We’re all familiar with the story of “original sin” the first sin which stains the souls of every child from birth. But the entire story is not only ridiculous, it’s logically impossible.
The story goes that Adam and Eve sinned the first sin when they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As the story goes God told Adam and Even that they could not eat from the tree. He warned them that they would surely die if they did. They did it anyway, disobeying God and, thus, the original sin was committed. It’s all pretty straight forward, cut and dried. Until, that is, you look at what else was going on back then.
Remember, Adam and Eve were naked in the garden, and to look upon nudity was also a sin. But they didn’t realize that they were naked until they ate the fruit, thus gaining the knowledge of good and evil, so even though they saw each other naked, which was a sin, it was not a sin for them because they didn’t know what a sin was and, thus, could not sin.
And right there is the dilemma. If they had to eat the fruit before they could gain the knowledge, and had to have the knowledge before they could commit a sin then how could eating the fruit have, itself, been a sin? My JW friend answered that by saying, “Because God told them it was.” But no, he didn’t. He said not to eat it. He said that they would die if they did. He never said that it was a sin. But there was certainly no reason to doubt the word of God. Or was there?
You see, God, being tired after a long work week, wanted a night out on the town. But he could not leave his beloved creation alone in perfection because if he did that nothing bad could possibly happen to screw up his perfect plan. So he had to find a babysitter. Gabriel was out. He was the designated driver. Michael couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a party without Michael. And either one of those in charge would have just made perfection more perfect anyway. So God finally settled on Satan to watch his beloved creation. What could possibly go wrong?
God is no more out of the driveway when Satan starts lying to God’s new creation. He tells them that the fruit is good and that they will not die. Given that God had just said the opposite one would be forgiven for assuming that Adam and Eve (or was it Steve? I forget) might have some misgivings about this information. But remember, they had not yet eaten the fruit, so they did not know what a sin was. This means that they did not know what a lie was. They simply did not have the tools to understand that Satan was lying to them because, without that knowledge, they would have had no concept of deception. So how would they have perceived what Satan was telling them? Given the understanding at their disposal they could have only possibly perceived it as “new information”. God said A and A was true. But then Satan said B. Not understanding the concept of a lie, B was also true. Both things were true, yet they conflicted. So the newest information is true right now while the older information was true at the time.
So the concept of original sin is twice impossible. Not that any of you here ever doubted that, and most sane Christians take Genesis as little more than a nice story anyway. But for Bible literalists it’s just one more thing they have to avoid thinking about too much. Remember, as a Bible literalist, if you disprove one tiny detail then it’s all wrong, which is the source of their warped understanding of how science works and the reason they believe that if they can find a tiny flaw with the theory of evolution the entire theory must be thrown out and replaced with “God did it”.
