Because it will prevent you from doing it again.

Because it will prevent you from doing it again. — Purple Pond

We are talking about self-punishment for what we have done. Is that right considering the fact that we couldn't really help it? Moreover what really help us to avoid or delay sin is firm decision rather than shame.

I don't know what that feeling is.
If I have done something wrong, it is not because I knew it was wrong at the time. Had I know it would cause me negative feelings then I would not have done it.
Thus things that I accept that I have done wrong were not done intentionally. Guilt is not a valid response. Fixing the problem, such as explaining what has happened, or re-doing something and putting it right is how you deal with it. I cannot see how regrets or guilt would help.

I don't know what that feeling is.
If I have done something wrong, it is not because I knew it was wrong at the time. Had I know it would cause me negative feelings then I would not have done it.
Thus things that I accept that I have done wrong were not done intentionally. Guilt is not a valid response. Fixing the problem, such as explaining what has happened, or re-doing something and putting it right is how you deal with it. I cannot see how regrets or guilt would help. — charleton

I understand what you are saying here but the question is why should you try to fix the problem if you couldn't really help it to happen? It is always beyond our strength when we sin or do something wrong.

I do not recognise the concept of sin.

You ask why should I want to fix some mistake I made??
I do not think this warrants an answer.

@bahman I am also interested in the phenomenon of guilt, but I think we should first learn more about it. Your question seems too simplistic to me. I started another thread where I hope people who know more on the subject will shed some light on what often plagues many of us.

It is always beyond our strength when we sin or do something wrong. — bahman

If we have free will we can decide to do something or not. If we decide to do something knowing that it is a sin then we should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
If we don't have free will then as the saying goes "Shit happens"

I think I answered this in my thread about why we think about the past.

I am also interested in the phenomenon of guilt, but I think we should first learn more about it. Your question seems too simplistic to me. I started another thread where I hope people who know more on the subject will shed some light on what often plagues many of us. — Dalibor

My question is simple but it is puzzling. Did you get the puzzle?

Is that right considering the fact that we couldn't really help it? — bahman

Exactly. I didn't know the gun was loaded.

If we have free will we can decide to do something or not. If we decide to do something knowing that it is a sin then we should be prepared to suffer the consequences.
If we don't have free will then as the saying goes "Shit happens" — Sir2u

Sin does not exist, and so there are no consequences to it.

I think what we feel guilty about is a social construction but that we feel guilt is because it is an inherent human trait. Freud thought that guilt was due to the internal conflict between the Ego and the Superego. I think our feelings of guilt arise from actions which we recognize consciously or unconsciously as not cohering with our internal, historic sense of self. Guilt represents the responsibility we feel when we have acted in ways that run afoul of what we consider to be good and proper. I think it is the product of our freedom of choice and the concomitant sense of responsibility we feel for to the choices we have made.

Sin does not exist, and so there are no consequences to it. — charleton

Sin - An act that is regarded by theologians as a transgression of God's will.

Without god there is no sin, only things that one should probably not do. To which there are consequences.

Sin - An act that is regarded by theologians as a transgression of God's will. — Sir2u

This is a contradiction of the definition of the Classical God; so self refuting.

This is a contradiction of the definition of the Classical God; so self refuting. — charleton

How so?

We could draw up a sketch of the way that guilt might be articulated across a range of discourses: we could link it to such ideas as culpability and blamefulness, wherein we are said to feel guilty for letting someone down, shirking our responsibility, personal negligence. It has been said that we can't look the other in the eye in guilt. We don't have to be accused by another to feel we have failed her or him. The other need not be disappointed in us, nor even be aware of our failure at all.

Guilt as self-blame would be the realization of our failure to behave in the way we expected of ourself, the hurt and disappointment we feel when we are not quite what we thought we were. It would originate in a being-other-than what we expected, the sense of missed opportunity, of a mourning of a better fork in the road not taken. Guilt would register a sense of seeming self-regression or decadence in the momentum of one's experience. What, preliminarily, might we comment concerning the structure we've just sketched of a `twinge' of guilt, the feeling of `letting oneself down'?

Let us at first locate the peculiar edge of guilt, as we have described it above, as its `I ought to have, should have, could have' way of thinking, our awareness that we failed to do what we were capable of, what we assumed we would. The proximity between that which one expected of oneself and one's apparent failure to live up to that standard would mark guilt as a gnawing, teasing puzzlement or surprise.

Our falling away from another we care for could then be spoken of as an alienation of oneself from oneself. When we feel we have failed another, we mourn our mysterious dislocation from a competence or value which we associated ourselves with. It follows from this that any thinking of guilt as a `should have, could have' blamefulness deals in a notion of dislocation and distance, of a mysterious discrepancy within intended meaning, separating who we were from who we are in its teasing gnawing abyss. Guilt and sadness would seem to represent a plunge into the darkness of separation.

Understood this way, I think the only way we can avoid the feeling of guilt is to see the gap between what we expected of ourselves and what we did that fell short of those expectations as due to an unavoidable change in circumstances that would allow us to trust our instincts again.

if you don't feel guilt, do you also not feel anger or righteous indignation? Becauae guilt is a form of anger at onself.

Since god is the creator of all; omnipresent, omniscient, then every thing that happens is the will of god.
Hence there can be nothing that is not in god's plan, therefore nothing that can possibly transgress the will of god.

Why would I be angry at myself?
At any given time I act to the best possible decision that I can make at that moment. Why would I beat myself over the head in hindsight for something I could not have done otherwise.
What good is regret?

Since god is the creator of all; omnipresent, omniscient, then every thing that happens is the will of god. — charleton

But supposedly, according to the OP, we can "resist sin". So he must think it exists.
Personally I don't think sin exists either. We just manage to fuck things up sometimes.

Do you feel anger at other people? Do you not make the same mistakes that other people make? Why would you feel anger at other people and not at yourself? Whats the difference between other peoples' anger-justifying mistakes and your own? To paraphrase you :"At any given time other people act to the best possible decision that they can make at that moment. Why would you beat them over the head in hindsight for something they could not have done otherwise?"
If you really believe this, then you would have no cause for righteous indignation, resentment, hostility, irritation, etc.

WTF are you talking about?
Have you lost the plot?
I do not feel anger at other people. I can get bored with people, find them irritating. But these are my feelings. Why would I direct them at people for being who they are? Unless I am in some sort of imminent danger I tend to let people do as they please and except that same for myslef.
I find this line of questioning a bit puzzling, given the thread subject.

We should feel guilty when we have done wrong, so when damage is objective or when it is subjective. Objective damage is that change perceived to of been in detriment to the otherwise state of being by the average balanced mind. Side tracking may be dealing with side issues but this as an answer which seriously deals with this one. The shorter the answer, within reason, the more accurate it tends to be.

We should feel guilty when we have done wrong, — celebritydiscodave

I never said that we should not, so what is your point.

so when damage is objective or when it is subjective. Objective damage is that change perceived to of been in detriment to the otherwise state of being by the average balanced mind. Side tracking may be dealing with side issues but this as an answer which seriously deals with this one. The shorter the answer, within reason, the more accurate it tends to be. — celebritydiscodave

I have no idea what any of this means. 8-)

"I find this line of questioning a bit puzzling, given the thread subject." The thread subject concerned whether guilt was justified. You said guilt was a waste of time and you never feel guilty. I claimed that anger turned inward was a component and perhaps essential element of guilt(a common analysis among psychotherapists). So I surmised that if you truly never feel guilt ( and therefore no anger toward yourself) for the reasons you stated, you would have to feel the same concerning anger toward other people(that they, like you, are just doing the best they can).
Maybe we're quibbling over language, but you said that people can irritate you, and to me irritation is a mild form of anger. Along those lines, I would guess that 'WTF are you talking about' is a form of irritation, and I have the feeling I wouldnt have to search too far in your previous posts to find other examples of your being ticked off by others' comments. You would be unique on this forum if you didnt show irritation from time to time. I'm just trying to point out that irritation is a form of disappointment in others, and when turned toward oneself it takes the form of a subtle guilt, of being a little surprised and disappointed in yourself.
Again, maybe your notion of guilt is a more intense , encompassing and self-condemning feeling than I have in mind,but given your ability to be annoyed by others(a perfectly normal reaction), I imagine you are equally capable of being disappointed in yourself from time to time. Because even if one believes one is always doing the best they can, this doesnt protect each of us wondering why we occasionally make mistakes that end up hurting others. That's what self-examination is all about, and the twinge of guilt(self-disappointment) is what prompts it.

I think I answered the question.
Guilt is for children.
Growing up is about learning to forgive yourself for things you are never going to be. It is knowing that as long as you live to your ability as a person who is growing, and satisfy yourself that your efforts meet your aspirations, you have nothing with which to turn in on yourself. Self guilt is regret - neither are useful emotions and eventually, I hope, you just leave them behind.

Irritation of others has noting to so with guilt. I see you trying to make the two things the same, but they are not.

Forgiveness is an interesting concept. It's used in a variety of circumstances in relation to others and ourselves. Most commonly, we forgive others who show remorse and contrition, who are apologetic and admit culpability for the mistake they made. We're not likely to forgive something that is not admitted by the other(or oneself), and our anger or irritation is a way to coax them into a recognition that they wronged us, to 'straighten them out'. To forgive is to acknowledge willingness to change one´s attitude of blame in RESPONSE to and acknowledgement of indications of potential repentance, at a conscious or unconscious level, on the part of the wrongdoer. If I make a mistake in relation to someone I care about, before I forgive myself , I am going to acknowledge my mistake, rethink it(repentence is literally a re-thinking).
This relates to your comment that 'irritation of others has noting to do with guilt'. Many psychotherapists say that guilt is just anger turned inward, but I suppose I could skip directly from making a mistake to acknowledging it and forgiving myself for it, just as i could forgive another for a wrong they committed against me without first feeling irritation, but more typically, a healthy feeling of irritation can speed the situation along from alienation to reconciliation, with either oneself or with others . Irritation at oneself can help prevent self-blame(feeling badly about unintentionally hurting people we care about) from turning into a more prolonged bout of dejection or even depression.

I don't forgive either.
If people deliberately try to stitch me up then they do not deserve forgiveness; if they had no intention of wronging me then they don't need it.
For them my comment is "no worries".

I don't know about other people, but such instances where this might be apposite are so rare in my life I just do not have much interest, and tend to dismiss all this nonsense and peri-christian ideology.

The Strange Persistence of Guit, Wilfred McClay, The Hedgehog Review. David Brooks notes:

Technology gives us power and power entails responsibility, and responsibility leads to guilt: You and I see a picture of a starving child in Sudan and we know inwardly that we’re not doing enough.

“Whatever donation I make to a charitable organization, it can never be as much as I could have given. I can never diminish my carbon footprint enough, or give to the poor enough. … Colonialism, slavery, structural poverty, water pollution, deforestation — there’s an endless list of items for which you and I can take the rap.”

McClay is describing a world in which we’re still driven by an inextinguishable need to feel morally justified. Our thinking is still vestigially shaped by religious categories.

And yet we have no clear framework or set of rituals to guide us in our quest for goodness. Worse, people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.

The only reliable way to feel morally justified in that culture is to assume the role of victim. As McClay puts it, “Claiming victim status is the sole sure means left of absolving oneself and securing one’s sense of fundamental moral innocence.”

“If one wishes to be accounted innocent, one must find a way to make the claim that one cannot be held morally responsible. This is precisely what the status of victimhood accomplishes.”

Guilt doesn't require a holding on to vestigial religious categories. There will be guilt as long as there is a desire to care about the welfare of others. Brooks thinks that without the foundation of religion, culture cannot summon the will or the organization to provide each perosn the human support that is needed But a decentered and complex structure of post-religious ethical cuture is not the same as an ineffective ethical culture, just as pragmatic post-religious truth is no less valid than foundational truth.