Original Sin Can Go To Hell

[TheHuckster]

...

Very well said. I think when evangelican Christians harp too much on the "punishment" and fire-and-brimstone aspect of sin, it takes away from Jesus' true message: That while our God-given free will allows us to sin, if we fess up to it and make our best effort to avoid it, we will be absolved from it.

[HYHYBT]

Basic Christianity, most condensed: God loves EVERYBODY.

He wouldn't have bothered making us otherwise. If your theological details are incompatible with that, you've got it wrong someplace.

[Krysalis]

It's in my personal opinion that, unless I can prove myself to a lineage to one of the tribes of Israel, the Original Sin does not apply to me.

There's plenty of references in the bible to count against the ideas that Adam and Eve were the parents of all humanity, only the Israel tribes. References making Cain sound like he was leaving the presence of a local god, rather than an omnipresent one, and knowledge given to various people who went into other lands to not do as the others do, for it is their laws, not the laws of the Judes.

Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. I just like reading about religions, and eager to learn if I'm wrong. I like learning.

[protege]

Wait, wait... doesn't that mean that mankind evolved because of Adam and Eve's actions?

You bastard...


Seriously though, I have a feeling that they'd start screaming about that too But, I do see where the Original Sin crap is coming from. I went to a Catholic grade school growing up. So much emphasis was spent on "do this, or bad shit will happen" type stuff. It's not about beliefs. Rather, it's about control. Think about it, the early Church was trying to assert itself--they had to put the fear of God in people so they could control them. How else could the Church have become so powerful for so long in Europe?

[bunnyboy]

Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere. I just like reading about religions, and eager to learn if I'm wrong. I like learning.

Only by a little. Most non-religious folk who study the pre-exile Hebrews think they were henotheists (other gods than ours also exist) who followed a local deity, and went further than most and went from monoaltry (worship of one god above others) to monotheism after the Babylonian captivity and early Persian occupation.

There's generally three points to this.

Pre-captivity
Captivity-Occupational
Post Hosean

Its why some books (including the Torah/Pentateuch) have a very half-monotheist feel, as the stories were either written or compiled at the time of Hosea.

As for original sin it has a very tenuous base in the Bible, at best. Even then it might be argued that the sin is of Noah's children, which was a bloodline curse, as opposed to the traditional one, which lacks one requisite for an actual sin, free will.

It wasn't even a true doctrine until after Constantine, merely a popular one.