Why is sin heritable?

So God went out of his way to create man, so that they can be perfect with him? Seems kind of inane and pointless, wouldn't you agree? I mean, that really begs a lot of preceding questions.What purpose does God have for the Starfish and Sea Urchin?

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

Are you reading a different story than me? Where does it say that?

Maybe I should re phrase that comment:I see no reason why the off spring of A+E should inherit sin. Note to self--- Stay off the punishment boat!

Does YHWH not have to power to effect any change in reality or not?If he does not, then I guess he may have been constrained in his use of methods to effect his wishes.If (as I'm led to believe) YHWH is a creator god then he must have the ability to tinker with his work without leaving any trace then he could have said "ok, A+E took their medicine and paid the price but I won't leave the poison in their kids".

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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)?

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YHWH creates us with sin already a component of our being. He need not have done so.

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What could have informed his decision to do so?

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Again, you're asking questions the stories don't provide the answer to. Sin is not a component of our being. Sin is not a thing. Remember, Paul personifies sin, that doesn't make it a thing. People have the ability to decide what they want to do, right or wrong.Why do we make laws today? People break those laws. We call them lawbreakers. It's the same thing.In dog breeds, we can see aggressive temperaments and passive temperaments. Some temperaments are easier to train than others.We see in Native American history differences between the temperament of tribes. Some were more warlike than others.God picked the Hebrews and found out they weren't easy to train. Maybe he wanted a challenge. If you want to get rid of the ability to sin, get rid of rules. No rules, nothing to disobey. Can we really get rid of all rules in our society today?

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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

No, we don't know that at all. All we know is the measly details provided by the bible.Death could not be a reasonable consequence because, according to Paul, death entered the world as a result of A&E sin.And we know they had zero comprehension of sin because they ate the fruit before they could conceptualize it. That is why immediately after they ate it, they felt the pang of guilt, but not before. Let me count the ways:1. God is the Creator and was the one who imparted their innate desires to sin in the first place.2. He places a tree that serves no purpose EXCEPT for temptation. So you either eat it and know what is bad, so you can avoid it, or you don't eat it and it just serves as a temptation.3. He allows the world's most cunning creature unlimited access two most naive human beings on planet earth and gives them no indication to abdicate the Serpent.4. Because death entered the world as a result of their sin, death BEFOREHAND was of no intellectual consequence to them.For the sake of the argument, we'll suppose that Adam is guilty of something (I'll let you know precisely for what if I ever figure it out). But is not God even more indictable?It was a set up. He provided the bait, they took it. It was all part of the plan. So human beings don't have instincts??? If you say yes, then you acknowledge that they have natural desires. And according to the bible, who created man? Yahweh... So deductive reasoning then tells you.....????? *sigh* I just assumed you were playing the role of devil's advocate. All right, let's have it. What are you up to? Is this my cue to ask you what the difference between God and Yahweh is?

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

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I see no reason why the off spring of A+E should inherit sin.

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You're still personifying. They didn't inherit sin. Because they are a product of the prototypes which had the ability to make decisions (obey or disobey), they will also have the ability to make decisions. Just like they have the ability to feel fear, happiness, sadness, heal, etc.Notice Cain had an issue with "obeying", but Abel didn't. But God said Cain could master that urge to do wrong. Cain chose not to master the urge.The ability to decide to follow rules or not is part of human nature. We also decide when we feel a rule is unjust. Would you have it otherwise?People in the Bible stories have challenged God's decisions and God has backed off.

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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

Yahweh warned Adam not to eat of the tree.Adam knew that Yahweh had done this. Erm.By committing the first sin (the wages of which are death) they had to face the consequence of death. I don't disagree. Before, they simply knew the order from Yahweh and the associated consequences: death. Afterwards they understood that disobedience is sin, and by sinning they created death. They developed their own concept of decency and began their independent lives away from Yahweh. Yahweh kept trying to help them all out, fix the problems they had caused, but mankind refused. Eventually, he realizes it's a fools errand and tries to find a loophole via the faith of Christ. But Yahweh didn't impart 'innate desires'. He gave them the ability to choose either way, including the capacity to not sin. If there was no choice to obey or disobey Yahweh, then there would be no free choice and A & E would have simply been forced to follow Yahweh which would have been a crappy story because any good story requires conflict, right? If he didn't give them access, how would Adam have been able to name it?He tells them to abdicate the Serpent. He says don't eat the fruit.Yahweh: Eat of this fruit and you will die that day.
Serpent: Nah - Yahweh isn't telling you the whole story. Eat the fruit and you'll know the full story.So humans had the choice: Live in paradise in obedience to Yahweh, forever unsure what the full truth was (but having faith it was in their best interests). Or they could abandon faith in favour of empiricism.They chose the latter. You are assuming that Adam didn't understand what death was. I find no such account of Adam's confusion. They both seem quite competent in what ceasing to be alive means. Disobeying Yahweh's instructions.If you are suggesting that it would have been better had Yahweh not bothered in the first place, you are making assumptions into the reasons behind Yahweh's act of creation which aren't explained in the story.Anyway - Job tried to indict Yahweh on similar grounds. To paraphrase "How can you condemn me? Have you got eyes of flesh through which to see the world? What gives you the right to try and find evidence of my sin - you know I'm not wicked for I have not been wicked." Job 10:

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I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

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To which (eventually after several chapters of whinging and intellectual argument, we get to Job 38):Yahweh: Who the heck are you and why do you think you know so much about everything? And then in Job 40 they cut to the chase:

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Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?

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Yahweh gets Job to confess he has sinned after all - and Yahweh was not to blame, and it was essentially all bluster, he accepts the punishment of death, lives a happy life and dies. And here endeth the lesson and all that. I see no evidence it was 'all part of the plan'. I know some Christians profess this - is it any of the Holy books? It may well be, there's a lot of words in there. That's right. Only animals have instincts. Humans have a soul that means they are morally responsible for their own actions. I'm just explaining the story as I understand it from Paul's perspective. I don't believe any of it is true, but I don't believe Macbeth is true either and it's still perfectly reasonable to discuss whether the Three Witches caused Macbeth to do the things they predicted he would do. But I'm not going to start wondering how the Three Witches came to have magic, how they gained knowledge that the prophecy they were going to give would be the precisely worded prophecy that makes the prophecy come true. Sounds like a computational nightmare - but it's still a cool story.

Not that I can see. Well, he certainly went through a lot of shit trying to get the Israelites to the promised land. He could have just magicked them all into faithfully following him and setting up a perfect city of moral virtue.At the very least - Yahweh chooses not to engage his super powers, but it is not clear what the extent of those super powers are. But Cain had a choice too! He could have chosen not to murder his brother. He wasn't infected or poisoned. He just knew that it was morally wrong to do it, but that his brother had pissed him off and it was possible to do it. Yahweh told him he could follow what he knew was right, that it was in his power.But he murdered his brother. Cain had his own battle with sin to deal with, not Adam's. Everybody has their own personal choice to make - do the right thing all the time, or only some of the time when it's to our personal advantage. It's our fault if we choose the latter, not Yahweh's. Yahweh did not make the choice, we do.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Animals are also souls like us then?Uhh... People don't inherit souls. Like Dr A said, this is spiritual Lamarckism...weird. So you're arguing for Adam's imperfection before the fall? Hence your use of the word prevented/kept/reject this many times... No one denies that. However, sin is not carried on genes, is it? Ok--how does/did Adam think? If I think a certain way, is it 100% probable that my daughter will think the same exact way I do? Abel is a good case in point here...he certainly "thought differently" from Adam, yes? Enoch? Noah? Righteous people born of a unrighteous man these are...There has got to be more than "we think like Adam because we're his children" to the answer. It is the commonly held belief in Christianity that satan sinned by his 5 "I wills" even before Adam sinned. But that's a different issue, isn't it? You portray OT law as a failed attempt towards achieving righteousness, when in reality, it was only a stage setter for the future coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I agree with everything you say up until this point.What does sin have anything to do with procreation? Substitute "Adam" with the bolded, and that make sense.But if you want to say what you said, you also have to explain the connection between Adam and his children that is responsible for original sin. What exactly is it that we inherit from Adam that makes us sinful? I understand the chronology and logistics of the events that led to "mankind's fall", but I'm trying to find an answer for why God would not let Adam's sons have a new, righteous soul? There are people in the Bible whose bent was towards God...so much so that God even took Enoch up to be with Him....so why? If you lock a kid up in a room with an adult and the kid makes a mistake, yes, it is the adult's responsibility. But that doesn't exempt the kid from the timeout he needs to get, yes? The mistake was still done by the kid.Right.

Because he got pissed off. He does that a lot. Apparently there's no Undo button on Yahweh's decrees, as evidenced by the flood in which Yahweh opines for a do-over and settles for a promise to not do it again.Sorry: didn't see the correction. They didn't Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Held partially liable for something he didn't have the free will to avoid? He didn't have the capacity to make moral decisions without free will!God: "Adam, if you break this tree I am going to kill you."
Adam: "You got it God!"
(Wind blows, and the tree breaks.)
Adam: "Huh."
God: "You sonofabitch! I said I was going to punish you, so not only are you going to die but you and all your children's souls are going to die forever in eternal torment!"
God: "But I LOVE you." Oh, so God cannot do things that are logically impossible now? I will adjust my view of miracles accordingly... (Don't worry, I give you a 50% chance of flip-flopping on this point) You are still missing the point, it is more than that. God can give people free will without letting them choose if they want it or not and be perfectly ethical; just don't punish them solely for having it. If they didn't have a choice in the matter they shouldn't be held responsible for the direct consequences.God could have simply said "Make good decisions with your free will," and it would have been fine. Once they have free will they can consider the bad choices and the good choices, and make their moral decision. God punishing *considering* the bad path is simply immoral, yet that is what he claims to do with things like adultery!If someone doesn't know about an immoral choice compared to the moral action, they can hardly be considered moral for taking the moral action. If they know about the immoral path and it isn't desirable at all their moral choice is similarly lacking in worth. If they desire to make the immoral choice but restrain themselves their moral choice takes on real meaning; yet God punishes based simply on it being desirable.The Christian concept of God lacks basic ethical sense. Ahh, but they were not created with it, they gained it from eating the fruit! They were also punished for that act; if they were created with the free will they would be being punished for being created. Too true; after all Jesus leaves one out. I was referring to desire of another person's wife or property, and adultery. Right; they are responsible for their choices *after* they gain free will. But you just said that they gained free will and God punished them for that same act (eating the fruit). Can I assume you are going to go and read more between the lines now? (other 50% is here!) I'm not arguing that at in the slightest; after all, if man has no free will that says nothing about the environment he is in. The events leading up man gaining free will are simply not affected by the free will of man (duh).Before man gets free will he makes no choices for which he can be held morally responsible. The choice to get free will (eating the fruit) wasn't a choice made with free will (you already agreed that such a thing is logically impossible and that God not only didn't, but couldn't allow it), yet God punishes that man for that action.That punishment is simply and clearly immoral.

But he did have free will. Miracles aren't logically impossible. The evidence is: they occurred. He didn't punish them solely for having it. Otherwise it'd say that in the story, but it doesn't. It says he punished them for freely disobeying him. As he said he would. And the punishment he gave was less than the punishment he threatened. Well that's what Matthew says he claims, yes. But I was talking about what Paul claims. And to be honest it would appear not to be a great inconsistency: Jesus wasn't warning after considering having sex with a woman, but he was warning that the lust itself that led you to consider it was sin and you let it have mastery over you and cause your lusts. Probably. But I'm trying to address Paul's concept of Yahweh. There is no suggestion in the story that the fruit gave them free will, you are reading that into the text.They had free will, they freely chose disobedience. They were punished for that. Yes, part the Law appears to be an attempt at explicitly providing the Israelites a defence against sin, and allowing Yahweh to justly punish transgressors because the Law was clear. So thoughts of jealousy, immoral lust etc should be immediately discarded lest sin gain mastery of you. If he had just left it, sin would have resulted in a cycle of repeated death. He tried to whip the children of Israel into shape with tough love. I said no such thing. You interpreted me saying that because in your interpretation of the story they gained freewill by eating the apple. But that reading makes no sense for all the reasons you listed.
The story strongly implies the couple had a choice. If there was no free will they didn't actually have a choice, they were pre-determined by Yahweh to do it. But then this just makes everything look silly and impugns the authors of being the most ludicrous idiots ever (How come they bothered to point out Yahweh's surprise, how come predetermined robots could correct Yahweh's mistakes, how could they persuade him of the correct path to take? The whole thing becomes a stupid puppet show with no moral responsibility on the part of the individual. Since the entire story is a just-so story trying to explain why we are individually responsible for our own behaviour (because they were an Absolutist culture), I think my interpretation is at least closer to the intent of the authors than yours.

And, again, what purpose does it serve to warn somebody of something they have no concept for? You have to look at this in context and not how you understand it.If I was God and I said, if you do x, glunderhsirpdfms will happen as a resultant consequence. If you cannot even comprehend what in the fuck a glunderhsirpdfms is, it would be like telling a baby not to touch the burner on the stove.... Useless.... Futile..... Moot......Yahweh, in his infinite wisdom, surely would have known that. So the point that God told him would not reasonably exonerate God, nor should it reasonably condemn Adam or Eve. Look at it in perspective, Mod. What is death? What is glunderhsirpdfms? It's like a baby; completely innocent and incapable of understanding bad until the moment its get bit, burned, scraped, etc. Help them out? He helped them out by placing the tree there to begin with? He helped them out by giving the Serpent unlimited access to them? Fix their problems??? He's the cause of ALL of their problems. So omnipotent and omnipresent beings don't know the future? That's not God. Then that pretty much makes the choice for them, no? That's like saying he gives us the choice to eat. Technically it's a choice, but not much of one, aye?If Yahweh created man, he created all their instincts. Surely we agree upon that. Otherwise, something just springs out of thin air. So are we looking at this from a literary perspective or are we assuming (as fundamentalist Christians do) that everything contained within the bible is literal and historical? If God didn't create anything, would it negatively impact a Being which is perfectly contained within itself? He doesn't mention the wiles of the Serpent, whatsoever. Does it strike you as odd that the first humans, along with every other trillion humans to follow (except Jesus Christ) have all failed the test? We're not therefore dealing with an anomaly. We're dealing with 99.99999 rate of failure. So who's to blame? The product (which didn't create itself) or the manufacturer?The story is all one, big set up. I'm assuming we are using the bible as the guide. Since you mentioned Paul's understanding, we're looking at it from that perspective. If we're to analyze the bible from a literal perspective, then death entered the world as a consequence for Adam and Eve. Well, lets stick you in the middle of Swahili territory with no means of deciphering their language. When they give a warning in their native tongue, that you don't understand, and end up stabbing you to death, we'll let the world that it's your fault for not heeding their warning.Same principle applies. No it isn't. That's the one question never answered by the bible. No, that has nothing to do with my argument. That sounds like more like envy. All it means is that God holds all the cards. Any perception of good and evil is directly attributed to God on the basis that he is God. That's a matter of interpretation.However, seeing if God remains true to his own standard is much easier. For instance, if God's law is absolute, is it ever acceptable to lie? That's because you have to read behind the lines. The undertone running through the whole series of books leads to one conclusion. Man is imperfect, man can do no good on his own, man needs God for salvation. God is supreme. The End.The rest is just details. Sure, whatever, they have souls. Do they also have instincts? Because according to the bible, animals also have spirits. Whatever, it's irrelevant. I am asking you if human beings have instincts, and not your interpretation of whether or not the bible thinks humans have instincts. That being the case, then you should concede the point that death entered the world as a result of A&E's sin. That being the case, my point that they could not understand the consequence of death invalidates the premise of the caveat altogether.... Making my point all the more sensible from either a literary or a literal perspective. Some aspects of the bible are true. Most of it is likely an embellished adaptation, though.The point is that you and I would probably agree that from a literary perspective, there is a "moral of the story." We agree upon that, but the conclusion is faulty when juxtaposing that with the real world.

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

Who first introduced Satan into the world?I've always been mystified as to how God created everything except bad things. Somehow bad things just magically popped in to existence ex nihilo. Perhaps you can clear that up that discrepancy for me, because I can't make heads or tails of it. Then would it be reasonable to say that for ordinary man it is impossible not to sin? If that is the case then is it reasonable to blame man for a condition imparted by God? Isn't that like God blaming for you getting hungry?Man: "Uh, but LORD, I'm hungry because you made it so that I would crave food."God: "SILENCE you insolent twit!!!!" To set up the need for Jesus Christ. The whole point is to prove the frailty of man and the awesomeness of God.The real question (which isn't answered in the bible) is why if there is such an emphasis on the afterlife, why there is a physical life at all?That, and, what great cosmic purpose do Starfish have in God's plan for the world?

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