because we can only concentrate on
one thing at a time. At the point you make a decision, you don’t know what you
are doing so you cannot be free. If I didn’t exist a moment ago and only came
into existence now I wouldn’t feel any different and yet forces from the moment
past have caused my present action. I couldn’t do any different. God could
control me even if I am still free. But it makes no sense to say I am free.
The doctrine of sin accuses the human race of what they have not done. It asks
us to approve of the needless evil allowed by the Lord and to make ourselves as
unkind as he is.
If God revealed the doctrine and is good then reason is no use in determining
what is good and evil. We must believe that we are insane and just believe him
even when what he commands seems to be evil.
GOD AND THE MYSTERY OF WHAT IS SINFUL
The doctrine of sin comes from the doctrine of God. God is something that is
incomprehensible. The concept makes us confused. For example, nobody can explain
why he thinks that it is good to let us suffer so then it is natural that his
moral rules or some of them cannot be understood. This little monstrosity leads
to lots more. Anybody can make up a cruel rule and say that it is a mystery. The
monstrosity is the tool for Churches to make slaves of their victims. By asking
us to believe in him God is condoning all of this because he thinks it is all to
good for us. Because he can’t or won’t provide evidence he renders anybody who
wants slaves to get them with stupid guesses unfettered.
Unsurprisingly, the Bible and religion are inebriated with moral principles that
make no sense.
THE SEVERITY OF THE CONDEMNATION OF SIN
If there is a good God of infinite power and love, then sin insults him and is
the worst evil. It is the cause of evil and suffering and so is the worst evil
also in the sense that those evils are rooted in it.
Few buy religion's claim that it loves the sinner and hates the sin. The sin is
the sinner. The person who claims to love the sinner but this is denial. Even if
you could love the criminal and hate the crime, you certainly cannot love the
sinner and hate the sin when the sin is so bad. Hate the sin means hate the
sinner for sinner means a person who is the sin in the sense that it is his
sinful character that is the problem. Sin means you are a sinful person. Sin is
not separable from the person. For that reason as well, to hate the sin and to
condemn it very severely is to condemn the person as severely.
XIANITY DENIES THAT NATURAL EVIL IS AS BAD AS SIN
It is shocking that the God belief implies that sin is the worst evil and that a
small sin is worse than a natural disaster like an earthquake. God allows
natural evil to happen implying he prefers it to sin. But God should abhor sin
and evil the same. Evil whether wilful or not should offend him infinitely. We
do not condone the actions of a tyrant who maims and butchers and say it was for
an understandable but wrong purpose and we can see and feel the tyrant. We
cannot be as sure there is a God the way we can be as sure that the tyrant
exists so we condone the seemingly evil ways of a being who may not exist in
preference to condoning the similar ways of a real person. But it is better to
give a possible reason for God’s actions than just to say, “Oh God knows what he
is doing – but I cannot explain it”, which is an unimpressive cop-out. So if a
young mother is killed tragically you should say, “Perhaps if she had lived she
would have turned into a monster that abuses her child so God did right to take
her”, if she had been showing signs of a bad temper before she died which has to
be done if there is a God who comes first, whose honour matters more than the
dead woman’s.
Another problem is that to condemn a human being for doing something like
slapping someone on the face and not to condemn God for making things like
smallpox and flesh-eating bugs is terribly unjust. We can’t reward and praise
bad actions even when done by well-meaning people and God cannot be an
exception. It is worse when the person will suffer from the condemnation and God
cannot for he is out of reach and the Church says nobody can give him anything
for he is perfect and is totally happy. It is certainly worse to hurt a person
you can see and touch for something minor or fairly minor and let God off the
hook for worse when you cannot be as sure that he is as real as the human
person.
SINS INVENTED
A religion that invents sins should be dumped immediately. For example, the
Catholic Church argues that deliberate sexual self-stimulation even for a few
seconds is a huge sin.
A religion that exaggerates how bad sin is should be dumped immediately. It says
sin says no to a relationship with God and this is terrible for God is so good.
A religion that exaggerates how bad some sins are should be dumped immediately.
For example, suspecting Joseph might have been Jesus's father is considered to
be an outrageous blasphemy in Christianity.
And it should be dumped yesterday if it says anybody should suffer everlasting
torment as a punishment if he dies. When a system lies about sins and doesn't
know what it is talking about, the doctrine must hold a vindictive attraction
for it.
And it should be dumped yesterday if it says anybody should be sentenced to
death by God for sins. The Bible God says that the wages of sin is death.
Any religious system that opposes a sensible understanding of right and wrong
has no right to exist. Letting yourself be called a member is failing to take a
stand and thus is encouraging the system.
People condemn a human being for doing something that is harmless like
homosexuality or something that isn’t the worst crime like adultery and then God
can do worse and be thought well of. He is praised and loved even though people
believe that he makes viruses that torment and kill children. That is
disgusting.
When sin is infinitely evil if you believe in God for he hates all sin
infinitely only a strict Puritanism and fanaticism can follow. Sin has to be
kept down at all costs. Love is strict.
Some people feel that sin is so bad that you have to avoid accusing another of
sin at all costs. The teacher can be paralysed by this doctrine so that she
won't judge a bully as a bully.
They will feel that the Puritanism is what is needed but the problem is applying
it properly. The lack of knowledge about what is in the heart of another is a
roadblock.
If you have a choice between destroying the sinner and the saint you have to
destroy the sinner - even if the sinner has done something harmless but
forbidden such as masturbated for a second. To condemn a sinful choice is to
condemn the choice-maker. The sin is the sinner in that sense. What we would do
or think is part of who and what we are. Such a situation being hypothetical
means it still tells us what we are.
God sends earthquakes and plagues to eradicate even sin that harms nobody very
much which shows that we have to be strict and not let anybody away with
anything for he is strict. God hates sin though it does him no harm – which the
Churches all agree on - and need not do us much harm either. He could prevent
the act of rape from doing much harm to the victim by making it easier to
recover from magically. Some people do recover from being abused surprisingly
easily. Instead of letting us batter somebody to death, he could allow us to
commit loads of sins that do little harm but which eventually add up to being as
bad as this but in which the harm is spread out among many people and over a
long time that it has no devastating effects. All these considerations suggest
that God is rigid and does things by the book and that we should be the same for
he wants us to conform to his image. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that
anybody who merely calls his brother a fool should be dragged before the
Sanhedrin. Jesus was saying that civil freedom was evil. He said we must be
perfect as God is perfect.
And the strictness always has to start by saying to
people that they are very grave sinners.
If that is untrue, it is a very grave untruth and calumny.
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