What is sin? How is it defined? “An immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law,” is one definition. A “transgression of the law of God” says another definition. “Something that violates God’s will” is yet another definition.

If we accept those definitions, then my claim is that it’s impossible to knowingly sin. The proof is simple: we don’t know God’s laws. We don’t know God’s will. God has failed to make his will and laws known to us. (P.S. following common usage, I speak of God as masculine.)

The emphasis is on the word “know.” Yes, we know what other people who claim to be speaking for God say what God’s will is. There is no shortage of priests, preachers, gurus, imams, and TV evangelists who claim to know what God’s will is. But that’s just people talking. God himself hasn’t made it clear. All we have are the conflicting, contradictory views of preachers and the contradictory views of scripture.

Jews say God doesn’t want us to eat meat and dairy together. Hindus say God doesn’t want us to eat beef. Muslims say God doesn’t want us to eat pork. Christians say God is perfectly OK with us eating a bacon cheeseburger.

Of course, God has failed to make his will known about much more important matters. Is it OK to kill another human being? The Fifth Commandment says “no.” But 1 Samuel 15 has God ordering killing of human beings: “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” Don’t forget to murder the infants, says God, allegedly. And here’s a list of wars that some major Christian denomination declared unjust and forbade its believers from fighting. And here’s the list again. That’s right, the list is empty.

Believers often claim objective moral values exist, and go further to claim the existence of objective moral values proves God exists. But here again, God has failed to make objective moral values known to us (assuming they exist). For a few centuries, Christians in Western Europe burnt or hung women thought to be witches, following the direct command of “Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live” in Exodus. Then we figured out that maybe we didn’t need to do that. Christians in the United States for centuries owned slaves and said God was OK with that, based on rules in Exodus about owning foreign slaves. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that it was not moral to own other people as property.

If objective moral values about slavery and witches exist, God failed to make them known. We’ve had to struggle to discern what is moral and what is not.

It’s as if we must base our views of right and wrong on human intuition and empathy.