Original Sin

Great Debates
1

Original Sin – Paradise Lost?
In the spirit of full disclosure, my religious beliefs reside somewhere within the plausible theories of atheism, agnosticism, deism, theism, extraterrestrial intervention… and my personal favorite, arrogant intellectualism.

The problem, and source of my spiritual confusion, is grounded in the fact that all religious “beliefs” are based on concepts to explain or deny the undeniably unexplainable.

My religious heritage is “Irish” Catholic. My primary education was parochial grammar school. It is understandable then, I felt deceived, when I later learned that Christianity, Islam and Judaism are all affiliated as Abrahamic religions. Seriously! The Jews, I sort of expected… but the Muslims… the bible??? Even more amazing, all 3 religions base their doctrinal legitimacy, religious beliefs and teachings on the “Old Testament”. And here, I had been lead to believe it was exclusively Christianity’s validation book as the one true religion.

This is not to say the Bible is without any historical significance or merit when read critically. If you are a pragmatic realist, you recognize the Old Testament most likely began as a public register, a noble idea from an evolved, enlightened and well-intentioned ancient ancestry. I believe it was an educated attempt to develop a civil and just society… documenting and codifying public laws, health codes and collective standards to promote social order in the nascent days of our intellectual evolution. Although I’d liked to believe its original authors were principled and judicious academics, I am also fairly confident their archetype efforts at creating a civilized society… eventually devolved into a self-serving catechism, revised through subsequent interpretations and editorializing by unenlightened individuals and groups, who preferred avarice and power to community and wisdom as a means to social order.

Because of my cynicism, I can intellectually dismiss, disassemble or dispute just about any miracle, cataclysm or “smiting” in the Old Testament. These natural events rely on creatively sourced embellishments of environmental events; plagues, droughts, floods, fire, brimstone and my personal favorite… “raining frogs”. Smiting, on the other hand, relates to mankind’s “un-friendlier” nature of inhumane cruelty and barbarism! The threat of horrific retribution was, and continues to be, religion’s “go to” cudgel for instilling faithfulness (i.e. obedience). “Parables” are simply fables… made up stories. All are intended to coerce, suppress or inspire people allegorically. I have witnessed amazing things in my lifetime… my very existence in the universe, the birth of my children and grandchildren, but I have never witnessed a “miracle”. I don’t believe anyone else has either.

BUT…
In examining the depressing religious and actualized history of mankind, there is one underlying theme in the Old Testament that is hard to ignore and impossible to completely discount… the Genesis legacy of “Original Sin”! I think they got the essence of this one right, but maybe not the facts.

In spite of our truly extraordinary abilities to hope, to care, to love, to think… to explore our realities, to conceptualize our imaginations and envision our dreams; there is one inexorable dirty little truth regarding humanity… we are tragically flawed, imperfect and doomed from the very beginning!

If we are to accept the general story line of Genesis, God created the universe. It consisted of the earth, the sun, the moon and the heavens. He proceeded to create the firmaments and all living creatures that inhabit the earth. He purportedly hardwired them to exist according to a code of instinctually predisposed harmony. He called it Eden. The Aramaic root meaning of Eden is” fruitful, well-watered”. Another interpretation could be “… having the incitement value of a well-cared for potted plant”.

It is conjecture on my part, as is all religious writing, but I believe God must have found “Paradise” boringly incomplete… it lacked something. The solution was a creation in his own image and likeness… a “mini-me” sans the “superpowers” of course! He named him Adam.

God provided Adam with everything he could ever possibly want or need in this new paradise including connubial companionship, but something was still missing. God realized Eden was too predictable and perfunctory, unimaginative, banal and consequently boring. Would a tiny smidgen of God’s “super powers” fulfill humanities potential for greatness… a random sprinkling of “Intellect” perhaps?
Freed from the preprogrammed hard wiring of instinctual responses, intellect could provide mankind the perceptual ability to consider “choices”. This was the checkers/chess conundrum of “dichotomous contemplation”… the ability to discern right from wrong.

Intelligence alone could not complete the experiment! “Passive comprehension” would be frustrating and just as painfully boring and uneventful. In order to complete this great experiment, God would need to share another of His “god-like” superpowers…“free will”. This should certainly animate His experiment. If nothing else, it would make it intriguingly unpredictable and entertaining.

Intellect would provide mankind the capacity to contemplate the benefits and/or consequences of actions before committing to them. Free will would provide mankind the god like ability to actualize his conceptualizations, creating and shaping his own reality… Destiny … HOT DAMN!

Unfortunately, God’s gift of free will was absolute. Everybody now had one. Intellect, on the other hand appears to have been distributed more randomly, not always fully supplanting instinctual behavior.

In any event, the “Creator” was definitely betting on mankind’s newly formed decision making capability to be a power for righteousness! By giving mankind free will, God’s experiment would no longer be predictably boring. It was time to test the grand experiment. Eden needed a single “Rule” to test mankind’s devotion to God.
“Do not eat the fruit of the forbidden tree”. This experiment would not be predictable or uneventful… unfortunately far from it.

Disobedience has been generally accepted by the Judeo / Christian/ Islamic communities as the “Original” sin. In reality, disobedience was actually the subsequent sin. When you have absolutely everything you could ever possibly want or need in the “Garden of Eden” and you “desire” the fruit of one tree, which you have been instructed not to eat… the first sin committed by mankind was “Greed”.
The sin of Greed had to precede the sin of “disobedience”, hence the true “Original” sin. Our misogynistic chroniclers also realized they had found their perfect scapegoat.

Now why would subsequent leaders of all 3 religious sects promote “disobedience” over “greed” as the original sin?

The sin of greed could not be the calculus upon which these men would construct the principles of their new religions and subsequent societies. These men were not ascetics. They were acolytes of the very sin they now felt obliged and determined to obscure. These were men of power and privilege, seeking ever greater power and privilege. They could only attain absolute authority through obedience.
Supplanting greed with disobedience, as the “Original Sin” suited their needs perfectly. Absolute enforced obedience… and the threat of eternal damnation provides people of power with the perfect tool to subjugate, exploit and control. They were driven by greed and addicted to the power it generated to force the masses into submissive obedience. The historical Jesus attempted to “re-center” this biblical lesson in his teachings… and who was it who silenced him?

Greed is the most destructive and damning of all the uniquely human traits and engenders just about every other sin. Take a look at the history of mankind and our screwed-up, self-absorbed world today… and tell me I’m mistaken… tell me I got this one wrong.

2

From what I understand (and Wikipedia seems to back me up on this), “original sin” is a Christian concept; Jews and Muslims (and even some Christians) don’t read the first chapters of Genesis the same way.

Furthermore (again, as I understand it), your mention of “the original sin” doesn’t match the way theologians use the term. The sin in “original sin” isn’t a specific sin but the state of sin(/sinfulness).

Some people say much the same thing, only about Pride rather than Greed. (They’re both among the traditional Seven Deadly Sins.)

3

I would say the Original Sin concept is an offshoot of mankind’s fear of the unknown, especially back in the days when we thought natural disasters happened because we somehow displeased the gods. It’s a way of justifying the whims of an all-powerful creator who allows suffering and strife, saying that we were born flawed because Eve displeased God. It’s not so much of an excuse for human error as it is a means of controlling the masses through guilt. We were born imperfect, and we can only achieve perfection by obeying God’s word.

I doubt the founding fathers of Christianity got together and said “Quick, we gotta justify our greed before word gets out that greed was the original sin!” The desire to wield power and influence can be more enticing than the desire for riches.

4

Basil Bernstein and Mary Douglas looked at various societies from an anthropological perspective and drew some interesting conclusions. They noted that in terms of establishing values within communities, societies could be graphed using speech, (restricted moving to elaborated), and family control, (positional moving to personal), and determine a number of characteristics. A society with very restricted speech and positional family control sees sin as an act against a rule, regardless of motivation or mitigating factors. Such an approach is seen in some of the older Greek myths involving the Furies who take revenge upon a character for violating a natural law, even if the transgression was done in ignorance of the law or with the best of motivations. There is a fair amount of evidence that the Jewish authors of the tradition from which Genesis 2 - 5 was produced wrote from that perspective. (Compare the later tale of Uzzah (1 Samuel 6 or 1 Chronicles 13), where the oxen who are pulling the cart with the ark stumble and Uzzah, a non-Levite, puts out his hand to steady it and is killed.) A society with that approach to the law is going to interpret the breaking of the law according to actions, alone. Motivation is simply not a factor in the discussion. God established a Rule. Adam and Eve broke the Rule. Consequences arose from that act of disobedience.

Discussions of later interpretations or current understandings of the myth are still open, of course, but when we look at the tale as written, I think it is important to have some understanding of the society from which the authors emerged. There is a contemporary popular theme when challenging various religious beliefs that follows the line, “The religious leaders chose this meaning for a story because they wanted to impose this code of behavior to their own benefit.” While I would not say that such an event was impossible, I suspect that religious beliefs do not arise so simply or lend themselves to such facile manipulation. (The same sort of New Age interpretation of religious belief accompanies the currently popular, in some circles, notion that there were dozens (if not hundreds) of Christian beliefs that were “stamped out” at the Council of Nicaea when the leaders of that church “created” the canon of scripture.
The reality is that the Council of Nicaea addressed exactly one major difference of belief and did not address the scriptural canon, at all. When the canon was finally confirmed seventy years later, the church authorities used a list of books that was already 200 years old.

I would guess that disobedience was the primary evil attributed to Original Sin simply because disobedience was regarded more harshly by the society in which the Genesis account was written, a society exercising tightly restricted speech and strong positional family control.

5

There is no such thing as original sin.

However, it is possible to use your imagination on some of the old ones! :wink:

6

The Italians?

7

No, St. Paul.

8

Was the sin Greed, or Covetousness?
Both mean you desire to have…

…but to covet means you want that which is not yours to have.

9

William, a tip: Start with the TLDR version.

A lot more of us might bother to read your long post if you start with a summary of your question or thesis. Then we’ll have a better idea whether we’re interested enough to bother with the caveats and personal revelations, background information, and considerations.

10

Learjeff

DILLIGAF?

No offense intended… but I couldn’t help myself!

11

I had to google that:

Thanks! :)