<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><div dir="ltr">On Apr 24, 2020, at 11:11 AM, William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">Ben, of course atheism cannot offer those things, but my point is that people want those things, or many of them do, those that are not just in there for the socializing and business implications.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">I am with Spike on sin. Big mistakes can certainly be equal to sins. You are sinning not against a god, but against other people and ultimately yourself (since you need to forgive yourself for them).</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">spike, examples from you are always welcome</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">bill w</div></div></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Again, this conflates sin with mistakes, errors... That can work metaphorically, but then we’re not talking about sin in the religious sense. If me playing piano badly is a sin against music in the metaphorical sense, this really isn’t akin to Original Sin. Ditto for sins against others. This is just a way of stating one has wronged another and needn’t have any religious basis. <div><br></div><div>Likewise, the repudiation of the theological concept of sin doesn’t mean the repudiator is free from blemishes.</div><div><br></div><div>Finally, with forgiveness, the everyday notion is really unlike the Christian concept. I can forgive a person who wronged me often because they’ve changed, made up for the wrong, etc. But the Christian god is forgiving because the sinner can’t possibly correct the wrong or the flaw and payment is too much — at least in conventional Christian theology. God’s forgiveness makes up for the human inability to live without sin. </div><div><br style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><div dir="ltr" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><div style="line-height: normal;"><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Regards,</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"><br></span></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Dan</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> Sample my Kindle books at:</span></div><div style="line-height: normal;"><p style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">http://author.to/DanUst</span></p><div><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div></div></div></div><div><div style="line-height: normal;"></div></div></div></div></div></body></html>