Question from Tim:
LX, I’m interested in your thoughts about something:
I’ve been thinking about crime and punishment lately for separate reasons from religion, but a related religious connotation entered my mind recently that I think needs exploring, and I’d like your thoughts on it.
As it relates to Christianity (and many other religions as well in some form or another) humanity has to suffer on planet Earth because a god was disobeyed by a young couple in a garden. The price of their disobedience was that they became “fallen”. Different definitions of what exactly that means abound, but the basic premise is that they went from a perfect state to the current state of existence that all humans currently find themselves in. That existence is definitely less that perfect, and involves all manner of things like sickness, disease, pain, suffering, heartbreak, bad luck, etc. If you are really unlucky you might have been born Jewish and killed in the holocaust, or born gay and thrown off a high rise in Iran. But no one escapes the wrath of this god, everyone has some kind of bad thing befall them from time to time.
And all of it is due to, from we are told, a couple of young people eating a piece of fruit off of a forbidden tree.
So I can’t help but wonder, in the midst of all this suffering throughout the history of humanity, how much longer people who had nothing to do with the decision of Adam and Eve will be made to pay for the choice of those two back in the day. In other words, when will the punishment fit the “crime”?
Answer by SmartLX:
Ah, the good old Problem of Evil. Trying to wrap my head around the continued existence of evil in a world with an all-powerful, all-knowing and entirely good deity is a major reason for my atheism. I didn’t simply renounce my faith because of the apparent conflict, though; the complexity of the problem caused my tween self to give up thinking about religion at all, and I had other things to focus on. This self-enforced sabbatical from theology went on for enough years that my emotional connections to faith faded completely. When I finally did come back to the subject, faith did not appear justified on an intellectual level, so there was nothing left to support it.
The story of Adam and Eve attempts to shift the responsibility for everything that’s wrong with our lives from God to the imperfect nature of humanity. Though you and I didn’t eat the apple, we’re marked with Original Sin as a result of the act itself, just so that God sees a reminder in all of us. Also, it could be reasoned (within the hypothesis of an actual Adam and Eve) that we’re of the same race as Adam so we are similarly flawed, and therefore liable to do something just as bad. God sees into people’s hearts, we’re told, so uncommitted crimes still count against us.
In a separate discussion over whether an eternity in Hell is justified for any possible sin, one Christian defense of God’s “policy” was that offending an infinitely powerful entity like God carries a punishment proportional to the entity, not the crime, and the punishment is therefore infinite. Whether or not this bit of logic is pure assertion, a Christian might apply this to Adam: as a finite being Adam could not absorb an infinite punishment, so it had to be extended to his descendants ad infinitum.
Speaking practically, Christianity will never allow humanity a clean slate. A large part of its pull is the idea that we all have work to do in order to redeem ourselves, and a relationship with Jesus is the only way to get that done. The threat of Hell is always there, even if Hell is seldom or never mentioned.
11 thoughts on “The Reach of Original Sin”
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Ah the bliss of ignorance. Or is it a curse. You both fail to realize that you have embedded in your minds, what you have gleaned from others which you are using to base your feeble and ill founded ideas of what the Bible says, and not a first hand knowledge.
For one, the Bible tells us what what happened and tells us why and the outcome of what happens.
God created out of love. Man fell because of more than anything a lack of trust. They were not imperfect, just new. And Adam made a wrong decision. Which is why, the reprieve. And not outright destruction. Which is why you and I and the whole human race can now make our own decisions as to whether to trust or not.
And by now you both should have gone through what I have said about God, death and hell. And seen that your conceptions of these subjects are not what the Bible actually says. They are flawed, misunderstood baby, ideas, that lack the substance of real Bible study.
So if you would like to start from where you left off and learn what you have missed in your early formative years, (so that you may be able to make decisions to not trust for the right reasons), Please refer to these links.
9:17
Truth about Hell – Amazing Facts Ministries
Advent Exodus
YouTube – Jan 9, 2014
28:16
What is hell? where is hell? 1/2 – amazingfacts – doug batchelor
winelfredpasamba
YouTube – Dec 14, 2012
14:47
Doug Batchelor | ‘Good News About Hell’ | Amazing Facts #16
Doug Batchelor [original]
YouTube – Jan 6, 2016
28:23
41. Amazing Facts Presents TV: “The Good News About Hell-1 …
BibleTruth101
YouTube – Nov 2, 2013
2:04
The True Facts About Hell
hewhocauses
YouTube – Dec 18, 2009
28:16
What is hell? where is hell? 2/2 – amazingfacts – doug batchelor
winelfredpasamba
YouTube – Dec 14, 2012
9:17
Hell – the Truth about Hell
Amazing Facts Ministries…
YouTube – Mar 11, 2013
13:51
10 Facts About Hell You’re Not Being Told – Reproved
the Truth shall make you free
YouTube – Mar 16, 2017
27:41
Doug Batchelor , What is hell, where is hell, Amazing Facts
Witness
YouTube – Aug 8, 2015
3:03
Amazing Facts about HEAVEN and HELL | స్వర్గం – నరకం …
News Mantra
YouTube – Jan 15, 2017
Web results
The Man Who Unlearned Hell | AF Blog | Amazing Facts
https://www.amazingfacts.org/news-and-features/af…/the-man-who-unlearned-hell
As with most people in that denomination, William believed that those who died unsaved would suffer eternal torment in the fires of hell. Edward held the same …
Our dear Gerald is talking about atheists’ IGNORANCE.
I raise my cap in…DESPAIR!
No. I’m simply asking that if you are going to be an Atheist, do so knowing the truth about what you have undoubtedly heard, but have failed to validate.
The Bible no where says that the wicked will burn for ever in torment. It says that the wicked will be put to sleep. Never more to awaken and suffer in sin.
This I mean, because just as we would want our aged parents who are dying and suffering, to mercifully be put to sleep, God would wish that for us, if we decide to live life without Him. We would only be suffering. And since we will eventually come to the choice that to be with Him is more deplorable then not living, then God grants their desire.
Death comes to the wicked simply because they would rather die then to live with God. They have believed the lies of satan for so long that they can not believe the truth. So they go the way of sin. Eradication.
So the lie that God would ever be so evil as to send someone to burn for just a few short lived life of sin, is shown to be a deception of sin. Or at least it is if you take the time to look through the sites I provided.
i am not going to be anything, i simply don’t believe whatever the bible says, for one because it was written by ignorant people and for the other because it says things that are impossible to happen, by science, because there are no miracles. end of story. you are boring in stating what the bible says, it is as if someone accused of lies, theists, tries to prove the truth by stating what HE wrote, because it was written by people and in times when people believed miracles are possible. most of it is impossible to happen, like virgin birth, and rising from the dead. so, get off of my cloudN.
Gerald, I don’t think anybody reads your rants. I surely don’t, especially not your excerpts from the bible.
regarding smartxl’s answer, i wander how can humans, eve came first, the x, and from that beginning become adam, the y, so, how can humans be responsible for any sin, adam and eve including, if god is the one to blame for their ‘bad’ nature, because it, sorry, god has no gender and even if it did have one it would be she but not he, because women have eggs and bear children, as far as i know, i am one of them, so god made them faulty, and why does it punish them for being faulty. silly, or nasty.
ah, i forgot, there is FREE WILL in humans…THEISTS tell us.
but SCIENCE SAYS THERE IS NO FREE WILL IN BRAINS. HAHAHA
so why should anyone believe what a shepherd wrote in the bible, and not scientists.
and who says he ever met ‘god’ on the mountain.
he may have been been LYING, or simply CRAZY, MAD, PSYCHOTIC.
and, why do christians say they are right about things regarding god.
so do muslims and jews.
who is to judge.
SCIENCE. these people have high intelligence, knowledge and integrity.
i trust them, nos moise whatever the name of the liar or lunatic, or both was.
the same applies to muhamed the sexual predator.
and to jews who think god chose them.
einstain, a jew said in a letter, google it, that there is no god, explained his meaning of the word ‘god’ and that jews are no better than any other nation.
There have been all too many “scientists” who have shown that they can not be trusted. As a matter of fact, they too are human. So the art of deception is known to abound among scientists as well as any other group. But this said, then since not all scientists give in to using deception, then that must be the case in other groups also. And since Christians are included in “groups”, there are Christians who do not deceive.
It’s either that or you should not trust anyone, Niki.
It is either Moses the shepard or Einstein. everything else is irrelevant. This character, Moses, lied that he was given the tables from ‘god’. No witness to this idiocy. And then he wrote the lie down. End of story.
Niki please present the witness that video taped where Moses really got the “tablets of stone”.
If you can’t, please tell me how you know, Moses lied.
I am not going to BE anything, I simply don’t believe whatever the bible says, for one, because it was written by ignorant people and for the other, because it says things that are impossible to happen in nature, by science, and I trust science because it is learned in natural phenomena, because there are no miracles in nature, science has explained almost all natural phenomena, except for the origin of energy and matter, and its conclusion is that ENERGY AND MATTER DID NOT BECOME, BUT THEY SIMPLY ARE. End of story. You are boring in stating what the bible says, it is as if someone who has been accused of lies, theists, tries to prove the truth about him not being a liar, by stating what HE wrote, that is I AM NOT A LIAR BECAUSE I SAY IT IN MY BOOK CALLED THE BIBLE, because it was written by people and in times when people believed miracles are possible. Most of it is impossible to happen, like virgin birth, and rising from the dead. So, get off of my cloud.
As for how i know Moses lied that he met ‘god’, but because Einstein and great majority of scientists say miracles are not happening, nor can they, only natural things happen, and meeting god would be a miracle because god itself would be a miracle, entity that nobody has proved, it existence, so, it is theists’ burden of proof that god exists, and until further notice it doesn’t, and, mind, the bible is no proof of god because it was written by people who believe in god APRIORI, so it is heavily biased, theists need an objective witness/proof of its existence, something you will never find, because there isn’t one, aside the fact that god chose illiterate Moses and not someone literate, and similarly god chose Jews by their silly beliefs.
God does not exist, get over it and live. Here is not your place.
I’m pretty sure that if you would go and talk to some of the scholars who are themselves Atheists, they will not agree with your statement that the people who wrote the Bible were, “ignorant”.
And if you trust science, then you would have to agree that what is happening to life today, does not agree with what the evolutionists say, happened in the beginning of history.