Chris and new co-host Fro, a Norwegian who recently left religion, take up the claim that Christians just want to sin. They look at sin as an offense against God, the way forgiveness is built into Christianity, and a caller’s pushback that most believers feel real remorse. The episode also touches on Adam and Eve and Jason’s view of original sin.
Do Christians just want to sin?
Chris argues that two things point that way. First, Christians say everyone is a sinner and nothing can be done about it. Second, the religion builds in absolution, so a believer can sin, confess, say sorry, and then repeat the cycle. He clarifies that he is not claiming Christianity was invented so people could sin. He thinks the forgiveness feature was added into it, and that always being absolved may make some believers feel better than everyone else.
Can atheists sin?
Fro says it is hard to sin when there is no God. He and Chris describe sin as an affront against God, which depends on whether God likes something, not on whether it is morally good or bad. Fro notes the first three of the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with morality. Atheists can still do moral wrongs, but they cannot offend a god they do not believe in. Chris adds that not hurting people is not that hard.
Does Christian forgiveness encourage people to sin?
Chris says the promise that Jesus carries the guilt for sin works as an excuse, since believers can simply come to Christ and be forgiven. He raises confession to a priest, which could give the church leverage because the information stays secret. He points to Crusaders reportedly promised absolution for killing Muslims, and to medieval indulgences, where people paid the Catholic Church for letters declaring their sins forgiven. In his view, forgiveness of sins has been a focus for religious sects for a long time.
Is it fair to say Christians enjoy sinning?
Caller Jason pushes back. He says the Christians he knows who have done serious wrongs feel genuine remorse, take no pleasure in it and are caused anguish by it, so the claim is somewhat inflammatory. Chris agrees this is true for many Christians and many sins, but says it may not hold for all of them. He still thinks forgiveness was built in to relieve anxiety, so believers can sin without feeling bad forever, even if they do not want the sin itself.
Was original sin created as an excuse to sin?
Jason says original sin was made as an excuse to sin, and notes that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit, so they had no concept of sin. Chris points out they discovered sin after eating. Jason suggests the story may have taught right and wrong to illiterate people, and that absolution could have given power to a theocracy managing its society. Responding to a chat comment, Chris asks for proof that Adam and Eve even existed.
Transcript highlights
Selected passages from the live stream, lightly edited for readability. Click a section time to jump to that part of the video.
Christians, Sin, and Introducing Fro
Chris opens the show as guest co-host Kelly Laughlin takes over, then introduces his new co-host Fro. He sets up the topic of the stream: a common claim that Christians just want to sin, and the idea that sin is an offense against God, which an atheist cannot commit. He asks Fro what he thinks of the idea.
Fro responds that it is hard to sin when there is no God. He observes that many theists equate sin with things that are morally wrong, but that the first three of the Ten Commandments have nothing to do with morality. They are about things God wants or does not want.
Fro introduces himself to the chat as a 46-year-old from Norway who converted from religion about six months ago. He describes himself as an antitheist rather than simply an atheist, and says he wants to actively push against organized religion. He hopes for a world with no religion, and Chris agrees that more people working toward that goal makes the vision more viable.
Chris notes that Fro has called into this show before as a theist, and asks how much shows like this influenced his conversion. Fro says he would not have converted if shows like this did not exist. He admits that he still wakes up some nights in a cold sweat, afraid of hell, and says that questioning religious belief and talking about the rationality behind it is one of his pet peeves. He argues that shows like this give Christians an outlet to be challenged, since otherwise they stay in a bubble where everyone believes the same things.
Chris then invites Christians to call in and try to bring Fro back to the faith, adding that he himself has been a bad man for most of his life and was once an eco-terrorist as a teenager. Fro mentions that he was once a communist who was jailed for chaining himself outside the US embassy when he was young. Chris closes by saying that he hopes for respectful conversation with theists, and that the first weekend of these calls brought in several theists, so he hopes more will join.
Part 2
Although he’s from the country and I’m from a town I’m from the best norway I thought that would I’m from a very very very tiny Norway. It’s holy. It’s probably less than a quarter mile wide. So Maybe a half mile a mile away. We got some buildings out way on the outskirts of town that we I guess we can call still part of town Yeah, no Brenta said I hear noitian is easy to learn and everybody there speaks english noitian is so Not easy to learn but we all speak english here Yeah, yeah. Well, you’ve got it Noitian is very very not easy to learn It’s just you’ve got English down very well. So is
is you know, no, I don’t live in Europe I always wanted to visit there. I’m probably never gonna get there in my lifetime, unfortunately But it seems in my experience talking to Europeans that English is just becoming like the official second language of the continent Is that true? Well, yeah, but I don’t especially speak with a very noitian accent more most mostly noitian when they speak Norwegian english they speak very like this They don’t have any tone in their English They very speak like very monotone and very slowly because they are afraid That the people from Other countries will not understand them. We have a prime minister that talks very like this But yeah, no,
I don’t That’s you have that cadence to you know where where I live where I live Yeah There actually are a lot of Norwegian immigrants that have settled in the Syria which is probably why the town got its name But even still today 150 170 years after everybody came here We the the local people still have that cadence even though they’re speaking English, you know, so that it out Yeah It out it out it out. It out it out it out. It’s it’s it’s really it’s really noticeable around here and it was kind of it was a It really stood out to me when I first moved here and I have actually caught myself doing
it Because I’ve been around it so much. It just became normal. So I started to speak some of the the local dialect to You know, Terry Terry’s in the chat says yes, Christian sin And aper brennan, uh, the thing is you should never speak to noitians about swedish people Please don’t that that is blasphemic. That’s Actually blasphemic you’d It’s it’s yeah, no don’t do it We are not saints, but Jesus absolves them all and that’s exactly my point is that if We have a caller And are you a real kennedy and are you afraid of being shot? No, we do have a caller. Oh, let’s bring our caller in then we got Kennedy I needed
the scroll down. I didn’t see that. That was my bad Hello Kennedy, how are you? Can you hear us? Hello Kennedy I’ve got you down the air Right, right, right So, you know, I’ll just pick up where I left off while Kennedy gets there. It gets it together there Oh, I Christians built a thing into their religion to absolve them from the sin That way they’re allowed to sin right and then and then you come up with the excuse that well everybody sins Yeah Kennedy Oh There we go How are you? Hello Kennedy We could hear you for two seconds Do what you did before? Hey, I’m not I’m not hearing anything at all. So
I just heard something there kennedy We could I could hear him. He said hello Yeah, hello Can you hear us kennedy? I can hear you kennedy. Can you hear us? Can you hear me? What what did you want? Sorry, he clearly can’t hear us Okay. What do you mean by every believer wants to sing? What did you want? Well, I just explained it while you’re trying to figure out your sound issues is that Christianity has a built -in process For sinners, right and they also believe that everybody is a sinner So if you believe that everybody is gonna sin no matter what and then you build in a thing to your religion Can you hear
Call-ins, Norway History, and Defining Sin
Give us a call. You don’t have to be a theist to call us and talk. You can ask us all kinds of questions. You might have questions on how to be a better atheist, or on how to deal with members of your family as an atheist when they are not real happy about you coming out.
Kenzie Rainwolf, I want to apologize for really messing your name up so big. Now, the Norwegian and Swedish thing, to be all serious for a moment. Back in the day, long, long, long before I was born, Denmark owned Sweden and Norway. Sweden was the first country to go away from Denmark, and Denmark gave Norway to Sweden. Then in 1814, I want to say, or 1914, I don’t remember, we broke away from Sweden and became our own independent country. Therefore, it’s been a victory ever since that separation between Sweden and Norway. Now that I look at it, I can’t unsee the way to pronounce it.
I need to refresh my coffee, and I’m going to play a commercial right now. Does anybody have a preference? I’ll give you about ten seconds to give me a preference before I choose one myself. I want to talk about the dog one, where they asked the priest to come explain about the condoms. Let me pull that one up. Oh, I’ve got to get used to where these are all at on this. Here we go. Oh, no, that’s not the right one. Let’s do the deathbed conversion Bible. We haven’t done that one in a while.
Starting next week, I am going to have guests every Saturday and Sunday. Next Saturday I will have Greg James, who’s the executive producer at the Atheist Community of Austin. He’s responsible for putting on The Atheist Experience. Truth Wanted and Talk Ethan are the big bosses over there, so that’ll be really fun and interesting. Then next Sunday I’m going to have Secular Rarity. I think everybody knows who he is. He’ll be coming and hanging out with me next Sunday morning.
I have to admit something. I hate being on camera. I despise it. I don’t look the way I sound, and I always say I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint. For some reason everybody keeps watching me after six years, though. This is actually my first time being on camera, so I feel exposed. Then obviously you have something going on, or you wouldn’t be here with us today.
I have to tell you the story about how he messaged me. Did he tell you that he messaged me to get in contact with you? No, he didn’t tell me that, but we did contact each other yesterday. It is so funny, so I’m going to dox my own chat with Chris here. He sent me a message that was supposed to go to you. He asked me what my thoughts were on Fro’s recent deconstruction. He said he was considering him potentially as a guest host, and only with an experienced person like you and Erin. So I said I like Fro. I know him personally, and I would recommend him ten out of ten.
That’s fair to say, because a lot of people, when they come on a show for the first time, get stuck like a deer in the headlights. They just sit there like, “No, that’s not me.” Then you ask them a question, and the answer is yes. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not boring. You seem to be talking very well today, and I’ll just take that. The only thing I had before you were on was the alcohol, I guess. Who knows? Maybe there’s something else in here.
Gungi asked: “If we examine the concept known as sin from outside the moral frameworks of Christianity, what does sin actually constitute?” We did explain it earlier. To me, sin is an affront against God. So it doesn’t matter if it’s morally good or bad. It just has to do with whether or not God likes it. That’s what I think sin is, and that’s why I don’t think atheists have sin.
Kenzie Rainwolf asked if that was Starry Night on my tie, and yes, it is. I even got the church tower on there at the bottom. You can hear birds in the background, and that’s not me. Those are my birds. I have two Pacific blue parrotlets. They look just like a big green parrot, only they’re just this tall, like three or four inches tall. I don’t have a single bird of my own, so I’m very, very single, hint hint, wink wink.
Brenda said you’re very charming. I was going to point that
Whether Christians just want to sin
The problem with sin is that since we don’t believe in a god, we can’t really offend the god that we believe in. So we can still do things that are morally wrong, and that’s a thing, but we can’t sin. Do I do moral wrongs? I’m pretty good at not doing moral wrongs. I say that as a joke, but is it really that hard to not hurt people? If you really needed God to tell you not to hurt people, it would be so troublesome for atheists not to hit people.
Somebody in the chat named DCJL said you can’t sin, yet you will die one day. Being able to die one day is pretty stupid, but he goes on to say that death is the wages of sin. Everybody dies whether they sin or not, so apparently that’s not the wages of being a sinner. If somebody led a completely moral life, never hurt anybody, completely believed in their god and worshipped them, they would still die. So that is not the wages of sin. Who knew?
The reason I believe that Christians just want to sin comes down to two things. Number one, they come up with the excuse that all of them are sinners, so there’s nothing they can do about it, so they just sin. That’s part of their religion. Number two, the religion actually builds in a way to be absolved of sins. They can go out and sin, come back, confess, say they’re sorry, and everything’s okay. Then they can go out and sin again and go through the same process, and everything’s fine all over again. That’s why I believe Christians just want to sin.
DCJL also said that if Adam and Eve had not sinned, they would still be alive today. My response is simple: prove it. Actually, prove they even existed. I would love to have a conversation with him about it, and I would love to have somebody show me why I’m wrong. I really like being wrong. Wrong is my favorite thing to be, because being wrong has taught me more than being right ever has. DCJL, you’re saying things that just don’t make any sense to me, so I would like you to explain them.
[Commercial break]
A caller named Jason joined the show and said he had a different view. He said the desire to sin was the purpose behind the concept, but I told him I’m not claiming Christianity was formulated for that. I’m claiming that the ability to be absolved was built into the religion. I don’t think Christianity was made just so people could sin. I think it was thought up first, and then they added the sin part later. If Christians are always absolved of sin, that makes them better than everybody else, and I think many of them would probably think that.
Jason said he didn’t think original sin was made to get people to sin. He thought it was made as an excuse to sin. He pointed to the Adam and Eve story, which he found interesting. Adam and Eve did not know the consequences of eating the fruit. They had no knowledge of good or evil, so they didn’t have any concept of sin before they ate it. What they did was neutral, because how could they have known the consequences without knowing them? I pointed out that they ate from the fruit and discovered sin after they ate, not before, and Jason agreed.
Jason suggested that the story may have been formulated as a way to inform illiterate people, and people who couldn’t participate in the functioning of the theology, to understand the difference between right and wrong and to guide them. He also said that the New Testament has a big focus on living in a way that is conducive to an effective society. I said that sounds like what the Ten Commandments were for, not the absolving of sin. Jason replied that the Ten Commandments came before, in the Tanakh, so they aren’t necessarily a Christian concept. I said I’m not sure how absolving sin makes society more morally correct.
Jason’s answer was that the absolution part seems to have come after these commandments of behavior, and that it may give power to the theocracy. The reasoning would go something like this: we need you to go and do these bad things to these opponents of our regime, but don’t worry. We say you can’t do it here in the community because it’s sinful, but if you go and do it over there, there’s absolution, so don’t worry if you do it to them. Jason’s view is that this is a way to help the governing powers manage the society they are managing.
Does Christian Forgiveness Encourage Sin?
Chris and Jason discuss whether the crucifixion and the idea of absolution from sin encourage Christians to sin. Jason argues that Christians do not sin out of a desire to be sinful, but are drawn to the benefits of the faith and do not dwell on its contradictions. Chris responds that the promise that Jesus carries the guilt for our sins is an excuse for sinning, since believers can simply come to Christ and be forgiven.
Chris raises the question of confession, asking why Christians need forgiveness for sins if sinning is not central to being a Christian. He suggests that confession to a priest could give the church leverage over people, since the information shared in confession is kept secret. Jason doubts that priests would reveal the details of confessions, though he acknowledges the scandals that have affected the Catholic Church.
Chris argues that the focus on sin relief in the New Testament is psychological, since sinning is unavoidable and believers are told not to worry too much about their mistakes. He points to the Crusades, where participants were reportedly promised absolution for killing Muslims, and to the medieval practice of selling indulgences, where people could pay the Catholic Church for letters declaring their sins forgiven. Chris says it is clear that the forgiveness of sins has been a focus for different religious sects for a long time.
After the break, Chris and Jason return to the topic. Jason says that the Christians he knows who have committed serious wrongs feel genuine remorse, do not enjoy what they have done, and are caused anguish by it. He concludes that it is not fair to say that Christians just want to sin, and that the claim is somewhat inflammatory. Chris agrees that this is true for many Christians and many sins, but says it may not hold for all of them.
Sin, Guilt, and Morality Without Scripture
Some people will have that anxiety because of committing the sin, and having that out for it gets rid of the anxiety, right? I honestly still think that was built into the religion to relieve that anxiety, so that Christians were allowed to sin without feeling bad, or at least feeling bad forever. Maybe it’s not that they want the sin, but they’re definitely allowed to sin. It’s definitely built into the religion.
Chat, I don’t think we’re still apes, right? Technically, we’re classified as one of the great apes, so how did you originate if you’re not from an ape? I know he’s joking. It’s probably best not to ridicule it, though. I think there are useful moral and ethical lessons, and metaphysical things to ponder, within the Bible.
I honestly believe there are a bunch of Christians out there who would be getting pitchforks out for us, and to me that is the antithesis of what Jesus was saying. That’s one of the things that really gets me about Christianity. Most Christians I know, in my experience, don’t really take the teachings of Jesus
Forgiveness, indoctrination, and whether Jesus existed
And yet there’s not a single verse that implies the opposite, that forgiveness is limited. I’m not sure why bringing that up proves anything, since it doesn’t say anything about the opposite either. You’re right that there is no unlimited forgiveness verse in the Bible, but there is no verse saying forgiveness is limited. So for you to bring that up a second time after I already talked about it is pointless.
It says that you’re supposed to forgive your brother seventy times seven, right? That’s the closest we come to a number in the Bible. I don’t think goat herders were really good at big math like that. Yeah, they got pi wrong in the Bible, so who knows. They got it close enough to use it, though. When you think about it, some old Bronze Age goat herders coming up with pi, and being that close to it, is actually amazing. I think a lot of people today look back at ancient civilizations as being dumb and stupid. They weren’t. They just didn’t have as many facts as we do, and they hadn’t invented all the tools we have today. They were just as smart as we are.
There was an American writer and philosopher named Robert Anton Wilson, and he came up with the idea of a Jesus as a unit of measurement. If you took all the knowledge human beings had from the be
Brains, Words, and a European Morning Show
Going back to our conversation with Flockmeister earlier, a part of our body would just be leading us everywhere, wouldn’t it? One particular part. Yeah. Oh, that’s perfect. I think it was Robin Williams who said he wished he could take his brain out and put it on a leash, so it wouldn’t cause him so many problems.
There’s a lot of obfuscating and trying to get around language that I see all the time in the text chat. I think you Christians are getting caught up in the words and not the actual meaning behind the words, the concepts. So sitting and arguing semantics a lot of the time doesn’t really cut it when the concept is not being adequately communicated through the word. This is especially true when we’ve had so many different translations of the Bible, and that same word can mean so many different things, with different variations of it. If that makes sense, it makes sense to me.
I was wondering what people would think about a European version of The DAM Show. I know we have at least one European in our text chat right now. Obviously it would not be at the same time as the American version. My idea is a morning show from 10 my time to 12 my time in the morning for Europeans. It will be early my time, but that’s my pitch for it. I really want to do this. I’ve really caught the bug now.
Darth is interested in helping host the European version, so there you go. I would love that. I’m sorry, I got caught for a minute there. Somebody had mentioned that we should get Billy Fivehead on the show as a secular guest, so if you’re interested in being on the show, contact me. You can send me a DM through Discord. I use the same name everywhere, so go ahead and contact me on Discord, and we can set that up if you’re really interested. Very easy to get a hold of, if you want to send me some pictures of you.
Brent Antichrist said that if we disprove the existence of a historical Jesus, that would invalidate Christianity, right? That’s an interesting question, and you would think it would. But I don’t think it would. I think there would be enough people out there who would deny that proof that the religion would keep going. It’s been that way for a long time, and people have always found a way to hold on.
Tell the people at home what’s happening tomorrow. We’re going to have the weekend edition, 9 to 11 Eastern, 8 to 10 Central, of The DAM Show. Fro said he’s going to come back and hang out with me tomorrow, so it’
Leave a Reply