The Original Sin
I have issue with the entire premise of this ideology. Christianity is based on the idea that God created a perfect world and placed a perfect man in it. Man screwed up, thus blemishing the existence of all men that came after and the only salvation was through the Messiah who was born of immaculate conception, was persecuted and killed for his teachings, and was resurrected and ascended into heaven to take on God-like status. Right? I think that we can agree that this is the Christian contention in a nutshell.
What follows is simply my rationalization of why this story appears to me to be flawed, why I don't believe the Bible to be factual, and why I can't believe in the Christian version of things. In properly examining the assertions of the Bible, I have to immerse myself in the ideology. This does not mean I hold it to be true, just that I can entertain a notion.
So God created the world and the heavens and everything in it and saw that it was good, often very good.
-blah,blah-
Then we get to Day 6… Ignoring the fact that evolution proves that land animals came before birds… I don’t have much argument up to this point. But then, Day 6 begins at Ge 1:22, so there wasn’t a whole lot before that either.
Day 6
Ge 1:27 “And God proceeded to create the man in his image, in God’s image he created him; male and female he created them.” [28] Further, God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.”
Then he tells them they can eat all the seed bearing vegetation and the beasts get all the green.
God looked and saw that it was all good, very good, and that was the end of Day 6….
Then God rested. This begins Ge chapter 2.
So Ge2:5 God made plant life on the earth……. Though he’d already given it to man and beast for food in 1:29.
Then, 2:7, “And Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.”
Ok… First inconsistency. God had, on Day 5 created the living souls of all the creatures, would this not too include man? Would he create man and animal on the same day and only give animals a soul? If man was first created in God’s image, would this not indicate a “spirit being” of sorts.. a soul ?
Further, if God had given the instruction to “Be fruitful and become many”, how was this to be a followed command without a body?
Then, Ge2:8 “Further, Jehovah God planted a garden in Eden, toward the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. [9]Thus Jehovah God made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food and also the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad.”
So, to summarize……… Two days later, God gave man a body… Built him a special sanctuary with lots of pretty and yummy plants…. And created the SIN TREE and put it in this near-perfect home. That’s right, he created Adam, then the garden, THEN the tree that ruined humanity. This is where, for lack of better reasoning, Christian theologists invent the concept of “testing” and “freewill”. Logic says that The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge were after-thoughts and not necessary to the “life” of man.
Then God settles Adam in as caretaker of this garden and gives him a warning. Ge2:16 “…from every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. [17] But as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.”
One, notice the other special tree, The Tree of Life is not, apparently, currently off limits. I think this passage could very well be taken to mean that eating was not mandatory, but for pleasure. Eating for us is a matter of life and death, no food and you will eventually die. This passage introduces the first concept of death, so it begs the question, “Did death even exist before eating of The Tree of Knowledge?” Even if you cannot fathom that concept, you have to wonder, did Adam have any concept of what death is? There is no timeline, but I think it can easily be rationalized that this was Adam’s first day of life; he had no experience with anything. In my opinion, this is a meaningless threat.
Then God saw that Adam was lonely and he had him name all the animals… THEN he gave him Eve.
Ge2:24 “That is why man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and they must become one flesh. [25] And both of them continued to be naked, the man and his wife, and yet they did not become ashamed.”No, shame happens in chapter 3 after they eat the fruit…
Ok….Father and mother are meaningless terms because nothing up to this point has procreated. “They must become one flesh.” This, I cannot seem to wrap my head around. If they were in fact naked, but didn’t realize it or didn’t care, how would this happen? One would rationalize that “being ashamed” comes from knowledge of the sexual nature of the exposed body parts. How can they go forth and populate without coitus? Did God intend man and woman to rut like animals strictly on a pheromone-induced whim like the majority of the animal kingdom? Of course, man was given the command to “be fruitful and become many” before he even had a body.. 2 days before he had a body and who knows how many days before Eve had a body. How was this to occur? One could say that God maybe meant in a spiritual, soul-type sense.. but then that would mean that man does, in fact, create man (and man’s soul) and thus negates God being “The Father”, instead… more like Grandfather….
Perhaps “become one flesh” doesn’t imply fornication at all. Perhaps this refers to the nature of a man and wife working as one, as a team, one being an extension of the other. If this is the case, this makes sense. However, it still causes me to question how man would procreate. Perhaps man was not intended to procreate at all.. Perhaps God’s initial intention was to continue creating man has he had Adam and Eve, and merely intended Adam and Eve to successfully raise them up and send them into the world… Hmmmm?
Now we’re at Ge chapter 3.
The serpent questions Eve, “Did God really say you couldn’t eat from every tree in the garden?” Eve answers,[Ge3:2] “Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. [3] But as for eating the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘YOU must not eat from it, no, YOU must not touch it that YOU do not die’.
[4]At this the serpent said to the woman; “YOU positively will not die. [5]For God knows that in the very day of YOUR eating from it YOUR eyes are bound to be opened and YOU are bound to be like God, KNOWING good and bad.”
The text does not tell who exactly told Eve this rule. Remember she was not present when God told Adam.
So Eve saw that the tree had fruit, and it looked good to eat. So she began picking it, then eating it… and she didn’t drop dead. She then offered the fruit to Adam.
[Ge3:6]”….. Afterward she gave some also to her husband when with her and he began eating it. [7] Then the eyes of both of them became opened and they began to realize that they were naked. Hence they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.”
She gave it to her husband and he ate it. It doesn’t say that he saw her pick it, and it doesn’t say that he asked where she’d gotten it. It also doesn’t say that he was shocked by the change that came over him, nor in subsequent verses that he was shocked to find out that she was tricked by the serpent… BUT, in truth… was she tricked???? There eyes did open, and in fact, they didn’t die.
Now some would claim here that God was talking about their immortal soul, BUT if you believe the rest of the Bible, then the immortal soul is in jeopardy of eternal torment or sleep (or heaven), but never death. (Even the later passages that say "death", this is referred to as a resting period before the resurrection and it is implied that this "death" is not an end.)
So God comes and they hide and he exclaims, “HOW DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE NAKED, BUT BY EATING FROM THE TREE???” And Adam says, “She made me do it.” And Eve says, “The serpent deceived me.” (Though again, I have to point out that he was more truthful than God in this situation.) So God punishes the serpent by …. making him be…. a serpent, and declaring that man and snake would forever be enemies.
Then God punishes Eve. “[Ge3:16] To the woman he said; “I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy, in birth pangs you will bring forth children, and your cravings will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.”
Increase? How can you increase what never was? Because we know that, at this point, Eve had never “known a man” nor been pregnant or bore any children. So, again, how do you increase what never was? By instigating any measure of it. That's right, now she must simply bear children.
“in birth pangs you will bring forth children”… Again, this strengthens my earlier assertion that man was never intended to procreate.
[Ge3:20] After this Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she had to become the mother of everyone living.
Then God turns to Adam and says that now he will have to work for and cultivate his own food, then adds, [Ge3:19] “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Being that this is spoken during God’s punishment of Adam, I think that it can be reasonably interpreted to mean that NOW Adam has to face mortality. Therefore, this strengthens my claim that when being warned of the consequence of eating from The Tree of Knowledge, Adam would have had no concept of what death meant.
Then [Ge3:22] “And Jehovah God went on to say; “Here the man has become like on of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also from the Tree of Life and eat and live to time indefinite, --“ [23] With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. [24] And so he drove the man out and posted at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubs and the flaming blade of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the Tree of Life.”
So, first question…why does the Tree of Life matter now? Because man is no longer immortal.
Second, why does God now post a guard for the tree? Because God made a mistake thinking that his warning against the Tree of Knowledge would be enough to keep Adam away from it and he doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice…
That’s right, God made a mistake, meaning that God is fallible.
There is no logical argument against this.
God made angels. God made man. God made a garden for man to live in. God put the Tree of Knowledge in Man’s home. The Angel tempted Man to eat the fruit creating the Original Sin. God rectified this sin by creating the Christ solution.
Now, supposedly, the Messiah had to be born a man, lead a sinless life, and had to die to pay the ransom of our sins.
These are the conflicts I see:
1) We're supposedly all God's children, but for some reason God had to be explicitly involved in the Christ's conception. Therefore, he would not be the same as you and I.
2) There is some half-assed concept that this had to be a miracle birth in order to give the Christ some sort of authority as the "Son of God" to "die for our sins", yet this defies the premise that he was the perfect human sacrifice.
3) If you assume that the royal "we"s and "us"s throughout the Bible refer to the Holy Trinity crap, then the Christ was "part" of God before his conception, before his death, and before his resurrection. Therefore, his "divinity" shouldn't be in question.
The Christ, whether Jesus or not, would not -in theory- be human.
How can Jesus be called human if he was in fact a demigod?
Sure, human body, but half of his DNA was either Divine...
Or missing, but that it scientifically impossible because he was after all a viable being.
Or he was the product of asexual reproduction.. But that isn’t scientifically possible because asexual reproduction results in an offspring that is identical to the parent being, and Jesus was a man, not a woman.
So, if you go with the idea that Jesus was the Christ and Messiah... then he was anything but human. Therefore, his being perfect and sinless is meaningless because he was... already... Divine.
The whole premise of the Death and Resurrection of the Christ is that he was “the perfect human sacrifice…”
Without The Original Sin, there is no need for the Christ. And I contend that the life and death of the Christ does nothing to rectify The Original Sin.
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