I agree.

@Matias
Human use of metaphor is not contradictory to any scientific principle. It is observably what humans do. All symbolic language refers to phenomena in objective reality.

@Matias
You are not alone in thinking that. But there are plenty of scientists who study and talk about sin. There is nothing that is off limits to the gaze of science. If humans do it, scientists study it.

@Matias : "My impression is that you often use the word "metaphor" too loosely, in order to elimate all differences."

I understand how that impression might easily be taken, but only by using the same kind of thinking that leads so many members here to misunderstand you and your intentions - as they so often clearly do.

I have no outcome, or goal, or target result in mind. I have no motivation to "eliminate any differences." I don't have any delusions of changing anyone's mind. I'm just following the science, and reporting my impressions of it. It has led to places I would never have imagined or desired.

I have no agenda. Mostly I am just fascinated and surprised at how closed-minded and dogmatic the people are who claim to be lovers of science and reason. And I am deeply curious to better understand why they cling so desperately to their dogma, while deriding theists for doing the same thing.

The problem with claiming science as the high road is that it can't legitimately be done unless one knows what the relevant science actually says. And "science" is an enormous field of knowledge, with which no human is entirely familiar.

I certainly don't claim to know all of the science that might bear on the claims I make here, and I'm as capable as anyone of misreading the science that I am familiar with. But I'm not twisting things to fit a plan, because I don't have a plan.

My selfish motive here is to learn. I present my hypotheses, based on my earnest reading of the science, and hope that people who might be better informed will show me, by way of reason and familiarity with studies I haven't seen, the flaws in my thinking. But mostly all they do is throw rotten tomatoes and cling to their comfortable prejudices as fervently as any theist ever did.

You and TMW are about the only two here who have a broad-based and realistic grasp of religion's actual place in human evolutionary history, and I appreciate the exchanges with you for that reason. So this rant isn't against you - I just want you to understand that I have good reasons for the seemingly outlandish claims I make, even though they can't easily be defended in a few words. They are the culmination of years of study, and if anyone happened to have the curiosity and the time, I'm confident I could articulate a science-based path all the way to solid ground. At the same time... I have no expectations that anyone would be so interested.

@Matias

And I'm not suggesting that scientists use the word "sin" the same way religionists use it. I'm saying that there is a science-based way to view a statement about sin that sees through the literary form to find the human psychological mechanisms being referenced by that kind of language.

@Matias

I understand.

It can be quite a long study to see it otherwise.