Is there Biblical support for the concept of "Original Sin"?

Could you perhaps (globally) define what you see the Christian concept of original sin to be? I mean, what kind of thing do you want to see the bible argue?The essence of what I consider to be original sin is contained in the very section you quote: all men made sinners through the disobedience of Adam. I take it that your idea of original sin won't be just that."For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners".

In the verse utilised in my post above, Paul refers to their disobedience. Disobedience, although deemed a sin, doesn't require that a person has a knowledge of right and wrong. You can pick up a knowledge of obedience and disobedience from the consequences that attach to actions rather than the morality which attaches to actions.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Okay. The thread title asks for biblical evidence for the concept. What's wrong with Pauls statement as biblical evidence?- The word "should" implies a moral element to their choosing. I've pointed out that a disobedience doesn't necessarily require a moral element. They are told what to do, are told there are negative* consequences attaching to not doing and placed in the position of choice. No shoulds or shouldn't's need enter the frame in order that disobedience occur. And if disobedience then sin..*God uses the word die which we must assume they understood to be at least a negative thing. If they didn't have some concept of death as a negative thing then we have no reason to suppose they had any understanding of any word. An assumption which renders discussion a bit pointless. Which is besides my point. My point merely had to do with clarifying the biblical evidence of Paul. Disobedience = sin. Disobedience not necessarily involving a knowlege of good and evil.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

He doesn't need to support his position in order for his position to be biblical evidence for the Christian concept of original sin.(perhaps you mean: is there other biblical evidence, besides this from Paul, supporting the Christian concept of original sin?)- I haven't asserted they should know to obey a command. I have asserted that a choice offered, one that is built on promised consequences, requires no knowledge of good and evil on the part of the chooser. Consequences become the motivating/demotivating influences in their choice - not moral considerations.Whether a promised negative consequence is ultimately delivered on isn't relevant to the role that promise plays prior to the choice being made. If they disobey and the promised consequences aren't delivered upon the disobedience still stands.What I am assuming (and I don't see how we can do any differently) is that they understood 'plain English'. Which means "you shall surely die" held some kind of negative connotion for them. A negative consequence attaching to a choice in a certain direction - in other words.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

He doesn't need support in order to be right. He'd need to be contradicted in order to be wrong. It seems to me that you have biblical evidence and that you want more. Could you explain why? This person promises these consequences, that person promises those consequences. I can choose based on the lure (positive/negative) of consequences without having any idea of what's right or wrong can't I? Who do you think permitted the serpent to enter the garden?

A few days prior to the garden event, God drops a large stone on Adams toe. Adam yells with pain. God says: "see the stars in the sky. Now imagine what it would be like if that many large stones fell on your toe and you'll begin to understand what death is like".It doesn't matter whether death is like that. What matters is a negative association with the word death is made.We don't know how Adam came by his understanding of any word but if we are to assume he understood something of any of them then we have to assume he had an understanding of them all. Including the word death.A negative association with the word would suffice for the purpose of choice made available.- And? We are assuming they understood language in which case they had an understanding of what consequences meant. Whilst we can't prove the choice was a consequentially balanced one, it does make sense of the rest of the story. An unbalanced choice isn't actually and leads to determinism. Which is a bit of a pointless discussion really.- Adam and Eve could have been smart as hell. More competent to make consequential decisions than you or I perhaps.God left them with a negative consequence. The serpent tempted them with a positive one. They choose. There is no 'supposed not to' element involved ("supposed not" to implies a moral injunction) for folk who weren't yet moral.- See above re: competency.It seems to me that it's you whose stacking the deck. What's written is negative and positive consequence offered. We're not told the power of either consequence being weighed to ensure a 'choice' in a particular direction. It seems fair that we assume a balanced choice for want of evidence to the contraryGod knowing what would happen need not determine what happens. And so the choice remains Adam and Eves alone.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Does it?Let's remind ourselves of what he claims - our agreed working definition of original sin - and then you can suggest where in Genesis 2 and 3 the contradictory statement lies. Here is Paul again:

quote:

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For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners
  —Paul

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- Why pick an analogy involving children? Why not pick the analogy of an adults well capable of making decisions that would result in non-morally related consequences?- If we plump for the 'adult making non-moral consequential choices' analogy? Wouldn't the blame then lie with the choice-maker?- Are we assuming an all powerful, omniscient creator God? If so, then we don't need the story to tell us that God permitted it. It's self-evident that God permitted it given that he knows what the serpent does and doesn't prevent it happening. And so choice would be provided by God.- Let's recall the point being dealt with and recap. You claimed:

quote:

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Actually, we agree that it is likely that Pal is referring to the Garden of Eve story, however, reading it I find absolutely no support for the position that Adam or Eve were even capable of sinning until after they had eaten the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They just plain did not have the tools needed to make decisions on right or wrong.

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Paul talks of their disobedience making all men sinners not their sin. To further counter your claim and elaborate on his, I go on to argue that you don't need to involve morality in order to be disobedient. Once that's established (and I think our adult analogy above indicates how that works) we can see that Adam and Eve can indeed be disobedient before they aquire a knowledge of good and evil.As to your introducing "on the day that you eat"? The issue is disobedience when faced with a choice - not whether the consequences promised as a result of that choice were delivered on or not. Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Without the potential for disobedience...Had they chosen to obey they'd have been expressing their freewill equally as well.

I didn't quote Paul equating disobedience with sin, I quoted Paul saying what the vehicle for people being made sinners was - Adams disobedience.To obey means to do what your told by a person. To disobey means not to do so. You don't need tools to do that. You only need to act, your choice in that regard flagging whether you have obeyed or not. In Adam and Eve's case 'obey' was attached to negative consequences and 'disobey' attached to positive consequences. We must assume they had the tools to appreciate consequences otherwise they don't understand plain English.You're claim that they act as children might be expected to act isn't supported by the text - it's laid onto the text.- Adults make consequential decisions all the time without reference to morality, their experience equipping them to do so. The story doesn't say what level of experience in consequential decision making Adam and Eve had so you can't suppose them children. Okay. I'll retract God equipping them with the choice. We'll go with circumstances doing so.Edited by iano, : No reason given.Edited by iano, : No reason given.

Cause and correlation are two different things. How do you leverage the one into the other? I don't expect them to do any such thing. They weren't morally equipped. Like I say, I'm not expecting them to make a moral decision. Only a consequential one.

It doesn't matter if it didn't happen the way (jokingly) I suggested. We either assume Adam and Eve understood language or we don't.It doesn't matter that they didn't know precisely what death was (or precisely what a knowledge of good and evil was, for that matter). For the purposes of making a choice based on consequences they only need to have some negative association attaching to the word/concept 'death' (and some positive association attaching to the word/concept 'knowledge of good and evil')- By 'very good' what do you mean? Morally very good or consequentially 'very good'? I don't see why you need morality consequential decisions.- Their choice lacked any kind of moral factor (is the suggestion). The promised consequences (not judgment) of their choice involved becoming moral.- There is no need to go that far in order to be fair. In order to provide fair choice, you only need to ensure that the level of knowledge of consequences on both sides of the choice is equal. Even if the knowledge of consequences was only 0.01% of the total possible, the choice would be fair if it was 0.01% on both sides. Peopleare flung into prison having had sufficient knowledge to make a choice. No one but God can know all the consequences.Are you suggesting prison is immoral?- I see no reason to see it other than literal. I've as little issue with talking serpents as I have water being turned into wine. I also understand what unbelief is - I was an unbeliever for 38 odd years, it took that long for me to become impoverished of spirit.- You've a post count of 4, I've lost count of my posts. I've seen all the arguments a dozen times over and am not convinced by them.- If your placing your bets on science then that's a fair stance to take. I'm not placing my bets there, I'm placing them on a God I know to exist other than by scientific means. You can appreciate whom I think must bow to whom.Don't get me wrong - I think science is really great (I'm a mechanical engineer) but I'm supposing this realm of ours a subset in a larger realm. There are surprises to be had I'm thinking.

Interesting question that. How does one make a undetermined free choice? I'm not sure I have an answer to the mechanics of that but I know that for the purposes of this discussion the conundrum isn't altered substantially by adding wrong/right onto the question above.

Indeed. But isn't our focus on the agreed working definition of original sin: that men are made sinners through Adams disobedience. That he was the vehicle whereby sin entered the world would seem to be a part of that mechanism - and is something that would appear to be supported in the Genesis account.Your point?- And disobeyed God.Your presume them like young children faced with authority but don't substantiate this other than by repetition.- Reptitious eisegesis. You point to the text. But don't cite it to support your claims. Countering that you have support for the idea of them making a consequential decision from scripture telling us that:- consequences were offered
- they understood plain English
- they weren't moral- The subject is biblical support for the Christian notion of original sin. Paul is an example of same.The sub discussion is whether Adam and Eve could make a choice and disobey as per Pauls claim of them (whereby all men were made sinners). Our working definition didn't mention sin. It mentioned disobedience. They disobeyed and so were clearly capable of it.- Which is not the same thing as Genesis contradicting Paul Welcome to the club. You yourself agreed that the Christian concept of original sin is defined in Romans 5 I'm content to leave it at Genesis supporting their disobedience.

1. Paul is in the Bible and forms biblical support for the notion marketed by Christianity2. It doesn't matter if the Bible didn't support him in order for the notion to be biblical.3. We've been over the above 2 points and settled on the claim of yours that Genesis contradicts Paul. That ball having been moved to your court lies there still.- I could do the same in support of my view and where would we be. I'd welcome something a bit more specific, something to permit us to plump for your possibility over mine - for without a way of doing that, your attempt at contradiction is stalemated.1. Them like typical kids2. Them as a-moral adults capable of making consequential decision(had they obeyed God no doubt you'd be citing a "first up best dressed" authority figure. Spare me this dot-connecting approach and keep it concrete .. please )- Nor is there anything that shows why such a thing is necessary in making consequential decisions. Telling us that the motorboat has no sail isn't a convincing way to argue the boat incapable of motion.

Just checking that I'm not missing something. There is only one consequential decision to be made. There are two things to choose from (the minimum required to make one consequential decision) Like I said, I don't know the how. If I was to suppose man a machine who has been determined by initial conditions (whether divine or naturalistically) then I would say the 'how' connects to the intitial conditions. But seeing as I (nor I suspect anyone else) don't suppose that we are ultimately determined, I can't say.In so far as I can envisage it, I see Adam as a sphere, positioned at the fulcrum of a see-saw. On the one end is the weight of the prohibition. On the other, the weight of the enticement. Assuming both weights equal, the see-saw remains horizonal and Adam remains in the middle. He obtains neither the consequences of the prohibition nor the consequences of the enticement. The choice remains to be made.Now he wants the consequences of the enticement but wants to avoid the consequences of the prohibition. And so a tension is built up pushing for an act on his part. One way to achieve what he wants is to suppress the truth about the prohibition. To remove it's restraining power by opting for the vehicle offered by the serpent "did God really say (by which ne meant: "did God really mean")Once that's done, the weight of the prohibition falls off the see-saw, the see-saw tips over and sphereAdam rolls down to the consequences of disobedience.But that doesn't get to the apex which is "why did Adam will this to be?" The answer appears to halt at "it was his will" without the possibility of penetrating futher. But I'm open to non-determined suggestions-It might be better to start a new thread on this if you want to progress (although I don't see how progress can be made myself). It's certainly a topic in need of an answer but is off topic here.
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