Sin, soul, and other vague words

[Pulsar]

What the hell is Sin???

Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question. You've all heard this from fundies: "Eve ate the forbidden fruit, so that Sin entered into the world, and shit happened."
Earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, asteroids, AIDS, cancer, famine, war, even baldness, genital warts or a hairy ass - all because of Sin. So what is it? Is it some kind of "entity"? As if all matter in the universe has been infected by "something" that makes it "behave badly". The christian version of chaos. Or entropy, though they don't have a clue what the Second Law really is.
I call it a patch word: a deliberately ill-defined, vague word, used by unreasonable people as a wildcard to conceil any holes in their "reasoning". There are more words like this:

Soul and Spirit: The ghost in the machine. The unphysical, eternal entity that's really me, separate from my physical body. Right.

Spiritual: "He's a very spiritual person. He's in touch with his soul." What does that mean???

Heaven and Hell: What's Heaven? An endless white space in another dimension where our "souls" float forever? And for what purpose? There's an analogy with the designer fallacy here: just like theists can't answer where God comes from, they always say our purpose is to go to Heaven, but they don't know what our purpose would be once we're there.
Hell is easier: a vulcanic place where we suffer for eternity. Though how that's possible without senses our a nervous system, I have no idea.

Kind: The taxonomy of creationists. "One kind of animal cannot turn into another". Well, if there were only 8000 "kinds" of animal on the ark, why can't they give us a list of those animals, and how did those animals diversify into the millions of species today, in just a few centuries, without evolution???

And of course the ultimate vague terms: God and the Devil.

Not only religious people have these buzzwords. We all know the new-age, pseudoscientific term

Energy: "This room has a lot of negative energy..." As if that means something.

I'm sure you guys can come up with more of these patch words.

But looking back, I think I can answer my question:

Sin is a spiritual negative energy, caused by the Devil, that prevents the souls of Mankind from going to Heaven.

Makes perfect sense

 

[MachineSp1rit]

I like the Heaven thing. basically heaven is same as nirvana, and what is nirvana? nirvana is just endless content, there is no cold because there is no heat, there is no good because there is no evil... sounds like death to me.

death=nothing. so heaven is nothing.

 

[Ozymandyus]

You'd be surprised how precisely these words are actually defined by theologians. They have long very specific discussions about the theoretical natures of sin and spirit and all this stuff. They treat it all like science, which really is quite sad when you look at it.

Though, granted, I have had some really interesting discussions with Catholic theologians about this stuff. They usually have very good descriptions of these words, stuff that you might buy as logically coherent. Doesn't make them true though. None of them believed in things like Energy, Kind, or Devil though, I can't really imagine what a creationist theologian would have to say.

 

[Pulsar]

You'd be surprised how precisely these words are actually defined by theologians. They have long very specific discussions about the theoretical natures of sin and spirit and all this stuff.

I'm sure they do. It helps a lot when you're not confined by that irritating scientific method - all that observing and testing
Also, can they define these words without using equally vague terms? I wouldn't be surprised if their definitions are constructed from baseless assertions and circular reasoning. I'd like to hear what they have to say.

 

[Ozymandyus]

Well, all reasoning is circular when you get right down to it, whether part of the circle refers to evidence in the physical universe is the key though. But yes the reasoning is generally baseless, that is, without good evidence. They do look at problems and unexplained things in the world and seek ways of explaining them, but make the mistaken assumption that there are Reasons for everything.

I'd be happy to share my understanding of the theological Catholic understanding of these words, as I was a good and thoughtful Catholic for many years thanks to 8 years of Jesuit education - and 8 more of Catholic gradeschool.

Edit: Will post my understanding a little later, have some errands to run.

 

[Pulsar]

Yes, by all means, I'd like to hear what you can say about this. I was raised as a Catholic myself, but I've never known much about the 'core' of the doctrine.

 

[Spase]

I really liked this video... maybe because I'm a dork...

Anyway! It's about where the word soul comes from (it's root) and interestingly goes into a lot of detail about what's actually in the bible, how it's been translated differently in different contexts etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJvKbVx9d0c

 

[buzzausa]

Sin is a spiritual negative energy, caused by the Devil, that prevents the souls of Mankind from going to Heaven.

Makes perfect sense

That is just beautiful

Anyway I was raised as catholic too and I have to tell you that growing up I never questioned those terms. That's what adults were teaching me, they were clearly smarter than me, so there was no reason to question it.
Hey...I was young and being taught by nuns in elementary school and priests in middle school can really mess you up from that point of view.

I believe that nobody really has a good definition for these terms and that is simply because they want all these things to be outside of our world and understanding (like "spirit" for example) because they are derived from a "higher power". If that's the case then, you can't define any of these terms in a tangible manner. Sorry...you can't have your cake and eat it too

 

[Pulsar]

I really liked this video... maybe because I'm a dork...

Anyway! It's about where the word soul comes from (it's root) and interestingly goes into a lot of detail about what's actually in the bible, how it's been translated differently in different contexts etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJvKbVx9d0c

That was a great video. I found this site: http://www.pickle-publishing.com/papers/soul-and-spirit.htm, which talks about the same issue. I'll summarize:

The most common conception of the nature of man is that man has an immortal soul and/or spirit within him that can be conscious after death. This was the understanding of the Greek philosophers, the Pharisees of Jesus' day, and numerous pagan religions. But was this the understanding of the Bible writers? The word for "soul" in the Old Testament is nephesh. Nephesh is translated in following ways (the numbers being the number of occurrences of each way):

any 3 / appetite 2 / beast 2 / body 4 / breath 1 / creature 9 /
dead 5 / dead body 4 / desire 4 / fish 1 / ghost 2 / heart 15 /
hearty 1 / herself 2 / himself 8 / life 117 / lust 2 / man 3 /
mind 15 / mortally 1 / myself 1 / one 1 / own 1 / person 29 /
pleasure 3 / soul 475 / thing 2 / themselves 3 / thyself 1 / will 4 /
would have it 1 / yourselves 6

The meaning of nephesh's root word is "to breathe." Since those who are breathing still have "life," one of the meanings for nephesh is "life." Since the "body" is what we use to breathe with, one of the meanings for nephesh is "body." Since a "dead body" is what once breathed, one of the meanings for nephesh is "dead body." Thus, all three renderings of nephesh, though apparently quite different, are derived from the same basic meaning of the root word.

In the New Testament the word for "soul" is psuche. Psuche is translated in the following ways:

heart 1 / heartily 1 / life 40 / make doubt 1 / mind 3 / soul 58 / you 1

The word for "spirit" in the Old Testament is either ruach or neshamah. Ruach is translated in the following ways:

air 1 / anger 1 / blast 4 / breath 27 / cool 1 / courage 1 / mind 6 /
quarters 1 / side 6 / spirit 240 / wind 94 / vain 2

Neshamah is translated in the following ways:

blast 3 / breath 17 / inspiration 1 / souls 1 / spirit 2

In the New Testament the word for "spirit" is pneuma. Pneuma is translated the following ways:

ghost 2 / Holy Ghost 90 / life 1 / spirit 151 / Spirit 137 / spiritual gift 1 /
spiritually 1 / wind 1

That is just beautiful

You have my permission to quote me

 

[digitalbuddha48]

Sin is a spiritual negative energy, caused by the Devil, that prevents the souls of Mankind from going to Heaven.

Great definition but I think that if you changed it to "...caused by the Devil or humans..." it would be perfect. Along with what you were saying about original sin, it is true that Satan tempted Eve, but it was SHE, not the devil that actually ate the fruit so I believe it would safe to assume that people can also create this "negative" energy (just think it fits better if you were trying to write down these definitions).