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One of the many tenets of Christianity that I strongly object to is the notion of Original Sin. Adam and Eve transgressed against the wishes of God, thus we (their descendants) are in need of saving, hence our reliance on Jesus and his crucifixion. It depends on the premise that responsibility and blame for evil acts are passed down from parent to child. For this post I will not focus on why such an idea is psychologically harmful (especially to children), although that would be a valid avenue of criticism. Instead, I think it would be more effective to just show why it is wrong.
Imagine that a man rapes and impregnates a woman. The rapist then escapes the authorities while the woman is left with child. Over the nine month gestation, the police hunt the rapist to no avail. As the mother gives birth to a son, the police get a lead on the infant’s biological father. Three weeks later the police raid the rapist’s hideout only to find that he had committed suicide via drug overdose mere hours before they arrived. At the scene they find a note where the rapist describes his life of murder, crime, and hedonism. Further, he wrote that after having committed all these atrocities, there were no more thrills left for him. And so he decided he best end his life pleasantly, lest someone else do it for him in a much less favorable manner.
What we have here is someone who has done many evil things, done nothing to make up for his misdeeds, and has escaped all punishment. He leaves behind two victims who are denied all forms of restitution, justice, and closure. This is, of course, one of the worst kinds of situations and I don’t pretend to know a good way to deal with it. But one way I know to be wrong would be to apply the principle of original sin.
If responsibility and blame are indeed passed from parent to child, then we need only go to the infant son to extract justice. If the sins of the father are the sins of the son, then the three week old baby is accountable for his mother’s rape. If original sin held true, the righteous thing to do would be to punish the newborn just as we would punish the rapist had he been caught.
If you agree with me that the previous paragraph’s conclusions are not only absurd, but monstrously unjust and immoral, then the same must be said of the Christian notion of original sin. No fair and just adjudicator would ever hold someone responsible for something that they did not do, let alone for something that happened before they came into existence. But that is what Christianity says that their god does. (a great reason to start indoctrinating your children early – ed. )
Here is another quick thought experiment. Think of the worst thing you have ever done in your life. Then categorize that misdeed with a word or short phrase like ‘neglect’ or ‘assault’, or ‘theft’, or ‘betrayal’. Now, would a just punishment for your category of transgression involve crucifixion? Do you think it would require someone to have their hands and feet nailed to planks of wood and then slowly, agonizingly asphyxiate to make up for any of the offences I just mentioned? Absolutely not. The fact is that no one human has ever done anything that deserved anything close to that kind of torture. Even if you believe that the absolute worst of history’s monsters deserve brutal punishment, those rare instances compose a negligible percentage of the population. The point being that humans, as a whole, are not evil beings and we certainly don’t deserve crucifixion or any other torturous punishment by default. But Christianity says that we are and that we do.
Of course, it has to. If we were not responsible for evil deeds done before our existence and we did not deserve a cruel fate, then we would have no need of a savior, no need for a messiah, and no need of Jesus or Christianity. If we are on the whole morally higher than rapists and child molestors (empirical evidence says we are), and if we are answerable only to our own deeds (reason and justice say we are) then the idea of original sin is aboration of truth, a mockery of rationality, and an assault on morality.
Ten minutes that you will not regret spending of your limited time here on earth :)
Today started poorly.
After a woefully insufficient amount of sleep, I dragged my body out of bed, ate something for breakfast (I think it was yogurt) and drove off to face the day. Half an hour later, through the cold and bitter morning air, I trudged groggily across the six blocks from my parking space to school. Then, something blog-worthy happened.
Halfway to my destination I was greeted by two ladies, one offering me a publication. “Would you like to read a bit about discrimination and racism? It’s an awareness piece, something you can read in your free time.” Now, even in my barely conscious state, a red flag went off inside my head. This was suspiciously close to the M.O. of religion panderers. My sluggish mind did its best to make a quick assessment. The messengers? Not in white tops with name-tags, no backpacks, no religious symbols. The media? Booklet covered with the faces of people from varying racial backgrounds and the headline “Prejudice and Discrimination: Why? How Can You Cope?” Again, no religious symbols in sight.
With my suspicions abated and my interest in social justice piqued, I accepted the magazine, muttered a clumsy farewell, and continued my gloomy trek towards campus. It was not until this evening that I found out that I had been duped. I opened up the booklet to find that it was indeed religious propaganda, though it did not fully reveal itself as such until the fourth page. As I read those first four pages and the reality of the situation bore down on me, my initial disappointment was surprisingly short lived. Indeed, it was quickly replaced with mirth as I considered the implications of this ordeal.
Let’s break it down. We had two believers handing out pamphlets designed to keep other believers believing and to help non-believers to start believing. That’s an old story that’s been done billions of times over. What was novel, and the cause of my amusement, was the guile of it all. It used to be that ‘Bringers of The Word’ adorned attention grabbing robes, stood atop platforms, and called out their proclamation with fever. These messengers, on the other hand, wore non-descript, commonplace clothing, did not mention God or any religious affiliation, and quickly walked away once their media was distributed. The booklet itself was similarly shrouded. The cover lent itself to the assumption that the publication’s sole concern was the issue of prejudice. As I mentioned earlier, it took three pages of warming up before the religious slant fully made itself known.
This level of duplicity is reserved for actions we consider amoral, shameful, or just plain wrong. It was like a child who doesn’t lie, but artfully avoids telling the whole truth, then runs away while the adults are left to discover the facts of the matter. It brought me joy to see believers (not to mention their publications) displaying this kind of abashed behaviour. It means that somewhere, deep within their subconscious, the realization of wrongdoing is starting to take hold. Sure, they are very far from consciously being aware of and admitting their erroneous ways of delusion and misanthropy, but the point is that they have at least started down that path.
Sooner or later, they will ask themselves “If what I’m doing is good, then why must I be deceptive about it and why does it make me feel bad?” And suddenly they will understand. They will know that what they are doing can’t be good. They will see that “It says so in the Bible ->Why believe the Bible?->It’s the word of god->How do you know?->It says so in the Bible” is circular and cannot support any belief system. They will recognize that their previous distinctions of ‘saved vs damned’, ‘righteous vs blasphemous’, ‘believers vs heathens’, ‘saints vs infidels’, and ‘chosen vs forsaken’ were all false. They will drop their delusions and the world will enter an era of rationality and prosperity. And when that happens, they will truly be ready and mentally equipped to fight social injustices like discrimination.
If you have not noticed religion tends to get the short end of the stick here at DWR. Whether it is being put to philosophical test or really just being mocked. This post much more in the later than the former category. You really just have to stand back in awe of the stupid that is out there.
Today’s flavour is Turkish stupidity. Religion is the great equalizer when it comes to being absofrackinglutely retarded. I quote…
Dr. Oktar Babuna and Cihat Gündoğdu tried to “disprove” arguments of the scientists through harunyahya.tv. Supposedly Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) would participate in the program, but he did not.
“Babuna and Gündoğdu presented same arguments as in last week’s TV program and referred to Koran to try disprove evolution, as well as they maintained an aggressive attitude. Followers of Harun Yahya, mostly remarkable for their finery and calm attitude, depicted Darwin as “wine addict, diseased personality, who wrote book and loafed around the ship with yelling”. The creationists described evolutionists as “so called scientists” and they “criticized” concepts of evolution with certain words such as “comedy, fiction, ridiculous absurdity”. “
Okay, well besmirch Darwin all you would like. I’m sure those with the allah/jeebus complex do not mind if similar standards or arguing are applied to their godhead. I’m sure their response would be measured… The evidence that supports evolution is mountainous. Refuting evolution would require conclusive evidence that evolution is wrong as a theory. And no, your magic book that says evolution isn’t fact won’t cut it.
“The creationist claimed that evolution theory relies on certain coincidences, and they applied to Koran to disprove the theory. The creationists argued that God need no reasons and consequently God created the universe “at that moment” saying “be”, not through evolution, nevertheless they did not slow down. They called in the question which evolution created angel and daemon, how felicities in the heaven evolved, how the snake came into existence out of the baton as well as the bird out of mud. The creationists tried to disprove evolution theory with these questions.”
You really cannot lose when you have magic on your side can you? I’m in awe of the fact they would mention ‘angels and demons’ in the same breath as evolution. It’s like wow….just wow…
“Babuna and Gündoğdu did not refer to evolution as a “theory” and they were insistent on inexistence of any intermediate forms. Babuna and Gündoğdu, who claimed that evolution theory has been falsified through 250 million fossils”
Take that evidence! Checkmate! We can just say it doesn’t work and it is good enough!
You know, Hitchens was right, religion really does poison everything.
I’m tired of people saying that one cannot prove the non-existence of their god. Not only can one do it, but its already been done. I’m referring to the problem of evil. The fact that evil exists negates the possibility of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omnipresent deity. Those are very important qualifiers, the problem of evil does not disprove the existence of any deity that is not completely perfect or is lacking in someway. I admit that the existence of any deity lacking, even slightly, in any perfection, in any way, cannot be disproven. On the other hand, any such deity would then be in the category of leprechauns, the boogey man, the tooth fairy, and the large invisible pink bunny that “actually” created everything, but only reveals this to asylum patients. And while this category, filled with an infinite amount of characters limited only by our imagination, cannot be disproven, no rational person would ever believe in such entities, as there is no evidence to support their existence. Or, if you prefer, they all have equal evidence in their favor, so each has a 1 in infinity chance of being correct. Not exactly zero, but close enough for any one with the cognitive capabilities of a codfish.
Get the full story at the CBC.
The amazingly cogent world of religion strikes once again with timeless wisdom, His Popiness said: 
“You can’t resolve it [the problem of AIDS] with the distribution of condoms.”
The Unctuous High Holy Pope of Vapidity then added:
“On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
It would seem to me, the lowly heathen that I am, that condom use is a good thing. It is a inexpensive way to curtail the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (obvious bastions of Satan) that said, “The male latex condom is the single, most efficient, available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV [the virus that causes AIDS].”
Hmmm…. a religious edict, basking in the filthy crud of relgious dogmatism, is causing grevious harm to millions of people. Not particularly surprising, (given the religious track record) but disheartening all the same. The “god is love” bunch really have their work cut out for them in this instance.
Religion is a dangerous delusional pursuit; why people continue to propigate such an abberation, given all the evidence, boggles the mind.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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