Finally Found The Courage of My Convictions and Told Facebook Bigots off!

[Kelvin Mace]

52. To me it comes down to intent

I upset some religious folk (including my wife) with my view that to "sin", in the classical religious definition of the word, is impossible without malice.

I get arguments that you can unintentionally hurt someone, which I do not dispute, but if it is done without intent, it is a mistake, not a sin.

To me this is a far simpler philosophy/ethical system than what is found in the Bible.

I have always said that knowledge (science, technology, etc) is invariably a two-edged sword. Nuclear physics can mean CAT scans or nukes. Chemistry can mean insulin or heroin. We can build aircraft carriers or hospitals. We can use our hospitals to cure the sick, or profit off them.

But in every instance of duality comes the choice to act benevolently or maliciously, selflessly or selfishly.

The advantage of the philosophy I stumbled upon is that it can be stated in a single sentence, and probably explained with examples in a few pages. It is flexible and pretty much answers all moral dilemmas. This beats a thousand pages of arcane text (translated and re-translated through a half dozen languages) trying to apply bronze age socio-economic morality to a digital age culture.

The downside to my philosophy is it makes no promise of omniscient, omnipotent beings who will punish evil-doers and reward the faithful with everlasting paradise basking in the aura of his awesomeness. In my philosophy, we are all ultimately responsible for our own actions and cannot justify our malice as "just following orders". We have only one life to get it right or get it wrong. There is no cosmic paternal figure demanding our worship in exchange for forgiving us for transgressing the myriad of contradictory rules found in His holy writ.