Original sin and salvation
Earlier on in the book, we had looked at “Original Sin”. Nevertheless, let us have a more detailed look at the absurdity that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.
Why did God put the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” in the Garden of Eden? What purpose did it serve? Did God Himself need the knowledge of good and evil? Did He have to take a piece of the magical fruit now and again to refresh His memory? We can assume that He did not. Did any of the animals of the Garden need the Tree? We can assume not. How could a tree, an organism of wood and sap, contain the knowledge of good and evil? What capacity did it have for storing such knowledge, and how was that knowledge passed on by eating and digesting it? Allow yourself to think about that... Why, therefore, among all the useful and decorative trees in the Garden of Eden, did God deliberately include this tree, the tree that carries the warning: "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die"?
Did He put it in the Garden as a temptation to tempt Adam and Eve? The bible says very clearly that, it cannot be the case. God does not tempt, "Let no man say . . . I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth He any man." (James 1:13) Therefore, we have a tree of a nature that we cannot comprehend, whose fruit is so sinful to consume that it would result in the immediate and eternal damnation of humankind, placed in a location so precarious as to make that outcome an inevitability, all apparently for no purpose whatever. Imagine a caring, loving parent leaving a loaded pistol in the playroom of a five-year-old child, knowing what the result will be, and watching from a crack in the door as the child blows his brains out.
Did God know Eve would eat the fruit? Of course He did! Christians and the bible tell us that God knows all things from the Beginning unto the End. Did He not know Eve would give it to Adam? Of course He did. Did He not know that the serpent would tempt Eve? He did, if we are to accept the bible. Therefore, did Eve have any free will in the matter? Could she have acted in a manner other than God had foreseen for her? Of course not! How could she? How was the serpent able to speak? Did it give itself this remarkable ability? How does the mouth of a snake, with no lips or proper teeth, and no articulate tongue, form human words? How did the tiny brain of a snake become wise and subtle? Who made it so? Who was responsible for putting the principle actors, Adam, Eve, the serpent and the Tree, all together in the Garden of Eden? God, of course. The inescapable conclusion? That He put all the pieces on the game board, and enacted His own little drama, resulting in the deliberate, eternal damnation of Humankind. In the words of Ingersoll, “Could a devil have done worse?”
However, here is another problem. We are told in Genesis 3:14 that after the speaking serpent had completed the mission for which he had been placed into the Garden of Eden, that of tempting Eve, God cursed the serpent: "upon thy belly shall thou go, and dust shall thou eat all the days of thy life." (Does the devil have a finite life?) So somewhere out in the world, the Christian must believe, is a 6000-year-old talking snake that eats dust! Moreover, they say that we are the irrational ones. If Satan was cursed to spend the rest of his existence as a serpent, then how does he reappear later in the New Testament, and take Christ up to the top of the mountain to tempt him? How can this be? Did he release himself from the curse, or did God do it? What about the devil's activities in the Book of Revelation? If he is slithering around as a serpent, what is the great danger? Why doesn't someone simply step on him or cut his head off with a shovel?
We are told that at their creation, Adam and Eve, like small children, did not posses the knowledge of good and evil, of right from wrong. I wonder why God wanted to withhold this from them... Should Adam and Eve therefore be held responsible for committing an action prior to them having the Knowledge of Good and Evil? I would not think so. They disobeyed an instruction before they knew it was wrong to disobey. Was this the Ultimate Sin, for which every human being ever born was to pay with their eternal soul? Was that the worse thing that Adam and Eve could have done? They could have beaten and slaughtered each other, and destroyed their paradise. However, they did not do anything so cruel or barbaric. They ate a piece of fruit, contrary to the will of an arbitrary god. People disobey God's commands millions of times every day all over the earth, from lying and stealing to murder and worshipping other gods... why then was Adam and Eve's simple disobedience to carry such a heavy price. It would have been fair of God to give Eve this same warning... but He did not. He uttered it before He pulled out Adam's rib and made a whole woman! We have no record of God or Adam telling Eve of this dreadful warning, so why should she be held accountable?
Would you treat your own children that way? Would you condemn them to eternal torture, infinite revenge, never ending intense pain with no chance of pardon, for taking a cookie out of the cookie jar before dinner, after you had told them not to? Moreover, would you condemn your children's children, and all generations that will come after? What sort of justice is this? No natural person can condone this. All that the Christians can say is that we cannot understand God's method of justice. That is all they can say.
Why should I be held responsible for Eve's decision to eat the fruit? Why should you? If your distant ancestor, four hundred years ago, killed a man in an act of cruel and pointless savagery, should you be handed a life sentence in prison for it? God Himself states in the bible that He does not punish the children for the sins of their fathers (although He contradicts himself on this issue). Are we to conclude by this that we have no sin upon us as the result of our births? No stain of eternal depravity upon us? Might not the notion of Original Sin be the fabrication of the Church, in order that they might further their careers and ensure their survival? For if one does not need to be saved, one does not need priests and preachers. Christians tells us that without their religion, all of us are doomed without hope. They try to convince us of the dilemma they have created for us, then try to convince us that they alone have the remedy. Christianity cuts you and then tries to sell you a Band-Aid.
Because of the Fall of Man, we are told that it is not enough that we are good and caring people, not enough that we do unto others, as we would have them do unto us, not enough that we forgive those who trespass against us. We must be baptized, have our heads wet by a pries, a meaningless gesture, and proclaim that we accept Jesus Christ as our personal saviour. We must believe the unbelievable. A Hindu, who happens to be more charitable and humane than the best Christian, is nonetheless consigned to eternal damnation, just as the kind and gentle native of some tropical island who never heard of Jesus and his cross.
If, as the Christian doctrine teaches, the only way to salvation is through Christ, what became of all the souls of the people who died before Jesus' appearance on earth? All those Old Testament figures, all those who died in battle? Millions of people, to be sure. They had no chance of salvation before Jesus, had they? What about the countless millions that did not hear about Jesus and his saving message after He was here on earth? According to the Christian dogma, they are all condemned to hell because they did not accept Jesus into their hearts. If we are to believe the dogma of salvation through faith, then we must believe that by their mere birth, they were consigned to hell without a chance, no matter how virtuously they lived.
Why do you suppose God waited so long to send Himself down in the form of Jesus? Did He care nothing for the souls of all those men, women and children born between the “four thousand years” between Adam and Jesus? What of all those instances when God commanded His servants to kill men, women and children, sparing no one, knowing full well that they had no chance to be saved? Why did Jesus not appear in the generation immediately following Cain and Abel, when the number of persons on earth could be counted on one hand? The task of convincing people that Jesus was in fact God would have been effortless. In such a scenario, every human ever born would have a much fairer chance of attaining salvation. Because of God's failure to do this, however, the vast majority of people who ever lived were doomed without hope.
Christians tell us that Christ died to absolve Original Sin, so that all who believe in him might be saved. It is written that he came for the sole purpose of dying. Would it not then have been just as well if he had died of a fever, or of smallpox, or of old age, or from any other reason? We all suffer in some sense, and we all come into the world for the ultimately sole purpose of dying.
If Jesus Christ was in fact God, and if he came into this world to suffer for us as Christians tell us he did, then the only real suffering he could have endured would have been to live a full life. His existence on earth was a mortal state of exile or banishment from Heaven, the most perfect place, and the only way back to the paradise that was his home was to die. Everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be.
The sacrifice of Jesus was no sacrifice at all, for a number of reasons. First, according to the New Testament, Jesus Christ was God Himself. What possible inconvenience could death represent for an immortal god? None whatsoever. Would not God have an infinite capacity for enduring physical pain? Was crucifixion the worst possible way to be put to death? I submit that it was not. It is my opinion that burning to death by a slow roast would have been far more painful. The Church should know all about burning people to death, by the way, they did it enough. Their devices of torture were state of the art. Christ's suffering was negligible compared to those who disagreed with His Church. Additionally, Christ supposedly came back three days later. So just what was sacrificed? It's not a sacrifice if you take it back. Yet, the Christians claim Jesus made the most ultimate and perfect sacrifice. Is there anything more absurd than this?
The claim is made that the price for sin was so high that Man could not pay it. Only God could pay the debt. Like a father who assumes the debt that his son cannot pay, we are told that God allowed Himself to be sacrificed on the cross so that he can forgive us. So, your child has just taken a cookie out of the cookie jar when he wasn't supposed to. Now, to forgive him, you tell him: "Take this hammer and this nails, and nail me up onto a piece of wood until I die. Murder me, perform a human sacrifice, and then I'll forgive you for taking a cookie." Sacrifice the guiltless in order to forgive those who did no wrong, for a crime that was no crime in the first place.
Suppose that a man had been convicted of murder, and was about to be hanged, and the governor watches over the execution. Now suppose that, at the moment the convicted man was about to be hanged, someone in the crowd steps forward and announces, "I am willing to die in the place of that murderer. He has a family, and I have none." Moreover, suppose further, that the governor should reply, "Come forward, young man, your offer is accepted. A murder has been committed and somebody must be hanged, and your death will satisfy the law just as well as the death of the murderer." Is this situation acceptable to any civilized person? Yet this is the Christian doctrine of sacrifice. I say, let the guilty pay for their own crimes. If I commit a crime, I will take responsibility for my own actions.
Another paradox regarding original sin within the Christian dogma takes us on a journey outside our solar system, maybe even outside of the Milky Way. In a later chapter, we will be looking at our universe in more detail. Nevertheless, it is safe to state that we are not the only intelligent, sentient species in this universe. Even the most sceptic anti-alien believer must consider the fact that we might not be alone. Because the universe is so large, there can be hundreds, thousands of other sentient species out there. However, because of the distances between start we might never make contact with them, ever. For the sake of this argument lets say there are other sentient being out “there”. How does original sin apply to them? Were they also affected by Adam and Eve’s sin? Do they, also, now have a sinful nature? Did Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross also give them a chance to reach heaven? On the other hand, did Jesus have to go and die on their home planets too?
It is clear that Christianity is a gilded mansion built upon a foundation of sand. Its basis is not only unexplainable, but illogical and immoral as well. However, as people so often say when they are faced with such illogical, immoral conundrums that they cannot talk their way out of, "God works in mysterious ways."
We are told that we must swallow this story, hook, line and sinker. We are told that God gave us the free will to believe it or not, but this gift comes with a deadly threat. Believe it, or be eternally damned. What kind of choice is that? Some people may be convinced that the threat is a very real one, and so they will believe any story that their preachers tell them. Under these conditions, some people can be made to believe anything at all.
Salvation is not awarded by doing good deeds, we are told by the church, but through belief alone. God can forgive all things, it is said, except disbelief. He will pardon the murderer of children, if he but falls down and begs for forgiveness, and accepts Jesus Christ as his saviour. However, He will not pardon the person who uses reason and honesty, and who finally decides: "I just can't believe it." I am told that it does not matter how good of a person I am during my life, because at the end of it, I will be asked: "Did you believe the one about the Garden of Eden?" I'll have to be honest and say, "No, I didn't. It was just too far-fetched. Sorry."
For me, I cannot swallow the Bible stories, no matter how much I am prayed for or threatened with eternal damnation. I cannot help it. It has to make sense to me... that is the way my brain works. If there is a god who created me, he will understand my reasoning…
If you do believe the Bible tales, I would have to ask you, WHY?
