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Original Sin

shmogie

Well-Known Member
I thinks it’s full of absurdities and contradictions

  • We (Humans) are punished for sins committed before we are even born.
  • It was the sin that made Adam and Eve aware of good and evil, so they couldn't know that what they were doing was a good or evil act until they had done it. (Why didn't God want them to know anyway? And didn't he already know they were going to disobey his instructions? What kind of sin is that?
  • The real reason for banishing them from the Garden wasn't even so much that they sinned or that they had knowledge of good and evil. It was actually out of the fear that they might find and eat the fruit of another dangerous tree! the Tree of Life and become immortal like God. So what's the real message here? God does not like to share power and wants it all to himself and is quite possibly afraid of man's potential. This seems to be a recurring theme in many Old Testament stories.


you could ultimately be punished for your own sins, not anyone elses, ever.

Your extrapolation is bizarre.

God does not share power, what does that mean ? Do you think allowing a race of immortal evil people is somehow sharing power?

God fears nothing from the people he created, and as for potential, we see every possible evil played out by humanity, there is your potential.
 

shmogie

Well-Known Member
Yes u can believe in creation and evolution.
But one is backed up by science and the other is a copy and paste version of other cultures myths and full of contradictions and other nonsense
Hmmm. Creation means a beginning. There is no evidence for the beginning of evolution. Your myth is no better than mine.
 

Prometheus85

Active Member
you could ultimately be punished for your own sins, not anyone elses, ever.

Your extrapolation is bizarre.

God does not share power, what does that mean ? Do you think allowing a race of immortal evil people is somehow sharing power?

God fears nothing from the people he created, and as for potential, we see every possible evil played out by humanity, there is your potential.

I take it, you take the Adam and Eve story literally?

I’m any case.

God doesn’t completely tell the truth
In Genesis 2:16-17, God says to Adam, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat of it you shall die. Adam and Eve did not die, not in the physical sense “on the day” that they eat the fruit.

The serpent seems to tell the truth
The serpent tells innocent Eve two things in Genesis 3:4-5: “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” The first part of what the serpent says is corroborated by the fact that Adam and Eve don’t die after eating the fruit. The second part is corroborated in the justification God gives for throwing Adam and Eve out of the garden...See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22).

Which bring us to...God seems threatened by humanity’s power

Genesis 3:22 in my opinion is perhaps the most embarrassing verse in the whole Bible. God doesn’t kick Adam and Eve out of the garden as punishment for disobedience; He kicks them out because they might eat from the tree of life and live forever. That is the justification given in the plain meaning of the text. Some people (like you @shmogie ) come up with some very creative ways of making God’s motives noble like saying that He didn’t want them to be immortally cursed, but that’s ultimately speculation that isn’t derived in the text.

The irony is that the serpent told the technically truth while God was less than honest because they didn’t die and God did want to stop Adam and Eve from becoming like Him, but… the serpent’s truth was a deceitful kind of truth. The knowledge of good and evil gave Adam and Eve a “godlike” characteristic that they couldn’t handle. So things aren’t really what they seem, but we need to be honest about what seems true from the text in order to appreciate this irony.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
What are your views on original sin? This is both for hard-line literalists and those who believe it's all metaphorical

For the believers in the literal interpretation: I assume you reject evolution - otherwise the Adam and Eve story can't really be a thing. Who's to say when the first 'humans' walked the earth, considering we all have varying amounts of neanderthal DNA still floating around.

For the metaphorical believers: unless Adam and eve literally gave us original sin, jesus' martyrdom was pointless. If you believe Jesus was a mythical character, how can you assume God is different?

Thanks for indulging me :)

It's always seemed like a completely ridiculous concept to me. Let's hold people alive now accountable for the negative acts that their long dead ancient ancestors committed. What sort of a morally bankrupt individual would come up with such a moronic plan?
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
Original sin makes no sense at all.. Look how often the scripture contradicts whether children inherit the sins of the father.

Its a pretty convoluted dogma. Jews and Muslims don't believe in inherited sin.
Original sin certainly does make sense. It often is misinterpreted by religious leaders, but scripture must be taken in context.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
In Christianity Adam and Eve sinned because they were beguiled by the snake and disobeyed God. Therefore all human children forever are born with that inherited sin.
Eve was deceived (beguiled, as you say), Adam was not. All human children will not forever be born with that inherited sin.
 

YoursTrue

Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
I'd suppose the Hebrews used it to explain why life sucked. Why life was a struggle. A "good" loving God would not subject the creation he loved to this crappy world. So we must have done something bad to deserve this crappy situation we fined ourselves in.

God, a loving God would have created Eden, the perfect place for us to live. Instead we find ourselves living in this craphole.

Original sin, man disobeyed God, is a story to explain why we live in a craphole.
Just to say, while there are so many bad things going on in this world, there still is much physical beauty. This will not, however, balance the situation out. God alone is the one that will restore the earth to its original beauty, and yes, He will wipe out, do away with, all corruption and badness.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Of course it does. My open mind accepts also the possibility that the Universe has been originated by Mother Goose burping because she ate too much. Among an infinity of possible things.

I think that Mother Goose burping is equally plausible, and has the same evidence, of a god spawning a son so that he can sacrifice a weekend of his life for our sins, or whatever. Nevertheless, they are still logically possible.

Ciao

- viole
Great... then you have possibility thinking! :D Go fly with Mother Goose!
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Yes u can believe in creation and evolution.
But one is backed up by science and the other is a copy and paste version of other cultures myths and full of contradictions and other nonsense
We will agree to disagree :D
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
Except that primates don't behave like that. Self is very much secondary in our, and in other great ape societies.

Most of the world lives without the Christian God, and the vast majority of humans behave in pretty much exactly the same way as other great apes from a macro point of view.

Try watching comparison videos of chimps and human behaviour. It's creepy.
been doing that

it's the creepy part that the garden event was suppose to remedy
so far....some luck

but we humans still snatch/grab.....runaway

we can't do that before God and heaven

as for original sin......that event is undefined
alleged to have separated God and Man

the forbidden fruit was not the original sin
that test was make certain the alteration had taken hold
that Man would from then on....be that creature curious
even of death is pending
 

Desert Snake

Veteran Member
What are your views on original sin? This is both for hard-line literalists and those who believe it's all metaphorical

For the believers in the literal interpretation: I assume you reject evolution - otherwise the Adam and Eve story can't really be a thing. Who's to say when the first 'humans' walked the earth, considering we all have varying amounts of neanderthal DNA still floating around.

For the metaphorical believers: unless Adam and eve literally gave us original sin, jesus' martyrdom was pointless. If you believe Jesus was a mythical character, how can you assume God is different?

Thanks for indulging me :)
Evolution doesn't work with Christianity, or the Bible, at all.
Now that we've cleared that up, it could be said that if one were sinless, they may not need the conditional sacrifice, however, since things were affected by the sin in the Garden, there are still affects from that.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
I find that to be an utterly impossible belief, Ken. Surely, those "other beings" couldn't possibly be genetically compatible with these newly created humans, and yet there was nobody else around for Cain and Abel to do their begetting on. You are letting your extremely simplistic lack of understanding to allow you to imagine forth anything and everything.

Or, you are extremely simplistic in what you have studied in the Bible which, as an atheist, would be quite possible.

Do you really believe that Adam and Eve only had 3 children in a lifetime with no birth control pills? Very simplistic.

Do we believe that Adam and Eve were the "original sinners"? Yes. And certainly we never have to teach our children to do wrong, they learn all by themselves.

You might believe that, I certainly do not, and from what I've read, quite a few others also do not.
??? Having had three children, 11 grandchildren and dealt with hundreds of parents.. I don' t need you to believe the obvious.

And your notion of parenthood in this regard I find quite awful, really. Many, many animals, as we can easily observe, "teach" their offspring what is good to do and what is not, because this is essential for survival. Even casual observation at the zoo, or in nature films, or a walk through the forest, can show you a mother directing a child, or even cuffing it when it strays. Do you think they have "original sin?" No, they are higher animals, and the primary feature of higher animals is that they need more to survive than mere instinct -- they have things to learn.

Have you read the Bible? What was cursed?

You have to do better than what you just said.

Who teaching children to lie? Who taught a child to push their sibling when parents weren't looking? Who taught a three year old to bite in anger when their 2 year old brother tried to take away his toy?
 

sooda

Veteran Member
Or, you are extremely simplistic in what you have studied in the Bible which, as an atheist, would be quite possible.

Do you really believe that Adam and Eve only had 3 children in a lifetime with no birth control pills? Very simplistic.


??? Having had three children, 11 grandchildren and dealt with hundreds of parents.. I don' t need you to believe the obvious.



Have you read the Bible? What was cursed?

You have to do better than what you just said.

Who teaching children to lie? Who taught a child to push their sibling when parents weren't looking? Who taught a three year old to bite in anger when their 2 year old brother tried to take away his toy?

Its an allegory and you have to add to it or tweak it to try and make it history.
 

Kenny

Face to face with my Father
Premium Member
Wonderful! And since He's God, there's nothing I could do to stop Him connecting with me, right?

Oh, right, I forgot, it doesn't work that way. It all has to be about me doing something -- opening a valve or whatever to "let Him in." So, I can make a holy sign on my forehead (or wherever it's needed), then let my imagination go to work, right? And whatever, in my own imagination, feels really, really good and important, that's my God Connection, eh?

Is it any bleeding wonder there are so very many versions of Christianity out there? :rolleyes:

Does this make any sense?

So if someone wants a relationship with you, you can't stop him/her? If you want to love someone, you don't have to "open a valve and let her/him in?" That's called opening your heart.

Is it any bleeding wonder that your are confused?
 

Faithofchristian

Well-Known Member
What are your views on original sin? This is both for hard-line literalists and those who believe it's all metaphorical

For the believers in the literal interpretation: I assume you reject evolution - otherwise the Adam and Eve story can't really be a thing. Who's to say when the first 'humans' walked the earth, considering we all have varying amounts of neanderthal DNA still floating around.

For the metaphorical believers: unless Adam and eve literally gave us original sin, jesus' martyrdom was pointless. If you believe Jesus was a mythical character, how can you assume God is different?

Thanks for indulging me :)

Well for one thing, Adam and Eve did not commit the original sin.
Lucifer alas Satan, committed the original sin, back before Adam and Eve were created,
All Adam and Eve did was fall into Satan's trap of committing sin against God.

But it was Lucifer alas Satan that committed the original sin against God back during the first earth age.

All Lucifer alas Satan is doing, is using us human beings as his means to take people's eyes off of him and focus on Adam and Eve,
That it was Adam and Eve who committed the original sin, but in reality it was Lucifer alas Satan who actually committed the original sin himself.


That's why God destroyed the first earth age of the dinosaurs because of
Lucifer alas Satan rebellion and leading a third of Angels in his rebellion against God.

This is all recorded throughout the Bible and in the book of Revelation 12.
 
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