Sunday 21 April 2013

The Problem with Original Sin

Even on its face, Original Sin is a pathological and offensive doctrine. It is an oddity of religious cultural evolution that first mutated into existence with Paul, then into several competing forms. One of those, Augustine's, was culturally selected over centuries to provide a rationale for an atoning Jesus. Most of the Christian creeds that are being propagated in churches today include versions of it, with elaborate camouflage further evolved to conceal the underlying absurdity: Limbo for unbaptized infants (a doctrine recently gone extinct), an ill-defined "age of accountability," even universalism. But now, with the certain knowledge that there was never any Original Sinner, the doctrine of Original Sin stands fully exposed, unable to hide any longer.

From Evolving Out of Eden, Price & Suominem, 2013.

18 comments:

  1. (" there was never any Original Sinner").

    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Plenty around this day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Sin" might have been the improper term to use all along, because technically the Law did not exist when the notorious decision was made. Precisely how Mankind chose to take the authority of deciding good and evil unto himself will not be known in our lifetimes, but the story of the Garden of Eden suffices to get the important points across in an allegorical manner.

    As for the atoning sacrifice of JC, it was necessary to demonstrate God's ABSOLUTE love (no bounds) for His Children, and to always be a remindrance of how much misery selfishness and narcissism cause.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was long ago convinced that some in the Armstrong camp would never allow their minds to be changed about anything, but now Larry gives me hope. "...the law did not exist in the garden" and the "story" was just an allegory. Perhaps the light of rational thinking is shining down on Larry's corner of the world after all.

      Delete
    2. Phrontistes, there is much that I could say, but I won't...

      Delete
  3. These days, Original Sin is an extremely difficult concept because just about every kind of sin anyone could come up with has already been committed and hardly any wickedness is truly original -- it's all pretty much been done before.

    ReplyDelete
  4. My systematic theology tutor said that he never understood the idea of original sin till he had kids. The notion that we and our world are broken seems to me undeniable. I'd have thought that by contrast that it was the only Christian doctrine capable of empirical proof.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just call it what it is; Adamic Condemnation. If you are born you are born in sin because of Adam's sin being passed to all mankind. You are already condemned because of this doctrine and in need of being rescued from the consequences of Adam's sin.

    It's sort of like a doctor intentionally cutting an artery and you have to beg the doctor to fix it or you die. And, if you refuse to beg the doctor to fix it you have no hope getting it fixed and you are lost forever. Not only do you have to beg the doctor to fix the injury, you have to worship the doctor forever after - or else the doctor will kill you anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Corky, sometimes you are really bizarre! So many (maybe you too) have been infected with this nonsense that we are all somehow being unfairly punished because of a misdeed done by an ancestor over whom we had no control. Balderdash!

    First, we are not being "punished". Adam's "sin" was expected, predictable, and necessary.

    Secondly, every one of us, given the same circumstances, would have made the same decision. So, cut Adam (and God) some slack. And, be grateful that God already had an escape plan for us. Sometimes, you really do not give God enough (or any) credit....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right, I don't give God any credit at all. That's because I know that men made up that nonsense.

      Delete
    2. Right, Corky. That's the trunk and root of the spurious tree.

      Delete
  7. In primitive times, it was deemed right and proper to punish someone's whole family for someone's misdeed. Indeed, this practice has persisted up until relatively modern times: I was just last night watching "Masterpiece", a show set in 1920's London, where a department store employee stole something and he was fired from his job - and his daughter, who also worked in the store, was fired from her job also! The owner of the store subsequently re-hired her, because after all she hadn't done anything wrong. However, he had problems with his senior managers, who just couldn't understand why the daughter should get re-hired in spite of the fact that her father had stolen.

    The thinking of being punished for one's fathers sins is well-entrenched in human history, across most or all cultures. So, the idea of original sin is not that far-fetched. After all, the bible was written by human beings based on their conception of right and wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  8. There was a time in ancient history when there was the first human action counted by God as sin. The account in the first few chapters of Genesis lets us know that it was not just a run-of-the-mill transgression of a code that was under consideration but something that altered the entire trajectory of the relationship between God and man. The Patristics, for some reason, seemed to want to define some complex mechanism of transmission to subsequent generations of man for this initial folly. Instead, I think the whole event is focused on men just being men, no special transmission necessary. Just free will.

    -- Neotherm

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AS IF a man could alter the will of a god's desired relationship between them. A very small god, with no power to control circumstances and events at all maybe - but not a real God. Now, if we just knew WHAT a god IS - that would help.

      Delete
    2. I can answer that!

      A god is a figment of man's imagination. A mythical character.

      Believers understand that all gods are mythical except their god. They look at Zeus, Odin, Baal etc. as ridiculous. And they're right. But, in their minds, their own god is the ONE exception to the rule.

      Unbelievers are almost the same - they understand that all gods are mythical, however they do not believer there is any exception to the rule.

      Delete
    3. Now Corky, don't you know that we all can know what God is because He has provided us with cult false prophets who, by virtue of their failing to predict anything accurately, proves that we have all committed original sin and need special priests who suddenly get some "calling" to tell us things that just aren't going to happen but never can happen to prove to us that they are God's special End Time Apostle, Evangelist or PooBah (no mentioning of a Cultmeister One Man Show here!)

      You have it all wrong! You must trust and believe people who are completely daft without any science and logic who are always wrong who make up their own authority out of the aether of their own empty minds the theology we all need! It is called faith -- it is the evidence of things which will never be seen, let alone come to pass.

      Without this sort of faith, you will never be able to grasp the enormity of the depth of insanity established millennia ago on false premises and superstition by people who did not know anywhere as much about the universe as we know now.

      Me neither.

      I guess we're both doomed to live in a world of rationality and science.

      Delete
    4. Yeah...doomed, doomed to be awake while others are sleeping their lives away. I'm glad I don't have to join them in dreamland and believe in fantastical stories in a book of macabre fairy tales. They wouldn't believe them either if the book hadn't been called "the holy bible" and had it foisted off on them as truth since the time they were born. The fear of that book and its god is so great that it has to be proved beyond the tiniest shadow of a doubt and to their extreme most satisfaction that it isn't true before they will even begin to listen to a voice of reason. OTOH, if those same fantastical stories were in any other book, they wouldn't give them a single thought of being true. They'd just laugh at 'em...like I do.

      Delete
    5. Corky, it's not about a book, it's about the rotten, narcissistic, sociopathic, psychopathic nutjobs.

      The belief system is simply a medium in which to transport the crazies, so stop concentrating on the medium and take up with the real issue -- the ministers and leaders are daft with mental disorders.

      Solve that problem and the rest goes away.

      Delete
  9. If God is a figment of your imagination, then you don't need to believe in original sin! That would be silly and incongruent with your beliefs. You can even say it is silly and it isn't offensive to me.
    Many people have wrestled with faith, and were in the exact same spot as you, and then came into faith in God. Crazy? I know. God is good.

    ReplyDelete