What is humanity's greatest sin?

[Wirekittin the nefarious]

In your opinion, what is humanity's greatest sin? How do we correct ourselves from committing this sin? Are we able to recover from this sin?  

[A Man Among Kings]

Humanity's greatest sin, in my opinion, would be to say that they know something, but can easily be proven wrong.
It just grinds my gears.
xp

 

[o0 Mystic Mama 0o]

In my opinion, humanity's greatest sin is ignorance. Obviously, the correction of this sin would be to observe and learn about the world around you. I don't think the world as a whole will ever recover from it, because they're already too close-minded to admit that they don't see every aspect of situations.  

[Isayo]

Humanity's greatest sin is the willfull belief that honesty is more important than truth.  

[nightlight]

don't you kinda have to believe in sin? maybe human folly would be a better term?  

[Totle]

nightlight

don't you kinda have to believe in sin? maybe human folly would be a better term?

True... rather than sin, maybe mankind's greatest fault?


Betrayal. There needs to be a damn good reason to turn on someone who has blindly put their faith in you. In doing so, they commit a great folly, because deep down you never know if someone is truly trust-worthy, there's always a seed of doubt. Realizing that they are most vulnerable and to take advantage of that is... disgusting and attrocious, to the highest degree.  

[nightlight]

Totle

nightlight

don't you kinda have to believe in sin? maybe human folly would be a better term?

True... rather than sin, maybe mankind's greatest fault?


Betrayal. There needs to be a damn good reason to turn on someone who has blindly put their faith in you. In doing so, they commit a great folly, because deep down you never know if someone is truly trust-worthy, there's always a seed of doubt. Realizing that they are most vulnerable and to take advantage of that is... disgusting and attrocious, to the highest degree.

it's also part of man's basest instincts. trust is the foreign concept to us rather than betrayal.  

[moonfox6]

humanity's greatest sin is to waste life. life is so precious, so unbelievably(sp?) valuable, yet people can spend their whole lives without savouring the brief moment of our existance - the smell of coffee, the sunlit taste of an orange, the joy of shoaring a moment with another person... i just can't believe we waste these oppourtunities!  

[Totle]

nightlight

Totle

nightlight

don't you kinda have to believe in sin? maybe human folly would be a better term?

True... rather than sin, maybe mankind's greatest fault?


Betrayal. There needs to be a damn good reason to turn on someone who has blindly put their faith in you. In doing so, they commit a great folly, because deep down you never know if someone is truly trust-worthy, there's always a seed of doubt. Realizing that they are most vulnerable and to take advantage of that is... disgusting and attrocious, to the highest degree.

it's also part of man's basest instincts. trust is the foreign concept to us rather than betrayal.

self preservation?
Regardless if its a more basic instinct, it's still a great fault of our society. Even in caveman times did mankind understand that they were more powerful as a group rather than as an individual.  

[nightlight]

Totle

nightlight

Totle

nightlight

don't you kinda have to believe in sin? maybe human folly would be a better term?

True... rather than sin, maybe mankind's greatest fault?


Betrayal. There needs to be a damn good reason to turn on someone who has blindly put their faith in you. In doing so, they commit a great folly, because deep down you never know if someone is truly trust-worthy, there's always a seed of doubt. Realizing that they are most vulnerable and to take advantage of that is... disgusting and attrocious, to the highest degree.

it's also part of man's basest instincts. trust is the foreign concept to us rather than betrayal.

self preservation?
Regardless if its a more basic instinct, it's still a great fault of our society. Even in caveman times did mankind understand that they were more powerful as a group rather than as an individual.

that's a matter of perspective. in your example, man's survival instinct drove them to band together to bring down a mastadon or whatever. it doesn't change anything.  

[Maryhl]

I would say ignorance is the greatest fault of humankind. But it shouldn't be seen as a permanent fault so much as a motive to continue improving.

To quote from a favorite of mine... Rabindranath Tagore's essay on The Problem of Evil (available here):

Tagore

The current of the world has its boundaries, otherwise it could have no existence, but its purpose is not shown in the boundaries which restrain it, but in its movement, which is towards perfection. The wonder is not that there should be obstacles and sufferings in this world, but that there should be law and order, beauty and joy, goodness and love. The idea of God that man has in his being is the wonder of all wonders. He has felt in the depths of his life that what appears as imperfect is the manifestation of the perfect; just as a man who has an ear for music realises the perfection of a song, while in fact he is only listening to a succession of notes. Man has found out the great paradox that what is limited is not imprisoned within its limits; it is ever moving, and therewith shedding its finitude every moment. In fact, imperfection is not a negation of perfectness; finitude is not contradictory to infinity: they are but completeness manifested in parts, infinity revealed within bounds.

Pain, which is the feeling of our finiteness, is not a fixture in our life. It is not an end in itself, as joy is. To meet with it is to know that it has no part in the true permanence of creation. It is what error is in our intellectual life. To go through the history of the development of science is to go through the maze of mistakes it made current at different times. Yet no one really believes that science is the one perfect mode of disseminating mistakes. The progressive ascertainment of truth is the important thing to remember in the history of science, not its innumerable mistakes. Error, by its nature, cannot be stationary; it cannot remain with truth; like a tramp, it must quit its lodging as soon as it fails to pay its score to the full.

 

[Raticiel]

I think things like betrayal, ignorance and so are all written in human nature. So are these truly sins? That would mean to be a human is to be a sinner. I can't say I'm not a sinner. But what is a sin actually?  

[Wirekittin the nefarious]

Sin (disambiguated) refers to a fault. Of course, the word "sin" does have a strong religious background and is an ambiguous word. "Fault" or "folly" would be a more politically correct term, but remember that politically correct is sometimes not correct at all. Nonetheless, it's a free forum, use what you will. I was just going for more of a flowery term that would attract more interest than "misdeed" or "fault".  

[emperor_Hikaru]

Mankind's greatest sin is betrayal of one's own beliefs. If you believe in something, and allow that to just get run over or work against it, that is wrong. That is why it is important to make your beliefs make sense to you.