While “sin” may have several different definitions, for this examination, sin is defined as a transgression against God, an action that is offensive to God, going against God’s will or intent. A transgression against another person, or an animal is not a sin, unless it violates God’s will, or is offensive to God himself.
Do you believe that we are intellectually close to God? To make a comparison, if God is to us like we are to other living things, would we be like other animals? Or when compared to god perhaps you think we are more like insects, or even just an amoeba or other single cell forms of life? On a scale of 1 to 100, if god is 100, Where would you put us when compared to God’s intellect? While these questions are rhetorical, it is clear that the prevailing beliefs among various Christians and Muslims alike would place us very low on the scale, some would say we don’t even rate a 1.
A person with an ant farm doesn’t ever feel offended by the actions or beliefs of any of his ants. Even in the case when he or she may be trying to influence the ants’ behavior and the ants aren’t performing as desired, one wouldn’t get offended.
Additionally if a bear, shark or a lion tries to eat me, or if any other animal should attack me, I hardly think it is trying to offend, nor do I take offense, even in the case that the animal holds mistaken beliefs about me or my wishes.
Our legal system understands that we can’t hold young children to the same standards as adults when determining culpability, and we apply that to the mentally ill too, as we recognize that a person has to have the capacity to understand what they are doing is wrong.
How can anything that one animal does to another animal in the wild or even on a farm possibly be offensive to anybody, even to the farmer? By extension, how is it possible for one of gods flock to offend god by how he treats another member of the flock? Even in the case when people treat each other badly, clearly any people who are affected (including emotionally) by the behavior in question can be offended. How does this act offend god? What about when the offending person believes they are acting in accordance with god’s will?
You raise us up to the level of God when you think we can hurt him physically or emotionally offend him by our actions or beliefs.
The concept of sin is by its very definition referring to the behaviors that offend god or hurt god in some way by not acting according to his desires. If you think we are like an amoeba when compared to the intelligence and understanding of god, then we cannot possibly commit a sin against god.
The whole concept of sin is obviously bullshit and it gives both Christians and Muslims a tool to oppress others and claim to be righteous and in accordance with God’s wishes. For believers to accept that their idea of god is a being with the intelligence understanding and power to create everything in the universe according to his own design, and at the same time they think this same god would be offended by the actions and beliefs of humans on earth shows active cognitive dissonance. Why would a god design us to have brains that reason things out on their own and sometimes lead to behaviors that this super powerful being finds so offensive that they deserve eternal punishment torture and damnation?
The concept of Original Sin, as described in the bible is equally problematic when looked at with a modern understanding of morality. As a society we have moved beyond the obviously immoral notions of holding children responsible for the transgressions of a parent, or of substitutional atonement. Yet according to the bible, god has imposed an infinite punishment for the finite crime of disobedience, and, has declared all the descendants of Adam will suffer the punishment. Before Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, learning the difference between right and wrong, they could not know that what they were doing was wrong. Since the ability to understand why they were wrong is part of our modern understanding of culpability, and that was lacking according to the story, punishing them for what they could not understand is like punishing a mentally retarded person for not understanding the impact of something they’ve done. It’s wrong.
There are those who would claim that the God of the bible is so advanced when compare to us that we can’t possibly understand his ways. To them I call bullshit as I find it is actually quite easy to explain God’s actions in terms of the bronze age morality that the bible stories account for us. Certainly, if you apply Occam’s razor, it is a far simpler explanation that the source of this primitive morality is the crude tribal mentality of the human authors of the story.
For the last portion of this examination into original sin all that’s required is for you not to deny what science has shown to be true in the matter of genetic bottlenecking. According to what we now understand, it simply isn’t possible that there was ever a time when there were just two human beings alive, and a minimum population would be at least 50 individuals. The problems with limiting the gene pool are well understood and evolutionary biology teaches us that entire populations of primates evolved, not just two individuals. This means that story of the two first humans must be a myth.
If you accept the science, then you understand that means Adam and Eve could not have been the literal first two humans. You must recognize that the story about the “fall of man” and every human born after, being a descendant of Adam and eve, is a scientific impossibility. If the whole point of Jesus’ sacrifice is for all who accept it to be saved from the punishment for an original sin that they did not commit, and, as shown scientifically, was just an ancient myth, then those who are “saved” have only been saved from a mythical punishment that was never a real danger in the first place.
This is a link to yet another example of people using their religion as a tool to oppress others.
