Original Sin, Original Bollocks

Recently, my conversations with a theist explored Genesis/evolution. While the theist spoke of the Pentateuch as the Books of Moses and implied she felt they were fact, as the conversations progressed and as my evidence began to mount toward this as being a falsehood, she switched gears and said Genesis was symbolic, that she learned that from her bible class. This was a shock to me that she would waffle like this, given how firm and almost arrogant she was in her other points.

I, of course, had pointed out from Day 1 that Genesis was merely poetry and couldn't possibly be fact. It was only after I pulled out the big guns and pointed out that her Catechism states this as well did she finally cave. Of course the CCC says Genesis is true in other ways, but admits its events are far from precise. As I mentioned in an earlier post, she also changed gears on evolution, first stating she was an ID believer, then when I pointed out her last three popes and her CCC admit evolution is fact, she said she believed in it.

So, the question now becomes, if Adam and Eve didn't really exist and didn't really eat a forbidden fruit while talking with a snake, what happens to the Original Sin? You see, without Original Sin, why would Jesus have to die? Why would we need a savior?

Here is the CCC's reconciliation with science:

"Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

While the Church permits belief in either special creation or developmental creation on certain questions, it in no circumstances permits belief in atheistic evolution."

I love the last line. But the spin here is, the soul is eternal and immediately created by god. Really? So at what point is this soul inserted? If we are cousins of apes and chimps, which we are, and we evolved through stages such as Dryopithecus, Ramapithecus, Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Sapiens, at which point did we start getting souls? Were they inserted even when we were Neanderthals? We weren't "humans" yet.

But this ancestral sin is such bollocks, as is the need for Jesus' death. To condemn humans before they are born, or as Christopher Hitchens used to say, "We are born sick and commanded to be well," is akin to failing a student before teaching them a subject, or failing said student because their grandfather got an F in the class decades before them.

This is a sick religion, and Original Sin is only the tip of the iceberg.