Not important? Is that why only the first 15 chapters of Leviticus are dedicated to it? - sarcasm off.
You're right, I don't get the whole sacrifice thing. I think a better plan would involve no sort of
violence at all.
Now before you mention sin, I don't believe sin exists. I think it's just a religious concept made
up in order to control people and make them feel guilty. It's also not right for someone else to take
responsibility for another's actions i.e scapegoating Jesus who took our "sin" away - whatever
that means? Also, I shouldn't be held accountable because someone else a long time ago ate a
piece of magical fruit. To me this sounds absurd but that's what is in the Bible. No offense.
I guess I get it but I just don't buy it.
No, it is important. It's just not important in an of itself. The sacrifice of animals is pointing to something else, and has a different significance on this side of the Bible. Now, it's critically important to understand the concept, and it was also important for OT period people to follow the sacrificial system, of course. But the sacrifice of animals is not itself the end point. It is MAKING a point, and making it in such a way that no one could be in any doubt as to what was required of them, particularly in that time and place, and with that level of interaction between rival cultures. Again, I mostly flagged this because it tied back to the earlier discussion about creation.
If you are going to disregard sin as a concept a priori, then of course nothing I can say to argue the case will mean anything.
However, I think we have a sense of justice, of engendering good and punishing evil, in our own society. I think a concept of sin, as it appears in the Bible, can be reasoned to from human morality at large. All sin is, at the most fundamental level, is injustice. Jesus talks about the Law being summed up as love the Lord your God, and Love your neighbour as yourself. Sin is not loving the Lord your God, and not loving your neighbour as yourself.
As to what you bring up about violence, we have a sometimes explicit, and if not, implicit idea of violence and force as well in our society. Society only holds together because of a near constant exchange of implicit threats, whether by the state or by individuals, through culture and through physicality. So it's disingenuous to say that you don't like something because it is 'violent'. If you, as a member of a human society, want to have a society where good things happen and bad things don't, then force/violence, either real or implied, must exist, simply because we exist in a world of competing forces. But this is not new. Secular philosophers since Weber and Durkheim have discussed this at length.
So its perhaps a little too simple to disregard something on the basis of mere 'violence', because to discuss the nature and need of that violence is nonsensical without regarding the context in which it is enacted, and what kinds of violence signify in a given time and place. This is why the concepts of justice, evil and sin are important to discuss - what is evil? Is there such a thing? What is the proper reaction to evil things, things we often viscerally respond to? Is justice a legitimate concept, and how do we reconcile true/legal 'justice' with very different emotive justice? Why do we have judges, instead of allowing victims to dictate the remedy? How does the idea of sin, or rebellion, or lawlessness, play into these concepts, and how does that manifest in the discussions of these issues in the Bible? These are all important questions that are worth asking, even if you don't believe any of it, because they inform the view of Christians, and are key to understanding of that view.
And your comment about the fruit is certainly an example of reductio ad absurdum. Adam and Eve's condemnation is not because they ate a fruit. It is because of what the fruit actually was, and actually meant. What does it mean for Adam and Eve to eat of the knowledge of good and evil? What are the reasons given for why they want that knowledge, and why are those reasons such a big deal? You can debate the text on its own terms, but to argue that you think its dumb on the basis of 'its a fruit' is as flimsy as me saying I could never vote Democrat because Obama wears dumb ties (I have no idea if he wears dumb ties, that's just what came into my head
). The fact of fruit is neither here nor there, ultimately. What is the actual point being made? What is the reasoning behind the concept of sin?
