Loomis

Fat chance.

Yahweh blows smoke out his nose.

Deal with it.

John Kesler

Keep in mind that Catholics accept the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal books as authoritative, and one such book explicitly states that man was originally immortal:

amir

I'm not Christian, but I don't really get the problem here. Surely everyone sins at some point or another, right? In the past Jews would have to haul cows and sheep to the temple to sacrafice them for their sins. Once a year they threw a goat over a cliff or something to atone for general sins of the people.

Isn't Jesus simply meant to have replaced the need for all that?

gurugeorge

No, acceptance of Jesus as your saviour means that your original sin is effaced - i.e. the sin you were born with, that you inherit from Adam & Eve's mischief.

That's the Christian (well Catholic, which is what I know) theory - it means that, for example, babies are not born innocent, they are born sinful, just by virtue of being human.

God then sent his only-begotten Son to atone for that original sin, and only if you accept that atonement is your slate wiped clean of original sin. Then you only have your own personal sins to deal with.

Of course the whole thing is a complete and utter farce from beginning to end. The function of the concept of original sin is to help religious leaders gain psychological ascendancy and power over their "flock".

Doug Shaver

That is totally irrelevant. So is a boatload of Protestant fundamentalist dogma that Catholics are known to reject.

OK, I got careless. I was thinking you said "Catholics believe . . . ." when in fact your words were "Catholic teaching is . . . ."

I have talked with bunches of Catholics in my time, and have never known one who believed that there was no death in this world before humanity's fall from grace. I know there must be a few, but I've never conversed with any of them on that subject.

Clearly, there must be ways to interpret the catechism without denying the reality that death has existed in this world for long as life has existed, since that is exactly what most Catholics manifestly do.

MerryAtheist

The scripture verses are not irrelevent in this context, because they are the very verses referred to in the Catechism - in other words, the Church itself uses those passages to support it's doctrine. I didn't post them because I believe them, I posted them because the Catholic Church believes them. Not sure what you meant about the Protestant fundamentalist dogma stuff.

I used to be Catholic myself, and beck then I would have thought the same as those Catholics you've spoken with - but the fact is that I never really thought about it much then. I've only stumbled upon this recently on other forums, and it was recently confirmed in discussions at CatholicForums.com (my handle is SteakNPotatoes there).

I would love to hear such an explanation myself. The best that has been mustered as yet is "God's ways are mysterious."

amir

It may be Catholic theory, but the thread was started about moderate Christians who believe the Old Testament is metaphor. I don't know what Catholics believe, but if they believe that the OT is all 100% literally historically true, I wouldn't say that they are moderate.

Anyway, this thread seems to expect some kind of logic from Christian's beliefs, which is kind of naive. Beliefs have more to do with emotional needs rather than rational thought.

drewjmore

Chirst died as an atonement for actual, individual sins.
Original sin is forgiven in baptism.

Two related, but distinct concepts.

<edit>
Not to defend them (by asserting that they do make sense...), but to point out the flaw in the argument: the OP is essentially a straw-man, "these religions ARE a certain way, and that way does not make sense, thus they are stupid." Only they're not really as the OP describes.

Anat

To my understanding they don't.

Cheerful Charlie

Man was of course most mortal. he was not allowed to eat of the tree of life and live forever.

See Genesis 3:22. See Genesis 6 where god shortens mans lifespan.

Cheerful Charlie