Why is sin heritable?

If the act of eating the fruit gives Adam the ability to distinguish good and evil, and effectively free will, then how can God ethically hold Adam responsible for eating the fruit? Genesis is quite clear that the sin that earned him all the punishment and expulsion from the garden was eating the fruit, not what came after.Furthermore, how can he be held responsible for his sin after gaining free will, if the free will was not gained through his free will? (convoluted I know) By having free will it is literally impossible for him to follow God's law since God punishes for thought crimes; even considering sinful action is worthy of eternal torment (Commandments 6 and 9 for example). Since Adam didn't possess the wherewithal to determine if he wanted free will or not (lacking free will), can he really be held morally responsible for the inherent infractions involved?

If that being was perfect, then how come he ended up eating the fruit? If Jesus was also perfect, this implies that even Jesus would have ended up eating the fruit.Either Adam was flawed, or God is punishing for something that wasn't a mistake.

But not acquired traits. If Adam had lost a leg, would we all hop?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

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God formed a man from the dust of the ground. He then breathed the breath of life into him and he became a perfect living being.

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That perfect man was put in a perfect garden with one instruction not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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You're embellishing a bit on the text, unless you are using perfect to mean completed.The text does not say the man became a perfect living being, just a living being. The text doesn't say that Eden was perfect.

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Had that man not eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he would still be tending the garden today and we would not exist. Only he and the woman made from his rib would exist.

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Had God not put the tree of Knowledge of good and evil in the garden, we would have the same result. Who had better knowledge of what would likely happen?So God created mankind with the ability to make choices (whether right or wrong) and put an enticing tree in the middle of the garden, but told them it was off limits. If God didn't want mankind to have the ability to make choices, he would have destroyed all mankind in the flood. By saving Noah and his family, God allowed mankind to continue with the ability to sin. This tells us that God wanted mankind to be this way.

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Scripture is like Newton’s third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
-- Carlene Cross in The Bible and Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Everyone is susceptible to sin according to the bible. If literally everyone desires sin, and Yahweh is the Creator, make your own conclusions.Secondly, the verses I suspect you are alluding to don't say that sin is inheritable, but that if you sin, up to the 3rd and 4th generation (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren) are in jeopardy.

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"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction." — Blaise Pascal

Yahweh said obey me or there will be consequences.
Adam didn't obey him.
There were consequences.
Adam was held only partially liable. Yes, so does Romans. And after eating the fruit, the options of disobedience went from one single item of disobedience to the full range of shitty possible behaviour that was previously unthinkable. Yahweh didn't mankind a choice in having a choice (which would be logically impossible), but he did give them a choice to live in obedience or disobedience. Mankind chose disobedience, so we deal with the consequences. Yahweh has been trying to figure a just way out for a while. He even tried killing all the worst sinners in an attempt to engage supernatural selection to give mankind salvation.That was a decision he's been criticised for since! How can one gain free will as an act of free will? That's nonsensical. They were created with it, they chose what to do with it. They faced the cosequences. It's the Israelites explanation for why free agents are also morally responsible.You'll have specify the commandments since different groups number them differently (they aren't numbered in the text) = 6 is often murder and 9 is often lying. I don't see how they are thought crimes, nor do I see the relevance of bringing thought crimes up. Yes. Yahweh is responsible for the consequences for brining free agency into the world. The free agents, by definition, are responsible for what they do after then.Look - we could, you are right, in a deterministic universe, keep pointing to causes back to the original one and conclude that the big bang was morally responsible for 9/11 (or we could conclude that the British theft of Kuwait meant they were responsible or whatever).So, in practical terms we need to establish a cut-off.We can try 'but for' ('but for Yahweh's creation of free will - there'd be no sinning') which does apply. But nobody just relies on 'but for' because of the Big Bang problem.So we could also demand proximate cause.

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Active, direct, and efficient cause of loss in insurance that sets in motion an unbroken chain of events which bring about damage, destruction, or injury without the intervention of a new and independent force. Also called direct cause.

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Sorry - the insurance related ones were more straight forward.Now - you want to argue like a determinist and that there was a direct chain between Yahweh's creation of man and sin. But mankind have non-deterministic free will - they are truly independent forces. So we can't hold Yahweh, liable. Sorry.

He's talking about Romans, you're thinking of Old Testament stuff. The potential penalty for breaking the Law was punishment by Yahweh to the 3 and 4th generation (though Yahweh is also merciful and does look the other way on this sometimes). As Paul notes, sin existed before the Law.Exodus 20 etc.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

I see no reason why YHWH should have punished their off spring, as well as A+E.

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False. Satan first introduced sin into the world i.e first being to sin Adam and Eve were the first humans to sin.

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False. Adam was the prototype and he was created with the ability to sin or not. The snake didn't disobey according to the story. Eve was the first to disobey and then Adam. Without a rule, there is no sin. That's why A&E could run around naked without shame. Once they ate and obtained the knowledge of good and evil, then they knew that being naked was wrong according to that culture.

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But I think Larni's question is, why was it a repeating pattern i.e why did God allow it to become a repeating pattern and not just curb it (after all,He hates it)? There has to be a reason why it is a recurring pattern i.e what theologians commonly refer to as original sin.

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That's one of the problems with trying to get more out of a children's story than intended.Even in Romans, Paul isn't saying that mankind so longer has the capability to sin. For those who feel Paul wrote Hebrews, even there it is obvious that mankind still has the ability to sin. Why God made mankind with that capability, we may never know. We can only speculate. If we go by the Genesis 1 story that says mankind is made in God's image, then we have that capability because God has that capability.

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Scripture is like Newton’s third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
-- Carlene Cross in The Bible and Newton’s Third Law of Motion

If sin is breaking of a moral law, why did YHWH decide that x was a moral law, sinning was to break that law and it was part of our nature to engage in x (i.e. to sin)?YHWH creates us with sin already a component of our being. He need not have done so.What could have informed his decision to do so?

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I see no reason why YHWH should have punished their off spring, as well as A+E.

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Which is irrelevant to whether "sin" is heritable. The consequences seem to bother you more than the idea we are able to sin. Some people are more apt to sin than others. They have a "sin nature".

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Scripture is like Newton’s third law of motionfor every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In other words, for every biblical directive that exists, there is another scriptural mandate challenging it.
-- Carlene Cross in The Bible and Newton’s Third Law of Motion

Adam did not know that it was wrong to eat the fruit. Remember, the whole point of that tree was to give them understanding of what good (righteousness) and evil (sin) was. Adam did not know it was wrong, God intentionally placed an enticing tree in the middle of the garden, and instilled in to Adam his natural desires and curiosities.Sounds like the only one at fault would be Yahweh, no?That God is allegedly omnipotent and omnipresent makes God complicit in everything, especially the first sin. Yahweh completely facilitated their sin. In a court of law, we'd call that "entrapment."

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"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from mistaken conviction." — Blaise Pascal

Peg, I'm really sorry to sound like a broken record but the point is that YHWH could remove our sin without having to create Jesus with the express intention of killing him.None of that was necessary. YHWH did not need to make sin heritable.Was there anything limiting YHWH's ability to remove sin with a wave of his hand?

But if YHWH loved us he would gift us with eternal life, rather than make it contingent on our choices (which our nature specifically makes impossible).Like a parent loving their baby, rather than making that love contingent on loving us back (a concept no baby can deal with).

He knew it was in contravention to Yahweh's actions and that there consequences attached to eating it. Whether or not he knew it was morally wrong is not relevant. He did know that he would piss Yahweh off if he did it, and he still did it.Sure, Yahweh could have explained things a bit more straightforwardly, but Yahweh isn't perfect so what are you gonna do? There are no 'natural desires and curiosities' - humans aren't simply natural and they don't make decisions based on some physical organ like their heart or kidneys. Those desires simply existed because sin was in the world. Before then, there was just obedience to a command or not. Not according to the story Paul tells, no. Yes God is complicit. Yahweh isn't. God is omni-omni but Yahweh doesn't know everything and makes mistakes. No - because Yahweh was not the serpent. If Yahweh was the serpent you'd have a point. Yahweh just told them they had a choice to obey, or disobey. They used their free will to disobey. An act Yahweh could not have foreseen, by definition of free will.What you have to demonstrate is that Yahweh is the proximate cause for sin.