"sin" only exists to view others as lesser
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Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light. - John Milton, Paradise Lost
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Act I: ok, hear me out
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ok, hear me out. this is a hot take.
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the title is kinda clickbaity. a better wording would probably be:
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A worldview that categorizes people's choices as divinely approved or sinful naturally creates comparative judgments about how people ought to live, even when its adherents are otherwise kind people.
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and we see this all the time. all the time.
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i'm not saying "religious people are judgmental assholes" btw, but hear me out.
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you might say "judgments?? no i dont do that?? i dont call out people like 'you're gonna go to hell' or something, i dont do that."
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which is yeah, good. thanks. you're better than some people.
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but with "judgments", i'm also talking about what's inside, and what is PRAISED MORE.
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you might not call someone out. you might not insult them. you might not tell them they're going to hell. but inside, you can still believe that your way of life is superior to that one guy's. you might not say it out loud, but you still would be happier if a non-hijabi woman decided to wear hijab than if a hijabi woman decided to let go of the hijab.
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and i think that's worth asking about.
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because we can trace that tendency back to the rules and punishments themselves. i mean, how likely are you to be actually, genuinely happy for a decision when your own books tell you that the decision is sinful and could give that person infinite hell and suffering?
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i'm not saying this is some scientifically proven universal law. i don't have the data here. but in my experience, there are more lovely messages to a person who converts to islam than there are to a muslim woman who decides to stop wearing hijab.
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and by "lovely", i mean genuinely lovely. the "ma syaa allah" comments and stuff. excitement. congratulations. warmth.
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not the "good for you, hope allah gives you hidayah" or "good for you but definitely not something to be proud of" type of comments.
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those are not the same emotional response.
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and that's what i'm interested in.
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Act II: The Seven Deadly Sins ooooo creepyyy
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let's take a step back on what a sin even is.
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in the kind of religious framework i'm talking about, sin is universal, absolute, and not really negotiable. that's kind of the whole point. if something is a sin, it's not just "i personally think you shouldn't do that." it's "you should not do that, period." it applies to everyone. it's not a personal rule anymore.
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and i think this is where the judgment comes from. not necessarily because religious people want to be judgmental, but because the framework itself creates a standard. there is a "right" way to live and a "wrong" way to live, and that distinction supposedly comes from something higher than the people involved.
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so now imagine two people making two different choices. under a purely personal-rule framework, that's just... two people making different choices. maybe i think one is better for me, maybe you think the other is better for you, whatever.
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but under a sin framework, suddenly one person is closer to what they are supposed to be doing, and the other one isn't.
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that's what i mean by comparative judgment.
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i'm not talking about "you're a bad person and i'm a good person." i'm talking about "your way of living is less correct than mine." and that's still a judgment.
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"less correct" might sound softer than "less worthy", and it is. i'm not saying that believing something is sinful automatically means you think the person has less human worth. a lot of religious people would strongly reject that, and i'm not saying they're secretly lying.
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but there is still a ranking of behavior.
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one way of living is closer to the ideal. another is further away from it. one choice is approved, another is disapproved. one gets "ma syaa allah", another gets "semoga diberi hidayah."
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people's lives stop being merely different.
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they become morally ranked.
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Act III: Half-measures
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and i think there's another part of this that i haven't explained properly yet.
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when i say "sin only exists to view others as lesser", i don't mean that religion was literally invented so people could look down on other people. that's obviously too fucking simplistic.
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and i'm also not saying secular ethics never judges people. of course it does.
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if someone goes around torturing random people for fun, i'm going to think that person is morally worse than someone who minds their own business. i'm not going to pretend all behavior is equally good just because i don't believe in god.
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the difference is what the judgment is based on.
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take some secular ethical frameworks. obviously "secular ethics" is a huge fucking category and not everyone agrees on everything, so i'm not saying all secular ethics work the same way. but the kind of ethics i'm talking about here generally tries to look at what an action actually does.
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did you hurt someone?
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did you violate their consent?
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did you cause unnecessary suffering?
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did you make someone's life worse?
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did you help someone?
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did you make something better?
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the point is to actually observe the world and then make a moral judgment from what is happening in it.
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and yeah, some of these things can actually be assessed. suffering can be measured to some degree. physical injury can be measured. deaths can be counted. economic damage can be measured. someone's freedom can be restricted in observable ways. whether something violates consent is something we can actually investigate.
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obviously morality isn't fucking Excel. not everything has a clean number attached to it, and different ethical systems will disagree about what matters and how much.
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but at least the standard is about something happening in the world.
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that's what i mean when i say i prefer it.
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i can be told "this is wrong because it hurts people", and then i can ask how much it hurts people. who got hurt? why? how certain are we? could there be some benefit that outweighs it? what happens if we allow this? what happens if we don't?
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there is something to investigate.
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sin can work differently.
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instead of asking "what did this action actually do?", the framework can ask "did this person obey the rule?"
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and those are not the same question.
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imagine a rule where nobody can explain who was harmed, whose consent was violated, what suffering happened, or what concrete damage was caused. the answer can still be:
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"doesn't matter. god said it's forbidden."
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and that's the part that bothers me.
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because now the moral system isn't primarily observing the world and asking how to make it better. it's checking people against a standard.
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did you obey?
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did you abstain?
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did you dress correctly?
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did you have the right relationship?
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did you perform the right ritual?
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did you believe the right thing?
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and once that's what you're measuring, comparison is already built in.
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this person obeys more.
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this person obeys less.
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this person is closer to the ideal.
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this person is further from it.
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this person is praised.
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this person needs guidance.
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this person is sinful.
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and that is what i mean when i say "view others as lesser."
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i'm not saying secular ethics somehow eliminates moral hierarchy.
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we actually need some moral hierarchy.
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i don't think "tolerance" means "i have to tolerate everything." because then what happens when someone uses that tolerance to take away somebody else's freedom?
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this is basically the tolerance paradox. if you give unlimited tolerance to movements that want to destroy tolerance itself, eventually you can lose the conditions that allowed tolerance to exist in the first place.
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so yes, sometimes i'm going to say "this person's behavior is worse than that person's behavior."
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sometimes i'm going to say "we should not tolerate this behavior."
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but notice what the argument is supposed to be.
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not "their souls are lower."
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not "god doesn't approve of them."
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not "they're impure."
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it's "look at what they're actually doing to other people."
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that's a very different kind of judgment.
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i can judge an action without declaring a person spiritually inferior.
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i can say "this is unacceptable because it harms people."
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and if somebody challenges that, we can actually argue about the harm.
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maybe i'm wrong about the harm.
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maybe i've misunderstood the situation.
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maybe the consequences are different from what i thought.
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maybe there's a tradeoff i didn't see.
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that's okay.
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i'd rather have a moral standard that can be questioned, investigated, argued over, and changed when the evidence changes than one where the final answer is simply "god said so."
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and that's why i keep coming back to the word universal.
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the issue isn't just that there are rules. it's that the rules become a universal measuring stick for human lives.
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and once you've made a measuring stick for how people ought to live, you're going to have people who measure up more and people who measure up less.
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that's unavoidable.
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the question is what you're measuring them against.
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and personally, i'd rather measure actions against their effects on actual people than measure people against how closely they conform to a divine ideal.
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maybe you treat everyone equally.
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maybe you love everyone equally.
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but the moral hierarchy of behavior is still there.
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that's the part i mean when i say "sin only exists to view others as lesser," because "make the world better" is definitely not its focus.
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Act IV: "i don't judge people, i just think it's sinful"
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and again, i know the response is going to be "but i don't look down on them."
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okay. i believe you. genuinely.
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but looking down on someone is only one form of judgment.
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you can love someone, respect them, think they're a wonderful person, and still believe that an important part of how they live is morally wrong.
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because if you genuinely believe something is a sin, you don't just think "i wouldn't do that." you think "people should not do that." and that's a completely different statement.
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that's the distinction i'm trying to make.
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preference is not the same thing as moral judgment.
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if i say "i don't want to drink", that's my personal rule.
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if i say "i don't think drinking is good for me", still basically my personal rule.
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but if i say "drinking is sinful, therefore people should not drink", i've changed the kind of claim i'm making. i'm no longer only talking about what i should do. i'm making a claim about what people ought to do.
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and when you add divine authority to that, it becomes even stronger.
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"you should not do this" becomes "god says you should not do this."
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now the rule doesn't depend on my preferences or yours. it's supposed to be true regardless of what either of us thinks.
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and the punishment makes this even harder to separate from judgment. if you believe that some action can lead to eternal punishment, then how could you genuinely see that action and its opposite as equally good outcomes?
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you might still love the person. you might still treat them kindly. you might never say anything cruel to them.
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but one outcome is still something you'd rather see happen.
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because according to your worldview, one person is moving toward what god wants and the other is moving away from it.
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and honestly, if you really believed that, i'd expect you to care.
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that's exactly why i'm not saying the judgment necessarily comes from hatred.
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it can come from compassion and still be judgment.
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Act V: hijab, homosexuality, and "struggling"
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that's why the hijab example bothers me so much.
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a person who believes hijab is a religious obligation can obviously love both a hijabi and a non-hijabi woman. i'm not denying that.
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but if they believe that wearing hijab is obedience and taking it off is sinful, then realistically, they are going to prefer one outcome. they are going to be happier when someone starts wearing hijab than when someone who wears it decides to stop.
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and i don't even think that makes them secretly evil or something. honestly, if you really believed what they believe, it makes sense.
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if i genuinely believed that not wearing hijab could put you at risk of eternal punishment, i'd probably want you to wear it too.
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that's the problem.
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the judgment isn't necessarily some personal hatred that the believer independently invented. it is built into the framework.
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same thing with sexuality.
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you hear "struggling with homosexuality" all the fucking time.
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and i know what people mean when they say it, but think about how loaded that sentence is.
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struggling with what??
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their family? social rejection? internalized shame? fear? those are things someone can genuinely struggle with because of being gay.
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but sometimes they literally mean struggling with the fact that they're attracted to the same sex.
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compare that with "struggling with heterosexuality."
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nobody talks like that.
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because one is treated as the normal, acceptable state, while the other is treated as something that has to be managed, resisted, or overcome.
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and this is where i think "sin" becomes more than just a list of rules.
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it becomes a way of sorting human behavior into categories of "approved" and "disapproved", "pure" and "impure", "obedient" and "sinful".
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and once you have that, the question isn't merely "what do you want to do?"
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it becomes "are you living the way you're supposed to?"
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that's a very different question.
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Act VI: (maybe) one of your argument against this
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and i can already imagine at least one counterargument:
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"well, you're also happier when someone supports the same soccer club as you."
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yeah. obviously. that's completely different.
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there's a massive difference between preference and moral superiority.
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i can be happier that someone supports Arsenal than Spurs because i'm an Arsenal fan. i'm not lol, just for example.
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i might even think "my club is better." that's preference. that's identity. that's tribalism. whatever.
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but i don't think the Spurs fan is morally wrong for supporting Spurs. i don't think they're violating some universal rule. i don't think god is going to punish them for it. i don't think they ought to support Arsenal.
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that's the distinction i'm talking about.
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"i like X more" is not the same thing as "X is how people ought to live."
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the first creates a preference.
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the second creates a moral hierarchy.
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and that's why i don't think the response "but everyone has preferences" really addresses my point. yes, obviously everyone has preferences. i have them too.
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the question is what happens when a preference gets elevated into moral authority.
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if i say "i like hijab more", that's one thing.
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if i say "hijab is what people should wear, and not wearing it is a sin", that's an entirely different claim.
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in the first case, i'm expressing my taste.
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in the second case, i'm claiming to know what people ought to do.
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and that's exactly the kind of judgment i'm talking about.
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not "i like your choice less."
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"your choice is morally less correct."
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so yes, humans naturally prefer people who share their interests, beliefs, aesthetics, politics, football clubs, whatever. i'm not trying to eliminate preference.
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i'm talking about what happens when that preference gets elevated into a universal rule.
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Act VII: God says so...
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and maybe that's the part i disagree with most fundamentally.
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i would much rather have "personal rules" than "universal sin."
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if something is important to me, i want to be able to say "this is my value, this is why i believe it, this is why i choose to live this way." i don't automatically want to turn that into "therefore everyone else should live this way too."
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and when someone does want to make a rule universal, i think they should have an actual reason.
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"this hurts people."
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"this violates consent."
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"this causes suffering."
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"this destroys someone's autonomy."
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something.
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give me a reason that exists outside of "because the book says so."
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because otherwise what you have isn't really an explanation for why something is wrong. you just have an authority declaring that it is wrong.
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"why is this wrong?"
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"because it's a sin."
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okay, but why is it a sin?
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"because god says so."
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okay, but why does god saying so make it morally wrong?
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and that's where i get stuck.
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maybe "god says so" is enough within your worldview. but it isn't enough for me, because i don't already accept that this authority gets to define morality for everyone.
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and if you're asking me to accept a universal rule, i want more than the authority of the person making the rule.
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Act VIII: Core Memories
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and maybe i'm just especially sensitive to this because i was close to this kind of worldview myself.
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but the more i think about it, the stranger the whole concept becomes to me.
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the idea that there is some universal moral scoreboard hanging over every person, judging their clothes, relationships, desires, sex lives, beliefs, and choices, and that the consequences can supposedly be eternal...
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i don't know.
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that feels fundamentally different from "try to be a decent person and don't hurt people."
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and again, i'm not saying every religious person is a judgmental asshole. obviously not. some of the kindest people i know are religious.
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i'm also not saying every religious person consciously goes around comparing themselves to everyone else.
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what i'm saying is that if your worldview contains a universal standard of divine approval and sin, then comparison is already built into it.
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some choices are approved.
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some are forbidden.
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some people follow the rule, some don't.
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some choices are praised, some are discouraged.
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and once that structure exists, the question "how should a person live?" becomes inseparable from "how are other people living, compared to that standard?"
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so when i say "sin only exists to view others as lesser", maybe that's too absolute.
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i don't think sin was necessarily invented for that purpose, and i don't think every religious person uses it that way.
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what i actually mean is something more specific:
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the concept of sin creates a framework where people can be morally evaluated against a universal standard of how human beings ought to live. and even when the person doing the evaluating is kind, loving, and genuinely cares about the other person, that comparative judgment is still there.
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and personally, i don't really want that framework in my life anymore.
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i'd rather ask: did you hurt someone?? did you violate someone's consent?? did you make someone's life worse?? did you betray your own values?? did you make a choice that you're happy with??
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obviously those questions aren't perfect. i'm not pretending i've solved morality by writing a few angry paragraphs on my digital garden.
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but at least they're questions i can actually engage with.
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and if the answer is no, then why the fuck should there be a cosmic moral authority declaring that you're still wrong?
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i don't need everyone to live the way i do.
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i don't even want that.
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i'd rather people be able to make their own rules, explain them, disagree with each other, change their minds, and live differently without needing some universal scoreboard to decide whose life is more righteous.
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"i like this" is one thing.
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"i think this is better for me" is another.
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"you should do this" is another.
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"you should do this because god commands it, and doing otherwise is sinful" is another level entirely.
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and that's the level i'm objecting to.
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