Why is disbelief a sin?

[Flopfoot]

Sorry, but I’m gonna take a different tack (might even accidentally throw a spanner in the works) and point out that actually, disbelief is not always a sin. (By the way all that you read in this post might be wrong, I’m no apologist / expert, but this is my understanding)

We have a doctrine of invincible ignorance which says that people who don’t believe in God through no fault of their own won’t be punished for this disbelief. For example, imagine someone in a non-Christian country who has never heard of the things we believe - what have they done to offend God so that they should be punished? Nothing. However this is not the only case. Other examples are when the people who have told you about God didn’t do it in a very good way - like when someone conquers a country and they bring in Christianity, the locals are hardly likely to believe in the religion of those who are conquering and killing them.

However, what about those who are not invincibly ignorant? Those who ‘should’ believe in God but the only reason they don’t is because they have chosen not to accept Him, maybe because of their pride or because they are stuck in their old ways or because it would mean too much change in their life. Then these people have commited the sin of rejecting God.

So how are we supposed to have any idea of who is invincibly ignorant and who is not? Well the thing is that God reveals Himself to us in many ways. We can examine the universe, see how everything in the universe is a chain of cause and effect, so what is the first cause? Who or what caused the universe to have energy, order, matter? We can examine the human person, see how we all have a desire for ‘something’ which today we know to be God, it dates back to the cavemen with their rituals and etc. Also we look at the human person, why is it that we are different to the other animals? How we can think and make decisions, and why is it that we have a feeling of right and wrong rather than just trying to do whats best for ourselves? Could this be our ‘conscience’? And then we have the Scriptures. And we have miracles. And then we have the people who go around explaining it all, the same as the first Christians began to spread the message. And then there is God’s grace, God gently calls all people to Himself. God calls us to have faith, to bridge the gap between what we can work out by reason and the bits we have trouble with because human reason is not perfect, just as humans aren’t perfect.

I guess you have to know for yourself whether you really are invincibly ignorant and that all you’ve heard of God is a bunch of crazy people on the internet, or if your disbelief is actually a case of rejection of God, that He has called you to believe in so many ways and you have just told Him to get lost. The former case is not a sin, the latter is.

 

[Hitetlen]

DeFide:
The eighth and last argument from history is from our own individual history and life’s experiences. The Christian faith is verifiable in a laboratory, but it is a subtle and complex laboratory: the laboratory of one’s life. If God exists, he wants to get in touch with us and reveal himself to us, and he has promised that all who seek him will find him. Well, then, all the agnostic has to do is to seek, sincerely, honestly, and with an open mind, and he will find, in God’s way and in God’s time. That is part of the hypothesis, part of the promise.Unfortunately this is much too open-ended as experiment.

DeFide:

How to seek? Not just by arguing but by praying, not just by talking about God, as Job’s three friends did and did not find him, but by talking to God, as Job did, and found him. I always tell a sceptic to pray the prayer of the sceptic if he really wants to know whether God exists. This is the scientific thing to do, to test a hypothesis by performing the relevant experiment. I tell him to go out into his backyard some night when no one can see and hear him and make him feel foolish, and say to the empty universe above him, “God, I don’t know whether you exist or not. Maybe I’m praying to nobody, but maybe I’m praying to you. So if you are really there, please let me know somehow, because I do want to know. I want only the Truth, whatever it is. If you are the Truth, here I am, ready and willing to follow you wherever you lead.” If our faith is not a pack of lies, then whoever sincerely prays that prayer will find God in his own life, no matter how hard, how long, or how complex the road, as Augustine’s was in the Confessions. “All roads lead to Rome” if only we follow them.

Here you propose something that is impossible. I certainly could go through the motions, but without conviction, and that would make it insincere. And all apologists assert that one must sincerely ask God to reveal himself.

There is a second problem, which I will only touch, because I don’t want to derail the thread. The concept of supplicative prayer (versus the meditational one) flies in the face of the Catholic doctrine that God is immutable, making the prayer a farce. If God wants to reveal himself to me, he will do it whether I ask for it or not. If he does not want to reveal himself, I can pray (even sincerely) until I get blue in the face, and nothing will happen.

 

[Hitetlen]

itsjustdave1988:

To believe in the NT Greek sense (Gk *pisteuo, *peitho), is to “commit, intrust, trust, obey.” The opposite (Gk apisteo, apeitheo), in the NT Greek sense, is to “disbelieve, disobey.” It is primarily a function of the will, not merely that of the intellect. Consequently, a faith of a child is that which is the model presented by Jesus to his disciples.

Unfortunately that is not convincing. The word “believe” is a thoroughly well defined one, and we must go along with the proper meaning. Next time you might bring up an old Hebrew word, and assert that the word “slave” in the OT is not really a “slave”, just an “indentured servant”. Such word games are irrelevant.

itsjustdave1988:

Sin (Gk hamartia) literally means “missing the mark,” is the deliberate transgression of a law of God.

One cannot deliberately transgress if one does not believe the concept of God.

itsjustdave1988:

Understanding these terms in the Christian sense, it is more clear that “disbelief” is a sin, because it necessarily involves a lack of committment to God, a lack of trust in God, and disobedience to God, all of which are required by the law of God.

Yes, and that is the problem. How can I obey someone, of whose existence I am not convinced?

itsjustdave1988:

For those who do not even believe there is a God, it is admittedly difficult to commit to Him, trust in Him, and obey Him. Yet the word “deliberate” is important. It involves voluntariness.

Not simply “difficult” - impossible.

itsjustdave1988:

To the extent that voluntariness is diminished, culpability for the guilt of the transgression is diminished. Thus, acts of commission or omission done by those invincibly (ie. unconquerably) ignorant, lack culpability for their sin. Vincible (ie. conquerable) ignorance may diminish culpability, but if one is voluntarily ignorant of things they ought to know, given sufficient time, capability, and opportunity, then they are fully culpable.

So I deserve hell after all, because my intellect rejects the concept of God, regardless of the fact that I would accept him if presented sufficient evidence.

Can you force yourself to believe in Santa Claus? Even if someone threatened you with torture and everlasting suffering? You could say that you believe but it would be just a lie to save your skin.

 

[Hitetlen]

hurst:

So God punishes those who knew Him yet disobeyed. And He rewarded those who did not know Him, yet obeyed the father they did know.

Why does the quote: “Ignorance is strength” come to my mind?

hurst:

Obedience is a very important virtue, and God rewards it.

You still argue as if God would be someone I can believe in. I cannot.

 

[Hitetlen]

Toni:

May I suggest a few good books then. Here’s just a few to start with.

I did read a few apologist books and was thorougly unimpressed. There was ONE book, which was an exception: Rabbi Kuchner’s “When bad things happen to good people”. I was very pleasantly surprised by his intellectual honesty, which I missed from all the others. Of course he wrote about the “problem of evil”, and was able to present an acceptable solution.

 

[Hitetlen]

Contarini:

If you don’t believe in God, why do you worry about what would please Him?

Quite an interesting presentation. I wonder what the Catholic criticism would be.

Just one remark: it is true that we always have to make decisions without having full information about the subject. However, the more important the decision is, the more information we need and demand.

 

[Hitetlen]

StCsDavid:

You seem so sure in your assertion that the universe is all there is…prove it. Okay, that’s rhetorical. Obviously you can’t prove that the universe is all that there is. You can theorize about it. You can weigh the evidence, but you can’t really prove it. You have faith in the accuracy science created by a falliable man that tells you the universe is all that there is…

The word “universe” has a meaning: “all that exists”.

StCsDavid:

Clarify one thing for me…this is just semantics so I know we’re singing from the same sheet of music…do you equate higher power with a god?

I will be able to answer once you clarify what the word “god” means to you. It is one of the most vaguely defined words.

StCsDavid:

That’s fair 'nuff, but what I was trying to find out is what you base your disbelief upon? Is it your feelings, a philosopher, what? The reason I ask it in the form of what the plurality says is that most folks have seen the evidence and concluded that God does indeed exist. I’m just searching for your evidence that He does not.

My disbelief is founded on the fact that I find the definition and description of the God of Christianity totally incoherent.

As for the “majority” argument. Millions of honest children attest with complete sincerity, that Santa Claus exists. They bring up their toys as material evidence, they will tell you that they actually have seen Santa Claus and even sat in his lap, and talked to him. Is this a compelling evidence to you? And if you reject it, why?

 

[Hitetlen]

Flopfoot:

Sorry, but I’m gonna take a different tack (might even accidentally throw a spanner in the works) and point out that actually, disbelief is not always a sin. (By the way all that you read in this post might be wrong, I’m no apologist / expert, but this is my understanding)

I guess you have to know for yourself whether you really are invincibly ignorant and that all you’ve heard of God is a bunch of crazy people on the internet, or if your disbelief is actually a case of rejection of God, that He has called you to believe in so many ways and you have just told Him to get lost. The former case is not a sin, the latter is.

Thank you.

 

[I_Leatherman]

Hi Hitetlen, I think I’d go along a bit with Flopfoot. Your thread title seems to ask diferent things.

1. If you dont know God, through no fault of your own - it is not a sin.
2. But if you’ve heard all the arguments for God, and seen the effects - then you’re not totally innocent either.
3. Disbelief is a sin because it implies a conscious rejection of God.
   e.g. if you reject the belief of the existance of Paris, the city, the chances are pretty certain that you will never go there - it is only your disbelief which prevents you going there.
   But, if you’ve never heard of Paris, and havent rejected the possibility of there being a city called Paris, then there is every hope that you will see one of the many signposts pointing to it.

But I think your question is this: you think you are special, you think you have some condition maybe genetic which you believe absolutely prohibits you from being able to see this city called Paris and any of its numerous signposts. So you argue that it cant be your fault if you dont get there.
If thats the case, and if you find, inexplicably, that you are repeatedly drawn to ask questions about the existence of God, I suggest, and its only a suggestion, that you will never be satisfied with anyones answer, except the answer that you get yourself, personally (you can hardly reject what you know).
So there it is, an impasse, you think you are constitutionally unable to believe what billions of others can believe, but at the same time you are moved to ask the question.
I think, and i may be wrong, that there are two possible answers to this problem:

1. You start to sink, and at some point in your progress downwards you will actually reach, in spite of yourself, for that one remaining point of hope.
2. You will decide, voluntarily, if this question repeats its-self in your mind, that you will, scientifically, clinically, & resolutely and finally, seek its answer for yourself, directly. You have already been told that there is a promise from the lips of God, that all those who seek Him Will find Him. That is, the moment you start your search for the answer you Know you are going to find it. (no special genes are required, only a bloody-minded perseverance to the bitter end. Warning: You may die in the effort to find this answer but no matter. )

 

[Hitetlen]

I Leatherman:

Hi Hitetlen, I think I’d go along a bit with Flopfoot. Your thread title seems to ask diferent things.

1. If you dont know God, through no fault of your own - it is not a sin.
2. But if you’ve heard all the arguments for God, and seen the effects - then you’re not totally innocent either.
3. Disbelief is a sin because it implies a conscious rejection of God.

I will answer the highlighted part, because it is the most pertinent one to the question at hand. I have heard all the arguments for God, and none of them are convincing. I have not seen any “effects” as you call them. I don’t even know what are you talking about.
I Leatherman:

e.g. if you reject the belief of the existance of Paris, the city, the chances are pretty certain that you will never go there - it is only your disbelief which prevents you going there.
But, if you’ve never heard of Paris, and havent rejected the possibility of there being a city called Paris, then there is every hope that you will see one of the many signposts pointing to it.

Hardly a correct analogy. I can investigate if a city called Paris exists, even if I only heard of it. This investigation does not require “faith”, it can be done with totally “secular” ways and means. The same does not apply to God. There is no method to find out if God exists. It has to be taken on faith.
I Leatherman:

So there it is, an impasse, you think you are constitutionally unable to believe what billions of others can believe, but at the same time you are moved to ask the question.

What other people believe is not my concern. If you suggest that it is reasonable to believe in God just because millions of people believe in his existence, then I will answer with this: “Millions of children will honestly attest that Santa exists; they will honestly be able to offer material evidence, and also attest that they spoke to him, sat in his lap, touched him.” They do not rely on second-hand information, on revelation, they have actual, physical proof. Do you reject Santa’s existence after you have been presented with physical proof and the honest testimony of millions of children? And if so, why?

 

[Ted_CharlotteNC]

Why are you here? It takes more faith to not believe:

Romans 1:20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. His eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

 

[Sherlock]

Hitetlen:

I have heard all the arguments for God, and none of them are convincing.

Having been an atheist myself for a period of time, I have to say that this does not seem plausible. I left atheism because I heard convincing arguments, which at least opened the door for me. I am thinking, too, of C.S.Lewis, who was himself an atheist until his door was opened by convincing arguments (from G.K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”, and conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien). Dittos with other notable and intelligent athiests, including Antony Flew. I think an objective observer would acknowledge that the arguments for God are at least as convincing as the arguments against God’s existence. I would say more convincing, which is why I’m no longer an atheist–it required too much faith. All of which is to ask, what arguments have you heard? Perhaps it will help me to understand your being unconvinced if I knew what arguments you are aware of.

 

[Hitetlen]

Ted CharlotteNC:

Why are you here? It takes more faith to not believe:

Romans 1:20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. His eternal power also and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. The word “faith” has been used in so many context with so many different meanings, that I don’t know what do you mean by it. So, please amplify. As for quoting the Bible, it is useless. Without believing in God, the Bible is just a loosely connected set of ancient stories written by rather uneducated people.

 

[Hitetlen]

Sherlock:

Having been an atheist myself for a period of time, I have to say that this does not seem plausible. I left atheism because I heard convincing arguments, which at least opened the door for me. I am thinking, too, of C.S.Lewis, who was himself an atheist until his door was opened by convincing arguments (from G.K. Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”, and conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien). Dittos with other notable and intelligent athiests, including Antony Flew. I think an objective observer would acknowledge that the arguments for God are at least as convincing as the arguments against God’s existence. I would say more convincing, which is why I’m no longer an atheist–it required too much faith. All of which is to ask, what arguments have you heard? Perhaps it will help me to understand your being unconvinced if I knew what arguments you are aware of.

Obviously I cannot assert that I have seen all the propositions, but I have seen most of them: from the first cause, to sustaining cause, to the cosmological argument, to applying argument from numbers, and many more - you name it. If you know of one, which you find especially convincing, I am willing to listen.

You use the word “faith” just like Ted does, and I would like to know which particular meaning of the word you have in mind. Without it I cannot answer.

 

[marysson]

Disbelief is a sin when God has given you the grace of belief and you refuse it.

 

[Hitetlen]

marysson:

Disbelief is a sin when God has given you the grace of belief and you refuse it.

Unfortunately, God has neglected to notify me about this “grace” so I never received it. I did not “refuse” it, just never received it. Maybe he sent it with Snail-Mail, and it got lost in the traffic. Would not be the first time.

 

[DeFide]

Hitetlen:

There is a second problem, which I will only touch, because I don’t want to derail the thread. The concept of supplicative prayer (versus the meditational one) flies in the face of the Catholic doctrine that God is immutable, making the prayer a farce. If God wants to reveal himself to me, he will do it whether I ask for it or not. If he does not want to reveal himself, I can pray (even sincerely) until I get blue in the face, and nothing will happen.

An immutable God does not make prayer of either kind a farce. Just because God does not change does not mean that God does not teach us to love via prayer. God sometimes waits to dispense blessings until we act according to his will.

As an analogy, if you travel over an immutable landscape, sometimes, if you take a wrong turn, you will find yourself in a dark, cold and desolate place. Conversely, if you take a right turn, you may find yourself in a beautiful, inviting place. Notice that you, not the landscape changed, but that your choices played a significant part in changing the outcome.

I hope that helps, and I hope your reading is going well.

 

[Hitetlen]

DeFide:

An immutable God does not make prayer of either kind a farce. Just because God does not change does not mean that God does not teach us to love via prayer. God sometimes waits to dispense blessings until we act according to his will.

You are talking about meditative prayer, and not the supplicative one, at least that is how I understand you. Supplicative prayer explicitly asks God to do something, which makes no sense if God is immutable. Ambrose Bierce wrote in the Devil’s Dictionary:

to pray (v.): “To ask that the laws of the Universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.” That about sums it up.

 

[DeFide]

Hitetlen:

You are talking about meditative prayer, and not the supplicative one, at least that is how I understand you. Supplicative prayer explicitly asks God to do something, which makes no sense if God is immutable. Ambrose Bierce wrote in the Devil’s Dictionary:

to pray (v.): “To ask that the laws of the Universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.” That about sums it up.

I’m talking about both types of prayers. God is pure act and knowledge. He sees all of history in the Eternal Now. Unlike us, he does not learn and forget, and recieve His being sequentially. All our actions, prayers and decisions, past, present & future, are equally present to Him.

God has laid out all the laws and workings of the universe, and so it is illogical to think that some parts of his will are annulments, while others are “natural”. Miracles are just as natural as Newtonian physics, and Newtonian physics are just as much of God’s plan as the Miracle of the Sun witnessed by 70,000 at Fatima.

Did my immutable landscape analogy offer no insights for you?

 

[Hitetlen]

Did my immutable landscape analogy offer no insights for you?

No, I am sorry to say, I miss its significance.