Atheism and the seven deadly sins.

[Svartalf]

I'm a lust filled greedy glutton, and find no evil in that fact.

[drl2]

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth

I've hit on all of them today except anger. Somebody say something to piss me off so I can meet my quota.

[Mysturji]

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth

I've hit on all of them today except anger. Somebody say something to piss me off so I can meet my quota.

You're a twat.

[Bella Fortuna]

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth

[surreptitious57]

The way to remember them is visualise an egg running around a race track - E G G L A P S

Or an egg slapping you in the face - E G G S L A P

Hard not to break them - hell, it's actually impossible. Even God broke one, possibly two - anger / envy - see Exodus

Try to live your life by the Golden Rule - you'll make mistakes, we all do. But all part of the learning process

[Berthold]

I've hit on all of them today except anger. Somebody say something to piss me off so I can meet my quota.

Joseph Ratzinger is a charming guy.

[hiyymer]

'Sin' becomes an alien concept if one is an atheist I think most of us would agree. And yet those with a socially oriented moral sense would agree that there is such a thing as good and bad behaviour from a social and functional perspective. I tend to think, with a sort of social evolution hat on that a sense of right and wrong is functional and advantageous for human social groups.

Where does that put the so called seven deadly sins, some of which it seems to me are about personal behaviour with not too much social context, do you think? Do they have a socially useful function in terms of trying to moderate behaviour? For those of you who sensibly are well past the stage where you would choose to retain such information here is the list.

Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Anger
Greed
Sloth

Simply stated we are a package of biological mechanisms that can be viewed as implicit felt motivations. The moral choice is the momentary experience of those mechanisms being in conflict; most commonly the conflict of a social motivation with an individual motivation. In the religious version of things the social should always win, but of course if it did we'd be dead. Take lust as an example. What would happen to the next generation if no one wanted sex.

[Brian Peacock]

The Cardinal Sins...

• Pride
  Envy
  Gluttony
  Lust
  Anger
  Greed
  Sloth

...as compared to The Cardinal Virtues...

• Natural Virtues
  • Justice
    Prudence
    Temperance
    Fortitude
  (And I suppose we shouldn't forget the) Theological Virtues
  • Faith
    Hope
    Charity
    Chastity

The Cardinal (Deadly Seven) Sins appear to offer prescriptions for behaviour in favour of the moral good of the individual and society. However, all the 'sins' actually deal with an abrogation of the virtue of Temperance, a virtue which promotes the good of limiting an excessive expression (or indulgence if you prefer) of our natural desires and inclinations.

Plato was big on the virtues and in his discourse The Republic, which is in part a kind of poetic comparison between the body and purpose of man with the body and purpose of society, he argued that it was when the natural virtues were given room to flourish and/or were at their most abundant then the most good was possible and both man and society would tend towards a state of well-being, happiness, and ultimately perfection. Aristotle had quite a bit to say on the subject of the virtues also, maintaining that the virtuous was that which represented a balance between an excess and a deficit (for example, the virtue of courage was the mean between the excess of foolhardiness and the deficit of cowardice). I think it is important to make some mention of virtue when considering sin if only to point out that the two are not exactly polar opposites, as the notion of virtue concerns the expression of personal qualities whereas the notion of sin is a more straight-forward proscription and judgement on action - one is not rendered virtuous automatically simply by not being sinful as Catholicism would have you believe.

With the Catholic Church being a strictly authoritarian, totalitarian force in Medieval European society the Platonic ideal was easily recast, re-emphasised, re-launched with a bit of PR spin thrown in. If the idea of a natural, innate kind of virtue were allowed to develop the populace might have cause to question the notion of God as the absolute, ultimate, supreme and (most importantly) necessary arbiter of all moral and ethical goodness. Of course, this would mean that there might also be little need for God's views on virtue to be so tightly enunciated and so heavily enforced by His self-declared Holy votaries on Earth whose whole raison d'etre was/is to promote the theocratic totality of their views. To embrace the notion of a life of goodness without reference to, regardless of, or aside from God would, in the Church's eyes at least, lead to the paradoxical 'sin of false goodness' where every good, though good, is necessarily a bad unless authorised by God through the Church. Even the ordinary, uneducated peasant could have spotted this idea for the hokum it is and might (quite rightly) have begun to challenge the implicit religious assumption that one needs religion in order to be good. The PR coup embodied in the deadly sins was in casting personal faith in God in terms of strict obedience to the institution of the Church with the concomitant sins of non-compliance, that is; one did not need the offices of a powerful religion in order to be good, but to ensure that one was not being bad, or; the only good was in not being bad. Thus justified the Catholic Church of the Medieval period pursued 'the bad' in Europe with all due prejudice, that is; by defining 'sin' broadly, categorising the 'sins' in their particulars, and then prosecuting their judgements by the poker, pyre and rack, by the force of arms and by economic force as well.

The 7 deadly sins therefore are part of a long Christian tradition in decreed judgemental strictures by which all, not just Christian, are deemed to be held to account before the magic sky daddy. The cardinal (pivotal, principal, chief, essential) virtues are superseded by the cardinal sins and emphasise what one should not do, rather than what one could or should aspire to being and doing. If not guarded against, these sins would lead one to a punishment in this life (perhaps even by the hand of the Church) and then further and perpetual punishment in the next life as one's soul was thrown kicking and screaming into the fiery pits of hell to burn for all eternity while Satan pumped his foetid, burning stools into your ever-open mouth.

It's nonsense of course, one does not require celestial permission in order to do and be good any more than one necessarily requires a divine check-list of 'the bad' by which to judge the value and worth of one's life and achievements. One does not require a supernatural threat to one's eternal soul to accept that excess, and an excess of excess, can be deleterious to one's person and to society, but likewise one also knows that there is no particular virtue in denying oneself the pleasures and comforts of life if that also leads to pain and misery. So striking a good balance, as Aristotle suggested, is what a moral life is all about, and what one person considers sinful in and of itself is not necessarily deleterious to the person, to others or to society, but just against the rules of a particular religious institution or a particular view.

_________________________________________
Some Links:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?sea ... hmode=none
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_virtues
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/
http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2s.htm

[hiyymer]

The Cardinal Sins...
It's nonsense of course, one does not require celestial permission in order to do and be good any more than one necessarily requires a divine check-list of 'the bad' by which to judge the value and worth of one's life and achievements. One does not require a supernatural threat to one's eternal soul to accept that excess, and an excess of excess, can be deleterious to one's person and to society, but likewise one also knows that there is no particular virtue in denying oneself the pleasures and comforts of life if that also leads to pain and misery. So striking a good balance, as Aristotle suggested, is what a moral life is all about, and what one person considers sinful in and of itself is not necessarily deleterious to the person, to others or to society, but just against the rules of a particular religious institution or a particular view.

The church making you wrong for x, is no different than you making the church wrong for their arbitrary rule against x. These are all just thoughts that make us right and on top. It's about power. Actually standing for something and enrolling others in it never makes someone else wrong or you right.

[Brian Peacock]

The Cardinal Sins...
It's nonsense of course, one does not require celestial permission in order to do and be good any more than one necessarily requires a divine check-list of 'the bad' by which to judge the value and worth of one's life and achievements. One does not require a supernatural threat to one's eternal soul to accept that excess, and an excess of excess, can be deleterious to one's person and to society, but likewise one also knows that there is no particular virtue in denying oneself the pleasures and comforts of life if that also leads to pain and misery. So striking a good balance, as Aristotle suggested, is what a moral life is all about, and what one person considers sinful in and of itself is not necessarily deleterious to the person, to others or to society, but just against the rules of a particular religious institution or a particular view.

The church making you wrong for x, is no different than you making the church wrong for their arbitrary rule against x. These are all just thoughts that make us right and on top. It's about power. Actually standing for something and enrolling others in it never makes someone else wrong or you right.

A fair point - if one feels that the arbitrariness of disparate moral codes renders them all essentially equal; just one set of rules or another, take your pick.

But my intention is not to score points over the morality of the Church, to appear on top, but to hint that the morality of doctrine is morality in name only. Just as a law is a rule, the moral rules of faith traditions are laws - just because something is permissible or proscribed, legal or illegal, does not reflect on the morality of the rule nor on the moral status of those who obey or disobey the rule.

A religion makes you wrong for x if and when you do not adhering to the beliefs and practices of the tradition or hold to the rules ascribed to the notion of the 'proper' Christian, Muslim or Hindu etc. Whether one acts for good or for ill is often immaterial to the pious; just being without a god, or holding to a competing interpretation or understanding of a god is enough to define one as a sinner - a moral failure. However, do and be whatever a religious institution requires of you and your words and deeds are imbued with rectitude and righteousness by default. In this way religiosity is proclaimed by many to be an indicator of rectitude in and of itself.

A religion, and particularly authoritarian religions (but are there really ant other kind, is there any religion which insistts that it is OK to not be religioius?) requires obedience, for only in sticking to the rules, undertaking the prescribed observances, and employing the correct terminology can the votaries of Tony (or some other nominated fantasy figure) judge one's level of Faith. To obey without question is to accept the supremacy of the Magikman and the primacy of Tony's authority on Earth; to question his authorities is bring into question either Tony's credentials or to place one's personal interpretation over that of his nominated representatives.

Yet if an adherent of Tonyism makes a commitment to obey the Word Of Tony without question then they immediately outsource their moral autonomy and render themselves mere moral automatons, unquestioning robots which simply follow orders; "I was only doing what somebody told me Tony wanted me to do and had no concern about the outcome of my action." then becomes a moral moral justification for action. The default moral status of action has been predetermined by Tony (or one of his supernatural cohorts) and communicated to the 'faithful' by his (self-)appointed authorities on Earth, if Tony wills it then it is good, and what is good is only that which Tony wills.

While it is true that the morality of each and any action can be adduced from its motivation and outcome in relation to any code, principle or rule, and that these rules change from society to society and from time to time, the motivation for the faithful, righteous adherent is not to be good but to always follow the rule. If the adherent were to acknowledge that the outcomes of some action constituent with the rule of God could be, or were, morally dubious or suspect in some way then they would also have to acknowledge that following God's rule was not always just and/or absolutely morally correct. Therefore, for example, for the Israelites to put to the sword 'all that breaths among the Amalekites.,' men, women, children, goats and sheep, an act of ethnic cleansing by genocide by today's standards, is good because if conformed to God's will. Similarly, if God had willed that all gingers be slain that would have been good too, not least because God is declared to be perfectly good and anything he desires, like the death of a whole race of people, is and can only ever be perfectly good also.

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

[hiyymer]

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

What "code" do you think the Israelites were following when they wiped out some entire tribe?

[JimC]

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

What "code" do you think the Israelites were following when they wiped out some entire tribe?

They were following a code built into our hominid DNA (one that urges, but does not have to be followed)

A code that says "take a weaker tribe, slay its men and boys, and take the women and girls for youself"

The clever bit was the priests rationalising it with a dramatic fairytale...

[Brian Peacock]

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

What "code" do you think the Israelites were following when they wiped out some entire tribe?

Well, recognising it is a Bible story, the code of 'that which God desires is good.' Whether that was the actual code, imperative or motivation at play is immaterial to my point, as is the actual extant-status of a godly entity capable of communicating its wishes to humans who in turn must do its bidding on the basis that it has supreme authority in all things because it created and controls the universe and everything in it.

What point did your question attempt to elicit or illuminate exactly?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

What "code" do you think the Israelites were following when they wiped out some entire tribe?

"Root hog or die!"?

Is that kosher?

[hiyymer]

The claim from the religious then is that adherence to the codes and practices of their tradition imbues them with rectitude by default, whereas in giving up their personal moral autonomy and conforming to the will of an authority they are rendered at best amoral, and in very many cases immoral agents. In this sense the moral codes of religion are not very moral at all.

What "code" do you think the Israelites were following when they wiped out some entire tribe?

Well, recognising it is a Bible story, the code of 'that which God desires is good.' Whether that was the actual code, imperative or motivation at play is immaterial to my point, as is the actual extant-status of a godly entity capable of communicating its wishes to humans who in turn must do its bidding on the basis that it has supreme authority in all things because it created and controls the universe and everything in it.

What point did your question attempt to elicit or illuminate exactly?

I was trying to figure out if you were saying that the code determines the action or that the code justifies the action.