I can forgive the people who created these ideas and this elaborate belief system 2,000 years ago; they didn't know better and it reflected the time in which they lived. Why anyone would go out of their way to embrace such a dark, apocalyptic Mediterranean import when we have so many choices (choices those in primitive agrarian cultures were not even aware of) or none at all baffles me. And no idea is more baffling or preposterous than the most milked of all church recruitment cows: original sin.
Original sin may have made sense at some level in a primitive, superstitious culture that practiced animal sacrifice on a regular basis, but to a modern, educated, compassionate person is beyond preposterous.
First, it was so trivial - not mass murder, gang rape, or torture, but eating a piece of fruit. Because it tasted good. And because god allegedly left it there, within easy reach, and then walked away (where was he, by the way, if he was omnipresent?).
Second, a school child can tell you that it is immoral to hold her responsible for something her brother did, much less her great-great-great.... grandmother whom she never met and whose behavior she had no way of controlling. If we can be judged by something done by a third party before we were even born, it makes a mockery of any concept of individual responsibility or accountability, the bedrock of Western democracy and the rule of law. We simply don't do collective punishment anymore. Or shouldn't. Let's not forget that some of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms culminating in the Holocaust were justified on this idea of collective responsibility by an entire community and their offspring for decisions allegedly made by their ancestors. Original sin did not cause the Holocaust, but it created fertile ground for Hitler to plant his seeds.
Third, even if someone somewhere did something really bad, so bad that guilt for this offense was transmitted somehow in our DNA (maybe it was killing of the Neanderthals, something we may be collectively responsible for, I don't know), we can't do anything to affect it one way or another. Having an animal who did nothing wrong die to give me a get-out-of-hell-free card (blood atonement) or even worse, a human sacrifice, at the heart of the Christian formula of Christ "dying for our sins", then the original sin is only compounded, not mitigated. They are true, true, and unrelated.
I never met Adam, Eve, or Jesus. I've never encountered a talking snake, and fruit that is delicious and shiny is almost always good for me (because I evolved the propensity to be attracted to it). I am very sad that Jesus was executed by the Romans who crucified so many innocents (including 5,000 people following the Spartacus uprising alone!), but cannot wrap my mind around the idea that a loving god would knowingly allow his son to be tortured to death because a naked couple once went on an illicit fruit-picking expedition or that any of these stories remotely involve me or my life.
Original sin is not just weird but offensive. Why can't we as thinking adults stand up and say these things out loud? Or let's at least stop teaching this offensive nonsense to our children.
Original sin may have made sense at some level in a primitive, superstitious culture that practiced animal sacrifice on a regular basis, but to a modern, educated, compassionate person is beyond preposterous.
First, it was so trivial - not mass murder, gang rape, or torture, but eating a piece of fruit. Because it tasted good. And because god allegedly left it there, within easy reach, and then walked away (where was he, by the way, if he was omnipresent?).
Second, a school child can tell you that it is immoral to hold her responsible for something her brother did, much less her great-great-great.... grandmother whom she never met and whose behavior she had no way of controlling. If we can be judged by something done by a third party before we were even born, it makes a mockery of any concept of individual responsibility or accountability, the bedrock of Western democracy and the rule of law. We simply don't do collective punishment anymore. Or shouldn't. Let's not forget that some of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms culminating in the Holocaust were justified on this idea of collective responsibility by an entire community and their offspring for decisions allegedly made by their ancestors. Original sin did not cause the Holocaust, but it created fertile ground for Hitler to plant his seeds.
Third, even if someone somewhere did something really bad, so bad that guilt for this offense was transmitted somehow in our DNA (maybe it was killing of the Neanderthals, something we may be collectively responsible for, I don't know), we can't do anything to affect it one way or another. Having an animal who did nothing wrong die to give me a get-out-of-hell-free card (blood atonement) or even worse, a human sacrifice, at the heart of the Christian formula of Christ "dying for our sins", then the original sin is only compounded, not mitigated. They are true, true, and unrelated.
I never met Adam, Eve, or Jesus. I've never encountered a talking snake, and fruit that is delicious and shiny is almost always good for me (because I evolved the propensity to be attracted to it). I am very sad that Jesus was executed by the Romans who crucified so many innocents (including 5,000 people following the Spartacus uprising alone!), but cannot wrap my mind around the idea that a loving god would knowingly allow his son to be tortured to death because a naked couple once went on an illicit fruit-picking expedition or that any of these stories remotely involve me or my life.
Original sin is not just weird but offensive. Why can't we as thinking adults stand up and say these things out loud? Or let's at least stop teaching this offensive nonsense to our children.
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