What Constitutes Sin

[airportkid]

If you're not religious, sin could simply be acting outside the law, which is secular.

If you're religious, sin has no relationship to law.  Sin, as far as I understand it, is acting contrary to god's plan.  Inscrutably, according to the religious, we're all born having already sinned.

There's no coherent "plan" in the christian bible, only fragments that are often contradictory, or (especially), so general or vague as to have no meaning.  It's so unnavigable christians cop-out by claiming jesus "died" (he didn't) to absolve all parties of all sin across all of time.

So tis is an invitation to the religious who consider "sin" real and "a thing" to map out their view of what constitutes sin.

What proportion of "sin" really just amounts to acting outside secular law?

What proportion of "sin" amounts to refusing to grovel toward a god?

What bits of god's plan supercede secular law, or even demand not complying with secular law?

[Rhythmcs]

Sin is the violation of a sacred article. It may be bad to do x y or z, but it might not be sinful. Let's omit magic book in the question as it's not actually a great treatise on sin.

Do you believe that the rights of man (however described) are inviolable? Well..then, to violate that, is sin.

[Rahn127]

I don't accept the concept of sin.

To me it's an invisible, intangible hat that other people place on everyone else's head.

[Bucky Ball]

Paul Tillich and Martin Buber both basically destroy the traditional Christian definition of sin, (obedience/disobedience to their gods).
Buber was a Jewish philosopher, Tillich was a Christian professor of either theology or philosophy. Tillich wrote "The Courage to Be", Buber wrote "Good and Evil".

Buber (in Part II of "Good and Evil") does a careful look at the language and philosophical foundations underlying the garden myth in Genesis.
The notion of evil there is clearly demonstrated to be the Babylonian concept of "chaos", and that's what is described in the Adam and Eve myth,
(which has all the syncretic elements described in ancient Near Eastern mythology).

Tillich agrees and does the same with respect to later concepts of evil.
Both Buber and Tillich would say that a "sin" or an evil act is one which does not promote one's authentic self ... a
position which has been arrived at by some modern ethicists. So this concept is both secular and religious, ... and it predates both Christianity and Judaism, and works fine.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I'm essentially a humanist, so sin to me is treating people like shit -- killing them, practicing thoughtcrime, slavery, that sort of thing.

[Dancefortwo]

Sin is a religious concept.  I don't know about other country's secular courts and government laws but the US Constitution has no Article or law that denotes the word "sin" in it.    Sin implies satan and mythical evil entities and transgressions against deities.   Causing bodily harm, stealing from others and infringing on their personal freedoms is a bad thing, it's not a sin.  It's just "bad".

[Rhythmcs]

Is it not...then, a sin..to abrogate the rights of man?

[no one]

Anything I don't like!

HOW DARE YOU EVEN ASK!!!!!! 

[Gwaithmir]

Sin is nothing more than a priestly construct designed to control people through fear and guilt. 

[julep]

Not a concept that I subscribe to, but sin is something that requires forgiveness, in addition to whatever penalties are imposed. Without the forgiveness—at the capricious deity’s whim—the sinner can pay and pay and is still doomed.

[Dom]

Sin is when you eat too much ice cream.

[Phaedrus]

“Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid.)”

― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

[TheGentlemanBastard]

Sin is a religious concept, usually regarded as a crime or offence toward gawd(s). Without religion(s) and/or gawd(s), sin cannot exist.

[Phaedrus]

More aptly, since god doesn't exist neither does sin.

[Minimalist]

For religitards the world over "sin" apparently comes down to "fucking."  They don't like it.

[Dānu]

From what I understand, one serving of sin constitutes 40% of your daily recommended allowance of fun.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Right and wrong is right and wrong. Sin is a religious overlay of extraspecial wrong that our god will burn you for.

But right is right and wrong is wrong.

[airportkid]

Both Buber and Tillich would say that a "sin" or an evil act is one which does not promote one's authentic self ...

So Trump telling the truth would be a sin.  Fitting.

[Phaedrus]

According to Google images:

[SYZ]

In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law.

As there is no such thing as "divine" law, ergo there is no such
thing as sin.

And the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to,
or proceeding from a deity or supernatural entity.

[Percie]

So tis is an invitation to the religious who consider "sin" real and "a thing" to map out their view of what constitutes sin.

Maybe you should issue a triple dog dare, because so far you just have an atheist circle jerk. 

[Percie]

In a religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law.

As there is no such thing as "divine" law, ergo there is no such
thing as sin.

And the divine are things that are either related to, devoted to,
or proceeding from a deity or supernatural entity.

What's this "deity" thing you refer to? Can you define that?

[mordant]

In my former life as a Christian fundamentalist, there was a lot of emphasis on Paul's statement that one should be "subject to the authorities" because they are "ordained by god". So disobedience of / distrust of authorities was effectively a sin. I was a child in the 1960s when "Distrust Authority" was kind of the unofficial hippie slogan. At the time I thought it beyond the pale. These days, I understand it much better, lol.

Apart from that, and somewhat schizophrenically, there were things that civil authorities tolerated or ignored that were still sin. As Min points out, most of those were sexual in nature, directly or indirectly. Fornication, adultery, divorce, anything against the "natural order" of one-man-one-woman lifetime legal arrangements with obligatory missionary position sex, with some woman whose hemline wasn't too short.

Although the Bible either doesn't prohibit it or even assumes it as perfectly ordinary, we didn't like long hair, facial hair, or anything that had a whiff of counter-culture to it.

Depending on what sub-sect you belonged to it might be sinful to defraud god of his 10% tithe, to not attend church ("forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is"), etc.

In other words the concept of sin for us became "stretchy" and ended up including things that our elders simply found distasteful.

It was ultimately a way to control us.

[Gwaithmir]

I see Percie has finally attracted enough attention for a -2. 

[Dancefortwo]

Sin is a religious concept, usually regarded as a crime or offence toward gawd(s). Without religion(s) and/or gawd(s), sin cannot exist.

That's sorta what I wrote in a couple of posts above yours.  Sin and blasphemy, those are religious transgressions against a god.  When people are charged with murder or other crimes there is nothing in the legal system that I know of which uses the word "sin" in the charges.  We use assult and battery, 2nd degree murder,  sexual assault , securities fraud, child abandonment and other terminalogy for such crimes but no one is charged with a "sin".  That's the term that religions use for what bad people do to good people or when someone says  bad things about their god.