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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (890)	9/15/2006 9:24:45 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 10087

People who don't believe in an afterlife might live very upright lives but they might not, either....So, believing in God affects my behavior. You already pointed out the benefit this can be to society. My inference from this is that you aren't sure how upright you'd be were you not a believer. I imagine that's pretty universal. And since life isn't an alternative universe sci fi story, I don't suppose there's any way to know. (I don't know if your reference to "upright" was intended to convey the opposite of "sinner." I'll assume it was.) There might be some utility in comparing crime rates among Buddhists and other religions without a deity with crime rates for theistic religions. I don't recall ever seeing data on crime rates arrayed by religion. Perhaps there are just too few people from non-theistic religions to be useful. As you can see by my multiple postings on the subject, I was very taken by Jeff's comment on sinning. Overnight, I found myself awake at an odd hour, turned on the TV and found nothing but O'Reilly and Scarborough, each of whom I turned off the first time he shouted down a guest, so my mind was left to wander. It ended up pondering my sins. Once upon a time, I bought some slipcovers from Sears on sale, returned them for some reason I cannot recall, and neglected to correct the clerk when he returned the full price rather than the sale price. I rationalized it on the basis of needing the money and Sears being a big corporation that wouldn't miss it. I remember it vividly because I felt really bad about it. Never did it again. That happened somewhere around 1966. That was the last sin I committed that seems worthy of reporting to a priest in confession. If I were still practicing, I can't imagine what fodder I'd have for confession. When I was working, on more than one occasion I took far more than my share of some especially compelling pastry treat that one of my colleagues brought in and left sitting in a communal area. That seems sinful to me, gluttony, I suppose, with a touch of greed, but something more usefully reported to a shrink than to a priest. <g> I mentioned the other day ordering something from Home Depot's business arm where I had to pass myself off as a business to register. I felt funny about doing that. It was deceitful so I guess a sin. Every once in a while, maybe a few times a year, I will find myself doing something of equivalent sinfulness, I think, perhaps, dunno. I really don't remember how often I do things like that. Rarely, though, by any definition of the word. I don't remember any of them other than this most recent but, not being memorable although leaving me feeling "funny" at the time, I don't see why I would. What with the priest shortage these days, it would seem more wrong than the lie, itself, to waste a priest's time with it. The point of that is that it's hard for me to get my head around the notion of daily sinning. By persons other than career criminals and general scum bags, that is, and I have no reason to think that such low life post here. So it must be that different people work off different sin standards. If you want to count such things as eating meat on Fridays, I suppose you could come up with a long list. I sure don't know why one would want to do that. As for the sins I just "confessed," I don't do them any more. But then I can afford what I want and am no longer in an environment where colleagues bring in goodies for all to share. Were my circumstances different, I don't know what I would do, either. Or if belief in God might stop me from doing it. (Re Home Depot, closing the loop, the package arrived yesterday. They ended up charging me a five dollar service fee, which I thought very reasonable. This packet of hardware, maybe one inch by two inches by one inch, came in a box two feet by two feet by two feet, filled with those air filled baggies. I guess the business arm of Home Depot doesn't have any small boxes.)