Why is sin heritable?

How would he have had free will if up to that point he was completely subject to the will of another being? Miracles are events that contradict the established functioning of the universe. If the laws of the universe are occasionally mutable then the miracle is no great occurrence; the assumption must be that miracles are conventionally impossible. Oh really? He said that Adam would surely die. He then turned around to not only fate Adam to die, but to labor in working the earth and to eat dirt for the remainder of his life. Furthermore, he also fated all of Adam's offspring to the same fate.Thats more than he threatened. How easily you ignore what Matthew says in favor of Paul; why not ignore Paul in favor of Matthew? Or them both in favor of neither? You would be better served to address the reader's concept of Yahweh, as Paul's concept varies by the reader. Free will cannot be exercised in a void of understanding. Someone with free will but lacking any method to sense reality cannot be blamed for any immoral action committed in reality. Similarly, someone with free will yet no concept of immorality cannot be blamed for immoral actions. Too late; even having them makes you guilty according to Matthew. Isn't he supposed to be omniscient? Yeah, they do look like dumbasses. I would agree in the intent, but it isn't what is written. The entire story is designed to make people guilty and inherently in need of the religion, but its presentation is morally flawed. That is the point I am getting at.If someone writes a story and they have a plot hole, you don't try to interpret the story so it makes sense. You say there is a plot hole due to an error in writing. Only religion seems to get the special treatment of infallible writers.

But what if how I understand it relies on context?Please provide support that Adam did not understand what Yahweh meant by "Do this and die"? I agree with your point, but disagree that Yahweh did this to Adam. If you are ascribing an action to a character, that is inconsistent with that character you have a lot of work cut out for you, right? So do the work death is like a baby?No, death is the ceasing of the state of living. Adam was in a state of living. He knew that was on the line. Again with the determinism. You forgot the free will again. You are correct. That's not omni-God. I'm talking about Yahweh, who clearly does not know the future when it comes to agents with free will. How does it make the choice for them? How is eating or you will die suitably comparable to eating causing you to die?What was the compulsion? It doesn't matter if it is literal and historical. We are discussing a character who may or may not be real. At the moment we are assuming it is the Holy Bible of the most populated Christian movements describes this character. Again you are assuming that moral decisions are instinctual. The Israelites did not think that. So no, Yahweh did not create 'a moral instinct'. He created mankind and told it to obey, but allowed for mankind not to obey should it so choose (it didn't force us to obey).Mankind learned what morality was by eating the apple, and learned lots of new ways to be shitty to each other. And they each individually chose to do some of them.Which needs to be paid off through death.Which is why he cut them off from the Tree of Life. We have no idea whether A & E knew about the Serpent. Adam had named it, so had clearly encountered it before. Since he knows no wrong, he would presumably have told Eve what he knew.
But anyway - Yahweh said do one thing. The Serpent said do another. We do know Yahweh gave explicit instructions with regards to the subject of the Serpent's speech. It doesn't strike me as odd, no. It strikes me as a pattern, and it's not because of souls and shit. It's because of evolution.But the point of the story is that the blame rests with the person that commits the immoral act because they are ultimately capable of freely choosing that. I don't think it serves as a sufficient hypothesis (for exactly the reason you outlined). But I'm not exploring if it's a good explanation - just what sin is in relation humans according the bible. Which doesn't say they are incapable of conceiving of not being what they were (aka alive). We create new things all the time: The printing press for example. Are you saying that before the person that built it, brought it into the world - he didn't understand it? Yes, that's what I said. They aren't explained. Yep - and now, if you trust he'll play his cards right you'll escape from sin and death. Yahweh's Law says that he will protect the Israelites and give them trinkets if they don't bear false witness.It seems strongly implied that lying is sinful, it may even be explicitly mentioned somewhere.Whether or not it is acceptable is up to Yahweh. He does give latitude on the issue. Yes, that Yahweh is a living god who over time works out a personal relationship with another free agent that he created. Sure - a lot of the later people may have said this was all part of god's ultimate plan, but as I said earlier - that makes him out to be a bumbling idiot or a monster or both. Oh, well yes, obviously we do. And more to the point I was raising: we have moral instincts. Honed by evolution. It is after all, what I've been saying all along. And I agree that if you are right in your assumption - it would. Well trivially so. There is an earth and humans live on it, for example. But I don't believe in any of the stuff we're talking about here in the non-trivial sense. It certainly contravenes the evidence. But we were talking about 'sin' and 'talking snakes' so...you know.

I think you and I are roughly on the same wavelength concerning sin. We differ on a few things.

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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.

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Although Paul's personification in Romans implies death came in through Adam, the A&E story doesn't really support his line. I don't feel that A&E created death. Like sin, death is not a thing.God planted a tree of life and threatened death. So death was already possible. Actually Abel would have been the first death as far as we know in the story.I think God downgraded the disciplinary action because their decision was influenced by the snake.

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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.

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I like that summary.

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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.

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Exactly! Sometimes people look for more than the story can give them.For all Paul's preaching, people still have the capability to sin and die whether they are believers or not.

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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

He wasn't. He was created and then told he could eat of the fruit. He chose to obey.
Then later he chose to disobey. Agreed. But the established functioning of the universe and the way the universe works according to ancient Israelites are very different things. Miracles require an act of faith or an act of god (or possibly in some cases, both). Thems the rules. With those things, people can raise from the dead, walk on water, impregnate virgins without 20th century equipment.If you think trusting Yahweh so strongly that you can water is of no great occurrence, that's your call. I think it would be a miraculous feat. He warned of immediate death. He intervened and gave them a stay of execution and hard labour instead. If you think that labouring for a finite amount of time and then dying is worse than never existing (which would have been the case if Adam was killed right then), you should probably kill yourself now and save yourself any further bother.But the wages of sin is death. That's just the way it is. Yahweh couldn't change that. So he withdrew the Tree of Life and used that as a means to pay off the wages of sin. Then he cursed everyone cause he was pissed off. Then why don't you expand? I haven't got the whole bibila committed to memory for Dawkins' sake! Fair enough - since I'm the reader here, why don't we address me? Indeed. But a being that knows that the being that created it said don't do something or you will die, has access to all the information it needs. If it chooses to disobey it suffers the consequences. That's exactly right. Or more specifically: by the time you feel lust - it's too late. Sin has entered into your heart. Sin is everywhere pluck out your eye if it shows signs of sin! etc. No - that was the point. They write him as explicitly not being omniscient. Concluding that he is, is reading something into text that isn't there and concluding it makes no sense. No shit. It's religion - I already assumed your conclusion Nah moral relativism dude - murder and crime were much more prevalent back then. They didn't have the technology. So they had to put the willies up people and trigger their obedience modules to stop society breaking down. If that is true, I can't condemn them. If they thought that was true (regardless of if they believed the bullshit) I can't condemn them. I wasn't there, man. I didn't see my best friends dying all around me. It was hell! And so on.I was just explaining that sin doesn't get inherited even if we take what the Bible says at face value.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Another opinion:

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

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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.

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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......

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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.

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What part of story don't you understand?This is a story. Read it like any other story. Unless the narrator tells the audience that Adam doesn't understand what God said or one of the other characters in the story tells us that Adam doesn't understand, then the audience accepts that Adam understood what God said when he said if he ate, he would die.

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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?

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It doesn't matter. There is a narrator in the story. The narrator already knows what happened since the story is in the past. As the story is written, Adam understood what God said.

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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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So what does any of this have to do with whether sin is heritable?Like most, you're focusing on the consequences; which isn't the point of this discussion.While everyone has the capability to sin, IMO, not everyone has a sinful nature. IOW, they aren't prone to wickedness. Some people have no problem breaking the law and others have no inclination to break the law. Some people have to work harder at not breaking the law than others.

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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

Except the part where hurting yourself hurts other unnecessarily. Or where you hurt someone negligently. But that wouldn't have had that Heinleinian punch, I suppose.

I'm not entirely sure I can tell what Paul really thought here. He may well imagine them as forces of nature in and of themselves, I've heard that interpretation before. But yeah - the New and the Old make for a difficult marriage. Paul did well trying to find a way to explain why the Christ had an ignominious end though,which is what he was really driving at all along. I read Paul as saying that the sin had to be 'paid off', through death. Sacrifices count - but one way or another ultimately the debt needs to be settled.Did Abel sin? If he died, I presume Paul thinks so. Or maybe you are right, that maybe Abel sinless was and was killable because of Cain's sin and that murder was available all along - it was just hadn't occurred to Adam pre-fruit eating. Sounds like a feasible justification for his mercy. He seemed to personalise the curses depending on what their sin was. Incitement to disobedience against Yahweh, following the serpent over Yahweh, following the woman over Yahweh.

So? Are you implying that its logical possibility or impossibility varies depending on expectations?When someone has poor logical skills I consider them to be wrong, not that the logical possibility of things is altered. People jump off buildings to their death on a nearly daily basis believing that they can fly. If you think it is a miraculous level of trust I can only describe you as deluded. You conveniently forget the punishments for all their offspring as well I notice. Also, around the United States we consider forced labor and torture as cruel and unusual punishments. He does seem to have anger issues. How exactly is being "pissed off" a justification for cursing people again? I don't need to expand from inconsistency. Death entered into the garden with Adam's act. (Romans 5:12) Knowledge of good and evil became Adam's with Adam's act. How can someone who lacks knowledge of death or the distinction between good and evil have "access to all the information (he) needs"? So by the time you actually have any moral decision to make, God is already on your case. Thats my point exactly. God knows everything in the past: Revelation 20:12
God knows everything in the future: Acts 15:18
God knows everything in the present: Psalm 33:13-15I guess he is just covering all his bases huh? I was just explaining that if we take what the Bible says at face value, it contradicts itself.

I already did, here it is again:

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Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned -- Romans 5:12

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Not in the least is it a lot of work to point out the inconsistencies. The only valid question is whether or not it is on topic. No, Adam comprehending death before the Fall is like a baby comprehending death. If you can explain how that is possible, I'm open to listening. As it stands, we can only assume the he understood it for the sake of the story itself. The only problem is, proceeding chapters in this overall story of the bible paint a different picture. And again you forget that the choices are so limited so as to make them void.Question: Do you have the literal choice not to eat?Answer: Technically, yes, but you will eventually die if you don't.Observation: Not much of a choice now is it?If all of mankind cannot abstain from sin, then that nullifies the choice, no? It's a statistical destiny based on man's desires which were most definitely imparted by God, for nothing can come in to existence without God's hand, no?That's the logical and inescapable conclusion, Mod, EVEN from the perspective a story. Even supposing we're just dealing with a literary work,

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I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things. -- Isaiah 45:7

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Predestination and omnipresence: [quote]Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. -- Matthew 10:29-30 Can we stop being vague now? Okay, God is not YHWH, YHWH is not God. What precisely is the significance? Because they cannot control their sin nature, which was created none other than YHWH. I'm saying that giving them the choice for something beyond their control is like telling someone they have the choice not to take a piss. Sure, you technically have the choice, but nature will eventually win, right? Eventually you will piss, eventually you will sin.That is an inescapable conclusion. I am trying to argue the point based on the merits you present. Sometimes Purple Dawn, for instance, gets hung up on semantics and wants to argue her point from a literary point of view, versus the feasibility of real-world plausibility.I'm trying to make sense of why an avowed atheist is suddenly taking the road less traveled. Are you playing the devil's advocate? Are you trolling because you are bored? Are you challenging yourself by trying to defend and indefensible position?I am just trying to get an understanding of your motivation for doing so. You stated that human beings don't have instincts, period, independent of anything else. But are corporeal functions, like hunger or the desire to mate, just functions of an intangible soul? It seems to me that if the spiritual portion of a man (soul) wars with the flesh of that man, that humans indeed have natural instincts and have a desire to satiate them.Moving from A to B, we can further conclude in the Bible that YHWH is responsible for all things coming in to existence, for He is the only eternal lifeform. Moving from C to D we can conclude that it was YHWH which gave man all of his instincts. From D to E we can conclude that since not one human can abstain from sin, that sin is a statistical destiny. Moving from E to F we can finally, and unequivocally, conclude that YHWH is therefore responsible for Adam's sinful nature. At no point was an apple mentioned in the story. That's a later interpretation from dogma. Shitty thing like, what? Give me specifics. Does YHWH have to follow his own rules? In real life I think that is how things work. For the sake of the bible, God appears on all accounts to be the blame. In order to bring it in to the world, one needs to understand the concept, yes? Yeah, I think it's found in this thing called the 10 Commandments. That's a matter of interpretation - whether or not God's law is absolute or relative. How do you interpret it? All one has to do is use logic and know how to read. The conclusion gives itself away.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.It certainly contravenes the evidence. But we were talking about 'sin' and 'talking snakes' so...you know.

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

Hi Phage, He had no sin in him as it did not exist in the universe. That would make him a perfect man.Mankind was created with the ability to choose. Just as you chose to answer my post. You did not have to answer and no one made you answer. You simply exercised your freewill and chose to answer.The question is why did the man choose to eat the fruit. The woman was deceived by Satan in the form of a serpent. But the man was not deceived. When the woman brought the fruit to him and told him she had eaten the fruit. He knew she would die so he chose to eat and die with her. Had he not eaten he would still be alive in the garden today.Jesus was tempted by Satan when he offered to turn the Earth and mankind over to Jesus if He would bow and worship him. He did that three times and Jesus refused all three times. He remained sinless. The man was not flawed. He just made a decision that was necessary for you to exist.That decision he made brought sin which produces death into the universe.By that sin mankind was separated from God.A way of redemption was required.God provided that redemption.It is available to anyone and everyone.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi PD, I am using it as a man without the guilt of sin or under the penalty of sin. Then mankind would not have freewill to choose. It tells us God wanted mankind to have a choice.Mankind can believe God and trust Him for which he will receive eternal life.Mankind can choose to believe God is a lie and does not exist and he will spend eternity in the lake of fire.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Larni, So you feel you are entitled, Why? Do you consider yourself a baby?God takes care of babies until they reach the point the man did when he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.Do you know good and evil?Is murder evil?Is helping a struggling family that has no food to eat good?If so you know good and evil.You are no longer a baby and are responsible for yourself.You have the ability to choose to believe in God and trust Him.You also have the ability to choose to believe God does not exist and trust in yourself.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

We have covered your rather unusual views on the Genesis account before, I see no need to get into it again. My point is that if Adam was perfect, and Jesus was perfect, then if Jesus was in the same situation that Adam was he would behave the same way.So by what right does God punish Adam for doing what Jesus would have done too? That is no excuse. If I was the child resulting from a rape it does not mean that I have to condone rapes as ethical, and I am rather horrified that you would advocate such a moral maneuver. Except for those who don't know about it, or commit the sin of not asking for it.

I'm saying we are discussing sin, a biblical content, and whether god is morally culpable after he created mankind and a talking snake made them eat magic fruit resulting in them being cursed...and whether or not sin is inherited.So - given that we have accepted that prior miracles have occurred so as to explore a moral discussion, we have accepted they are possible. Since they are possible they are not logically impossible.If miracles are logically impossible, Yahweh did nothing, and is thus morally responsible for nothing. Pick a position. The thing you are trusting and what you are trusting it to do is kind of important too. And if a 'jumper' trust Yahweh will give him eternal life, then the story says he might get it (as long as there are no suicide clauses to the deal). By all means add it to the list. I missed out labour pains and being hated and mistrusted by all mankind too. I figured you'd get what I was saying. Do you think those things are so bad, it's not worth living?Because unless your answer is 'those things are worse than being alive' I think we have concluded the punishment was more lenient that immediate execution. It isn't. Yahweh doesn't do 'justifying himself'. IT was just an explanation as to why he did what he did. I have no idea. But I was talking about Adam - who seems to understand Yahweh well enough in the text. No - if you fail to adequately protect yourself through self-discipline, faith or whatever - sin will be on your case.Jesus seemed to be suggesting that prevention is better than cure, since trying to simply resist lust is more difficult that not becoming lustful. Those verses suggest God is able to judge the actions of men, not predict them. But it doesn't matter since I am arguing about the Yahweh Paul was talking about in Romans. The Psalms are almost fair game I suppose - but they are also poetry, so care might be appropriate. I agree with that, but your quote was about punishing offspring for the sins of the father. Not for people inheriting the sin itself. Those children will have their own sins to wrestle with. He is penalising the children for their wrong doing. Yahweh implements a strict dictatorship with harsh penalties as deterrents against sinning as a method for helping mankind. But they still sin.Even with someone basically pointing a gun at them and their family, man still chooses disobedience.