The Christian church's attempt to explain why, even though people throughout history have known the basic difference between right and wrong, and are aware that doing good brings forth good results while doing bad tends to make everyone miserable, they still continue to treat each other so terribly.

As explanations go it's held up pretty well through the years; its great advantage is that is deals with the problem of evil without getting rid of God's omnitpotence, human free will, or personal responsibility. It allows us to maintain both a cosmic pride and an equally cosmic humility -- human beings are made in the divine image, but a flaw has been introduced that they cannot remove on their own.

Let's start with the assumption that God is in fact merciful, just, and benevolent, and view his actions in that light (and please note that this is but one of many possible takes on the doctrine):

OBJECTION ONE is an argument against the idea of sin itself: "If God were really good and truly loved us, he would not require anything from us that our failure to provide would bring about any sort of penalty." Since this doesn't apply to any human interaction (children often try that one out on their parents, with spectacularly unsuccessful results), it doesn't seem terribly sound to apply it to our relationship with God.

OBJECTION TWO: "The story of the Fall is internally inconsistent -- the fruit of the tree brought knowledge of Good and Evil, and without that knowledge one cannot sin. Therefore humanity's disobedience cannot be held against them." Obviously expulsion from the Garden cannot be a punishment inflicted on people who were incapable of comprehending their disobedience or its consequences. Therefore Adam and Eve had enough of a moral sense to know that disobeying God is evil, while obeying him is good. Some have speculated that the knowledge gained by eating the fruit may have been something humanity would gain on its own when it was ready, but of course that issue is pretty much moot.

OBJECTION THREE: "Why am I being punished for something I didn't do?". Some possible responses:

  • We are all in some sense responsible for the deeds performed by the groups to which we belong - as an American, I shoulder some of the responsibility for the actions taken by my government. As a human being, I shoulder the responsibility of sin.
  • We do participate in original sin to the extent that we perpetuate it. Every moment of our lives we are presented with Adam's choice, and more often than not we choose to evade our duties to ourselves, our fellow human beings, our world, and our Creator.

Though widespread, the doctrine of Original Sin is not embraced by all churches. Others maintain that human beings are born free of sin, and fall into sin when they (inevitably) fail to resist temptation once they have attained an age where they can reasonably be held accountable for their moral choices.