Why I Am No Longer Christian

#4b: Original Sin and the Fall Are Illogical, Part 2

Along with the surface-level problems with the story told in Genesis 3, especially those concerning biblical literalism, there are problems with the fundamental Christian doctrines of original sin and the Fall, which we will delve into next.

Original sin is the doctrine "which holds that human nature has been morally and ethically corrupted due to the disobedience of mankind." As the story goes, when Adam and Eve went against God's orders by eating fruit from the forbidden tree, their eyes were opened to good and evil, and they introduced sin into this world. The rest of humanity inherited this sin from Adam and Eve. Because of this, there is nothing humans can do to make ourselves righteous in God's eyes except by accepting Jesus's sacrificial death for our sins.

The Fall (shorthand for "the Fall of man") is the term for what happened when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were kicked out of the garden. They "fell" out of perfection (or God's grace, depending on how you interpret it) and brought evil into the world through disobedience. Christians tend to blame the world's problems on the Fall: wars, genocide and murder, illness, suffering, death, and even natural disasters. It takes the blame for evil off God's shoulders and puts it squarely on humanity's. Once again, by this doctrine, the only thing that can save us from the Fall is redemption through Christ.

Now, before I get into the logical inconsistencies, I want to acknowledge that how one interprets this passage varies greatly (as do interpretations of almost all Bible verses in existence). Some Christians — even biblical literalists, inerrantists, and evangelicals — don't believe that Adam and Eve were necessarily created perfect before the Fall. For clarity, I will be going with the doctrine that Adam and Eve were perfect, as the popular evangelist site, GotQuestions.org, states, and most Christians believe: "The first human beings were created flawless, in a perfect state; until they chose to sin, Adam and Eve were the ideal human beings."

Alright, let's begin!

One of the biggest logical inconsistencies with this doctrine is as follows: if Adam and Eve were perfect, then how were they able to disobey God and sin in the first place? Shouldn't that be impossible?

A common response to this is that God created human beings with free will, and with free will comes the ability to make mistakes. But if Adam and Eve were truly perfect beings, they wouldn't have disobeyed. Even if they'd had free will to do the wrong thing, they still would have chosen the right thing because they were without flaw. (You can argue that this isn't free will because they would always choose the right thing, but that's an argument for a different day.) So how did perfect beings make a mistake?

Jesus could not sin because he was perfect. The same should apply to Adam and Eve. So, if they sinned, they were imperfect. But why would God create imperfect beings, knowing full well that they would sin and he would have to punish them with death for it?

Another logical inconsistency is why it was Adam and Eve's choice, specifically, that brought sin into the wider world. Eve didn't know the full consequences of what she was doing because she was tricked by the snake. Since the snake was the one to urge her to disobey, then isn't the snake the first bringer of sin, and therefore all of the evils of the Fall? But if Creation was perfect before the Fall, where and how would the snake come up with the idea to tempt Eve in the first place?

Oftentimes, people claim that the snake tempted Eve because of Satan's influence, nevermind the fact that this is never stated anywhere in the Bible. Regardless of where the idea comes from, that would make Satan the first being to disobey God, meaning that he is the true first bringer of sin. It would be Satan's fault for the evils of the Fall, not Adam and Eve's. But that isn't how doctrine works.

Why would sin come into being when Adam and Eve disobeyed but not when the snake (or Satan) disobeyed before them? The snake (or Satan) did it first, but Creation was still perfect until humans followed suit? Why?

Some people try to fix this by saying that there was already evil in the world, but Adam and Eve lost their innocence by succumbing to temptation. But that goes against the doctrine of the Fall, which posits that there was no evil until Adam and Eve sinned. It's because of humanity's sins that there is war, death, destruction, and suffering in our world. If their disobedience didn't bring evil into the world, then where did it come from? The snake? Satan? But how did either of them get it?

That's another problem. Regardless of who was the first to disobey, where did evil come from? God's perfect creation sinned, which brought evil into the world, but from where? There is nothing that God didn't create, so doesn't that mean God created sin and evil? Wouldn't that go against his just and good nature?

Furthermore, before Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they wouldn't have known the difference between the two. That means that they wouldn't have fully understood the consequences of disobeying God, because they didn't know what evil was. How could they have known if they didn't even have that knowledge in the first place?

But there's even another twist to this: if evil didn't exist before Adam and Eve sinned, why was there a tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden in the first place? That would mean that good and evil already existed, but once again, that means that Adam and Eve's disobedience didn't bring evil into the world. It was already there, they just became aware of it, which would bring us back to the question of where evil first originated.

An even more damning argument skips over the perfection problem or the problem of evil and asks, if God knew that Adam and Eve would disobey, why did he plant forbidden trees in the garden in the first place? Why did he let the snake in? Why did he let the Devil influence the snake, if such a thing happened? He knew what was going to happen before any of it did. So that means, whether God created evil or not, he willingly let death and evil happen, including people suffering eternal torment in hell for not loving him.

People might try to argue that God didn't know that Adam and Eve would disobey him. But that goes against Christian doctrine. If God is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, then he would've known that Adam and Eve were going to sin, and therefore he could've prevented the death and destruction that came with it. Why would God make us with the ability to disobey, knowing full well that we would, and then punish us for it?

Eventually, this tiring argument wraps back around to free will. People argue that without free will, Adam and Eve would've been like robots programmed to love God. They would have no choice but to love and obey him. People say he wanted to give us a choice, because love is more meaningful that way. But it isn't much of a choice when your choices are either love God or suffer eternal torment, is it? You either love God or die? That's as close as you can get to forcing people to love you without completely taking away their free will.

At the end of the day, the Fall and original sin are riddled with problems that defy logic and reason. They are just another nail in the coffin that is biblical inerrancy, and ultimately, Christianity itself.