Hello,
Long time lurker.
Was actually planning on starting a thread on original sin as my first thread but figured I’d come in here to say my peace. As far as Paul goes, he places all his chips on the genesis story holding up. I look at the genesis account(s) rather differently; I see no wrong doing by Eve or Adam by eating the apple, and therefore see sin at best as non-existent at worst unjustly implemented. Let me explain what I mean.
Gen2 16 And the LORD God commanded
the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will
surely die."
Gen3 4 "You will not surely die,"
the serpent said to the woman. 5
"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and
you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
So from those two verses I infer that:
1. Man prior to "eating the apple" had no predisposition to or knowledge
of the concepts of "good and evil"
2. God willingly withheld the "knowledge" of "good and evil" when
creating man.
2a. Assertion 2 is backed up by the fact that the serpent was tempting
Adam and Eve with knowledge of good and evil, and would not be able to
do so if they already possessed such knowledge.
Adam and Eve were built incompletely, and were unable to handle making any informed decision in any matter regarding the morality of their decisions. Again remember
that these individuals apparently had never seen death (Bible says no
death prior to sin) so even gods not-so-veiled threat of death falls on
deaf ears because they would not fully understand what that was, and can
not be used to support the idea that Adam and Eve should have know
better(ie they knew the consequences). When you break this down god created an inefficient creation and then judges it unfairly.
My final assertion: God creating man and not giving him knowledge of
good and evil and then judging their actions (prior to gaining said
knowledge) as evil, well do I even need to finish this thought I think
at this point I've spelled it out pretty good, God's a dick, and Genesis
it the first "historical" case of entrapment.
I guess I can’t see how god can sit in judgment of a creation he made that was created unequipped to even understand the concepts of right and wrong and then grade them on those concepts. I can’t imagine your boss coming up to you in the morning and saying here is the MCAT good luck your job depends on it, and you happen to work at Wal Mart as a door greeter, not exactly up for the task at hand.