Gambling is not a sin

The only reason that some religions forbid gambling is because it’s very easy for some people to get addicted and to lose everything and destroy their lives or worse, their families. Not everybody has an addictive personality and plenty of people are capable of controlling their gambling and restricting it to only what they can afford to lose.

Moreover, when playing “gambling” games like poker, or really anything, if there isn’t any actual money or stakes involved (e.g., playing with chips for fun), then there is no harm in it and it’s perfectly fine for everyone to play, young or old, without fear of going to Hell (the only problem then might be sore losers who get angry and rage, but they’d probably do that over anything that sets them off).

The reason that religions forbid gambling is because it’s easier to make blanket laws that apply to everyone, including those that it doesn’t even apply to. This is particularly true of religious laws from a long time ago when people were a lot more simple and education was limited to just the elite, so most people couldn’t understand more advanced reasoning like psychology and germ-theory. I’d like to think that we’re past the point of hand-holding and can be trusted to understand the reasons for rules and commandments and laws can be more specific to the individual person and circumstance. Unfortunately, there are still far too many stupid people, and worse, the human population just keeps going up at an accelerating rate, which makes it impossible to deal with things individually, so we still need blanket laws. 🤦