knox my dear, that is entirely the crux and point of Christianity in the first place. YES! All human beings are equally contaminated by 'sin' and it is exclusively through the love of God (not good works, not going to church, not bible thumping, not anything any person can themselves do) that any and every human being can be spared any kind of punishment conceivable.

I am a sinner, and I will go to hell. Therefore I can do NOTHING to stop this, except hope sincerely that God(s) in Its' Infinite mercy will spare me.. I can't bother to even begin to condemn anyone else, because the blame is solely on me.

If God(s) can save anyone, he can and will surely save everyone, otherwise why even buy into this God(s) in the first place?

I've never understood the smug self-righteousness of some, as even since I was a likkle yut on the playground I cared for folks, and wanted not to see them become 'good church going christians' but rather that a kind and generous God(s) could save them and us all despite of and in full acknowledgment of our inherit weaknesses.

God(s) loves humans as they are, flaws and all, in fact especially the flawed and crazy ones, just as a parent gives the most attention to the kids who cause all the problems, not the goodie goodies who fend well for themselves ;)

Hell exists on Earth.
HUmans have created it.

Seems very unfair doesn't it. I'm gonna start causing trouble so God can save me MORE. Thanks for the tip.

exactly BUT we're talking about self-righteous assholes who condemn folks for no reason other then to feel better than them..

the antidote for such fire and brimstone attention whores is universalism :)

...and THAT'S why christianity is a form of mental illness. "sin" "punishment" "contamination" "exclusively"

NO THANKS!

yep.

i'd just like to add that atheism and sanity are both mental illnesses aswell.

I see you are taking St Paul's approach.. 'Were it not for the law, I would not even know what sin was, but the law, creates an opportunity for sin to abound in defining it in the first place'

maybe-- in any case, some forms of mental illness are more satisfying than others.

take henry miller-- he believed that people around him conspired to make him happy.

i'd like some of that paranoia!

but what about when the honey moon is over and in your paranoia you begin to condemn everyone as superficial and phony?

no, i think that the whole idea of finding life "sinful" is damaging and deranged. the projection of self-hate onto the world. i shudder in horror.

st paul by the way is the creepiest of them all.

life is a mental illness. it's causing me to die!

i don't know, i'm just pondering better forms of mental illness than, say, thinking that one is being eaten alive by a swarm of spiders.

he was one content motherfucker.

ever seen those videos of him as an old man giving a tour of the posters in his bathroom and on the street and then on his deathbed? dude was happy.

no! post a link if you got it, would be much appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPJmm4_rcSU

i dont know if the death bed scene is at the end of that but its on youtube if you search henry miller

fucking a man, thanks!!!

sin is an idea made up by man to cause guilt in other men, the better to CONTROL THEM.

sure, but which of those seven are you being held back from?

DAMN THE MAN!

not to hold people back. the churches don't want anyone to STOP sinning. they just want you to buy into their bullshit that they will clear you of your so called sins.

in this way they have you at their mercy, at their beck and call. for they are the only ones who will clear you of the sins they say you have.

Sin, as in the prohibition on negative human acts, isn't vastly different to various reward theories, or theories on evolutionary symbiosis, or affirmative behavioural theories. You could say that 'sin controls' - and there's bit where you'd be right - but you could just as easily say 'sin is an anthropocentric articulation of the evolutionary principle of reward systems in socialised animals'. I know it's not precisely how sin is used in religion, but at base, isn't sin the principle that if you fuck over another human, you will get fucked over back? Ok, you can disagree on the agency of that reciprocal fucking over, but surely that's a very basic principle of socialised existence (and therefore not exclusive to the religious dialogue, except in a piddling nomenklatura)?