God's impulse

Remember, I don't know anything about the Absolute Truth of the situation, I am just applying my errant flavour of logic and rationaility to the Christian Doctrine and God:

If God is not offended by our sin, nor angered by our sin, is it possible he's also not concerned about our sin?

Perhaps not. "Concern" suggests a worry about how something might affect us, or how things might turn out. This involves being in the timeline along with the rest of us and I am not prepared to admit that God is limited in this fashion.

Why would sin be bad for us?

I think that sin leads to loss of happiness, to pain, to war and death. I consider these things bad for us.

Does it follow that anything that is bad for us is therefore a sin?

Probably not. Depends how you define "bad". Some children may think that it's bad to learn mathematics. Attempting to do so causes them a loss of happiness. I don't think learning mathematics is a transgression of God's law (actually, I'm not 100% sure of that, I believe that there is a passage in the Bible somewhere where God warns man not to look closely at how he made the Universe -- and the Universe runs on numbers ...) so not a sin by the following definition ...

What exactly is sin?

We covered this in an earlier post and I think we agreed that it was a trangression of God's law. If one doesn't believe in God then one does not believe in sin. The question as you so rightly point out is the next one.

If the Bible is not to be believed, how do we know what things are sins and what things are not?

I believe the answer to this is that if you do not believe The Bible then it would be a good idea to avoid things that I believe God considers a "sin" by "treating others as you wish to be treated". A "sin" could be defined to an atheist in this fashion. "Hey Mr/Mrs. Atheist -- if you find that you are treating others in a manner that you yourself would not wish to be treated then you are sinning".

Note: this only works for 99% of humans. Masochists are one of the dead ends of natural selection. After all, there have been quite a few Darwin awards given out for these types.

As you know, I believe The Bible contains some fundamental truths, but I believe that it has been corrupted by men. Which is why I don't accept it 100% on faith. A simple example in the area we are discussing here; I believe God originally said:

"Thou shalt not kill"

And I believe that man changed this to:

"Thou shalt not murder"

I believe that man did this to suit his sinful nature, to allow war.

The interesting (to me) question that I am struggling with is:

"Assuming a God that sees the timeline in one go, that knows everything that is going to happen, and that doesn't need anything -- did He create us to benefit Him in any way? Or were we created entirely altruistically? Was it all done solely for us? Is there anything in it for Him?" I'd be interested in your opinion as always !

No song, the kids really don't like my music! It's half term (semester?) here in the UK and I have Wednesday and Friday off fulfilling my parental responsibilities role!