[russnewcomer]

It seems, based on your comment, that you have experienced Christian practice not meeting Christian teaching, which saddens me.

Sin, in Christian theology based around total depravity, is not 'essentially not being Christian enough', but is rather a failure to obey God. As I said before, this is an area where different religious backgrounds or experiences make discussing this issue difficult.

I certainly don't mean to say that Christians are less violent, but that they should be.

This feels like a discussion quickly falling away from the article and off-topic for the thread, so if you'd like to continue it, feel free to email me, my username at gmail.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Sin, in Christian theology based around total depravity, is not 'essentially not being Christian enough', but is rather a failure to obey God.

Except that when you say "failure to obey God" you mean "failure to behave as christians have defined a supposed god wants you to behave", or in short "not being christian enough". Simply attributing your rules to an entity whose existence you haven't even demonstrated is simply a rhetorical device to obfuscate the easy to understand statement "sin is when you don't follow my/our rules".

Just consider whether you would be willing to substitute any definition of god out there in your statement instead of the christian one. How about Allah? Then your claim would be that in christian theology, it's sin to not obey Allah (that is, behave as Muslims define that god wants you to behave). If you aren't willing to accept that, your argument doesn't hold, and if you are, you have to deal with a huge pile of self-contradictory doctrine from all the world's religions.

[russnewcomer]

You make a compelling argument based on your presuppositions.

If one doesn't hold a Christian theology based around total depravity, then yes, sin does seem like an arbitrary construct. In fact, even among Christians who hold to essentially similar theological views, there is disagreement about what actions are disobedient to God's instructions, and that's not an easy task to sort through.

As for if I would be willing to substitute any definition of God, no, I wouldn't. But my argument still holds up due to my personal presupposition that the Christian Scriptures are the inspired Word of God, and other religions that deny part or all of them are not correct.

Again, this is heading way off topic for the article, so if you are interested in continuing, feel free to email.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> You make a compelling argument based on your presuppositions.

You are confusing presupposition with lack thereof.

> But my argument still holds up due to my personal presupposition [...]

Yes, of course your argument holds up if you presuppose that it holds up, big deal. Except that just claiming something is true and then deducing from that that it is true isn't really an argument, it's still just an unsubstantiated claim.

I, for example, presuppose that at the center of the sun, there is a big oven with lots of bread in it. Therefore, there is a big oven with lots of bread in it at the center of the sun. You might have different presuppositions, but this argument still holds up due to my personal presupposition that there is a big oven with lots of bread in it at the center of the sun.

Also, that you are not convinced of the claim that there is a big oven with lots of bread in it at the center of the sun (I suppose you are not?) is just because of your presuppositions. If you didn't presuppose that you weren't convinced, you would now have been convinced by my argument.

[dragonwriter]

> Except that when you say "failure to obey God" you mean "failure to behave as christians have defined a supposed god wants you to behave",

Its a not-uncommon bit of Christian theology that sin is not acting how God has specifically and personally directed you, individually, to behave.

Now, Christians holding to that model have (varying, even among Christians) beliefs, to which they ascribe varying degrees of certainty, about things which they thing God commands of all people generally, which are therefore incorporated into that. But those beliefs are conceptually separate from the definition of sin.