The Dangers of Original Sin

Although I've stopped blogging very much, I started this post a long time ago because I thought I could do a good job with it. The problem is that, if it takes a while to write a blog post, it takes a very long while to write a good blog post. My new goal is to write a mediocre summary of my thoughts, sans research, so I can glance back on it when needed.

A sometimes relevant topic that I feel somewhat qualified to comment on is the returning idea of original sin. It's an old idea, obviously, and has been tied to multiple concepts over history. The concept of racism as "America's Original Sin" is hardly novel either, although I believe it is tied mainly to Jim Wallis, an American journal editor associated with leftist Christian evanglicalism, who published a "study guide" under the title in 1992 and later expanded this into a full book in 2015 - I have read neither. Wallis is also the founder of "Sojourners" magazine, which my parents have long subscribed to and which I was accustomed to seeing on my coffee table growing up. I am going to argue that the framing of racism as an "Original Sin" is a poor choice. I fully endorse almost all other adjectives: "ancient Sin", "founding sin", "really really very bad no good sin". I am specifically against capital 'O' capital 'S'. The fact that this framing originates (I'm pretty sure) from a left wing evangelist reinforces my previous link between religion and the left's successor ideology. It goes without saying that the right has their own version of religious OS. And in this case, it happens to be the OG.

I propose the following requisite features of an OS.

1. A bad deed, and one universally understood as such, generally because God says so.

2. It happened in the past. This isn't an important distinction, and any present transgression is a candidate for a future OS.

3. The blame for the sin is transferred not only to the transgressor, but to the transgressor's group. This can be a race, a religion, a sex, or humanity generally.

4. Most importantly: The blame is passed from one generation to the next. Sometimes this blame will nominally have an expiration date, but in practice all future generations will inherit the sin.

5. It marks the sinful group as deserving a worse fate. This can take many forms.

There are surprisingly many examples of OS within the Christian tradition. They don't paint a pretty picture.

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The OG OS: Eating the Forbidden Fruit

This story needs little explanation. God specifically makes a rule, which Eve breaks first, followed by Adam, at the behest of a talking animal. This curse includes the following punishments in the Christian tradition:

• Men and Women: Kicked from Eden

• Men and Women: Deserve to burn in hell for all eternity

• Men: Have to do work to survive

• Women: Have to have periods

• Women: Painful, life-threatening childhood

• Women: Can't be leaders over men (because Eve ate the fruit first)

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The Curse of Ham

Less well known in the general public. Noah gets drunk and his son Ham sees him naked by accident. Noah is so angry, that he curses Ham's son and all future generations, damning them to be subjugated to the offspring of Noah's other sons. Ham's offspring are then noted by Genesis to be the ancestors of the people of North Africa. This curse has the following punishments.

• Used to justify genocide of Canaanites by the early Israelites

• Used to justify European slave trade of Africans

• Used to justify Arab slave trade of Africans

• Used (and very explicitly) to justify American slavery

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Jewish Deicide

The belief that Jews are responsible for killing Jesus. The gospels variously blame the jewish crowds for Jesus' crucifixion to forgive the role of Pontias Pilate. But the Book of Matthew specifically has Jews saying "Let the Responsibility for his death fall on us and our children". This sin comes with the following prizes.

• A millennia of pogroms

• The Spanish inquisition

• The f#cking Holocaust

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Curse of the Lamanites

In Mormonism, the Lamanites are one of four Semitic peoples who settled the Americas before the Common Era. They rebelled against god, and "that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them". According to the Book of Mormon, this cursed people are the ancestors of modern Native Americans. This OS has had the following consequences:

• LOL, I don't know, but it doesn't Heckin look good, does it?

• Presumably, I would be least happy with doctrine if I was part of a Ute tribe 150 years ago.

These consequences aren't exhaustive. Every sexist rule against women has historically been justified by Eve eating an apple. Every racist belief against blacks has been justified because Ham saw his dad's dick. Every bit of antisemitism has been justified by something Matthew wrote, and Muslim's worship Jesus too.

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There are a few reasons one might see a religious OS as different from the OS of the successor ideology.

American slavery and racism are real. These sins aren't real.

Okay, but as someone who's spoken to a lot of religious people about morality, you only get so far saying "yeah, but your version isn't real". I'm arguing that hating all Jews is bad REGARDLESS of whether they asked for Jesus to be crucified. And it's at least possible that some Jews did say that, it doesn't affect the morality one whit.

American slavery and racism were particularly egregious.

This is at least historically questionable. It might be worth understanding the breadth and barbarity of slavery in Brazil, slavery in the Muslim world, or the Indian caste system. It's probably true that slavery in America was worse than Russian serfdom or Chinese Feudalism (although tell that the 18th century Ukrainian serf), but it's very hard to argue that Jim Crow was worse than the Gulags. Most of our understanding of the unique evils in American slavery are due to the availability bias.

Other sins target weaker groups. The sin of American Slavery punches up.

True, absolutely. That's why I'd be far, far more worried if someone told me they blamed all Jews for Jesus' death, than if they blamed all "Americans" for slavery (or even worse, all "white people"). A small note is that at many times in history Jewish people have done really well. That doesn't make antisemitism temporarily okay, and it doesn't come close. More importantly, I don't like saying that a bad idea is only bad if the believer has power. Primarily because I want to make access to power much more equally accessible. And to do that I want good ideas to be equally accessible as well. One good idea is the belief that racism is an ancient sin, a founding sin for the nation states of Canada and the USA, and a really bad, very awful, no good sin. But not an original sin, let's leave that language in the past.