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RE: I'm an atheist, but I believe in sin. 나는 무신론자이지만 죄를 믿는다. naneun musinlonjaijiman joeleul midneunda.

in #atheism7 years ago

I get what you are saying about the word sin. I used it partially just to be polemic, although I do like the more personal connotations of sin versus abstract notions like morality.

Sin is an overloaded word. It can mean a general concept "Murder is a Sin" - and that matches up nicely with saying "Murder is immoral".

But sin also is used as a verb "I feel bad when I sin". I guess you could say "I feel bad when I am immoral".

And finally, sin can refer to a specific instance of immoral behavior, "I feel bad for that sin I committed last Tuesday". That tends to work better than "I feel bad for the moral transgression I committed last Tuesday:

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I see and then I agree. I guess the word that you used the threw me off into a tangent was actually "believe", no just "sin".

I absolutely agree that using the word "sin" instead of the phrases "immoral act" or "moral transgression" has practical value. The thing is I do think that the word is really overloaded with religious concepts and dogmatism and reclaiming it for secular purposes with an altered usage would be really hard. Despite that I do see the utility in trying to do so now.