No Adam = no Original Sin - right? (moral, genesis, moral)

[PureX]

Originally Posted by Soldano16

Now that it's widely accepted that the story of Adam is not a literal representation of reality, the concept of original sin falls apart, it would seem.

No, not really. It's also widely accepted that there is no Santa Claus but that doesn't negate anyone's desire to give presents to loved one. It's widely accepted that the Little Engine That Could never actually existed, either, yet the lessons about persistence that this story teaches is certainly still viable.

The story of Adam and Eve is a story about how human beings came to live lives of toil and labor. The fact that the story is mythical does not negate the reality that most of us do live lives of toil and labor. And the story explains to us why that is, if we're willing to read it and contemplate it's symbolic events and images.

[doppelgänger]

Are you seriously suggesting that the Little Engine couldn't?! Blasphemy!

[trinity2359]

Originally Posted by pray4me

You truely see innocence when you look into a newborn baby's eyes. How can anyone think that we are born evil?

When that baby grows into a toddler LOL (I'm going through the 'terrible -two's right now).

[trinity2359]

Originally Posted by Dunemeister

The doctrine of original sin (despite what some overenthusiastic proponents of it say) does not say that people are born evil. It says that we are born with a propensity for evil. You don't have to teach children to be selfish, lie, or hurt others. Quite the contrary. You have to teach them to share, to be considerate, to be generous. So whatever "innocence" children have in their eyes, it's seriously defaced by their first birthday.

[pray4me]

Originally Posted by Dunemeister

The doctrine of original sin (despite what some overenthusiastic proponents of it say) does not say that people are born evil. It says that we are born with a propensity for evil. You don't have to teach children to be selfish, lie, or hurt others. Quite the contrary. You have to teach them to share, to be considerate, to be generous. So whatever "innocence" children have in their eyes, it's seriously defaced by their first birthday.

You don't have to teach them this that much is true. They learn most of what they know from watching others. You lie, they learn to lie. If they see someone else do it, that's what they learn. If a baby was born into a family where sin didn't exist and never encountered sin in their whole lifetime. Then they would have no sin, but since all of us have learned sin by adulthood it is impossible to not pass it on onto the next generation.

[Random]

I have arrived @ the point where my faith does not include any sort of determinism. I'm borderline Indeterminate right now. It's a place of great uncertainty and trepidition, but strangely exciting.

No determinism, curing yourself of that poison of the mind, means no "God's Will", no "Karma" and no "Sin". Therefore, I do not believe in original sin.

Original Sin is a notion based on the esoteric economy of souls that Kaballah implies and that Catholicism inherited, and is reflected in the monistic (monetary) economy we operate within today. Money is debt, and debts under the strict "moral order" of Abrahamic religion must always be paid or, it is presumed, there is some great cosmic imbalance that results.

But Original Sin is inherited debt from previous generations, and so, each generation inherits the sin-debt of the previous one in an endless cycle which (it is thought) ensures the divine mandate or necessity for Work (Labour) and thus also the preservation of the Master-Slave dynamic. It's all in the Old Testament, and that's the book of the physical world, the Law.

What it means is that we never own ourselves, "God" does ultimately, and the Master we serve (the System) can buy and sell us on God's behalf @ will by divine mandate.

Under the esoteric system that informs the world systems, that body you are in right now is rented, not owned by you, as a vehicle for your soul. This is affirmed by even a cursory investigation of the legalities of the Birth Certificate, wherein the identity associated with that body is shown to be a Corporate entity, effectively a Strawman, a fiction. The real "you" is endless-nameless, you see...unless you reclaim your sovreignty and choose a name to be know by.

What it all adds up to, is that Original Sin is a legal conceit worked into the System to establish and mandate the necessity for you to Work for and Serve the system itself.

It's a nightmare.

Reject all sin-debt notions, it's the only way to be free.

[Dunemeister]

Originally Posted by pray4me

You don't have to teach them this that much is true. They learn most of what they know from watching others. You lie, they learn to lie. If they see someone else do it, that's what they learn. If a baby was born into a family where sin didn't exist and never encountered sin in their whole lifetime. Then they would have no sin, but since all of us have learned sin by adulthood it is impossible to not pass it on onto the next generation.

A child of 18 months hasn't learned how to lie by watching their parents. They haven't learned to be selfish by watching their parents. They act these ways quite spontaneously. The sin is already in this little bundle of joy.

This does not entail that the child is evil. It only means that the child has a propensity for it, and we must work hard to curb that tendency. Of course, the parents are also hampered by their own propensities for evil, and that makes the job doubly hard.

[pray4me]

I've yet to see an eighteen month old child lie. They barely even know how to talk at that age. What was it that Paul said, without law there could be no sin? A young child doesn't know what a lie is, so it is impossible for them to lie. A lie is a diliberate misinterpretation of the facts in order to deceive another person. A young child has no such motivation, any "lie" they might tell would be either something they were mistaken about because they forgot, or to avoid getting into trouble. Secondly, I do believe that selfishness is inborn because it is part of survival but that good traits can also be inborn. Such as my youngest daughter who is the most affectionate loving child you could meet. She did not learn this she was born this way, it was part of her personality from birth.

If you say that a child has a propensity (which means a tendancy if I'm correct) for evil, I say they also have an equal propensity for good. It just depends on who their parents are, what events affect their lives and who has the greatest influence over them.

[Dunemeister]

Originally Posted by pray4me

I've yet to see an eighteen month old child lie. They barely even know how to talk at that age. What was it that Paul said, without law there could be no sin? A young child doesn't know what a lie is, so it is impossible for them to lie. A lie is a diliberate misinterpretation of the facts in order to deceive another person. A young child has no such motivation, any "lie" they might tell would be either something they were mistaken about because they forgot, or to avoid getting into trouble. Secondly, I do believe that selfishness is inborn because it is part of survival but that good traits can also be inborn. Such as my youngest daughter who is the most affectionate loving child you could meet. She did not learn this she was born this way, it was part of her personality from birth.

If you say that a child has a propensity (which means a tendancy if I'm correct) for evil, I say they also have an equal propensity for good. It just depends on who their parents are, what events affect their lives and who has the greatest influence over them.

Any child capable of forming speech lies. If you don't believe this it's because you have very little experience with real children. And whether they misrepresent the truth in order to keep from getting out of trouble or to advance their toddler sense of self-interest, it's still lying, and it's a product of their sinful natures, inherited from Adam. If they didn't have a sinful nature, they would never lie. And they wouldn't be influenced to be able to lie.

I agree that the same child who has a propensity for evil has a propensity for good. But in the end, the propensity for evil will color almost all efforts to do what is good. And this problem is inherent in the child. It's imparted "genetically" from the parents, it's not learned. That said, our sinful natures express themselves to greater and lesser degrees in different persons. So we can see that some children retain a sweetness that others lose quite quickly. But even the sweetest child exhibits tendencies to self-promotion, selfishness, dissimulation, and so forth. This tendency to behave this way is a product of sin that inheres in the child. It may be exacerbated or disciplined by the parents, but it's there nonetheless.

Sorry if this contradicts a more romantic view of reality, but I can think of no Christian doctrine that is better attested to by universal experience than that of original sin.