Re: rethinking sin

[Beth Benoit]

Title: Re: rethinking sin

Nancy Melucci wrote:

>So, my take is, no. Not for me or for most other people I know. Of course, a person seeking a Christian psychologist" is probably going to see it differently than I do. If I were practicing at this time, and had such a client present for treatment, I would most likely refer them to a Christian provider as I could not validate the perspective.

I concur with Nancy Melucci's take on sin.  As a former practicing Catholic, and now rather more knowledgeable scientist (here come the flames), I now see the concept of sin as a handy way to keep people in line, but of little use in the field of psychology, except perhaps for studying the area of authoritarian personality (more flames).  Honestly, on reflecting about the mention of religion in my classroom, there are only two times it comes up:  1) authoritarian personality discussion and 2) in Dave Myers' social psych. text discussion of whether indeed religious people are more prejudiced.  (Dave maintains that defining the word "religious" is the problem - those who cite their religious beliefs as what lies behind their approach to life and those who were "faithful" church attendees were lower in prejudice.)

Historically, encouraging concepts of religion and sin have been a good way to get people to follow the Golden Rule (which I learned in studies of Comparative Religions is almost universal) and the Golden Rule is a nice way to discourage people from hurting others.  So encouraging religious beliefs is, from a practical standpoint, a good way to encourage the continuation of the human race.  Guess you could put that in the area of natural selection then, since the need for religion may spring from the disappointing tendencies of humans to harm others (from hurting their feelings to killing them), which is not particularly helpful to the human race in the long run.

If you teach at a fundamentalist Christian college which subtly mandates (sounds contradictory, but in fact this appears to be the case) teaching the concept of sin, I guess you could teach, for example, that "aggression" is sinful.  But I don't see that it changes the outcome of studies of aggression:  who is likely to do it, why, and what things encourage it and what things can help lessen it.  Do you teach that community programs aimed at reducing aggression are saintly/religious or practical?

I've said a mouthful here.  I'll take my lumps at this point.

Beth Benoit
University System of New Hampshire ---
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