Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Jan 20, 2020 10:17 pm
Greatest I am wrote: ↑Sun Jan 19, 2020 12:26 am
Was Jesus born with Original Sin?
If so, then he could not be the perfect sacrifice.
If not, then he had no human side and was pure god, and god cannot die which, makes the sacrifice a lie.
Could these facts be why the Jews have no Original Sin concept in their religion?
Is that also why Jews rejected Jesus as their messiah, or did they just recognize the immorality of anyone using a scapegoat and the abdication of one’s responsibility for their actions, which is against all moral legal systems?
Why have Christians embraced such an immoral and illegal concept?
Regards
DL
"Original Sin" itself evolved to lose its original meaning.
I believe that Genesis' use of the
Adam-and-Eve myth was to rationalize why humans became intellectual yet still suffer real pain and sufferring contrary to the
apparent conception of some source that would 'justly' create us. The
Problem of Evil is what had to have run through the minds of our ancestors early on. Why do we eat meat to survive? Why do all animals anywhere require
killing anything in order to survive unless some things are more or less 'virtuous' by Nature?
The "original sin" was a general acceptance by most of the
varied cultures meeting in the Middle East in ancient times which was about the curse of being responsible to discovering Nature's secrets. As children, we spend most of our time desiring to being adults in the same way that humans as a whole wanting to be intellectually as wise to understand how Nature itself operates. The curse derives from the
truth that our existence is oddly 'evil' due to suffering, pain, and death existing necessarily for anything to be 'good'. How or why should be anything be considered even "good", if Nature itself is indifferent to values themselves?
Thus, many just presumed that whatever 'Nature' was, humanity's ever growing curiousity to want to KNOW and make rational sense of it makes us equal to BECOMING the 'gods' themselves with all the RESPONSIBILITIES of that knowledge. It's the
curiousity-killed-the-kitten type of argument. We may think that it is 'good', for instance, to want to discover why Santa Claus exists, whether there is a North Pole, and how we can secretly make it on to his "Good List" as children. But what we end up learning is that Santa Claus is simply a pretensious story adults ('gods') created to define in value of some set of behaviors as 'good' and others as 'evil'. The 'discovery' THAT Santa Claus is not real
IS the
curse! And this transition period makes us then responsible to be as matured intellectual beings required to maintain the well being of our young by continuing to do whatever it takes to prolong our children from growing up too quickly and discovering this unfortunate reality of the indifference of Nature. We are cursed to recognize that we
have to maintain the lie of Santa Claus if only to provide justice for ANY morality itself.
So, as per the opening of Genesis, when the source of creation operates, whatever this Nature is, it justifies every act of creation as 'good' upon every stage. [and thus the root justification of choosing the word "God" as derived from the value, "good".]
For your particular points about the extension of Christianity today interpreting "Original Sin" as some kind of
crime we are genetically born into, your arguments correctly point out some of the flaws in this thinking. It IS contradictory for those presuming Jesus as God taking a kind of vacation by becoming a vulnerable human being with its 'sin' and then thinking He is 'without sin' by His virtue of being God. He would be cheating by insisting he has virtue above other human beings simultaneously as being 'innocent' of sin.
The modern belief that you are referencing is to the Protestant origins only. Where the original story was about why we had to harm anyone or anything for survival, or why we had to suffer ourselves and eventually die, the modern evolution turned the 'sins' of Nature of suffering and death into HOPE of a latter life that relieves us of all our condition. For the Protestors against the Catholic Church, they didn't think it fair that people should be simply able to BUY the get-out-of-jail-free card as "Indulgences" represented. Instead, they reinterpreted Jesus as a 'scapegoat' who didn't bias one simply because they were rich. ANYONE should be able to get access to reconciliation for all suffering and pain they endured in life. Thus, the concept of turning the original 'sin' as a crime of Nature into a crime of Humanity instead, permitted the argument that Jesus didn't merely 'save' people from eternal death, but also saves anyone regardless of apparent worth and sufferring on Earth to be EQUAL among ALL humans, not JUST the Royalty, Wealthier, or more worthy in the light of some afterlife judgement.
By the original 'Jesus' (--> from "I am" via the Greek, "I Zeus" meaning, "I am the same" --> "I am the of the same kind of the 'Titan' beings before me) sacrifice was more literal of its own Nature, not humanity. For the first non-Jewish Christians, this was a selling point that meant the non-Jew could has the SAME 'god' as the Jews and Jesus was the referent 'hero' willing to first speak freely about letting in non-Jews in to the same privilege. The sacrifice (as a mythical-historical being) was that Jesus 'saved' non-Jews by sacrificing his own prior Jewish-only religion. It democratised the idea that anyone and everyone is EQUAL in significance by Nature to Nature itself. You don't need to be a King to be 'saved' because we are all 'kings' in Nature's eyes.
Well thought out.
I pulled this to comment on since you seem to recognize the bible as pure myth.
" How or why should be anything be considered even "good", if Nature itself is indifferent to values themselves? "
I do not see nature as indifferent as I see it, inadvertently and not by sentient intent, wanting to produce all life for it's best possible end. This fact is demonstrable.
I see all people to people evil as caused by the fact that we are evolving creatures and must both compete and cooperate so as to not go extinct. Here is the longer explanation. It was written for a Christian.
=======================
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by putting forward their free will argument and placing all the blame on mankind.
That usually sounds like ----God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy. Such statements simply avoid God's culpability as the author and creator of human nature.
Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all do evil/sin by nature then, the evil/sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not do evil/sin. Can we then help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil and sin is all human generated and in this sense, I agree with Christians, but for completely different reasons. Evil is mankind’s responsibility and not some imaginary God’s. Free will is something that can only be taken. Free will cannot be given not even by a God unless it has been forcibly withheld.
Much has been written to explain evil and sin but I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created. Without intent to do evil, no act should be called evil.
In secular courts, this is called mens rea. Latin for an evil mind or intent and without it, the court will not find someone guilty even if they know that they are the perpetrator of the act.
Evil then is only human to human when they know they are doing evil and intend harm.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil, at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, you should see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us. Wherever it came from, God or nature, without evolution we would go extinct. We must do good and evil.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
This link speak to theistic evolution.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-new ... 66/?no-ist
If theistic evolution is true, then the myth of Eden should be read as a myth and there is not really any original sin.
Doing evil then is actually forced on us by evolution and the need to survive. Our default position is to cooperate or to do good. I offer this clip as proof of this. You will note that we default to good as it is better for survival.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBW5vdhr_PA
Can you help but do evil? I do not see how. Do you?
And if you cannot, why would God punish you?
Regards
DL