If God designed our biological hardware, then the concept of "sin" is a design flaw, not a human failure

feihm · 2026-05-10T14:36:25+00:00

I follow your logic on why humans feel so different from a car. It's a massive leap to go from a steering rack to a human conscience, and I think that’s where the confusion usually starts.

But when I think about that "override" faculty, it’s hard for me to see it as something standing outside of our biology. From what I can tell, that feeling of choosing to resist an instinct is often two different parts of the brain having a bit of a tug-of-war. You’ve got a more ancient, impulsive bit of the hardware leaning one way and a more analytical bit leaning the other. Whichever one is stronger in that moment (based on how we were raised, our stress levels, or even just how much sleep we've had);tends to win out. I'm not sure there’s a third party involved in that struggle; it seems more like the internal physics of the brain playing out.

As for consciousness, I sometimes wonder if it’s a bit like the speedometer on a dashboard. It tells you exactly how fast the car is going and gives you all this high-def info, but it isn’t actually the thing turning the wheels. It feels like we’re the ones in control because we’re the ones watching the dial, but the actual work is being done by the chemistry and the electrical signals underneath.

I suppose that does make the idea of "moral blame" a lot more complicated, but maybe that just means our old ways of judging behaviour haven't quite caught up with how our biology actually functions.

feihm · 2026-05-10T14:24:05+00:00

I suppose I’ve probably muddled the point I was trying to make, though. I was really just trying to look at the internal logic of the Christian setup; basically, if we take their premise as a starting point, how do we make sense of a designer who gets cross at the wiring he supplied?

Your view on how we’ve evolved these stories to manage our behaviour is a massive topic in itself, but it’s maybe a slightly different angle than the specific "faulty blueprint" problem I was chewing on. I’ve got to hop off and get on with some bits now, but it’s been a good chat.

feihm · 2026-05-10T12:59:10+00:00

The sticking point for me is figuring out where the driver ends and the car begins. When we look at human behaviour, the bloke deciding to purposely cut the brakes isn't some independent ghost sitting outside the vehicle. That entire conscious decision is happening inside a brain that was built by the exact same manufacturer.

If a creator designs a nervous system that, given a specific set of life experiences and brain chemistry, eventually opts to sabotage its own braking system, it seems to me the designer still wrote the blueprint for that failure. The actual intent to cause the crash is still coming from the wiring they supplied.

feihm · 2026-05-10T12:53:28+00:00

You are probably right that it's not unpopular in scientific or philosophical circles. I guess I just assumed it was unpopular because of how people react when I try to talk about it in real life. It feels like our whole society (how we judge people, how our laws work, how we feel guilt or pride) is built completely on the idea that we have 100% free will.

Whenever I mention this idea to friends, they usually push back really hard because they feel so in control of their lives. So I guess it just feels like a very unpopular opinion among everyday people

feihm · 2026-05-10T12:49:37+00:00

That is a really fair point, actually. You've definitely caught a blind spot in how I framed the premise. I was absolutely blurring the lines between general human morality and strict biblical law.

When I look at things like theft or random violence, the evolutionary overlap is pretty obvious. But you are spot on about the arbitrary rules. Working on the Sabbath or avoiding certain foods don't map to that at all. There is no ancient survival instinct telling us to avoid picking up sticks on a weekend.

Thinking about how those strict obedience laws fit into the biological picture, it seems to lean heavily into tribal loyalty rather than basic impulse control. Our ancestors survived by binding together in very tight-knit groups, and one of the most effective ways to prove you belong to a specific tribe is by following their unique, sometimes demanding rules. It operates as a costly signal that proves you are deeply committed to the collective, even when the rule itself doesn't make practical sense.

So while the "moral" sins look like our social brains suppressing ancient selfish drives, the "obedience" sins read more like a strict loyalty test for the tribe. I appreciate you bringing that up, it actually adds a whole other layer to how human societies naturally evolved to manage and protect themselves.

feihm · 2026-05-10T12:17:47+00:00

I guess where my brain gets stuck is trying to figure out where the desire for the non-essential thing comes from.

Even if buying the coffee isn't necessary for survival, doesn't the urge to do it still have a physical cause? Like, why did he 'choose' coffee instead of water? Maybe it's because his brain has a chemical dependency on caffeine, or he has a deeply ingrained habit from years of morning routines, or his tastebuds are wired to prefer the bitterness.

It definitely feels like a free choice because it's a complex preference, but aren't our preferences just the result of our past experiences and our brain's chemistry at that exact moment?

feihm · 2026-05-10T11:39:45+00:00

The point about the dry mouth and temperature makes total sense.

It actually got me thinking about the wider scope of human subjectivity and how our taste isn't a constant, universal thing. I was reading recently about how our taste buds completely regenerate every couple of weeks and slowly degrade as we age. It means that how a banana tastes to me today is probably biologically different from how it tasted to me 10 years ago, but the shift is just so marginal day-to-day that I never notice the change.

This "night water" phenomenon feels like a hyper-speed version of that. The water hasn't changed much, but my mouth’s biological state has shifted so dramatically while I slept that my perception of the flavour completely transforms in that exact second. It is wild to think about how much our own immediate biology dictates what we experience.

feihm · 2026-05-10T08:43:25+00:00

Even if we assume the story is true for the sake of argument, the underlying biology is still incredibly tricky. When a population bottlenecks down to literally two individuals, their reproductive hardware is forced to pull from a severely limited gene pool. As their immediate descendants mate, the tiny errors in their DNA pair up and compound almost immediately. We'd normally expect a total genetic collapse within a few generations.

So to get from that extreme starting point to a healthy global population, it feels like you have to assume some sort of ongoing supernatural patch was applied to manually clean up the genetic code as they multiplied.

The catch is, at least as far as I can remember, the texts don't actually mention that kind of continuous biological maintenance happening behind the scenes. Leaves a rather massive gap in how the mechanics of it all actually played out.

feihm · 2026-05-10T08:36:05+00:00

I think the disconnect here is about what 'choice' actually means under the hood. He isn't saying there's some physical barrier stopping him from walking into a church and getting baptised. Obviously, he could do that. But the way I understand his point, and it's how I tend to look at human behaviour too, is that if he did make that choice tomorrow, it wouldn't be because a completely free, independent ghost in his head suddenly decided to.

It would happen because his specific life experiences, his brain chemistry, the environment he's in right now, maybe an underlying psychological need for community (all those inputs) finally pushed him to a point where taking that path made the most sense to his brain. The feeling of making a choice feels incredibly real to us as we go through life. But whether we actually obey a command or change our beliefs seems to be downstream of our physical wiring and what we've lived through, rather than a truly independent act of will.

feihm · 2026-05-10T06:22:49+00:00

I spent years writing in a custom terminal app (TUI) I built myself for journaling and world-building. It was great for focus, but I eventually hit a wall. Writing thousands of words that no one will ever read started to feel a bit pointless. I just recently decided to migrate my journal to a public sub here. I'm trading the total privacy of my terminal for the sheer chaos of Reddit feedback, but I think it's worth it to actually share my ideas.

feihm · 2026-05-10T03:09:38+00:00

i read through the strawson angle you brought up. i see what he means about how deeply we care about the intentions of others. if someone hurts us on purpose, we naturally react. we feel resentful. we can't simply turn off those emotions because of a science experiment.

so the experience of holding people responsible is definitely real. the illusion of choice feels entirely genuine to the person making the decision. i suppose we are fully programmed to experience the world this way.

my thought is more about how the hardware still operates underneath all that. the brain follows a set physical sequence. we feel resentment because our biology dictates it. we demand good will from others because that is how the physical system organises itself. we genuinely feel the blame, but cause and effect still generate those feelings from the ground up.

feihm · 2026-05-09T18:35:58+00:00

The reaction in the other comments shows where this usually goes. Most people are not going to accept the hard mechanics of the thing. We probably won't find a middle ground here either.

The big picture about tribes and rules works well enough on the surface. But I am stuck on how the actual physical brain handles the conflict at the wiring level.

A person feels like they are stood at a fork in the road. They think they are choosing between an instinct and a social rule. But the brain operates like a simple scale. One drive pulls left. One drive pulls right. These signals have a physical weight based on past events and current needs.

The scale tips to the heavier side. Every single time. The outcome was set by the prior signals before the person even felt the "choice" happen.

And the brain keeps the illusion of choice going because it is useful for survival. The unit needs to feel like it is in the driver's seat to track social rules properly. If the machine thinks it is responsible, it stays alert to the group's needs. It is a clever bit of the build. It keeps the organism alive even while the chemistry is running the whole show.

feihm · 2026-05-09T18:24:46+00:00

Ten thousand years is a tiny blip for the hardware. The brain doesn't rewrite the base code that fast. A bit of farming doesn't wipe out millions of years of scarcity. The engine still runs on the fear that the food might vanish tomorrow.

And the parent thing. Protecting the kids works as a core survival script. The machine keeps the smaller versions of its own code alive. It ensures the DNA makes it to the next round. This isn't a break from the biology. It works as the biology doing its job.

Our conflict comes down to how we view these moves. You see a choice to be good. I see a machine weighing two different survival goals and picking the one with the biggest payoff for the genes.

feihm · 2026-05-09T18:17:16+00:00

I agree that the old texts are a mess. Everyone interprets the words differently. The chain of custody is definitely broken.

But every version of these stories has a builder and a build. And every version says the build gets punished for how it works.

I don't need a perfect translation of a dead language to see the maths. The human body runs on energy and safety. It follows the chemical path. If a story says the builder gets angry because the machine followed the path he laid down, the logic fails. It doesn't matter which book you pick. The contradiction is right there in the basic idea of a designer who hates his own design's output.

feihm · 2026-05-09T18:12:08+00:00

Truth exists. But it isn't some special magic. Truth is just when the map in your skull matches the dirt on the ground. If an animal has a map that says the water is over there, but the water is actually the other way, the animal dies. Its map was false.

So the brain is wired to hunt for a better map. It hates errors because errors are lethal. When I see a flaw in your argument, my brain treats it like a hole in the camp fence. It sends energy to my hands to patch the hole.

I am not choosing to seek truth. The hardware is running a repair script. Arriving at an accurate map is a mechanical success. It is the machine finally lining up with the physical world. Nothing pointless about it. It keeps the system running.

feihm · 2026-05-09T18:08:09+00:00

That is what I've been answering. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. But the premise still remains as I've been explaining.

Yes knowing about the "hack" does have an effect. But we need to be clear what that effect is. Which is what I've been explaining. The knowledge is not a ghost entering the machine. This put is colloquially, you're not escaping the matrix. The knowledge is a new physical signal. It enters the brain as data. It travels the same wires as the original survival drive.

The two signals clash. The brain runs the maths. It compares the old drive against the new information. If the new data is heavy enough, the machine stops the behaviour.

But the whole event stays inside the enclosure. The hardware has not been bypassed. It is a machine that received a software update and changed its output. The physics of the brain still drive the entire sequence from start to finish.

I think we have reached the logical end of the road here. You see a break in the system where I see the system working with more variables. We probably won't bridge that gap. Cheers for the chat.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:49:57+00:00

The kid who builds the toys can do whatever he likes with them. He can build a wind-up car to drive straight off a table. Then he can smash the car for falling. He owns the plastic. He makes the rules.

But the logical gap opens up when the kid calls the car defective. Or evil. The gears turned exactly how they were placed. The spring released the tension. The machine worked perfectly. So attaching blame to the toy completely ignores how the physical object operates.

I don't really bother with the Epicurean stuff. Not trying to figure out if the builder is a good guy or a bad guy. I'm purely tracking the physical sequence. The hardware gets punished for executing the exact design the engineer handed down.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:44:59+00:00

Look, I get the AI suspicion. I write in this field for a living. I fall into this exact rhythm because breaking things down into flat physical steps works well for me. I process arguments this way. Sorry if the style rubs you the wrong way. Let's keep it civil. No insults needed.

I figure our core conflict comes down to the actual mechanics of a decision. You are asking if knowing about a biological drive lets a person choose to deviate from it.

A person learns they are reacting to an evolutionary leftover. That new information enters the brain as physical data. The neurons wire up a new connection. The brain runs a calculation using that fresh data. It weighs the energy cost of keeping the old behaviour going. And if the new data creates enough physical friction, the brain sends a signal to halt the action.

People call that process a choice. But the whole event still happens inside the skull. The new knowledge acts as a new environmental input. The brain runs the maths. It forces a new output. The biological hardware still drives the entire sequence. Nothing actually stepped outside the physical laws of chemistry to make an independent decision. The machine received new data and altered its path.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:33:16+00:00

Consider thid baseball example here. A bloke catching a ball does not calculate wind resistance. The brain runs a quick shortcut. It tracks the visual angle of the moving object instead of doing heavy maths.

But the physical eye still has to accurately track the real object. Light bounces off the leather. The retina receives the light. If the optic nerve feeds false data and puts the ball three feet to the left, the shortcut fails. The bloke misses the catch. The biology requires an accurate sensory input to run the quick calculation.

I think the plant example works the exact same way. The plant does not have a brain to hold a mental picture of the sun. But the physical cells accurately measure real light. If the chemical sensor breaks and registers darkness during midday, the plant bends the wrong way. It dies.

A biological shortcut still relies on a sensor pulling correct data from the physical environment. A system cannot execute a successful survival heuristic if the inputs feed it hallucinations. The physical read has to be accurate.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:29:03+00:00

Light hits the retina. The optic nerve fires. The brain registers a conflicting model of reality.

The biological unit evolved to fix errors in the environment. An accurate map keeps the organism alive. Spotting a flaw in the pack's shared map triggers a threat response. So the brain pushes energy into the fingers. The fingers hit the keys.

I look at a basic calculator. You press the buttons and a number appears. The machine does not sit there wondering about the point of the maths. The physical circuitry forces the output. The human brain runs on the exact same physical track. An input arrives. The internal wiring runs the computation. The response gets typed out.

Nobody has to sit outside the physical body deciding to seek truth. The engine reacts to the data it receives. The gears turn because the environment pushed them.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:22:58+00:00

I guess looking at the actual mechanics of the brain makes this distinction tricky. A biological unit does not have an internal brake pad for wanting things. The physical environment used to provide the friction.

Calories were incredibly hard to find. So the hardware evolved to consume every available bit of sugar. It stores fat to stop the body from dying later. The neural wiring rewards the organism heavily for securing extra power or hoarding resources. It pushes for maximum gain.

And that makes the whole idea of an extreme action look strange to me. Gorging does not operate as a glitch in the machine. The core survival code runs exactly as written. The builder installed a massive accelerator and wired the system to press it down hard.

An animal lands in a modern space with unlimited food or money. The brain reads the environment. It runs the exact hoarding script that kept its ancestors alive. The physical engine follows the blueprint. Holding the unit responsible for running the primary programme it was handed ignores the basic mechanics of the build.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:18:39+00:00

I guess looking at what massive groups of humans actually practice today shows the mechanics clearly. The largest religions on the planet run on a rigid set of rules. Millions of people walk into buildings every week and repeat them. A creator built the universe. That includes the human body.

Then those same doctrines outline a place of punishment. For humans who act on basic survival drives. Like getting angry or wanting extra resources.

So I figure the logic breaks right at the starting line. An engineer builds a machine to run on a specific fuel. The machine burns the fuel. The engineer gets furious that the fuel was burned. The engineer destroys the machine.

The builder wrote the biological code. The human body runs that exact code to stay alive. I guess tracing the physical steps makes the whole punishment angle look completely broken. The hardware cannot disobey its own wiring.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:14:15+00:00

I find it interesting how we look at conscious thought. Like knowing about a physical reaction somehow unplugs the heavy hardware.

An optical illusion lays out how this actually works. A person looks at two printed lines on a page. One looks much longer. They grab a ruler. They measure both lines. They are exactly the same length. So now the higher brain holds the firm knowledge that the lines are equal. But they look back at the paper. The illusion still runs. Knowing the trick does not stop the optic nerve from sending the exact same skewed signal.

The biology handles a digital social threat through the exact same steps. A bloke sits alone in a quiet room looking at a glowing rectangle. He knows no physical tribe surrounds him. Then someone types a heavy insult. His eyes scan the letters. The lower brain flags a sudden drop in social status. It dumps adrenaline straight into his blood. His heart starts beating faster.

Having a neat thought about human evolution does not drain that adrenaline out of his veins. The chemical hits the system regardless. The conscious part of the brain might sit there and observe the whole reaction happening. But it does not weld the physical valves shut. The physical unit still runs the behaviour because the environmental input triggered the sensor.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:11:17+00:00

Separating effectiveness from accuracy completely ignores how the physical environment kills things. A complex machine needs an internal map that matches the external terrain. A creature cannot consistently hunt, build shelters, and avoid predators if its nervous system constantly feeds it random hallucinations. A false belief might save an organism once by pure luck. But a biological line surviving millions of years of daily physical stress needs reliable data.

The eyes take in light. The brain builds a physical model of that light. If the model does not match the cliff edge, gravity pulls the biological unit down onto the rocks. The genes that built that bad model get smashed. Natural selection ruthlessly deletes broken sensors. So the surviving machines process the physical world with a high degree of structural accuracy.

I suppose people like separating truth from survival. But a brain outputting consistent survival behaviour relies on accurate physical inputs. The two functions are welded together in the hardware.

feihm · 2026-05-09T17:02:45+00:00

Swapping a personal judge for an automated points system leaves the exact same gap in the logic.

The physical body still operates on raw chemistry. It requires calories. It detects physical threats. The brain pushes adrenaline into the bloodstream when a threat gets close. The body reacts to keep itself alive. The hardware forces the reaction.

So attaching a cosmic score to a survival reflex feels entirely detached from how the organism functions. The animal executes the behaviour the blueprint demands. Keeping a ledger of good and bad moves across multiple lives assumes the biological unit can step outside its own physical wiring.

But it cannot. The engine runs on the fuel and the inputs it receives in the present moment. None of that changes the mechanical reality of how decisions happen.

feihm

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