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Posted by josef on 4/10/2010, 9:08 am, in reply to "Re: Luther and wu wei"
24.32.223.x
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: For instance many of us need the idea of sin
: in order to set up a paradigm that will
: purportedly give us self-worth. As in
: "If I am not better than you, maybe no
: one is better than anyone else, and if so I
: fear that life is meaningless."
:
: love,
: rat
Hi, rat,
Loving to track back to what is natural and what is essence, I considered sin in that light. It seems it might have originated as taboos, fear of displeasing the God/gods responsible for good harvests and devastating floods. And continued on in that vein with modern religion still about appeasing God/gods for favored status.
What you describe, "If I am not better than you, maybe no one is better than anyone else, and if so I fear that life is meaningless" seems the province, and luxury, of philosophers, examining sin in the über-reified modern mind that turns everything into comparison, conflict and judging.
For simpler folks, sin remains simply something "bad" to avoid in order to gain from God/gods favors and protection, eventually heaven, untold number of beautiful virgins, whatever. It's a dependency.
(The issue of sin hangs entirely on the acceptance of the concept of free will, a Catholic invention. A colorful story about Original Sin, Adam and Eve, free will, disobedience, to establish individual responsibility, set guilt and fear of punishment firmly in place, and keep the people under the thumb of the Church which only (it claimed)had the authority to forgive sin on God's behalf. Obey or burn. Theologians and philosophers have since run amok in the field of concepts thus created.)
But in the end, for most people, I think it's still really no more than taboo, the sense of displeasing or appeasing God/gods who have the power to bless & protect, or to punish.
Tyrannically-bent governments love to own this power of speaking to the masses with the authority of God. Talk about power!
Just my musings on it all, nothing more...
josef
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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