If god is justice then why do we have pay for these frickers' mistake?

>No one said it's all a metaphor.
Original sin just doesn't make any amount of sense under the purview of evolution. How could the world have fallen if death, decay, and suffering were apart of this World by design, and not at some arbitrary point around mankind's arrival on Gaia?

Our ape-like ancestors were already mortal. The first humans were already mortal from birth.

>If whatever species attained the spiritual maturity to conquer death through some kind of kabbalistic evolutionary process (which I'm sure is anachronistic to most Christian teachings)
I don't think this is what I or anyone said at all.

>If you believe that humanity was *intrinsically* flawed from the get-go, then how could you believe in original sin?
Sufficient to stand, free to fall. Would you rather have a relationship with a waifubot or a real woman?

You just ran into the problem of moral vs natural evil. Animals in the past could still die. Remember, in Genesis Adam is the last creature created. Yet it states that animals eat grass and whatnot, which you could prescribe as “evil” because that is destroying the grass. Alas, this is the way of life. God made it that way for some higher glory that would come about from it, aka the allowing of life. Man coming on these scene is him giving us consciousness. We are actually aware of reality and comprehend the world around us. God reveals himself so to speak. We decide to fall from god after his revelation by sinning for the first time by “eating” that fruit of knowledge that is forbidden. That knowledge of god, consciousness, and sin still exists in all men because of the human condition that was revealed to us, and we created.

https://i.imgur.com/6QJMDI2.jpeg

To answer the original question, imagine your father made millions in industry, only to lose the money to prostitutes, coke, and a lavish lifestyle. You as the child do not gain any of the fruits of that industry, as your father was not deserving of it clearly. It’s the same with sin. God gave Adam a gift that was not earned of clearly deserved. Because of his mercy however, you DO have the chance to gain it back. It’s up to you now. If you bite from the apple you are just as bad as Adam. Your daily sins are proof of this. His justice is allowing to show your worthiness and not just him saying “well humans fricked up frick them”.

I'm reading Paradise Lost right now, and a lot of what you're talking about is actually explained in that. I realize it's not actually part of the religious canon, but still. Milton talks about how in the garden humanity existed in harmony with not just all other animals, but all of nature. Everything was soft, and pleasant and temperate and there was no suffering at all. After Adam and Eve eat the fruit from the forbidden tree suddenly foul weather appears and bushes grow thorns, and animals take on the ability to bite and sting humanity. That evolutionary evil you talk about is described as being a direct result of humanity choosing evil.

Now, I should say that obviously that isn't literally true. Those types of animals already existed like that. Your problem, ironically is precisely the same as the issue you seem to have with the people who believe this stuff: You're both taking it too literally. Obviously humanity is not all descended from just 2 people. Obviously parasites don't exist specifically because someone took a bite out of an apple they weren't supposed to eat. Ultimately the story is about free will. It's a parable from ancient man trying to rationalize, conceptualize and reconcile why the world is the way it is, and why we are the way we are, while also giving us an ability to improve it.

Both of those posts were indeed me. I'll go back to Paradise Lost since this issue is directly addressed in that. Before humanity even falls, God explains that he already knows that Adam and Eve will violate his only prohibition he's given them and eat from the forbidden tree. He knows this, because he is omniscient. This gets into the question of free will vs determinism which is also addressed. God basically says that it's not wrong for him to punish man because even though he created man knowing he would chose sin, he also created man with free will, and the decision to chose to sin was man's alone. If man chose differently, he would know differently. It's therefore not God's fault for needing to punish us, or for creating us in the first place, it's our fault for choosing evil and necessitating punishment.

Jesus at this point who is God's son, and endowed with all of God's power, (but seemingly consciously separate from God which I admit is confusing and weird) says that in order to save humanity he will step in and accept mankind's punishment in his stead. This thereby gives humanity the ability to ultimately redeem themselves and one day re-join God in his kingdom.

This is kind of explained later in the book as almost a debt thing. Just because God releases humanity from punishment of non-payment for debt doesn't mean that the payment isn't still due. So Jesus agrees to at a later date go down to earth as a human, to suffer and die as punishment for mankind's sin in the garden and as long as people recognize Jesus as their savoir, recognize that he took humanity's punishment so that we didn't have to, then all is forgiven and they can rejoin the kingdom of Heaven. This is the entire gestalt of Christianity, that humanity is evil and will sin, but that Jesus Christ can accept the punishment for that sin in our place and we can all still be saved. While it is a bit confusing it ultimately does tie the original story together.

I'll say again, I don't consider myself religious and I have not read the bible. My knowledge of this comes more from the epic poem written about the story rather than the primary text itself.

You’re jumping the gun when it comes to “god could make it not so”. This has essentially turned away from original sin, and now you’re talking about the problem of evil. Evil exists because the lord clearly sees some greater glory in allowing it to exist. Could the lord make the world different? Yes. But you use assume that you know better. Who is to say that god could create a greater glory than exists? Perhaps we do indeed live in the world that will come into fruition to be “the best”. You can’t make that judgement anon. No man can. This is where faith is involved. We are simply men, we can not compete with a divine creature, if he says this is the best way to make a beautiful future, who are we to deny it? You can see the beauty in the struggle all around you. The tapestry of life is gorgeous, and a world with free will and the ability for natural conflict has created a wonderful story that could not possibly exist without our struggles. You also have to ask if existence truly is suffering for animals? Animals seem to be in permanent ecstasy and bliss when not directly in pain. Their understanding of the world is free of anxiety, depression, etc. They simply experience that which is, and when not directly in horrible pain, existence is wonderful. Terrible pain also creates the dichotomy for unconditional joy. Once again we circle back to you thinking you know better than god. It isn’t clear that the world in fact would be better if there were 5 dimensions and we ate hydrogen. We were also made in the lords image, so consider that perhaps he created reality for us in our state.

As for the human millionaire thing, perhaps you would but Adam did not. Adam was the millionaire in this scenario not god. God not owing us anything more than we get is because we have the free will to choose him. He already gave us our wonderful world, reason, and all the gifts we could need to want him and seek him out. We decided to squander that by betraying his perfectly moral nature by sinning. Why is his nature that way? I have no idea, no one does, but it is what it is. He knows better, and he is perfection. I am no one to argue. Sinners being condemned to hell isn’t by gods choice per se. He makes it very clear he does not want you to be in hell. He truly doesn’t and makes that clear throughout the Bible. I mean he came down as man to save us from it. Hell is the absence of gods presence. That’s the most horrible part of hell. It’s simply a place where god and the Holy Spirit can not touch. It’s like being eternally alone, with no spark of happiness, and nothing but your own reason telling you that you fricked by sinning and not taking religion seriously. You chose that fate. God is perfect, therefore he can not associate with that which is imperfect. Sinners being born into this world against their will assumes they wouldn’t want to be born, and that reality is horrible. People are made by parents, the soul by god.

NTA, but personally I read the fall of man for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a story about humanity gaining consciousness. When humanity was dumb and animalistic it existed on the same level as all other baser animals. In the same way a dog can be perfectly happy just having food and rest humans were once the same and existed in that kind of dumb animalistic bliss. Eating from the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was the step we took in rising above that (but falling existentially) and gained conciseness, self-awareness. We were superior to all other forms of life in our cognition, but also fallen from that state of animal bliss. We were not just capable of suffering, as all animals are, we were capable of understand our own suffering, of understanding our own mortality. We were capable of questioning why we exist in the first place, we didn't just experience pain and suffering, we could think about it. Why is it happening? why is the world like this? why is existence pain? This also gave us something else - the ability to chose to be kind. To help others, to not chose to cause suffering to others. Animals simply exist and act on instinct. They're not really good or evil, everything they do is morally neutral. The rise of sapience gave us, quite literally, a knowledge of good an evil, and the ability to pick between them.

As far as original sin goes I think it's fairly obvious. We are all human, and as humans we are imperfect. As humans even the best of us will sin at some point. It's a given, it's inherent to our nature. That's original sin. The fact that we human and by virtue of being human are imperfect.

I should note, I'm not particularly religious, nor do I follow any one Christian faith. Real Christians may take issue with that interpretation, it's just my 2 cents.