Second Life

[CuriousInIL]

Objects cannot be sinful. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines sin as a “moral evil” and quotes St Thomas:

Sin is nothing else than a morally bad act (St. Thomas, “De malo”, 7:3),

Yes, sin is an act. But, “sinful” means “involved with sin” and therefore can apply to an object IMO.

Depends. What is your moral intent while viewing, playing or participating. Are any of your thoughts and behaviors “morally evil”? If not, then there is no sin.

To the extent that these are addressed to me, I have no answers as I do not view, play or participate. I was seeking knowledge and opinions of others and assume that these are yours with hypothetical assumptions.

 

[davidv]

Yes, sin is an act. But, “sinful” means “involved with sin” and therefore can apply to an object IMO.
To the extent that these are addressed to me, I have no answers as I do not view, play or participate. I was seeking knowledge and opinions of others and assume that these are yours with hypothetical assumptions.

Please indulge my nitpicking. Sloppy use of the language in these contexts always get us in trouble. From dictionary.com, Sinful means:*adjective *characterized by, guilty of, or full of sin; wicked: *a sinful life. *Since an inanimate object cannot act. It cannot be sinful.

Also, since I have zero knowledge of the content of the topic, I presented general principles to be followed in determining sinfulness.

 

[1ke]

While many things cannot be sinful, I do not believe that it is true that merely because something is an object, it cannot be sinful. For example, a pornographic magazine is just a thing; is it not? However, isn’t that object sinful?

No, objects are not sinful. Only human acts can be sinful.

A magazine full of pornographic pictures is a neutral object until a person acts on it.

I could burn it in my fireplace for warmth without any sin involved.

With regard to pornography, sinful *acts *would be: creating, viewing, distributing, purchasing.

Is playing/participating in Second Life sinful?

Additional questions can be:

Is viewing the content sinful?
Is playing/participating to excess sinful?
Are actions that you do or can commit in the game sinful?

It is possible an individual might sin while playing depending on circumstances.

Once again, I have no opinion at this time about what might or might not be sinful about it (though some other posters have begun to set forth possibilities. And, because I have no opinion as of yet, I will say again I DO NOT KNOW WHAT COMMANDMENT is (or is not) being violated.

Well, without something more specific, the question cannot be answered.

Sorry if I am a bit chippy but you are running up against my pet peeve on this site, namely, that many folks turn a question, a quest for knowledge, into an opinion or position and then praise or criticize you for that position or opinion. Sometimes a question is a question and the questioner has no preconceived notion of what the answer might be.

This question does not seem to be a quest for objective knowledge-- ie, a principle or doctrine-- but a quest for opinions. Therefore, it seems ironic you are not willing to give yours.

Your question was overly broad. I see no way to answer it. That is why I asked probing questions-- such as what aspect you thought might be sinful and why you thought it might be so.

 

[CuriousInIL]

Please indulge my nitpicking. Sloppy use of the language in these contexts always get us in trouble. From dictionary.com, Sinful means:*adjective *characterized by, guilty of, or full of sin; wicked: *a sinful life. *Since an inanimate object cannot act. It cannot be sinful.

Oh my, please do not get me started on the failings of dictionary.com. But, even taking that “source,” I do not see how “characterized by” eliminates inanimate objects.

I prefer to rely on Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged (which really is IMO the only reliable dictionary source for general purposes other than the OED (too wordy for me)). It has as a relevant definition of “sinful” the following “2 : marked by or involving sin” and once again, while I see your point and while sinful is most often applicable to acts or actors, I do not think it is improper to apply that to an object.

OK dictionary rant is over.

No, objects are not sinful. Only human acts can be sinful.

A magazine full of pornographic pictures is a neutral object until a person acts on it.

I could burn it in my fireplace for warmth without any sin involved.

With regard to pornography, sinful *acts *would be: creating, viewing, distributing, purchasing.

I picked the example of a porno magazine for a particular reason; and, I think it is difficult to defend the idea that “A magazine full of pornographic pictures is a neutral object until a person acts on it.”

Of course, you do not sin by burning a pornographic magazine for warmth. However, before that object found itself in your fireplace, it had to be created and distributed (and likely sold and purchased) and thus by your own reasoning acts of sin occurred in its manufacture and conveyance to your fireplace. To me, that means it /involves sin/ and can properly be called sinful under the proper definition I quoted above (or even under that drivel from dictionary.com). But, I agree that generally objects are morally neutral–so long as their creation and distribution have not involved sin.

OK, I guess my rant wasn’t quite over.

This question does not seem to be a quest for objective knowledge-- ie, a principle or doctrine-- but a quest for opinions. Therefore, it seems ironic you are not willing to give yours.

It is a quest for all of the above. If someone has a principle or doctrine to apply so that objective knowledge on the subject can been obtained–great. (I do doubt that on a subject such as this there is anything definitive enough to get even close to even a majority agreement on an objective knowledge or truth, let alone consensus on the issue.)

Indeed, it mostly was a quest for opinions and it is not so ironic that I did not give mine, because I have not formed an opinion on the matter. The subject was being debated on a Christian message board and my thought was to port it here to get the Catholic slant on things so to speak. As of about 3-4 days ago, I had never heard of Second Life and I still have not gone to the site to see how it works. But, I read a fair amount about it at that Christian message board and wanted to see if opinions here differ from that other board (something I have done in the past on other topics with some very interesting results).

Moreover, I probably would not have given my opinion even if I had one, because I really dislike the threads on this site that are of the “* that [fill-in the blank] is [right/wrong (choose one)]; what do you think?” They often degenerate into responses that go about like this: “If you have to ask you already know it is wrong” or “Your opinion is wrong it most certainly is [wrong/right (choose the opposite of the OP)]” or other like comments.

I am interested in other’s opinions on certain topics and I choose to seek them. (Note that I do rarely seek folk’s opinions on the meanings of words, I wonder why? LOL). If you find that so offensive or bizarre, please feel free to ignore them.*

 

[1ke]

I am interested in other’s opinions on certain topics and I choose to seek them. (Note that I do rarely seek folk’s opinions on the meanings of words, I wonder why? LOL). If you find that so offensive or bizarre, please feel free to ignore them.

I don’t find it offensive or bizarre, only ironic. But, thank you for explaining, I do understand your position better now.

 

[CuriousInIL]

I don’t find it offensive or bizarre, only ironic. But, thank you for explaining, I do understand your position better now.

OK. And, I did not mean to imply that you found it offensive or bizarre. Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut.

 

[Carthusianish]

It’s just a game. It is what you make of it that can become obsessive and obscene.

I play World of Warcraft every night for a few hours, but it ends there. I have Real life responsibilities and a very demanding job. This game relaxes me.

Play it as a game then walk away. There is no harm or sinfullness about it.

Amen. That’s the right way to do it – you just have to treat it like any other entertainment, like TV or movies. However, there is a lot of “sketchy” content created by seedy users in 2nd Life, or so I have read. If that is the case and there are no safe havens within the world, then if it has become pornographic then that could be much worse than just neutral.

With any entertainment or leisure activity, anyone can turn it into a vice.