As I watched the movie "Dogma," an offbeat parable about Catholicism by film maker Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Chasing Amy," and others), I again pondered my beliefs on the idea of sin. The idea of sin is that we as humans have free will, thus we have the power to choose between good and evil. When we choose the wrong path, we have sinned, and must be held accountable for our actions. This idea of sin and free will also seeps into our criminal justice system, especially in the area of the death penalty. The one problem, though in the end our actions might often not change anyway, is that I do not accept the idea of sin, or at least sin of the variety that exists in the midst of free will. When a cat scratches someone because the person does not serve it (better yet s/he since cats have gender), we do not generally say the cat has sinned. Why? The cat does not have the ability to choose right from wrong, its intelligence is inferior to ours, so judging cats in such a way is both silly and wrong. We might however say "bad kitty" or give it a smack or squirt of water because cats do have the ability to learn as well as to feel pain and displeasure. The same holds true in many cases for children, the mentally retarded and unstable, and so on. The person either can not tell right from wrong, or is so unable to stop from doing wrong that to consider them "sinful" is misguided, though perhaps the acts themselves can be so considered. The average adult (or others in various cases) is held to a different standard, but just how different are they? Let's say I lie about not doing my job. I do this in full knowledge that it is wrong (how we determine this is not that important for our present purposes), but I do it anyway. Why? I do it the same reason why people have "sinned" for all of human existence -- to gain some type of pleasure. Humans are naturally attracted to pleasure, it is required for our very existence in various cases. We also are unable to stop its pursuit, even if we know we are breaching various rules set in place for our or society's overall good. We do so because we are "human," we are no less able to bad things than a cat, if anything we do more, since we are so much more able to do so. Nonetheless, the cat is not held to be sinful, but we are. This is wrong. Obviously, if we hold certain things to be wrong and we do one of these things, we are wrong as well (if we do a "wrong" thing for a good reason, such as defending a life, the thing in that particular case is still wrong, but less wrong than the alternative). Nonetheless, sin is not the same as being wrong, it has a certain moral basis to it with all the baggage that includes. How can we be held morally responsible for choosing bad things, when we are made in such a way that we are unable to stop ourselves? Yes, we can be punished for doing bad things to deter us from hurting ourselves and others (in certain cases), but this does not make us sinful. We might have some free choice, but overall it is limited by our physical makeup and environment. This does not make good any less good, but it does help us restrain ourselves from making bad (or "evil") into some totally freely chosen set of actions worthy of our moral scorn. The world is filled with bad things, and my hometown (New York) has its share. Recently, a group of teens rather pointlessly killed a Chinese delivery person / owner because they did not have the money to pay for more Chinese food. A relatively short time before this, another somewhat older killed group injured several employees during a robbery of a Wendys. These are both very bad, if not evil acts, but just how much were they the result of free will? A combination of environment and psychological make-up somehow made lacking something in these people (for people they remain, even if they showed how truly animalistic people can be) to allow them to do such acts. Nonetheless, they did not choose to do them as we choose vanilla over strawberry ice cream. Various forces quite out of their immediate control were involved and suggesting "free will" was the ultimate deciding factor is ridiculous. Humans might be superior in several ways to cats, but humans still lack at the present time the civilized nature to make such acts nonexistent. This lack of true free will does make it hard to accept the existence of so much pain and suffering in this world. The argument by many is that we were given this great thing known as free will, and it was our fault if we used it badly. This is as bad as blaming a cat for scratching a baby that is bothering her; we do it, but that does not make it right. We as humans and as a society have flaws, flaws we must deal with partly by punishment and other means. Such is life, but it is not the case just because we "choose" it to be the case. It is there because we were born that way and as a whole society develops in that way because of the flaws of each inhabitant. Thus, let's not blame ourselves for choosing a path because we are born with the instinct (to prevent pain) to choose that path! The fact we liked to do something does not make it right, but nor does it mean that we sin because we are unable to stop ourselves. This different way of looking at good and evil does not on the whole change things that much. We still should do good because of the benefits it brings us and must hinder evil because of its dangers. Nonetheless, it does help to put certain things in perspective when we consider that many of our acts are not as freely chosen as we might want to believe. Furthermore, such perspective might very well give us some humility before we decide to condemn or harshly punish certain people for their actions, even the most heinous. For if we do not truly have free will, we also know our limitations, and are able to take them into consideration in the pursuit of a better world. This issue is perhaps the most important of my arguments against the death penalty. The death penalty can be opposed because of the possibility of mistake or because how it is carried out is so flawed, but one must still face the fact many on death row did the acts (some quite horrible) for which they were sentenced. Nonetheless, if we take into consideration that such acts were not truly done by free choice, our sense of vengeance must also be reduced. Furthermore, there is the fact that society as a whole is unable to prevent the state of affairs that drives so many to kill.
Should our inability to truly do right and provide a good society that does not do such reprehensible acts along with their inability truly to choose to do wrong lead us to kill them? They remain people (perhaps even with souls), and just like us people unable to stop from doing bad things. It is clear they can be punished for their actions, but the ultimate question remains: should the horrible nature of their actions lead us to ignore they were not freely done? Any number of criminals have various reasons that mitigate the culpability of their offense, but in my view they all are not so culpable to have their lives ended. Recently, millions of Christians celebrated Easter, the high point of the religious year for believers. The very basis of Christianity is that Jesus, the Son of God, underwent the greatest of all sacrifices by dying for our sins, and then rising from the dead. This rebirth of sorts fit in well with the pagan themes of spring in which life is reborn from the death of winter. A rebirth that is symbolized in much of the largely secular Easter imagery that we know and love, including eggs and rabbits (seen as a very fertile animal). As with other religious related ceremony, we enjoy and celebrate such things without realizing the pagan and nature religion roots, roots that in many ways have much more going for it than the Christian beliefs that largely (but not quite as much as some think) replaced them. Actually, a whole lot of the religious origins of Easter make little sense and the fact that we still believe in them without really questioning them is far from surprising. Ignorance is surely not only found in religion, though allowing it to go unchallenged will likely help ignorance flourish in general. Christianity is not just a movement based on various moral principles or in honor of a special man that lived around two thousand years ago, since an agnostic, atheist, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, or follower of Wiccan can accept that. No, Christianity is based on faith that God sent his only Son to a little backwater (Palestine) to die for all of the sins of the world, and then rose from the dead to make it clear that the death actually had some purpose and involved a deity. Well, actually, sin is still here. A majority of people in the world do not know of what Jesus is said to have done or does not accept it as religious doctrine; many of these people do not appear particularly more sinful than those of us who know and/or accept the Christian view of Jesus’ death and its aftermath. Actually, most people in the area where he died did not realize “why” he died and that he rose from the dead. Furthermore, the spread of Christianity to a wide audience (though it unclear if the historical Jesus desired to do more than reform Judaism), as well as many of the beliefs that leads one to leave a “Christian life” arguably need not rely on the Easter story as much as one would think. Look at the success of Judaism and Islam, the latter spreading almost as broadly as Christianity with a similar universal approach. Furthermore, the whole point of the Easter story does not compute. First of all, the whole reason for Jesus dying is because of sin in the world, sin that ultimately supposedly goes back to the temptation of Adam and Eve. This was the “original sin” that ruined it for the rest of us, though of course, this really did not happen. We did not live in some pristine garden once upon a time and then by free will give up our right to paradise because we chose to sin. Sin grows from the human nature to satisfy our own needs and desires without concerning ourselves with the good of others, or even the ultimate good of ourselves. This is even clear in the Adam and Eve story: the whole problem arose from a desire for understanding and the inability to understand not fulfilling God’s will was not in their best interests. As long as we are human, we will sin, it is hard wired in our nature, nature that arises allegedly from God. Thus, follow this logic. God sets it up so we are bound to sin. He a long time afterwards sends “his son” to die to save us from what he wrought. Nonetheless, this alleged act of compassion does not seem to have done much to end sin. So, what was the point? A believer will respond that the point was that Jesus died so that our sins will be forgiven and that we will have eternal life, thus (1) sin that we really cannot be blamed for will be forgiven even though there really isn’t anything we did wrong in the first place and (2) the true value cannot be disproved until after we die. Neat trick. The awe and gratitude of what Jesus is said to have done seems a bit less logical, if we consider that it no longer seems that beneficial. The creation of life, a person that amazingly survives cancer or a long coma, and this one game where the NY Mets came back from 8-1 to beat the Braves in the eighth inning might all be worthy of our wonder and thanks, but God having to sacrifice his only son to make right what He actually put in place, and do so in a way where most do not even realize the fact does not seem to be. The fact that a successful religion grew out of a misguided view that it was does not change things by much, since not only did the religion bring with it a lot of problems, but the good it did bring did not require millions to be deluded in the process. Jesus’ death is understood as a great a sacrifice, though given what he apparently knew, was it? After all, as the Son of God, the idea is that he knew he had to die and why (it is unclear if statements in the gospels suggesting this were actually based on actual statements by Jesus). Jesus might have had a hard time of it because of his human form, but his death (quicker than many whom were crucified) clearly had a supreme purpose. Others have died through the years for much less than the salvation of mankind, some doing so with much less assurance that their death would actually have much immediate value at all. Furthermore, if Jesus was actually partly of God, let’s remember that God was around from the beginning, and will be here forever. So, the few years Jesus was on Earth were trivial, surely next to the suffering that many ordinary people have undergone through the years. For instance, through the years those who fought against evil governments rotted and died in prisons for years, though at least some actually did tangible unlike the largely invisible destruction of sin Jesus (who somehow is intimately connected to the God that brought sin about in the first place) supposedly accomplished. The whole idea that Jesus is the Son of God, as well as the fact he was sacrificed for our good, has a whole pagan flavor to it. The belief a great man (one meaning of “son of God” as used in the Bible was a particularly holy or unique individual) would come and be a savior to the Jewish people was a popular idea at the time, but this did not mean this person was the Son of God. The suggestion that Jesus was led most Jews to reject Christianity as blasphemous, though it is unclear Jesus claimed such a role for himself. This suggests that the whole Easter story was an after the fact attempt to give meaning to what seemed like a purposeless tragic death. Anyhow, the idea that a monotheistic God has a “Son” is basically a contradiction of terms, and the need to sacrifice him (thus furthering the concept of violence being necessary for good) is just a tad bit sadistic. Greek and Roman mythology explains Winter as the time when the goddess of the harvest is in mourning because she must send her beloved daughter to the underworld, a sacrifice necessary to uphold the growing cycle. Christianity itself is based on the sacrifice of the only Son of God, but the good it did is a whole less clear. It does help explain why pagans but not many Jews accepted Christianity, given pagans have a long tradition of such rather sadistic polytheistic theme beliefs, while Jews saw it as ridiculous. And it is a sad commentary to the all too typical response to truth and common sense that they were ridiculed and persecuted for doing so. This essay is concerned with Jesus' death and Resurrection as related to sin, not to other issues such as his miracles (apparently fairly usual events at the time), his overall message (demeaned somewhat by making him more than he was via dubious explanations), or the involvement of the Jews and Romans in his death (Pontius Pilate was much more heartless than shown in the Bible, and even if some Jewish authorities and a mob they got to support them was involved, Jews forever cannot be blamed for an event argued to be God's will any way!). Finally, my purposes was not to discuss the biblical acounts in detail, an interesting and troubling (for believers) exercise. For an extended discussion of the Resurrection accounts by a doubter, check out this interesting essay. These all are interesting areas to study, and necessary to get a truer vision of what occurred, but I was more concerned with a narrow issue here.