Original Sin

I have been trying to understand Original Sin. Here are some passages from the book of Genesis:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7-9 ...then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made grow every tree that was delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-17 The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.

Genesis 2:21-22 So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman.

Genesis 3:6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

This was the Original Sin according to the book of Genesis. If you don't believe in God, then none of this matters to you. I do believe in God, so I want to understand Original Sin because that is why Christ's dying and rising were necessary.

I know that the book of Genesis is not a "literal history" and has to be interpreted using many exegetical tools. What I have been trying to do is reconcile the statements above with scientific information. In the book Faith, Science, and Reason: Theology on the Cutting Edge, Christopher Bagwell writes the following:

There is no doubt among experts that we [human beings] originated in Africa. According to most experts, the fully developed form of the human being bearing all the [homo sapien] characteristics emerged in one population in Africa before we began to spread out of Africa across the globe, around 120000 to 70,000 years ago. Genetic studies have revealed that the original ancestral population from whom all today's human beings descended seems to have numbered only a few thousand, maybe even a few hundred individuals. In fact, geneticists have even discovered that all human beings alive today can be traced back to a single male and a single female. These two individuals are often referred to as "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y chromosomal Adam,"

Bishop Robert Barron, in one of his Sunday homilies, said this:

We are prohibited from becoming ourselves the criterion of good and evil. God alone, as the supreme good, and goodness itself, is the criterion of good and evil. What is in accord with God's nature, that's good. What is repugnant to God's will, that's evil. God is the criterion. The problem is when we make ourselves the criterion of good and evil. We say, "No! My will!! My mind! I will determine what's right or wrong!" When that happens, everything falls apart. 

St. Thomas Acquinas said, "No human authority may declare what God reveals as morally evil to be morally good.":

These are the Dogmas of the Catholic Church that I must accept if I claim to be Catholic that relate to Original Sin:

1. The first man was created by God.
2. Man consists of two essential parts - a material body and a spiritual soul.
3. The rational soul per se is the essential form of the body.
4. Every human being possesses an individual soul.
5. God has conferred on man a supernatural destiny.
6. Our first parents, before the fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace.
7. In addition to sanctifying grace, our first parents were endowed with the preternatural gift of bodily immortality.
8. Our first parents in Paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment.
9. Through sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God.
10. Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the devil.
11. Adam's sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation but by descent.
12. Original sin is transmitted by natural generation.
13. In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity.
14. Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision of God.

Here is what I think:

I used to hold a belief that our sinful nature is a holdover of our animal instincts, and that might be part of why we sin. However, we do have intellect, the ability to reason, and free will. Those are what make us different than animals. We can choose to do good, and we can choose to do evil.

God allowed human beings to evolve. He could have chosen two of them and infused them with souls.

The book of Genesis was inspired by God and written by men so that people of that time could understand. However, Genesis contains moral truths for all times. Man sinned. God told him not to eat of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." The "fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil" here represents God's morality. It is His jurisdiction. We don't have the right to make up our own morality. When we do, that could be the Original Sin; that could be what is meant by eating from the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." When we choose to make our own morality, we make ourselves gods.

We fall for the serpent's trick in Genesis 3:4-5: But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”

Only God has the right to decide what is good and what is evil.   

Divide and Conquer

 I ran into a couple of quotes about what I believe is happening in the good ol' U.S.A.

I believe the course of events is dictated by a Leninist and Stalinist political culture which has grown out of the precedents of czarism and Bolshevism, involving a bag of tricks in which six elements are used to achieve political and economic results: (1) provocation; (2) divide and conquer; (3) infiltration of the enemy camp; (4) disinformation; (5) controlled opposition; (6) and strategic deception. Various special formations and ideological sub-weapons have been developed by Moscow to amplify the working power of these six elements, including organized crime, drug trafficking, international terrorism, national liberation movements, revolutionary Islam, free trade, global warming, feminism, the homosexual movement, gun control and multiculturalism.

J.R.Nyquist

People who are divided are easier to control.

David Draiman