Is Living Well a Sin?

Off Topic
21

It’s not a sin to make things easier, but I feel that there’s a lot of instances of our ‘ingenuity’ causing us some problems.

Examples:

The chair makes our hips less mobile, causing us some postural problems

Wearing confining shoes does something similar to the above

In an attempt to raise and slaughter more livestock, we feed them corn, but they have an unhealthy fat profile.

Adopting agriculture led to a decrease in height and weaker immune systems in farming societies versus hunter gathers (this relates back to that recent Avatar post-- Taller people are subconciously perceieved to be ‘healthier’).

I concede that HG societies were doomed because they couldn’t fight farmer societies (less population)

But ‘improvements’ aren’t always 100% good. Anyone that’s on this website knows that it’s a good thing to train. Training isn’t a necessity with modern convenience, but it makes a lot of things better.

So living well isn’t a sin, but it’s to your detriment to ‘live well’ all the time.

22

I’m impressed that Max Weber is being brought up on T-Nation. I thought everyone was an imbecile brah here :wink:

j/k

24

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]johnconkle wrote:

…Adopting agriculture led to a decrease in height…[/quote]

What meth lab sold you the product that caused you to come up with this gem?[/quote]

you said it better than i could. if anything, it was the other way around.

25

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mAl&q=heights+decrease+with+neolithic+revolution&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Simplying googling it returns a couple of papers.

I was first exposed to the idea in “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark (somewhere around page 55)

Thanks for the clever insult, though.

26

[quote]johnconkle wrote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mAl&q=heights+decrease+with+neolithic+revolution&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Simplying googling it returns a couple of papers.

I was first exposed to the idea in “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark (somewhere around page 55)

Thanks for the clever insult, though. [/quote]

Interestingly, thanks to agriculture, we now pump so many hormones into our food that humans are once again tall!! We win again.

27

[quote]johnconkle wrote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mAl&q=heights+decrease+with+neolithic+revolution&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Simplying googling it returns a couple of papers.

I was first exposed to the idea in “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark (somewhere around page 55)

Thanks for the clever insult, though. [/quote]

Before saying anything to this, were you including animals in with your definition of agriculture, or just grains and vegetation?

28

No living well is not a sin. Just like a few people in here already said putting money and material things over your spiritual and religious faith is a sin. But that doesn’t mean you should not work hard and try to better yourself (bc laziness is a sin).

But if you only look out for yourself and your family and do not help in making a difference in the world it is a sin. According to the Christian bible, the second most important commandment is love your neighbor. The only way to love your neighbor is by helping them like they were your own flesh and blood. So if you are living in a big house, nice car, lots of money and you do nothing to help others and keep all your money to youself, Yes you are sinning.

We all sin in so many ways though, so going back to the OP they don’t have a right to judge you or anybody else for your sin bc there are plenty of ways they sin, and if they are judging that is sinning. We must look at our own sins and fix them before we can tell others to fix theirs.

29

[quote]honest_lifter wrote:

[quote]

True. However, and quite conveniently, if you look at the Protestant Ethic individuals are encouraged to work hard and reap the rewards of their hard work (i.e. make loads if money) because that’s what God wants them to do. Phew! Rapture, here we come!

[quote]

Well, if the protestants follow the bible, no where does it say anything about God wanting us to be rich. Second, i think that the problem isn’t that the things people acquire is a sin, but rather, how those things are viewed that makes it a sin.[/quote]

Matthew 25:14-30
Proverbs 8:18-21
Proverbs 10:2-4
Proverbs 10:22
Ecclesiastes 5:8-20

With wealth comes power. Do you think God intended for only the wicked to have wealth and power? Money is not evil, it is only a tool. Good people will do good things with their money, evil people will do evil things with their money. Pursuit of money for money’s sake is a sin (LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil).

30

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:

[quote]honest_lifter wrote:

[quote]

True. However, and quite conveniently, if you look at the Protestant Ethic individuals are encouraged to work hard and reap the rewards of their hard work (i.e. make loads if money) because that’s what God wants them to do. Phew! Rapture, here we come!

Matthew 25:1-8 - refers, not to money posessions, but to people posessions. In fact, refering to Gods people, and those put in charge of them were the slaves that got the money. Symbolic meaning.

Proverbs 8:18-21 - is comparing mere treasures of earth to the spiritual treasures that lie with God. “My fruit is better than gold, yea, than fine gold; and my revenue than choice silver.” NOT saying that we should persue material things, quite the opposite.

Proverbs 10:2-4 - This is proving my point. Nothing needed. “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death.”

Proverbs 10:22 - This one doesn’t specify in the verse.

Ecclesiates - Not sure why this was included. However, a good reminder of where are priorities should be.

I think that we are actually in agreement. I was not saying that God said we HAD to be poor to have his blessing, but rather, that he doesn’t advocate wealth. I think it is summed up by Jesus statement at Matthew 19:24, that it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to get into God’s kingdom. With this statement in mind, anyone would be hard-pressed to prove that God WANTS us to be rich.

31

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]johnconkle wrote:

…Adopting agriculture led to a decrease in height…[/quote]

What meth lab sold you the product that caused you to come up with this gem?[/quote]

Have you ever read one book about the Paleo Diet?

Sometimes I wonder…

32

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

I was inspired to this thread by the “Avatar” movie, wherein the simple native culture is held up as good, while the technologically advanced civilisation is regarded as evil somehow.

There seems to be a movement at hand that is anti-technology, and for the life of me I can’t understand why most people don’t totally reject the idea.
[/quote]

It wasn’t the technology that made them evil, it was the fact that they were uprooting an entire species to mine ore.

33

[quote]WormwoodTheory wrote:
It wasn’t the technology that made them evil, it was the fact that they were uprooting an entire species to mine ore. [/quote]

Yeah, that much seemed obvious. I definitely didn’t get an anti-tech vibe, or an anti-capitalism vibe for that matter, from the film.

35

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]johnconkle wrote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mAl&q=heights+decrease+with+neolithic+revolution&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Simplying googling it returns a couple of papers.

I was first exposed to the idea in “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark (somewhere around page 55)

Thanks for the clever insult, though. [/quote]

Don’t take it too personally. I just get tired of this neoteric cliche that modern agriculture is some kind of a malevolent, insidious force that is secretly destroying the planet.

I think it is a fairly well established fact that with modern agriculture practices have come human stature increases. Maybe you can successfully throw out the ol’ tried and true “correlation does not prove causation” rule of thumb…I dunno.

I do know or at least am rather well convinced that practically anywhere you go on this globe and find hunter-gatherer societies you will find people of relatively small stature. Go to the Amazon or New Guinea here in modern times or to many, many different places in the not too distant past such as the Inca, North American native of the 18th - 19th century, Mongolia, rural Siberia and China, the Himalaya, etc. - any place where a modern agricultural system is not or was not in place and inevitably you will find short people as a general rule.

Do not point to the exception to the rule societies in Africa where tall people predominate because if you do I’ll take you a few miles up the road from there and introduce you to populations of pygmies. Both examples would have more to do with closed society/inbreeding than a reflection of ag practices.

On the flip side I can anthropologically take you to the societies where tall people exist in great numbers and you will typically end up with societies that have practiced “modern” agriculture for quite some time now.[/quote]

I agree with this. Scavenging utilizes completely different muscles than those you’d use if you were in an agri society. Simple mechanics.

36

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

[quote]MaximusB wrote:
No, it is not a sin. I am guessing that you mean sin within the religious context. God gave us a working brain that is always searching for a better solution to a problem. You should tell those same people at your work who criticize our technological advances to go live in a home without heat, along with no use of a car, and having to hunt your own food. I think you will see a quick change of opinion. [/quote]

I was inspired to this thread by the “Avatar” movie, wherein the simple native culture is held up as good, while the technologically advanced civilisation is regarded as evil somehow.

There seems to be a movement at hand that is anti-technology, and for the life of me I can’t understand why most people don’t totally reject the idea.
[/quote]

I did not get this message from Avatar. The message I got was that people who steal and murder are bad and that the mere possession of overwhelming force, whether through technology or numbers, in-and-of-itself, does not justify its use to steal and murder. I, for one, am a big fan of technology, but I am not a big fan of using it to steal and murder. I wouldn’t have thought that an anti-stealing, right-to-life sort of ethic would be viewed as controversial by so many people.

37

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]johnconkle wrote:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=mAl&q=heights+decrease+with+neolithic+revolution&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

Simplying googling it returns a couple of papers.

I was first exposed to the idea in “Farewell to Alms” by Gregory Clark (somewhere around page 55)

Thanks for the clever insult, though. [/quote]

Don’t take it too personally. I just get tired of this neoteric cliche that modern agriculture is some kind of a malevolent, insidious force that is secretly destroying the planet.

I think it is a fairly well established fact that with modern agriculture practices have come human stature increases. Maybe you can successfully throw out the ol’ tried and true “correlation does not prove causation” rule of thumb…I dunno.

I do know or at least am rather well convinced that practically anywhere you go on this globe and find hunter-gatherer societies you will find people of relatively small stature. Go to the Amazon or New Guinea here in modern times or to many, many different places in the not too distant past such as the Inca, North American native of the 18th - 19th century, Mongolia, rural Siberia and China, the Himalaya, etc. - any place where a modern agricultural system is not or was not in place and inevitably you will find short people as a general rule.

Do not point to the exception to the rule societies in Africa where tall people predominate because if you do I’ll take you a few miles up the road from there and introduce you to populations of pygmies.

On the flip side I can anthropologically take you to the societies where tall people exist in great numbers and you will typically end up with societies that have practiced “modern” agriculture for quite some time now.[/quote]

You are wrong.

There is lots of evidence that with the neolothic revolution people got smaller and had lots of diseases that can be attributed to malnourishment.

Also, there are lots of genetic markers that get rarer the later agriculture was introduced into a society whereas others that make the digestation of grains more difficult get more prevalent.

We are rain forest primates, we never evolved to eat grains so some genetic adaption was necessary and is still not completed yet.

Even today, whenever some indigenous group like the American Indiands the Inuit or the Aborigines are confronted with our diet massive diabetes and CHDs are the inevitable result around 20 years later.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/m12v36v06608277g/

Abstract The increase in the Neolithic human population following the development of agriculture has been assumed to result from improvements in health and nutrition. Recent research demonstrates that this assumption is incorrect. With the development of sedentism and the intensification of agriculture, there is an increase in infectious disease and nutritional deficiencies particularly affecting infants and children.
Declining health probably increased mortality among infants, children and oldest adults. However, the productive and reproductive core would have been able to respond to this increase in mortality by reducing birth spacing. That is, agricultural populations increased in size, despite higher mortality, because intervals between births became shorter.