Original Sin

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I recently posted my religious beliefs and it got me thinking about when I decided Christianity was incorrect.

There was a question I couldn't answer that I thought I would post here to see if anyone has an answer. This may be very simple.

If the creation story is not literal there is no original sin. If there is no original sin then what is Jesus saving us from.

Sure "All have sinned..." But that seems insufficient to me.

Can a Christian believe in evolution?

You can maintain the idea of original sin while leaving the story allegorical. I don't see why you couldn't.


Yes.

These are basically the same.


Sure. I do.

Not really - so fare I remember my Catholic upbringing to sin you must beware that something is a sin and do it irrespectively. So without being capable of understanding that something is wrong you can't sin - at least in the Catholic sense. This certainly the case with children below a certain age and with mentally impaired people.

Whilst at least some people not able to sin, they are still subject to the "original sin", which is more than just a strange concept. Even the most brutal Roman Law demanded for a conviction that a person is able to understand his wrong doing.

One of the most serious problems I have with Christianity is that it doesn't even define sin. Just what is it that you're supposed to avoid?

Looking at women with lustful intent I feel may be most pertinent to my life. What is lustful intent? In the past, people have given me vague, snooty answers that don't really get to the heart of the matter. Sometimes a woman is just beautiful.

What we would need is a way to tell what is a sin and what isn't, in order to allow relaxed, confident, precise judgment to replace poisonous fear and anxiety. Even then, I think Christianity would have its problems.

OK so it appears it is a dumb question.

It must be my fundamentalist upbringing. This is what I was taught.

There was no deat or suffering until Adam and Eve ate the fruit. This was the "original sin" that all humanity was condemned for.

Moses was given the law but even those that followed it were tainted.

Mary was born after the immaculate conception and she was free of the original sin. Jesus therefore did not inherit the penalty from Mary or God of course. Since he also lived a perfect life he was able to stand in for everyone (I am foggy on this bit). I was taught that the crucifiction removed the original sin inheritance so we are only accountable for our own sin now. Ask for forgiveness and you are set.

This is the context in which I asked how Jesus was needed if the creation story is not true.

It seems my understanding is off.

Oh well.

That fits pretty well with what I was taught except that everyone was accountable, if they know the rules or not. Very harsh.

Original sin is human instinct. It's the reason why humans were so successful and now it's the reason we are threatening our own species. The desire to kill and conquer is what drove the first humans to kill off the Neanderthal. Our ancestors were pretty brutal. Even now we still harbor a killer gene. Serial killers and sociopaths are an extreme bi product of this gene but most people are so unconscious of these drives that they don't even realize that it is steeped in every human culture. Infanticide, war, genocide, slavery, etc., have been around since the dawn of man.

The virtues of faith, love, hope, patience are all metaphysical spiritual tools that lift us up out of our animal state. It has been taught that we are blessed with these virtues after developing a deep desire to become closer to God (whatever that is).

Sure. First sin can be allegorical and "made to fit" evolutionary understandings.

Adam could be a life-form without sex or self awareness, and being identical in each generation, and without awareness of birth or death, effectively immortal. Eve could be the first sexually differentiated life-form. First sin is the loss of innocence through the acquisition of self awareness, without which death is meaningless, as indeed are all other things.

We all "sin" because we all can be aware of self and all self-aware things all fall short of perfection and suffer accordingly, baring God. Sin could mean no more than failing to be innocent of one's own suffering, with suffering the necessary result of self-awareness intersecting with non-perfection.

Perhaps the only consolation for self-aware non-perfection is some kind of deeply profound and meaningful knowledge about God that cannot be known while one is bounded in awareness limiting flesh, but which God cannot communicate to us other than through an intermediary "us-like and God-like" entity, which itself cannot communicate to us unless we allow it to; thus Jesus and the need to accept Jesus to get to God.

Sin is nothing more than that which annoys/offends Yahweh. Mostly this is though breaking his laws, but in principle anything that makes him upset with you will qualify as a sin. What original sin basically means then, is that although we didn't eat those apples, Yahweh chooses to be ticked off with us anyway, and will only decide not to be ticked off with us if we accept Jesus. Original sin is still applicable even if the Adam and Eve story never actually happened, because it is quite possible for Yahweh to decide to be irritated with us for an event that never took place if that's what he really wants to do. Yahweh could choose to be angry with us for anything at all - if he can decide to consider people damned for having (fictitious) ancestors who ate apples, he could also be angry with you for the Titanic sinking in 1912 or for the fact that the dinosaurs went extinct, if he had the desire to. Describing someone as a 'sinner' is not a description of their character, but rather a description of Yahweh's attitude towards them.

The Catholic Church developed a complex system of sins, of different degree and severity. The theory say, besides other things, that some sins are by their nature so severe that they would be regarded also with a non-Christian as sin, like murder or rape, so fare the person in mentally in the position to understand his doing. Whilst other sins can be committed only by a Christian or a Catholic.

Because you can't enter heaven, according to Catholic teaching, without being a Catholic, and some non-Catholics did not commit any sin (like stillborn children), this brought the Catholic Church into difficulties, resulting in a theory about place called "Limbo", which has been recently abolished, and the whole question is now referred to "god's mercy".

My comment: "There's a method in the madness!"

Technically sin isn't one of those things that realistically can be avoided. I mean, one of the things told is "be perfect as your heavenly Father(God) is perfect" (Matt 5:48 ) Now, is it possible to be as perfect as God? Probably not, but if you fail, that is still sin. In any case, the word "sin" comes from the greek word "hamartia" which is a term for missing the mark. You are human, not a spiritual marksman, you are going to miss the mark. Not only that, but technically, sin isn't a list of rules, but rather relates very strongly to attitude.

To provide an example, lustful intent mostly relates to sexual desire. You can call this a vague snooty answer, but for most people this completely settles the problem.

That's the exact thing you can't have though. Ok, I suppose the Catholic church tries. That issue is probably a feature of the system, not a bug, given that Jesus was likely reacting against Jewish legalism. Christianity is meant to have people have limited natures, so that way they are to be purified by an external spiritual force, and humble before that same spiritual force as being limited, not only that, but there is a sense in which learning is supposed to occur over a period of life.

As a Christian myself I can say that you had it right before.
Jesus did remove original sin but we still have a sinful nature is what it is. All have sinned but we can be forgiven just as easy.

I believe that right now you are just really unsure of yourself. Don't ever give up in finding the answers cause the word will teach you. Or there are some books by Joyce Meyer, and Irwin Lutzer that can explain a few things.
Check out the link in my signature for more information.

As an intelligent person, I don't think you had it right before, and I doubt you have it right now. Anyone that thinks they've got it right, to me, is incredibly arrogant.

This is the beauty of agnosticism. You can be comfortable in not knowing.

If someone tells you that they know, and they urge you to find *their* "truth", that is someone you probably want to avoid.

The structure of a religious organization attributing sin (which is the religious equivalent of guilt) to its followers is such that the sinful adherent is permanently in debt to the religious organization and, like the operation of capitalism that is based on keeping people in debt, it is a very useful mechanism for controlling people since only the religious organization can, to some extent, relieve that obligation. The fanciful myths that encloud those debts are a vague justification for that control and nothing more.

Snag is that the genders are the wrong way round. The original, sexless, deathless organism would have to have been female. In certain animals - aphids are a good example - it's still the case that reproduction in 'normal' times is parthenogenetic and produces only identical females; when environmental conditions get tougher, males are produced, and sexual reproduction takes place, to create greater variety in the offspring, and therefore possibly more chance of survival. Sexual reproduction, and the existence of a male gender, have come to be the norm in most higher animals because they were phenomenally successful under all conditions. But the female is the prototype, so if you wanted a myth based on this, it'd have to be rewritten so that Eve came before Adam.