You say that I say that guilt comes from God, even though I do not. You also claim that false logic exists in my definition of guilt, when it does not. I defined sin with the metaphor of Bunyan's "heavy burden." All men have this heavy burden, but not all are aware of it. Therefore men are said to feel guilt in proportion to the amount they are aware of sin. So I proceeded to say that there are two ways to get rid of guilt, one being to ignore sin, the other being to get rid of it. Here, in the latter option, appears what might be called the grace of God (of which I am not qualified to write, being, as I said, that I do not possess it, and cannot confirm its existence.) This is exactly what I said and there is no false logic in it.
You claim it comes from god, I would argue that it comes from within yourself (Not god) because you know certain things are bad. Introducing god here doesn't really help.
Now as I said, I do not claim that it comes from God. I do say that "religion invites guilt, it argues that there is a moral standard, and that we fail to adhere to it." Paul says "With knowledge of the laws comes knowledge of sin, since we are breakers of the law." Of course, Paul is referring to the Jewish laws, but the laws of other religions or societies can also be broken, and that can also invite guilt.
Introducing god here helps very much. Aquinas argues that some sort of God ought to exist, "since the concept of better implies the concept of best, just as the concept of warmer implies the concept of warmest." The best helps us to define guilt, since those that believe in the best are guilty of falling short of the it, whereas Nihilists can only hold themselves guilty of falling short of the better. Nihilism, being a cowardly philosophy, says that it is enough to be
better and does not even consider the concept of best. Homer gives this expression in the Illiad, he writes "Be the best, better than all the rest, and do not bring shame on the race of your fathers." A more modern expression says "Do your best, that is enough."
Christianity is couragious. It says that "better than all the rest" is not really best. God is not God simply because he is the most powerful and he can blast others to bits. That is Homer's God, Zeus, who overthrew his father and is doomed to be overthrown himself some day by one mightier. The God of Christianity is God because he is
best, that is, he is perfection. Christianity does not cowardly stop at "better than all the rest," but instead turns to something we do not have proper words for, that we cannot even comprehend.
Christianity is also manful. In contrast to the philosophy of "do
your best" it preaches "do
the best," even though it aknowledges that doing the best is impossible. The dangers of the first philosophy are evident when we consider the state of our school-system today.
Also, you are permitted to do things that might be considered wrong (witch burnings or rigging elections for example) and may even be objectively evil if there is such a thing, solely if God commands it because he, and not 'good' is your ultimate end. Yes, God claims to be 'good' but this is an unsubstantiated claim- the Bible is rife with monstrous acts in his name.
You call the acts monstrous, and yet you deny that a thing can be monstrous, insofar as there is no objective truth. This needs explaining. And I would certainly never rig an election. I would only go on a witch hunt if there was such a thing as a witch and she was trying to kill or curse people. Then hunting her would be self-defence, or a noble defence of others.
What God commands the Jews in the Bible is concerning. Indeed, I have been quite concerned about it myself. Bring up some specific instance and we can talk about it.
Also, with your second section, I want to respond to it, but I cannot decipher it. Your topic sentence seems to be "guilt is a western concept." What is the meaning or significance of this? Then you seem to undermine your thesis, because you say that orientals feel "shame." It appears to me that shame is the same word as guilt, and that guilt is universal even by your own admission. Speaking of the cause of guilt, you say that the orientals feel it out of fear of societal disapproval. When I ask why someone would fear the disapproval of society, I come back to self-interest. Are you arguing that oriental cultures are essentially Nihilistic?
And what about your first section? What is the significance of your definition? What are you trying to say?