Original Sin

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That too, but: okay god punished adam and eve for disobeying him. But why then are we, the descendants of Adam and Eve. still being punished for their disobedience?

God is a prick?

ruveyn

Well its the same question we were discussing at the begining of the thread.
Why are we descendants being punished for what Adam and Eve did?

Modern fundies take the story aboslutely literally.
But even the ancients, long before Darwin, were aware of OT's problems with external logic.
On top of that ( as the sisters-as-brides problem discussed above shows) before you even start to worry about the story's external logic- it has enough crippling problems with internal logic.


So its obvious that the story was never even meant to be taken literally.

Its a metaphor.

But a metaphor for what?

When you leave the womb you are not aware.The world is mass of sensory confusion.
But at some point between infancy and childhood you become aware of the world, aware of opposites, and aware of self and non-self. At that moment you become attached to self - your own ego. And THAT is "the original sin"-attachment to self- and seperation from God. And in that instant you are inslantly punished because attachment to self is also the cause of all suffering.
So we all bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and we are all are then instantly expelled from the Garden of Eden. We dont become mortal, we just become aware of our mortality- and aware of other threats to our vanity and to other attachments.

So the story is not about one historic event. It has noithing to do with the origin of the human race as a species- its about what we all go through to become human.

Or not.
But thats my exigesis of what the story is about.
So you can believe in Original Sin AND keep your hands off biology class because the Garden of Eden story has nothing to do with the origin of our, nor of any other species. but is about the unchanging human condition.

I believe in original sin though i am not a Christian. Very much like the orevious poster, Naturalplastic, I think that Genesis and the sin described therein describe the conditions for believing in and having a neurotypical self. I think that this "sin" is is a queezy autoerotic relationship between parts of the self, as described by Freud and Derrida.

It occurred to me today that autistic finger waving and third person language, and even self abuse, may be part of a refusal to participate in original sin, and form a neurotypical self. In other words "Autistics are right", at least in a moral sense. I blogged about it but I may write it up more formally, since it might even be useful, or positive. ("Autism and avoiding the Apple: Autistic abjuration of original sin")

Finally a question. I hope that this is not offensive. I was wondering why, if true autistics might "say no to the apple." It might be a particular abhorrence of incest. I have also noted that there is a prevalence of young mothers and older fathers among parents of autistics, and I wondered if mothers of autistic folks might be, compared to mothers of neurotypicals, hot? That might warn autistics what they'd be getting themselves into at an earlier age.

I realize this thread is over 4-years-old----and, I've only read the OP and a couple of posts on this last page----but, I wanted to add my two cents.....

I've never thought of it as our paying for Adam and Eve's sin----I've always thought of it as our paying LIKE Adam and Eve did; IOW, any individual who doesn't believe-in God / stops believing-in God, or trusts someone else above God, will be punished for that sin.

Was Jesus' sacrifice retro-active; even to Adam & Eve? If Adam & Even can accept Jesus as their Lord and his sacrifice, does that rub out their Original Sin and this whole nonsense?

No, just cheap over-sweet cider. I believe in Arbour Mist too.

I don't think so.

This here below is I believe called the Apocalypse (the unveiling), one of many, so please read with care. If I am right about what I write about it may even cause those on the spectrum to have symptoms so it may be best left unread.


1) God created adam man and woman Genesis 1:27, Genesis 5:2

2) So what was Eve!? Eve was a "helpmeet" or comforter made of a "side", or "side chamber" (not "rib") of adam. We assume that Eve was the first woman, but not only is this denied by Genesis, the verb used when God closes adam's chest is that used generally to close something in. Eve was in adam. Many psychologists (Freud, Mead, Bakhtin, Adam Smith, Lacan, Hermans, Kempen, Markus, Derrida, Jefferson) claim that humans need some sort of helper in order to see themselves and have a self. This internal other, I think, is the biblical Eve.

3) As made clearer in the Quran, but hinted at in the bible, Adam and Eve become involved sexually, and whisper to each other (c.f. Derrida's The Postcard). In other words we have a homo erotic relationship with ourselves. This is too unpleasant to cognise so the relationship and Eve becomes unconscious.

4) Eve now grown old is called the "Whore of Babylon". She stares out of our eyes. The crimson hills that she is upon are our self body views of our nose cheeks brow.

5) We can be redeemed if instead of whispering to her, we take Jesus into our hearts and whisper to him instead. Since Jesus is in so much pain on the cross, we whisper very little and live in the light, his light as he looks down upon us. Jesus became the new paraclete, Greek for "helpmeet" I believe, upon his death. Jesus can stop the whispering.

6) The Quran is good on "whispering" which corresponds to thought as described by Freud's “Mystic Writing Pad” (1925), postcards and "hearing ourselves speak" in Derrida, and Vygotsky's egocentric speech grown quiet, and lately NASA's thought as sub vocal speech:

From a NASA page
"NASA scientists have begun to computerize human, silent reading using nerve signals in the throat that control speech. In preliminary experiments, NASA scientists found that small, button-sized sensors, stuck under the chin and on either side of the ‘Adam’s apple,’ could gather nerve signals, send them to a processor and then to a computer program that translates them into words.

"What is analyzed is silent, or sub-auditory, speech, such as when a person silently reads or talks to himself," said Chuck Jorgensen (pictured),"

The evil is in us. In our Adam's apple. It is our thought, or quiet self-speech. It is the way that we narrate ourselves and the 'person' that we narrate ourselves to. I think that not only is Eve a pretend female but also based upon our mothers, so that makes what we do:
Incestuous (mother child)
Paedophile (intergenerational love)
Homosexual (there is only one sex present, splitting itself in two)
Masturbatory (for the same reason)

It seems to me that autistic people may refuse to do this grotesque thing, for good reason, so they never, or less, develop a normal original-sinful-self.

One of the reasons I think this is because of the apparent prevalence of hot autistic moms. If one senses early where the self is heading, one may refuses to get one, into it. C.f. the tragic video (or don't, it is heartbreaking) "Broken Nights and Lost Days: Inside World of Severe Autism" The autistic teenager in the video may be beating his brains out for my sins.

No I don't accept the doctrine of original sin , for reasons outlined in this video .

The rabbi seems to be saying that we have original sin, but that the good Jew admits it and does not pass the buck.