It is the original sin that I find the most distasteful of all the Christian mythology. We are supposedly born into this world a sinner. It is more than distasteful to me. It is offensive.
OK ... so what's you're competing thesis?
Sin is a condition in all religions. In light of your comments, I would hesitate to suggest either a flawed notion of the self, or a flawed understanding of the doctrine, but those are the two points I would seek to clarify before proceeding with a dialogue on the issue.
To understand it, we have to first put ourselves, as much as we can, in the minds of the people who came up with it. The first chapters of the Bible are largely a metaphysic wrapped in mythopoeia.
Time:
The concept of time in the Ancient world was cyclic. Ancient man did not see time as linear, as we do now. The idea of 'progress' or 'evolution' is relatively modern (and in many ways assumes rather more than it should). So the point is that any notion of source, origin, begining and so on, will be within a
cyclic envisioning of the cosmos.
Space (or place):
Well, no concept of space as it has evolved, but rather of place. The concept of place in the Ancient world was relational and hierarchic. The idea of egalitarianism is again a modern notion and alien to the ancient mind.
The Garden of Paradise
Represents the metaphysical principles of the Centre, the Origin, the Source, the Beginning.
The figure of the tree, for example, signifies the vertical and hierarchic pole, it stands right in the centre of the garden; the four rivers signify horizontal dispersion.
What follows, especially the creation of man and his dialogue with the Divine, offers a sophisticated metaphysic (which refutes the 'we make God in our image' idea).
But the basic idea is this:
Man lived, originally, in a state of primordial perfection. This was the Golden Age, it's the subject of the Kaballah and all manner of esoterisms.
Why? Because if this state of ignorance, suffering and impermanence that we find ourselves in now is our actual and only condition, then life is without hope. Everything reduces to a question of necessity and pragmatics. A bleak picture, especially for a people who possess none of the technological or material comforts we do today. You're born, you labour until you drop or something gets you, and that's it.
But if there was a Golden Age, an Age of Innocence, then a return is possible, and there is hope.
But
something must have happened to separate us from Paradise.
Was this calamity the fault of God, or the fault of man?
Again, if it was God's doing, then we're back to a hopeless situation. We live according to the caprice of an unfathomable creator, and perhaps something a lot worse awaits us round the corner. (Look at the
Epic of Gigamesh, it asks the same questions, and comes up with a hopeless, tragic, nihilistic answer.)
So ...
We lived in a state of perfection according to our nature, we were not gods, but we walked and talked with gods. Then we did something contrary to the will of the gods, and we lost it, we were exiled from paradise.
We did not become bad people. We did not become evil, we are not demons, although we are capable of things that must surely make a demon blanche.
We were wounded, deep in the very fabric of our being. The idea of the calamities of one generation echoing down through the ages was a common one, and in many ways it's true.
So 'Original Sin' is not this or that naughtyness
per se, but a solution to the problem of theodicy — if God is good, why do bad things happen?
When understood without getting emotional or sentimental, it actually has many promising and optimistic aspects to it. It is not, after all, an inescapable condition.
Admittedly, St Augustine went to a pretty dark place when he contemplated this situation, and some of his responses to the question are out-spoken — not even the Roman Catholic Church accepts his whole thesis without question — Martin Luther is even bleaker still, and some elements of the peculiar American Christian expression has pushed on to even darker bounds ...
'Original Sin' then is a viable solution if one takes as axiomatic, that God is perfect, His will is perfect, and His creation is perfect, albeit finite and contingent, and that no ill can be done that cannot be undone.
That Paradise is not lost.
