Sin and Morality: How Christianity and its moral code fails modern society.

[Sorcerer]

I was on facebook and I read a post regarding the morality of premarital sex and how from some Christians' viewpoints it is regarded as immoral and their ironic use of shame to try to enforce their beliefs, it lead me to write this rather long reply in regards to how I think secular morality is superior to dogmatic religious morality. Feel free to criticise it.

Some Christians think premarital sex is a sin. They base this off words written for the moral code of a society who lived over 2000 years ago. This was before people knew how reproduction worked and in a society where young females who got pregnant were dependent on the support of their husbands. During this time, premarital sex would almost definitely lead to pregnancy, because their moral code lacked incentive for the father to stay unless they were married, it would mean that mother and baby would come to harm or become a excessive burden on their small community. Now days with knowledge of how sex works, contraception available, social services in place to support single parents and child support enforceable on any parent who should share responsibility, the harm that premarital sex does is negligible.

This is how I gauge my morals. I ask "how much harm does it cause", in this case I see very little potential harm, and I also see some benefits.

I don't see how belittling those who have premarital sex would change anything for a Christian though, since they also think Jesus forgives every sin. I'm guessing it's because they can't stop themselves from demeaning each other for their supposed sins, which is ironic, considering that whole "what would Jesus do", thing.

I often wonder about the huge mental conflict that Christians should have over responsibility and accountability for actions and personal improvement, when these are made redundant against unconditional forgiveness. What makes Christians feel the need to not do bad things and change themselves for the better, when there are no conditions for their Gods forgiveness?

How can Christians be moral people with the unconditional love and forgiveness of God? This is even more perplexing when they are primarily coerced into acknowledging their actions and seeking this forgiveness by the fear of Hell,or the reward of Heaven.

Surely to be moral we must hold ourselves to account for our actions and self improvement. The incentive should be altruistic, driven by the reward of benefiting Humanity in a mutual way. The positive and negative reinforcement of others in society and our own empathy and reason, should serve as direction to change, and forgiveness should be something we offer to ourselves and others when we accept they have acknowledged their wrong doing and show a desire to change.

A divine moral code, divine forgiveness and heaven and hell are merely constructs for people who lack the rational ability to see that morality is stronger and more sensible when it is only applied to actions, and that those actions' morality should be defined by how much good or harm they cause.

The Christian moral system is for those too narrow minded to see their society, and ultimately their world, as an extension of their self, via the environment. They fail to understand, that rather than a fictional God's word, (which is actually a collection of people's words), morality should be based around the premise that causing harm ultimately makes their society and their world worse, which makes it a worse place for them to live. Other than empathy, without this external world view, or without belief in a belief in a conditional system of divine punishment and reward, there is no incentive to be moral, because it isn't immediately obvious how it is in your best interest to be. Luckily as animals we have empathy hard wired, this probably prevented us destroying society when morality was based solely on not angering a God of which you could immediately ask forgiveness. A world which revolved around personal salvation, a world robbed of reason by keeping information and education as a monopoly controlled by the theocracy. A world which was sadly preferred over one that attempted to ensure everyone had the best possible world in which to live. The only world which was allowed to be suggested, because questioning it was enforceable by death. That world being, for Europe, the middle ages. And although the religion differs slightly, not so different from modern Islamic theocracy's governed by Sharia law.

The Christian moral code is for those too narrow minded to see how taking personal and public accountability for one's own actions is successful in enabling people to make moral choices. By being open about our wrong choices we allow society to aid us in further choices and assist change by gaining access to education and social systems which encourage beneficial actions and discourage harmful ones. The Christian moral code instead encourages people to hide their actions in shame and confess them privately to an imaginary God.

The Christian moral code fails to see that when someone thinks they have been forgiven by a fictional entity, really they are just pretending to forgive them self, and that instead true self forgiveness requires a deeper understanding of one's own actions, allowing them to be completely resolved. Christianity fails to see that asking for forgiveness without any desire to change, but only for the desire not to go to Hell, does very little to prevent further harmful actions and offers no real incentive not to repeat actions. Christianity limits peoples desire to want to constantly change by failing to give them the proper tools to do so, it provides a rigid moral code of little relevance to today and offers parables for advice which do not fit every situation or can be interpreted loosely giving vague advice.

Christianity offers to remove an imaginary curse to people for simply acknowledging their bad action to an imaginary being. It fails to help people see a rational method to become a person who no longer does that action. This is because asking forgiveness from a fictional God involves only personal insight. Whereas a person confronting their victim, while asking them for forgiveness, allows multiple people to get involved. Having wrong actions acknowledged by society and allowing society to assist in personal change ensures that there are maximum resources and otherwise unavailable advice from those who may have more, or more diverse experiences. It enables others to support change, by both their encouragement of positive change and discouragement of slow progress in change. Having the added insight of other people's experience helps understanding of the reasons behind harmful choices, in understanding our actions and seeing how we were wrong, combined with the knowledge of our having changed so that those choices are no longer made, people are then able to completely forgive and get on with living a life made of better choices.

This is why in my society there is a secular legal system, and we don't have a religious law system. This is why premarital sex isn't illegal. This is why our society isn't stuck between the feudal and industrial ages like the theocratic states who uphold a religious legal system. At some point our society decided Christians are stupid, let's make law about reason.