Sin is that which destroys life; morality is that which sustains life.

Christ referred to morality as the path to life (Mat 7:13,14). Therefore, morality is that which produces life.

Christ said the devil brought death to man from the beginning. (John 8:44) Therefore, sin is that which destroys life.

Notice that life is objectively defined. Therefore, morality is also objectively defined.

John the elder (not the super apostle) said, "sin is lawlessness" (1John 3:4). Lawlessness is an element of sin when properly viewed, but not a good definition, because the conflict is with all of the objective reality which makes up life. A lot of persons would define law too narrowly, as the crucifiers of Christ did in saying he broke the law by blaspheming. More basically, a hate for ordered existence, particularly valid laws, is a highly visible characteristic of satan, as he opposes everything constructive people do.

Major forces drive sin making it an intractable problem. The forces start with psychological conditioning at the subconscious level. After the sin is expressed, social forces develop and create conflicts.

(Fundamentalists say prove it by quoting Scriptures. Modern psychology and studies show the detailed characteristics of subconscious minds and how they are corrupted by sin. Christ taught this subject with the limitations of that time. We are supposed to build upon the foundation which he created. Therefore, I am summarizing existing knowledge here without using quotes.)

Every time a sin is perpetrated, it creates a force in the mind of the perpetrator. If it doesn't, it's not sin. The force defines it as sin.

The force never goes away until repentance occurs. The reason why is because sin defines the perpetrator, and definitions are timeless.

The forces cause perpetrators of sin to conceal, deny and rationalize the sin. That reaction defines sin, and it leads to more sin.

If these concept are difficult to understand or accept, look at crime. It does the same thing, because it is sin which is so obvious that even atheists accept it as wrong. Crime has to be concealed, denied and rationalized, because everyone feels threatened by it.

If sin is nothing but a whim of God's, why do atheists accept crime as wrong? Crime demonstrates the objective truth about sin.

Sin always has the same characteristics; only the degree of development varies. There is one basic force involved; and it always results from the same pattern of psychological conditioning. As an attitude, it is called pride. Functionally, it is the desire to dominate.

Morality is most basically defined by intentions rather than actions, because decisions begin with intentions, and there is qualitative content to intentions determining the specific complexities apart from external factors which can alter the results of actions. To explain this further, actions are influenced by environmental factors which a person cannot control. But a person's intentions are more perfectly a product of himself. In shaping intentions, everything in a person's mind and soul determines the result. Intentions therefore define the person morally.

Collaboration

Because sin is always the same, it is reinforced by collaboration—conscious and unconscious. For this reason, sin and conspiracy are used as approximate synonyms in the Bible.

Sin is so dependent upon collaboration that it could not exist without it. If there were only one person sinning, he would commit one sin; and that would be the end of it. The realization of the consequences would end it at that point. But that's not what happens.

Sin is promoted by the most corrupt persons. They encourage others to sin, often rewarding them and always creating the psychological support of security through numbers, which is absolutely essential for sustaining sin.

There is a high degree of psychological insecurity with sin, which must be countered with psychological encouragement, before sin can be sustained. The insecurity stems from the fact that sin puts the person in conflict with the rest of the universe—meaning objective reality and other persons.

Conflict with Reality

There are always victims of sin, and they oppose it. The result is a conflict. In response to the conflict, more sin is generated to oppose enemies, and the result is additional forces acting upon the perpetrators.

All elements of corruption are interrelated, and all elements of constructivity are interrelated. Therefore, the forces which sin creates drive the perpetrators to promote all elements of corruption and oppose all elements of constructivity.

Specifically, sin creates a conflict with reality, because objective reality shows what sin is and where it occurs. The perpetrators cannot allow that result; so they must oppose objective reality. Since all elements of objective reality are interrelated, the conflict with reality generalizes. And the conflict includes the methods of handling reality, which basically involve rationality. The result is that, to some extent or another, sin creates a hate for truth, rationality and justice.

The conflict which sin creates is an objective criterion for determining the existence of sin. It is particularly objective because the perpetrators of the sin are the ones who must respond to the conflicts to justify, conceal or promote the sin. Their response spells out their relationship to objective reality and the victims.

Infact, the primary significance of sin is not the effect it has on the victims but the effect it has upon the perpetrators. The problems of the victims are limited and temporary, while those of the perpetrators are unlimited and endless.

This concept is not as tautological as it looks. What causes the forces to go away? They last as long as memories last. And what sort of response must the perpetrators produce? Their response is open ended and unlimited, because they can never succeed in opposing objective reality.

Corrupt persons condition themselves into assuming that they can defeat objective reality by coercing everyone into supporting, or atleast ignoring, the sin. The assumption is extremely irrational, but nothing about sin is rational; it is driven by psychologically conditioned and subconscious force.

Psychological Conditioning

So let's analyze the driving force of sin in subconscious minds. First, the characteristics of psychological conditioning need to be reviewed. This subject entered the scientific domain about a century ago, when Pavlov did his classical experiments by psychologically conditioning a dog to respond to bell sounds producing the physiological effects of eating food.

The procedure was to feed the dog food and ring a bell and then repeat it over and over. Eventually, the bell sound without the food would produce the physiological responses.

The mental effects are quite obvious. The memories contained both the bell sound and the stimuli of food, since those realities were acquired at the same time. Through repetition, those memories would overlay earlier memories of a similar type. Stimuli then contacted the memories causing them to produce physiological responses. The memories could be contacted by a bell sound, because they had the bell sound within them.

Humans are not psychologically conditioned in that manner as easily as animals, because they have more awareness, which controls memories more completely. Awareness is highly corrective in minds in that it dissipates subconscious force.

Awareness, however, is relative; and it cannot totally remove all subconscious influences from human minds, or theoretically, from any minds. Therefore, sin can overtake minds through subconscious forces.

The Starting Point

Sin enters subconscious minds repeatedly creating cycles of regeneration. So we'll analyze the starting point of a cycle.

In relating to other persons, the sinner finds that a problem occurs because of his inadequacies. He isn't consciously aware of what is occurring, but he subconsciously assumes that if he could prevail against the other person, it would solve his problems. That assumption is the starting point of the conditioned response of sin.

So let's look at it more detail. The sinner loses his ability to objectivize the situation, when encountering problems in relating to other persons. He then subconsciously steps off the objective track onto the subjective track of assuming that he would be better off if he could prevail against the other person.

The key point is that the person's abstract awareness is not good enough to differentiate between objectively relating to another person and subjectively wanting to prevail against the other person. Wanting to prevail against the other person is the basis of all sin.

One of the problems is that there is no absolute line to be crossed. A person must oppose sin, because it destroys life. One must therefore oppose the persons who are perpetrating sin. Determining when that should occur is highly evaluative.

Christ taught where that line is at better than anyone else ever will. Doing so was the primary focus of everything he did and taught.

Pride

The traditional analysis is that the basic cause of sin is pride. Pride could be defined as the attitude of wanting to elevate oneself above others. The reason for doing so is to prevail against others. So it is the same analysis as described here.

So what happens when a person decides to prevail against someone else? Usually, there is more determination than results; but there are small ways of expressing the motive in nearly all circumstance, which first and foremost involves making degrading statements such as mockeries and insults.

The real problem is that the motive does not turn off so easily. If the person lacks the abstract awareness to avoid the attitude, then he also lacks the awareness to abandon it or overcome it; and it becomes somewhat permanent.

Over time, the attitude becomes a part of the person, all the time being expressed in various ways which create habits. Are humans free from habits? Not hardly. Habits are psychologically ingrained patterns which function on a stimulus-response basis.

So the habits of degrading other persons to prevail against them develop over time into all of the reactions and forces which create sin. The outward manifestations are put into major categories including jealousy, bigotry, envy, lust, hate, etc.; but they are all one force with various manifestations.

Jealousy is the feeling of threat from the betterment of others. It is not rational; but if one puts himself in opposition to others, then their betterment becomes threatening.

Bigotry is, most basically, the subconscious assumption that power is virtue and powerlessness is corruption. It stems from the positive reinforcements of power in prevailing against other persons.

Hate is a justification mechanism, as evident in its application. It is applied like a tool. Most basically, it is a method of accusing. It makes the statement that the other person is doing something wrong, or else he wouldn't be hated. Of course, no specifics are included, which is what gives it so much mileage.

Elitism is an attempt to build up oneself through association with power mongers at the expense of everyone else. Elitists assume that if you associate with losers, you become a loser; if you associate with winners, you become a winner. They win their status only to lose their souls.

Sin is irrational in that it functions on a stimulus-response basis in conflict with objective reality. It's irrationality is often used as a denial mechanism, because supposedly a person would have no reason to sin. But sin never has a reason; it is always irrational.

Reinforcement

Power is the positive reinforcement which creates corruption. One might assume that the abstract nature of power would make it a weak reinforcement. But the opposite is true. It is a pervasive reinforcement, which causes it to permeate a large amount of reality and to produce a very significant cumulative effect over time.

Another important fact is that since it is abstract, its corruptive influences easily escape awareness of the unwary. Once it escapes awareness, it does its destructive things to the mind without the corrective effects of awareness.

Awareness is corrective. Awareness can only exist as a perfect thing. It cannot exist if it is not perfect. It can be corrupted, which is what sin does, but it then is not awareness. In other words, corrupting it destroys it, which is why it is a perfect thing. Corrupt persons lack awareness, because their awareness gets corrupted.

What this means is that the most abstract things, which most easily escape awareness, are the most inclined to be corrupted. Moral concepts are abstract, which causes their corruption to get quite entrenched.

Power is viewed as good by corrupt persons, because they need it to overwhelm their victims. They assume that morality is bad, because it is a threat to their power.

Large categories of human corruption evolve over the millennia for the purpose of promoting corrupt power structures, which all fall under the umbrella of one large power structure. Satan controls it, but most persons don't know that, or they deny it.

From this perspective, there are sort of two types of realities. There's the world's corruptions which evolve into perverse monstrosities (theology, philosophy, relativity, prions, global warming); and there's the opposing realities including alternative media and various criticisms.

Those persons who promote the world's corruptions are exploiting satan's power structure. Most persons want to exploit satan's power structure. You see that on the internet. Web sites which glorify the corruptions get swamped; while the critics get isolated and attacked.

Criticism of such corruptions on the internet is usually called conspiracy theorizing, which is portrayed as if it were a combination of terrorism, sedition and mental illness. The Bible uses the words conspiracy and sin interchangeably, because all sin is conspired, and the world's power structures are conspiracies against life.

There is a very common error in religion which assumes that hugging sin fixes it. It is wishful thinking by persons who cannot face the truth. Spirituality is almost entirely an attempt to promote this ethic.

Control, Control, Control

There are three things corrupters are obsessed with: control, control and control. Control is the purpose of power and the source of power. A power lust turns corrupters into obsessive controllers.

For this reason, corrupters in religion assume morality is about control. Control means forcing people into submission to make them moral. But corrupters only destroy people attempting to control them through force.

Morality is not being controlled. Morality is being free from sin. Sin is overcome by learning constructivity. Learning is not being controlled, nor is it submission to anything. In other words, if morality is not what comes out of people, no amount of controlling will make them moral.

Conservatives (fundamentalists) contrive a version of Christianity based on control, domination and submission, because they are obsessed with control due to their addiction to power. For this reason, Paul's theology is based on control, power and submission. Christ's theology is based on learning and understanding (John 4:22)(Luke 12:57).