This is one of those strange concepts that we all just kind of accept as what many people believe, but if you actually examine it you’ll find that it really is some confusing and contradictory nonsense. Note that I will be explaining this from the perspective of how it has been explained to me. There may be some explanation or belief which makes a whole lot more sense than this, but I have never had anyone take exception with this explanation as it’s a convenient way to explain away pesky questions, if you don’t think about it too much.
This is my understanding of original sin as it was explained to me many times. In the beginning Adam and Eve walked through the Garden naked. To see another person’s nakedness is, of course, a sin. However, Adam and Eve did not know what a sin was and were thus incapable of sin at this point. Essentially you cannot sin until you know what sin is because sin is something you do in defiance of God, it is not something you do accidentally. But God had told them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so when they ate from the tree they defied God, which was a sin.
I can see a few obvious problems with this. The first one is pretty obvious. The explanation explains that seeing each other naked was not a sin because they didn’t understand what a sin was, but then it goes on to say that they committed a different sin. Why does that explanation apply to one case but not the other? I remember somewhere in the Bible that all sin is the same in the eyes of the Lord. So if you don’t know what sin is then why is one sin impossible and the other inevitable.
Now, I do kind of understand the mindset here. In the second case God specifically told them not to do something and they did it anyway, defying his will. So it wasn’t just incidental, it was an act of open defiance of God’s commands. As human beings we tend to see things in degrees, not as absolutes. Walking around in ignorance is a much lower degree than knowingly doing something. The incidental thing was not a sin, but the purposeful thing was. A nice neat little package to wrap it up in. At least, until you think about it a little more.
You see, God did tell them not to eat from the tree. He told them that they would die if they did. So of course at this point eating from the tree could be seen as a defiance of God and, thus, a sin even though they were otherwise incapable of sin. I will concede that point as a possibility, though there are still arguments to be made. But they did not eat from the tree “at that point.” God said not to do it, they had no intention of doing it. But the next thing that happened was that Lucifer came to them and told them that they should eat from the tree, that they would not die and that it was good. And this completely blows away the argument that they were defying God because after that, by the explanation for why seeing each other naked wasn’t a sin, they could not have been openly, purposely defying God by eating from the tree.
To see why this is we have to go back to the first excuse for why sin was impossible. They had no concept of sin. They didn’t know what a sin was. They didn’t understand sin and, so, could not sin. But they also couldn’t even conceive of the possibility of sinful behavior. So there is absolutely no way they could have possibly understood that Lucifer was lying. They didn’t have a concept of a lie, dishonesty or mistrust. There was no reason for them not to accept every word he said as “truth” because truth was all they knew. With that in mind it would have been absolutely impossible for them not to be tricked by Lucifer. How could you know he was lying if you didn’t know lying was a thing? So if they didn’t know it was a lie, how would they have seen that? God was telling the truth and so was Lucifer. They had said opposite things, yet both things were true. There is only one possible way I can think of that they could have interpreted that. What God told them was true, but now what Lucifer is telling them is true. The nature of the tree changed and now they should eat the fruit. So it was not a defiance of God to eat the fruit, it was doing what they were supposed to do as they understood it.
In this story, by the explanations given for why nakedness was not a sin, Lucifer went way overboard with this one. He could have just said, “Yo. God said you’re supposed to eat the fruit right now.” and they would have fallen for it. It would have literally been that simple to convince them to do something. Simply say, “God said…” and that’s a commandment from God if you have no concept of a lie.
