This is a tough question! The simple answer is yes. The more difficult answer gets into the idea of morals and how we understand the concept of sin. How do I know something is wrong? There are honestly several ways. One of the main ways is looking to God’s Holy Scripture. Through reading God’s Word, we have a direct link into the mind of God and what He thought was important for us to know. Some things aren’t mentioned in there. However, you can use logic and reason to begin to understand the overall mind and nature of God. Through the tool of reason, we have divine wisdom in the areas where he was silent. So, let’s talk directly about sin and how it manifests in our lives.
What is sin?
Sin is the direct willful turning from God’s known will, direction, or the law. It’s not your actions that are the sin, it’s the decision to turn away from God; to go your own way. This is why no one sin is greater than any other. I turn from God and then I do something. The sin is not the action, but the decision before the action. The action is the result of the decision to turn away. All sin is equally abhorrent in the eyes of God. Because of the fact that all sin is the same, we are able to understand that God is the ultimate decider of what is “wrong” or what “sin” is.
Without God, there is no sin. There is no wrong:
If there is no God, then there is nothing I can do that is wrong. Let’s pretend for a moment that God does not exist and everything I believe has been a lie. Would it be wrong for me to steal a candy bar from the supermarket? Nope, if I can get away with it, it’s not wrong. There is no basis for you (my accuser) to say that what I have done is bad or wrong beyond your own opinion or that of others. Basically, if you don’t believe that God is the ultimate truth and decider of the moral law, then you have created some sort of system for yourself. Perhaps you believe that the state is the ultimate authority or the government. However, laws can be changed. If an extremely rich person decided to throw all their money into making it legal to have sexual relations with little kids, they could probably get that sort of thing passed into law. But does that make it suddenly right and okay to do that? I would argue no, but under a system where government or the state makes up what is moral and immoral, then it becomes right and okay. The same could be said for people who make the decision for themselves if what they are doing is right or wrong.
Now, some of our decisions have to be based on our knowledge of God’s nature, but ultimately we believe that God will lead us in a direction through prayer, the study of His Word, and conversation with other believers into knowing his correct direction for us. None of those assumptions can directly contradict God’s Word or His known nature. For example, I don’t believe God would have it in His will for your life for you to murder your whole family and then use their bodies as shields to defend yourself from the law as you run naked down the street. That’s just not in His will and it would directly go against the known law of God and His nature. However, if a person decides that their own feelings and thoughts are the ultimate form of truth, and that is the truth, then there is nothing stopping them from making decisions and creating any form of moralistic code they want. They literally become their own god within their own mind.
If their own morals dictate that murdering their family and running down the street naked while using those bodies as shields is right… who am I to say they are wrong? Their opinion is just as valid as mine if there is no higher power that is greater than our own desires. This gets into the idea that all ideas are not equal. Not everyone can be right. Someone has to be wrong. You will hear it said that all paths lead to “god”. No, they don’t. They just don’t. You can’t believe that unicorns and fairies save your soul and still get into Heaven. It just doesn’t work that way. There has to be a greater form of truth. There has to be a higher power, other than your own will and selfish thoughts. Without God to lead us, we are lost in our own will.
D. Michl Lowe
Author D. Michl Lowe 
funny how Chrisitans don’t agree on what this god considers “sin”, and contradict each other constantly.
Now, it would be rather nifty if this god of yours gave any of your baseless claims its seal of approval. It doesn’t, and we just get humans making up this god in their image.
Now, in Eden, we have this god having no problem with Adam and Eve running around sinning, as long as they were ignorant. This shows that this god doesn’t actually care what humans do, as long as they are ignorant. It kept humans from knowing what good and evil are intentionally. now, why would a supposedly “good” god want to keep people ignorant of how to judge things? Does it have something to hide?
Eve and Satan gave morality to humans. Your god had nothing to with it, per your very own silly book.
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How do you believe Christians define sin?
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that’s the problem, D. You all have different claims. You all insist that your god hates “sin”, and you all promptly claim that anything you don’t like is a “sin”, whilst ignoring what the bible does indeed list as sin. For instance, disobeying your god is a sin, per the bible. So, D, how many people have you killed for working on the sabbath?
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Your misunderstanding of Mosaic law and the new testament covenant is showing. Christians agree on much more than we disagree. Just like any major organization, there is no complete consensus on the interpretation of scripture. That’s true of basically every philosophy and even political organization. So your belief that there should be complete consensus is not only silly but a little laughable that you would believe it SHOULD be as such.
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Unfortunately for you, I don’t misunderstand. Jesus says that every commandment is to be followed, no exceptions. Now, you can point to Paul saying you don’t have to follow the laws. Hmm, which to believe, Jesus or the anti-christ Paul? You know the fellow who ignored Jesus and told his followers to call him father, just like Jesus said not to.
And no, Christians dont’ agree on more than they disagree. They do not agree on what morals this god wants, they do not agree on what is a “sin”, they do not agree on waht heaven and hell are, nor do they agree on what Jesus is. They do not agree on how one is saved or how to interpret the bible.
Again, a Christian must try to claim that their religion is just any ol’ human endeavor, which belies the claims you make that it is some god that is involved. If this omnipotent and omniscient god cant’ make itself understood, then it fails at both of those descriptors, and ceases to be the god you claim you have.
Well, D, thanks for admitting that Christianity is nothing special, a human invented cult.
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You make many bold assumptions without backing up any of them. You say that most of what Christians believe they don’t agree on, but the large aspects of belief, the majority do believe. Most Christians would say that Jesus is God incarnate and that he died for the sins of humanity so that humanity can be saved from eternal death. Do all of them believe that, nope, but I think we can say the majority do. Do they bicker about non-salvific issues? Of course. Are there some issues that are salvific to some and not to others? Again, of course. However, most mainline Christian denominations agree about the big stuff. God was pretty clear about the most important aspects. You pulling in stuff that was clearly old covenant things meant to help organize the Jews is just silly and no real biblical scholar worth their salt would argue from such a flimsy set of ideas.
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No, I I say that Christians don’t agree on much of anything and I listed them.
Then you try to lie and claim that they do. Funny how you have no evidence of this and the sheer number of Christian sects show you are a liar. That I can walk past a dozen churches when I walk to work and that each is in desperate financial straits thanks to declining membership shows that you won’t worship together, D.
As you admit yourself, Christians don’t agree that Jesus is god incarnate, don’t agree how to be saved, don’t agree on what morals this god wants, don’t agree on what heaven and hell are, etc.
So, you still fail, D. And yep, some issues are about salvation to some and not others, agian evidence to support my point that Christians don’t agree, since if you don’t agree on how to be saved, you don’t agree at all.
Alas, you don’t agree about the big stuff at all, and you lie again, D. As I stated, how can what morals this god wants not be “big stuff”?
And hilarious that you whine about about the “old covenant” when Jesus says that the supposed “old covenant” is still in place is amusing. You want to ignore your own savior in favor of what Paul says. Again, nice worshipping of an anti-christ that disagrees with Jesus. I do enjoy this website where a christian points out how Paul repeatedly contradicts Jesus: http://www.voiceofjesus.org/paulvsjesus.html
you Christians have a real problem.
There are biblical scholars and they don’t agree with you, dear. EAch of you makes up your own nonsense. Everyone claims that they follow the bible and their god agrees with them and only them.
Now, if this is the case, why are you evidently all frauds since not one of you can get your god to answer your prayers as promised? This is in Mark 16, John 14,James 5 among others, in case you don’t know. It seems, again, that you are all frauds.
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Your denial of the truth that a majority of Christian’s do agree on most issues is just silly. For example, you keep saying Paul is an anti-Christ, but a majority of Christians do not hold that view. You might have found a fringe who do, but let’s be clear, that’s not most Christians. You want Christianity to be false so you can live how you want. If it’s all a sham, then you are accountable to no one. You talk about morality as if morality matters in your world view. When there is no God, morality is pointless beyond your own selfishness.
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You have yet to show that what you claim is the truth, D. Just like all other christians who claim a contradictory truth, you have no evidence for your statements.
Again, D, you can’t show that Christians agree on major issues. You can’t show that they agree on free will vs predestination, on what heaven and hell are, on how to be saved, on what morals this god wants (a core issue when it comes to how one is saved and what one has to do to be saved), on what parts of the bible are to be taken as literal and which parts are figurative.
And yep, a majority of “Christians” have no problem following Paul. They are ignoring about what their bible has both Jesus and Paul say, and assume that they agree when they do not. It is no surprise you can’t show that I, or the christian who created the website I linked to are wrong about the contradictions. Your trying to claim that since some Christians agree on some things is an appeal to popularity fallacy to try to validate a character who contradicts your supposed messiah.
I know that the various versions of Christianity to be false since you have no evidence for your version and no other Christian has evidence for their versions.
Christians make up their versions so they can live how *they* want, since they pick and choose which of this god’s supposed laws to follow and ignore the ones they don’t like. You’ve done this, D. You want to pretend you don’t have to follow the laws Jesus says you must.
I don’t recognize the bible as any kind of moral guide, either to ignore or to accept. So your claims that I ignore it to do what I want fails. And gee, what I want to do is not worship a genocidal, child killer who tells slaves to never seek their freedom. I have no want to harm people for who they love, nor do I want to take away freedoms from human beings to believe what they want as long as they harm no one else. Like Penn Teller said “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don’t want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don’t want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you.”
I’m accountable to myself and to other humans. I am not responsible to something you’ve made up.
Yep, morality matters to my worldview, and the bible has your god as moral monster. Chrisitans like you make excuses for this character, claiming that it can do what it wants in any situation. This makes your morality entirely subjective, since morality, for you, depends on who/what something is, not the objective morality of an action. Your morality is nothing more than might equals right.
Morality isn’t pointless at all and doesn’t need a god nor does it need you, which seems to bother you most. Morality is a human invention, that has changed over the years. We’ve kept the morals that help civilization work, and have discarded the rest. This also applies to religion, though it changes far slower since believers cling to nonsense in the delusion that some magical being “gave” it to humans and thus they want to claim it has some magical importance. It doesn’t and religious morality changes too. so much for your unchanging “god”.
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You accuse me of not backing up my claims that Christianity doesn’t mostly agree, but your claims are not backed up either. I am using a personal understanding of different denominations which I am personally involved with and have dealings on a literal daily basis. I realize the limited nature of that interaction but given I have spent my entire life entrenched in these deals I would say I have a pretty solid understanding of the differences many of the denominations present. So from the standpoint of personal experience, it seems fair to say that I have good working knowledge. That being said, I don’t really need to assert my expertise to you, because you don’t respect me, God, or religion no matter what I would present. Which is fine, you don’t have to. The great part about it is that I am going to continue writing on my website and you will continue to apparently be very offended by it. I am sorry it offends you so, but it doesn’t change my desire to continue or my belief in God. I continue to pray for you and your family. Snarky comebacks or not, I do enjoy dialog that is respectful and cutting. I hope your family continues to follow God, I read on your website that you come from a Christian home. Are your parents still believers? If so, I pray that they continue to have an influence in your life and that through some miracle, they might be able to lead you back to a belief in God. Go in peace.
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yep, I’m still waiting for you to show that Christians agree. Still nothing.
So, hmmm, we have catholics who believe in free will. Then we have Calvinists claiming that predestination is the thing. Which is the “right” answer, D?
Then we have Christians claiming that their god hates homosexuals, to the point that Evangelicals and Catholics spend millions on trying to harm them. Of course, we also have Christian churches who have no problem with gay folks. Again, D, show which one is the “right” version?
I’ve also spent my life as a Christian and as not, looking at various Christian sects. Church of God, Church of Christ, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness, and gee, all claiming to be Christians and not oen able to do what Jesus promised.
I have plenty of personal experience and working knowledge so, if you want to claim that as a valid source, mine is as good as yours.
Yep, you do need to show that you are a Christian, D. You are impotent to do what JC promised, so you are as impotent as your god.
I don’t respect liars like you, D. You can’t do what Jesus said, so why would anyone respect you, a literal fraud, if one is to believe your bible?
Yep, you’ll write, and I’ll show you to be a liar. You pray for me? Great, sicne that also shows that you and your god are imporant. alas, your bible says that any real Christians get their prayers answered quickly and with what they ask for. That your prayers fail shows that your god is either imaginary or wants nothing to do with you.
My mother and father are barely Chrsitians, and I bought them a bible to read. Gee, they don’t. My brother and sister in law have shown that their religion is a lie since they were ever so sure that this god would be returning in 1999. Ooopsie, they believed a lie.
My parents are good people, which has nothing to do with them being Christian. They aren’t failures like you. They ask *me* about what the bible says, not my ignorant brother and sister in law. I’ll never worship a genocidal lunatic who kills children and who tells slaves to never seek their freedom. I have higher standards than that. Pity you don’t.
oh and dear, which god? Which Christianity is the right one? Oh yes, you can’t tell me.
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Freude,
You mention many different denominations. Which of those you mention, or which of those different beliefs you mentioned deny the reality that Jesus died for the sins of humanity? Church of God believes that, the Church of Christ, Catholics, Protestants, Nazarene, Orthodox, even Morons, and Jehovah’s Witness’ believe it. Seems like that would be the most important aspect of it all. That being said, there are differences, no one is denying that. Let’s be clear, you said before that God should have made it clear. Perhaps a human trying to explain to an ant what a human is, is a difficult thing for the ant. We aren’t robots. This is why I personally believe we have free will. We are allowed to have disagreements. You talk of genocide being a bad thing, but again, you have no basis for saying that. It’s just your opinion. I hope and pray that you will soften your heart. You have so much hate built up inside yourself. You seem to hate me… you don’t know me. You talk about me being a liar and a fraud, but it’s hard to be a liar when you are speaking the truth as you know it. To be mistaken in some areas of life, is the necessary condition of humanity. John Wesley said something similar. I could be mistaken about God, Jesus, and all of life. However, Pascal’s wager is a wise way to live. I have a wife, three amazing children, and people who love me and care for me, as I do for them. By all accounts, I am truly blessed. If it all turns out to be false, just a dream of a dream, then I will die in the peace of that dream and be all the happier for it. You seem to live your life in the throws of hate and conflict online. I dont know how you live in the real world, but if this online one is any reflection of the real one, I pity you. Go in peace. D. Michl
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You can call me Vel, if you’d like.
Yep, I do mention all of the many many denominations of Christianity, all of which contradict the next. You try to keep lying and saying that Christians don’t disagree on major things. You have *one* thing that they might agree on and when taken in context of everything else you disagree on, you don’t even agree on that. What is wonderfully funny is that you can’t rebut my points that you all disagree on how to be saved unable to agree if it is grace, belief, works, or childbirth per Paul, who says that’s the only way for women to be saved.
You also can’t agree on what morals your god wants. That’s a problem since morals is how one is judged by this god. If you get it wrong, you’re damned and gee, all of you have different lists of morals.
You can’t agree on how one is saved per the nonsense of free will vs. predestination. You can’t agree on what heaven and hell are, how long one might be there, etc. You can’t agree on what baptism does or how to do it. You can’t agree on what parts of the bible are to be taken literally or as symbolic. You don’t even agree on what Jesus *is*.
I do love how you call Mormons “morons”. Freudian slip showing how much Christians hate each other? Nope, it isn’t the “most important aspect” as I’ve indicated above. Chisgtians have murdere each other over these differences and gee, poor ol’ impotent god never does anything to clear things up.
You have denied that there is differences. Nice attempt to lie again.
Why does your god have such problems, D? Then you try to blame humans for not understanding. Since your god is omnipotent, it should never have any difficulty ever. But nice attempt to depower your god so your excuses work. That’s always fun to watch.
I’m glad to see another Christian have no problem with genocide. Alas, you try the same lies about morality. What I like besgt about that is that you have no problem with your god committing genocide, D. You have no problem with that since you claim that your god can do anything it wants, so it isn’t under the same morals as humans. Now, that makes your morality entirely dependent on, aka subject to, who or what something is, and not to any objective
morality of actions. Welcome to subjective morality, dear! Your morality is no more thanm might equals right.
Nothing at all in the bible says you are allowed to have disagreements. Indeed Jesus says that’s a no-no. “20 ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,[f] so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. 24 Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” John 17
Well, your hope is useless and yours prayers even more so. Now, how does that work when Jesus promises that all TrueChristians™ get their prayers answered with no exceptions of excuse and answered quickly?
Happily, your lies about me having “so much hate” are just that, lies. You need to pretend that no one could ever counter you without emotions being involve. I know you quite well, and you do spread the harmful nonsense of the bible, which encourange hate and ignorance.
It’s not hard at all to be a liar when you repeat lies that you were shown to be lies. And per your own bible, you are a fraud. You claim only your version of Chrsitainty is true; no evidence of that at all.
Pascal’s wager depends on an ignorant god who will accept people who believe just in case. Now, do show where your god would accept that. I’ll be happy to wait to see you cite chapter and verse. In believing in a god whom you can’t show exist, you waste resources and time. You also compromise your own morals by worshipping this god, who, if as described in the bible, is unjust, unfair, works with its archenemy to the point of murdering a family, and who, after it murders all non-christians, sets this archenemy on its faithful. You’ve got quite a jerk for a god.
I have a loving husband, a great family who care for me, and gee, no god needed. I’ll die in peace, and not need to fear some idiot god that I might offend since I don’t know what it wants. Alas, you are wrong again, needing to pretend I have to be unhappy since I don’t agree with you or obey you. I have a great time in the real world, and I don’t need to spend time inventing excuses for a vile deity.
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Heh. Okay. I’m done. Sorry we apparently can’t find any common ground at all. You continually claim I am a liar and aren’t willing to listen. Go in peace.
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And here we go with the Christian unable to rebut my points and being “shocked” that we don’t find common ground over his lies and excuses.
I’m more than thrilled to have nothing in common with you and your disgusting morals. Why should I listen to baseless claims and outright lies from a man who can’t show I’m wrong, D? It seems that you thought your god would force me to agree with you and now that it hasn’t, you are confused.
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No matter the topic, someone who has a completely closed mind to other points of view and most often just attacks the person isn’t going to make for good conversation or debate. I am done with the debate, not because you have won (to win would be to convince the other person), but because you aren’t willing to consider other points of view. Maybe you are taking the “Thank You For Smoking” rout to argument, believing that others who see you “win” will be convinced of your superiority, but I doubt it. I think it more likely that your bullheadedness is just out of your hatred of Christianity and not a desire to bring about change in people. That being said, I am done arguing with you. Your comments will no longer be published on my site. If you wish to comment to me personally, feel free to email me at d.michl.lowe@gmail.com
D. Michl Lowe
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