posted
Thinking about this more, I have more I want to say.
When I was young, I made rather good grades and seemed to think more clearly than many people around me. Also, many of my authority figures, unfortunately, were rather cruel and arbitrary and clearly did not have my best interests at heart. So I learned not to trust authority and to think for myself and make my own choices. Unfortunately, none of that made me a particularly wise authority over myself. I was young and didn't know very much. So I made a lot of mistakes. When I grew to know God, then for the first time I found an authority who clearly was vastly wiser and more intelligent than I, and also loved me totally and always had my best interests in mind. That is of tremendous worth to me, because learning things the hard way is not only painful and slow, but can cause irrevocable damage.
So my belief (and I took a long rambling path to get here ) is that sin is defined as harm to ourselves or others, but that it's not always easy to tell right from wrong, but God will help us learn if we want to listen. If you find a way to remove the possibility of harmful consequences from something that was previously considered sinful, then what you are doing isn't sinful now. However, I don't think we can see that much of the whole story. Just as Pippin didn't understand why he shouldn't have a look at that ball thing that Wormtongue threw out of Orthanc. Sinfulness = stupidity = ignorance. So it's wise to seek guidance from advanced beings who know more, if you happen to be friends with any of those. :-P
I think the unwisdom of extramarital sex, for instance, is about much more than disease and pregnancy. Perhaps it's more about selfness, and sensitivity, and the joy of innocence. Perhaps it's about ten thousand things that can't be put into words. So I don't think that exact example works, but I agree with the principle. If it doesn't cause harm then it isn't a sin.
I think one good way to tell sin is by the fruits. One reason I don't feel that monogamous homosexual couples are sinning is that their lives seem greatly enriched by their love for one another. If it were a sin, surely it would blight their lives, wouldn't it? I think this is one of those things where we will get new revelation one day when we are ready for it. I don't know what the revelation will be, but it will give gay people access to the celestial kingdom.
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Right and wrong can be subtle things. I think they amount to more than just not doing anything that harms people. For instance, I think it might not harm anyone to destroy a lost masterpiece of art, but it would nevertheless still probably be wrong. And you might actually harm fewer people by telling certain lies to them, but that doesn't necessarily make it right to do so.
Correspondingly, there are often subtle reasons why things are sinful. I don't think alcohol is wrongful only because it can lead to overintoxication. Even if you couldn't drink too much, there is still a problem with it - the same problem that people often have with caffeine. That's the notion that alcohol encourages the artificial alteration of your state of mind to make you happier. Unless you just like the taste, that's often the whole point of alcohol - and I think there is something bad about that. I think it leads to a problematic view of how to attain happiness. The trouble is, the wrongness in that is something that is extremely subtle, and it takes only a little rationalization to overlook that wrongness if you want to. There are similar problems with free sex. There is a sort of innocence that these things dissolve, which is hard to get back - and when it dissolves, it can often dissolve some of the joy in life with it. But again, this is a nebulous thing - and something that is easy to rationalize away.
I think the reason we have moral rules is because human beings aren't smart enough to calculate the answers to subtle questions of right and wrong on a case-by-case basis. Many things seem okay in a certain instance, but aren't. Many things can be rationalized, no matter how wrong those things may be. We are incapable of perfect judgement. For this reason I think we make use of clear moral rules which, if we follow them every time, end up causing less harm than if we were to try to judge every choice on a case-by-case basis.
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I don't think that a lot of people drink because alcohol makes them happy. I know that I, personally, drink to have fun. It's not a huge difference, but the difference is definitely there. I don't expect alcohol to be a great source of joy and happiness in my life, just like I don't expect visits to an amusement park to be my sole source of happiness.
I'd also point out that just about EVERYTHING is an artificial alteration of one's bodily functions, insomuch as "artificial" implies "outside of one's body." Sugar, antidepressants, antibiotics...
posted
... air conditioning, running shoes, books,... I agree that artificialness is not valid reason for rejecting things.
My belief in the error of drinking alcohol comes from the way alcohol affects the dopamine "reward" system in the brain. Each time you reward yourself by drinking alcohol, you subtly remake your brain's circuits over to focus a little more on alcohol and a little less on things like love, family, honor, children, accomplishment, etc. Nobody really understands fully why one person becomes an alcoholic and another does not. And nobody knows in advance that they will become one. Yet alcoholism destroys so many lives! So much unnecessary damage to families! So much grievous harm!
Alcoholics will gladly sacrifice the lives of their children, their honor, honesty, love, everything else that's good, for a good slug of whiskey. They will gladly use your feelings of family loyalty in order to pry out of you the price of another drink. They'll lie, steal, cheat, whatever it takes. They steal tuition money from their kids who are struggling to get an education with no parental help. They'll steal the money that their siblings need for life-saving medicine. Ordinary happinesses like love and honor have no hold over their brains, for they have been totally re-configured and reprogrammed toward the need for alcohol.
Why begin, even a little bit, retraining your brain to respond with pleasure to a drink rather than a beautiful sunset or a joke with your friends or hugging your boyfriend? Why do that to yourself?
It's a great illustration, though, of what I mean by subtle sin, because it's very unclear and tenuous up front, and far from inevitable, the connection between that first drink and that life of misery vomiting and peeing on yourself alone in the gutter. Yet every single one of those winos on the street began young and healthy, with a bit of innocent fun drinking with friends.
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Also, we didn't understand the brain chemistry of addiction nearly so well until the last few years. Yet the word of wisdom has been protecting Mormon families now for almost two centuries. How I wish my great-grandparents had learned about and embraced the Word of Wisdom! Then maybe my grandfather could have had a life.
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quote:I'd also point out that just about EVERYTHING is an artificial alteration of one's bodily functions, insomuch as "artificial" implies "outside of one's body." Sugar, antidepressants, antibiotics...
The artificiality of that sort of happiness, or that sort of fun, is not an issue of whether or not it came from something outside one's body. It's more an issue of the meaningfulness of it. I believe true happiness is more akin to joy, and is of a quality that will also uplift your life in the long run, cumulatively. More artificial forms of happiness make you happy in the short run, but cumulatively inject a sort of slight meaninglessness into your life that slowly makes you less happy in the long run. This includes not just chemicals that you use to alter your brain, but often also the use of material things to be happy, or unhealthy relationships, or possibly gambling, etc.
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posted
Tres, I really don't see how the fun had when having a few drinks with friends is any more artificial than many other forms of entertainment. What about going to the movies with friends?
As for the dopamine issue, pretty much EVERYTHING that you like or enjoy has affected the dopamine levels in your brain. I mean, our whole lives are determined by a series of "addictions." Think about how many things to which we casually say we're "addicted." TV shows, movies, books, foods...
I think it's more a matter of degrees and what one personally can handle. Personal comfort level.
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Karl, the definition you're using for sin seems to apply to specific activities, so I think you're talking about rules of conduct, not a mental state, or karma.
I can only comment on this from the outside, since my religion (Christianity) isn't about rules of conduct; we specifically left that behind in favor of "the spirit of the law, not the deadness of the letter." But I'd say that whereas rules can't really capture morality (and Daoists agree!), they're better than nothing. I have a rule, for example, against telling other people's secrets. I might break it in some cases, in cases in which I think it's right. But it's a good default. Maybe this is why rules keep creeping back: they're good defaults.
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quote:I don't think I made myself clear. It's not that "God says so" is enough. Rather, it's that God says so for a good reason. Investigating the reason for that is a good thing. Also, because there is difficulty sometimes in learning what God says, it must be evaluated with what we know. If what we perceive to be God's command leads to what we perceive to be a bad result, we need to investigate. Perhaps there is another of God's commands that apply, perhaps we misunderstand the "badness" of the result, or perhaps a little of each.
"Because God says so" is enough if one has perfect two-way communication with God. As I don't, I'm required to apply reason as well.
quote:Wow. Dag is a deist.
No, he's not.
First off, that's not an insult. I'll stop short of calling it a compliment because I know you'll consider the source.
From wikipedia:
quote:Historical and modern deism is defined by the view that reason, rather than revelation or tradition, should be the basis of belief in God. Deists reject both organized and revealed religion and maintain that reason is the essential element in all knowledge. For a "rational basis for religion" they refer to the cosmological argument (first cause argument), the teleological argument (argument from design), and other aspects of what was called natural religion. Deism has become identified with the classical belief that God created but does not intervene in the world, though this is not a necessary component of deism.
You've argued with KoM that your state of belief is not simply an artifact of tradition. You may not "reject organized and revealed religion," since Catholicism is the form in which you express your belief, but you argue with some regularity that reason is the basis for your belief in God.
I call myself an atheist, and I also call myself an agnostic. The two are not the same, and neither adequately describes my belief system, so both are necessary if I want to come close to describing my belief system accurately.
Western religion has historically defined religions as being separate and distinct. For example a Christian cannot be a Jew, a Hindu or a Muslim. Recently we've heard that the distinctions between religions are becoming blurred. That may be true, or it may simply be that we realize that we are capable of adhering to more than one religion at a time. It's quite common for chinese people to be buddhist, taoist, and confucian. A Christian missionary comes and "converts" them to christianity, and then gets upset when they continue to self identify as buddhist, taoist, and confucian. What the Christian doesn't understand is that they've simply added Christianity to their worldview. They are Christians, now, but they haven't stopped being what they were before.
I never accused you of not being Catholic. And I have a high regard for deistic thought. I guess you can take that for whatever it's worth.
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quote:First off, that's not an insult. I'll stop short of calling it a compliment because I know you'll consider the source.
I'm not insulted in the least.
quote:You've argued with KoM that your state of belief is not simply an artifact of tradition. You may not "reject organized and revealed religion," since Catholicism is the form in which you express your belief, but you argue with some regularity that reason is the basis for your belief in God.
Except that "rather than" is the incorrect connector between "reason" and "revelation or tradition." Reason is one of the tools given by God to humans, to be used in their relationship with him in addition to tradition and revelation. This idea is very old within the Catholic Church and is not unique to it. Further, I believe that reason alone is insufficient as a means of understanding God.
quote:I never accused you of not being Catholic.
Every definition of Deism I've ever read is pretty much incompatible with my beliefs. Refer to the wiki article:
I sepcifically reject the clockmaker hypothesis, pantheism, pandeism, and "that God intervenes only as a subtle and pervasive force in the universe."
If all you mean by "Dag is a deist" is that I use reason as one of several means to understand God, then you are correct. It seems a hopelessly limited use of the word to me, though, and one I have not heard before.
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quote:Except that "rather than" is the incorrect connector between "reason" and "revelation or tradition."
And yet the concepts of faith and grace are so important to some people that they see reason as the enemy to religion. Kind of like an intellectual tower of Babel.
I don't know of a single word that can be used to mean the opposite of deism, but it's useful to be able to make a distinction between people like that and people like yourself. I don't see that as being hopelessly limited, because it's a distinction that you make with some regularity.
As to being a use of the word that you haven't heard, well, it is the unifying concept behind deism in any of it's forms. So now you know.
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quote:And yet the concepts of faith and grace are so important to some people that they see reason as the enemy to religion. Kind of like an intellectual tower of Babel.
I don't think the importance assigned to those concepts is the driving force behind any perception of reason as the enemy of religion. I can't conceive how anyone could think either faith or grace to be more important than I do - I think both are absolutely essential, of utmost importance.
I tend to think viewing reason as the enemy of faith - if meant in a general sense* - is more a sign of the perceived weakness of faith and grace. A perception I don't share.
*The reason I said this is that some reasoning - what I consider false reasoning - can be the enemy of faith and grace. But some faith - that is, faith in something false, can be an enemy of those things as well.
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quote:I really don't see how the fun had when having a few drinks with friends is any more artificial than many other forms of entertainment.
I think it depends on what you find enjoyable. Could you replace the drinks with, say, coffee, and have just as enjoyable an evening, or does the alcohol content in the drink somehow provide a social lubricant that's "necessary" for your enjoyment of your friends? If it's the latter, then the argument can be made that this is an "artificial" joy.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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When we are young, our parents tell us to stay away from the stove. "Don't touch the stove!" This is because we aren't able to discern when the stove is dangerous and when it isn't. Going near the stove gets us punishment - all we know is that Mom will get angry with us if we go near the stove. Much better to just stay away from it entirely. As we get older, we understand why we are supposed to stay away from the stove; we can begin to determine when the stove is dangerous and when it isn't, how to touch it even when it is dangerous. And sometimes we will burn ourseves. Sometimes even burning ourselves can be for a greater good. As adults, we can choose those things and we then live with the consequences.
Now God is much greater than even a parent is to a child and the gifts God gives us are more wonderful and dangerous that stoves. So it makes sense to pay attention to the acquired wisdom about what God wants. But, as adults (and I think God wants us to be adults) I think it is important to try ourselves to understand the "why" and the consequences and to make our own choices rather than just knowing the stove is bad.
Does that help explain it?
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I do understand what you are saying about alchohol, I can understand the desire to keep that kind of hurt from ever happening. I don't think that making alchohol a sin for everybody is the right way of fixing it. I think that it is similar to what the Catholic Church has done with sex and I believe that has led to a great deal of heartbreak and wrong.
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quote:I really don't see how the fun had when having a few drinks with friends is any more artificial than many other forms of entertainment.
I think it depends on what you find enjoyable. Could you replace the drinks with, say, coffee, and have just as enjoyable an evening, or does the alcohol content in the drink somehow provide a social lubricant that's "necessary" for your enjoyment of your friends? If it's the latter, then the argument can be made that this is an "artificial" joy.
Okay, I can see that, to a certain extent. At the same time, the atmosphere in a coffeehouse is inherently different from the atmosphere in a bar. Even if you're just at home watching movies, I think the vibe is pretty different.
quote:At the same time, the atmosphere in a coffeehouse is inherently different from the atmosphere in a bar.
Very true. So go to a bar and drink nothing but root beer, and see if the experience is the same. Back when I was a Baha'i, this was my life -- and believe me, it IS different when you drink.
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posted
Perhaps it is, but I don't know if that makes the fun "artificial." Different, yes. Like I said, having friends over to watch movies and drink is different from having friends over just to watch movies.
I've never gone to a bar that was just a bar and not had a drink, but I've gone to concerts that were in bars, even hole-in-the-wall bars, and just had diet Coke all night. It's still fun, but it's different, and I don't see how it WOULDN'T be different.
Also, bartenders love you when you tip them for your soda.
quote:Perhaps it is, but I don't know if that makes the fun "artificial."
I guess the question is whether the difference can be directly attributed to the presence of a drug. Raves are very different if you're on ecstasy; does that make the fun there "artificial?"
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I spend a lot of time in bars or pubs. About %80 of the time I drink cranberry juice. Another %19 of the time I will have an Irish Cream or a pint of cider or something. The experience is not very different. One time out of a hundred, I will drink enough that someone who knows me well could tell that I had alchohol. Even that is not all that different.
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People on antidepressants can often attribute much of rediscovering enjoyment of life to a drug. Does that make it artificial?
I mean, if you want to be really, really picky, just about everything is a drug in the sense that it alters your body's functioning in one way or another. As I said before, our entire lives are made up of us doing things that release chemicals into our brains that we experience as pleasure.
quote:I spend a lot of time in bars or pubs....The experience is not very different.
Well, no, I wouldn't imagine that it WOULD be, since 99% of the time you're not even slightly drunk, and 1% of the time you're barely drunk. Seriously, if you go to bars and don't drink, you're not really qualified to speak to the issue of whether or not being drunk produces an artificial happiness.
quote:I mean, if you want to be really, really picky, just about everything is a drug in the sense that it alters your body's functioning in one way or another.
This is true. But consider the case of a patient hooked up to a drip of some euphoric painkiller. This patient may well feel happy and content, despite lying in a hospital bed with terrible wounds. Is this sense of well-being artificial? If not, why not?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I understand your stove analogy. I agree with most of it. Perhaps I'm not making clear what I mean. I'm not advocating that we don't attempt to understand the commandments that God gives. On the contrary, I myself attempt to understand the reasons behind them and I believe this is what God wants us to do. However, my point was that even if I do not understand all the consequences of a commandment, I will still try my best to keep it, simply because God said so.
What I'm trying to say is that although more knowledge about why God commands us to do what we do leads to wisdom, my obedience doesn't hinge on the extent of my understanding. I take it on faith that at some point or another I will reach an understanding. Clear as mud?
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Except you weren't. In your case, you should go to a bar and get properly drunk, and THEN see if it's different from your usual experience. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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BQT, that does make sense. I still disagree because I think that what we understand about "what God commands" is imperfect and often translated, interpreted, and transcribed by folks that were operating under the "stove is bad" premise.
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Tom, I don't think that would prove the point either.
If you're drunk I don't think any of us are going to argue that you haven't achieved a level of artificially induced euphoria (or whatever you want to call it). Whether or not you think of this as a sin, it doesn't really address the question that I'm hearing bandied about: "where do you draw the line with what is sinful because it is artificially induced happiness?"
A better example would be to go to a bar and get lightly buzzed (where your judgement is not impaired, but you are definately feeling some chemical effects from having alcohol in your system). this is the grey area I see being at issue.
I would imagine that even a devout Mormon wouldn't see drinking one glass of wine with dinner to prevent heart disease as a huge deal (accepting that you aren't drinking enough to feel any effects other than something that is effectively medicinal)
Now, the best practice to make sure you never cross over the line into sin would be to not drink at all, but if you want to walk that fine line, where is it? is it when you start feeling anything, is it before then, is it when you start losing some control of your judgement...?
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quote:I would imagine that even a devout Mormon wouldn't see drinking one glass of wine with dinner to prevent heart disease as a huge deal (accepting that you aren't drinking enough to feel any effects other than something that is effectively medicinal)
Actually, the glass of wine with dinner would keep a Mormon out of the temple. The commandment is not 'do not get drunk'. It is 'do not drink alcohol'.
And you've just highlighted what I see is the problem with where this kind of justification leads.
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i.e. I'm a semi-devout catholic, and if my friend in a highly commited but not-yet-married relationship was having sex with his partner I wouldn't see it as a huge deal. It's not to say I'd do it, or fully support it, but I'm going to view it on a vastly different level than wanton orgies etc or in the case of drinking: frequent drunken binges.
Maybe I'm just more tolerant of other's sins.
And I think when the commandment's get that specific (in the mormon prohibition agains alcohol and caffine, or in the Kosher laws prohibiting pork etc...) that the problems arise. Maybe that was initially proposed because there was a lot of dangerous moonshine going around that was causing blindness, and not because the occasional alcoholic beverage is sinful.
When you say: "Love your neighbor as yourself" no one's generally gonna argue with that, but when you break it down to: "give your neighbor your best shirt every friday" people are going to start questioning what the logic behind the commandment is.
Again, I'm not saying the alcoholic prohibition is a bad idea, but I'm wondering what the intent behind it was (stop drunkenness or stop imbibing alcohol)
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I think a typical Mormon would consider not being permitted into the temple to be a huge deal.
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I'm really unsure of how to compose my thoughts on this, so my apologies in advance and feel free to ask questions for clarification. I normally just observe these kinds of threads.
It seems as if these decrees against alcohol and "casual sex" have a lot to do with the fact that as humans we are very habitual creatures, and these kinds of activities have a high amount of "destructive potential" associated with them.
Since life is filled with negative events etc, adding alcohol into daily/weekly living can be dangerous because of the habit forming potential that is within all of us. Once the habit of "drinking in response to ____" is formed, the probability of moving further towards the extremes of the habit becomes higher, and the effects of which can ripple from generation to generation, across families, into the workplace, into the community, into the...etc etc etc.
"Casual sex" has a high "destructive potential". For example, a child is created. Does one abort and cause the woman spiritual/emotional destruction? Let the child be born and hope it doesn't become another statistic? I'm willing accept that couples have come together so that their child doesn't, but I don't think that happens often, and when they don't the child is more prone to destructive habits that further the dysfunction.
So maybe sin is: "that which reaps (or has a high probability of reaping) a transmittable and self-replicating destructive act that's counter the effectiveness of the human race?"
What's effective for the human race and is that even the right word??
Whoever said they had a headache, I'm with you. Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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) is that sin is defined as harm to ourselves or others, but that it's not always easy to tell right from wrong, but God will help us learn if we want to listen. If you find a way to remove the possibility of harmful consequences from something that was previously considered sinful, then what you are doing isn't sinful now. However, I don't think we can see that much of the whole story. Just as Pippin didn't understand why he shouldn't have a look at that ball thing that Wormtongue threw out of Orthanc. Sinfulness = stupidity = ignorance. So it's wise to seek guidance from advanced beings who know more, if you happen to be friends with any of those. :-P
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