With no OP, I’ll take a stab at what I guess he was trying to ask:
“Original sin” is:
Read the inscrutable Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry.
Or perhaps there was an intent to debate this; in which case, providing a starting definition still is useful.
I suppose a fair question then, would be:
Is the concept of original sin valid if the creation account in Genesis is not literally true?
A modern language rendering of Article IX of the 39 Articles of Religion of the Church of England:
Here’s the original, in classic Elizabethan English:
A creationist take on it is found here.
The book Are Men Born Sinners? The Myth of Original Sin is available in complete form online. Contents page with links to the chapters is located here.
The Catholic Response reference page summarizes most of Roman Catholicism’s understanding of it. [Disclaimer: I have absolutely nothing to do with this site, despite what the link may imply!]
“Original Sin” is also, of course, a movie, a line of clothing, a band (apparently) and a brand of snowboard. (Google this for yourself.)
Original Sin is nothing short of the introduction of ethics.
““Ethics is a requirement for human life. It is our means of deciding a course of action. Without it, our actions would be random and aimless. There would be no way to work towards a goal because there would be no way to pick between a limitless number of goals. Even with an ethical standard, we may be unable to pursue our goals with the possibility of success. To the degree which a rational ethical standard is taken, we are able to correctly organize our goals and actions to accomplish our most important values. Any flaw in our ethics will reduce our ability to be successful in our endeavors.””""""
-Justhink
And if the concept of original sin is not valid, then is the concept of Jesus dying for our sins valid?
This:
“It is rather to be seen in the fault and corruption which is found in the nature of every person who is naturally descended from Adam. The consequence of this is that man is far gone from his original state of righteousness. In his own nature he is predisposed to evil, the sinful nature in man always desiring to behave in a manner contrary to the Spirit. In every person born into this world there is fund this predisposition which rightly deserves God’s anger and condemnation. This infection within man’s nature persists even within those who are regenerate.”
is one of my big problems with Original Sin. It seems… I don’t know, almost ‘racist’ to me. You can’t (or shouldn’t) discriminate against a being because of something they were born with, and cannot change, or help. Unless, apparently, you are God.
The question was not in jest or out of malice. My God did not make any bad things. What is the rational for me to feel guilty about being born when I was born in the manner my creator planned and intended me to be born:confused:
If you are not a sinner, you do not need salvation, so the concept of Christ the Redeemer is meaningless.
Original Sin is the very core of Christianity - and one of the reasons I am not a Christian.
(and I do not feel that I was born in sin - sorry Poly…)
Read The Christian Agnostic it discusses this and many other stumbling blocks to being a “Christian”. It was written by a prominent retired minister.
I have a theory that there are three types of sin.
There is the sin against your church/religion’s authority - a Meta sin.
There is the sin that is pointless or patently stupid, so that anyone who will bother going to the pains of avoiding it is obviously a member of Our Tribe - a Shibboleth sin
Then there is what I think of as a Meat Sin. The Meat Sin is defined by a square with a cross drawn in it, making two axes. One axis is the benefits self vs benefits community axis. The other axis is the short term benefit vs long term benefit axis.
Any behavior can be plotted as a point which will fall into one of four quadrants. Behavior that falls in the short term/self quadrant is tempting behavior (call it quadrant one). Behavior that falls in the long term/community quadrant requires thought, planning, and an act of will (call it quadrant four).
An individual is better off, personally, if they avoid quadrant one. Acting for their own long term benefit is better in the long run (hence the phrase - long term benefit). Acting for their community’s benefit, either short or long term, will gain friends and support. Other people are our greatest resource, which makes gaining support good for us, long term.
So it is desirable, from a strictly meat perspective, to shift behavior, especially the behavior of other people, into quadrant four. It tickles me when religions, which are supposed to be based on the spiritual, end up organizing most of their sins from this meat perspective: toting up lists of good and evil behaviors that come down to lists of quadrant four and quadrant one behaviors.
To me, Original Sin is the acknowledgement that all humans, heck, all living things, tend to slide into quadrant one behavior. The Devil is the personification of the slippery slope toward quadrant one. It’s the externalization of the urge to do what you know will not benefit you in the long run, just because it will feel good now.
Original Sin is also the acknowledgement that Life feeds on Life. Life competes with Life. No matter how diligently you plan your behavior, you will never be innocent in the original meaning of the word - - doing no harm. Even plants try to shade out other plants.
We can never be completely innocent. Innocent also has an implied meaning, as in innocent bystander, that is - this person should not be harmed. Like the notion of sacrifice, this implied meaning hinges on a balance. To the degree that someone is harmless, they should not be harmed. Since we can never be completely harmless (due to Original Sin/the general facts of Life), we can also never be completely safe.
Anyone craving Complete Safety will not be worthy of it unless a miracle somehow cancels out their deficit of harmlessness. Only if Someone can magically steal or eat that last bit of unavoidable harmfulness can a person be Completely Safe.
Those of us who can’t find the magic to balance the equation must live with knowing that we are not innocent and we are not safe.
Why does a Christian have to only be one who believes that Jeasus’s purpose in “life” was to account for our sins? I thought Jesus came into the world to teach us a “way” - a means of living in love to accomplish God’s intent for us.
I think you’re close to the mark there. The most important thing about Jesus Christ to me is that He atoned for our sins and that through Him our sins are forgiven. I also believe that He also came to show His people that what really mattered was not the rampant legalisms that were pervasive at the time, but the essence of the law – love God and love your neighbor.
Yllaria, I liked your explanation. Welcome, both of you, to the SDMB.
My take on original sin is that we are creatures of both body and spirit, “Part ape, part angel,” as I like to put it. The body wants to eat to excess, hurt those who hurt it, not to mention have sex with anyone and occaisionally anything in sight (this is an exaggeration, not TMI). The spirit knows there’s more to life than fun, fightin’, and, well, you know. To me, “original sin” refers to the latter desires, and the urge to let them run unchecked. Then again, I’ll admit this is a doctrine which I haven’t thought all that much about.
I hope I get to read more from both of you.
CJ
OK, this quote from that page kind of bothered me…
“Now evolution does not disprove original sin, but on the contrary - sin seems to disprove evolution. Evolution does not explain man’s sinful setback. If man evolved from animals, then man also shares a common digression missing among animals.”
(This site also uses the “only a theory” language, which always bothers me.)
FTR, the way I understand it is that the Church doesn’t have an official position on evolution, except to say that the human soul was created by God; this doesn’t preclude the possibility of physical evolution (and, personally, I accept the scientific account of physical evolution; just had to get that out there ;)). In other words, the human soul isn’t something that evolved. It’s one of those questions that science can’t answer – nor, to be fair, does it seek to.
Which doesn’t answer, say, Mangetout’s question, either – it’s also one of those things that bothers me, at least on occasion, and then I feel compelled to take it out and poke it with a stick for a while.
My own mental gloss on the concept is “Humans tend to be jerks, a lot of the time.” Which chimes, pretty much, with the quote Polycarp posted. 
In the novel “Atlas Shrugged”, author Ayn Rand insists that the concept of origonal sin is nothing more than a means by which athority figures (in this case the church) manupliate the masses. This is a compelling arguent when you consider that origonal sin is often used throughout the middle ages as a reason why everyone “has” to be babtized and/or made a member of the Church, as this is the only effective means of canceling out origonal sin.
Thus forcing pagans to becoming babtized Christians under threat of pain and death seems perfectly acceptable.
Ayn Rand also argued that the very name “orignal sin” was indicative of it’s impossiblity to exist. Origonal sin origonates prior to a point in a human’s life at which her or she can even make the descision to sin. And sin (by deffiniton) can only be arrived at through personal choice. So Origonal Sin (sin where a choice was never given) is impossible.