You don't need a god for people to be responsible for their actions. Believing in a god means that offenders can seek forgiveness from their deity and continued to offend again and again with the knowledge that they can clean the slate whenever they want
I'm not a theologian or that well versed in religion in general, but as a person with passing knowledge imagine if there is a god who operates under a religion that includes confession or some similar system, it's not simply a "get out of jail free" card type deal.
Like, I think of it like this. So, I'm like God and stuff, creating this world full of people with free will's and deciding how set up the rules and stuff. And so I totally want people to act within a certain set of rules, treat each other nice, generous, charitable, you know all those positive values whatever they might be. I figure though like, there's gotta be some sort of incentive, you know? What's gonna stop a guy from killing another guy for a juicy piece of fruit? Or more likely, pizza? Then it hits me: Heaven. I'll just make this wicked awesome place, and admission requires you to appeal to those good values I mentioned above.
So you know, that seems to iron out that issue, easy peasy. But then I run a simulation and realize a major flaw - my free will peeps ain't perfect! Being a God, very easy to overlook. I could just expect everyone to be perfect, but then what happens if someone messes up once? Odds are they'll be like "Welp, I'm screwed, might as well just steal all the pizza I want."
So I figure, I'll make this system where if people, after the fact, see the mistake they made, and promise to try not to do it again, it'll be all cool. And since I'm God and can read minds and shit, I totally know if they're sincere or not. So if they just think "I'll just do all this bad stuff and then say sorry and it'll be ok" they'll have another thing coming.
Or in essence, it's not the apology that gets the forgiveness, but being truly sorry and understanding the err in there ways that does. And then of course, stopping the action. A flaw in this is obviously that a child molester may feel horrible after doing so and run to ask forgiveness, and then not be able to control themselves and do it again. And that I don't have an answer. And as a hypothetical God creating a world with free will and mental disease, I honestly can't think of a better system.
Thanks for the sermon.
Would you mind keeping your preaching to within church walls? Perhaps I could come and practice science within your church..
Well, as ranty as is it, this is technically a thread about religion. It's not that out of place :
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