Salvation and Original Sin in Christianity

Admin عدد الرسائل : 605 تاريخ التسجيل : 20/11/2007

Salvation and Original Sin in Christianity

The problem I have with Christian thought is the concept of 'original sin'. By this doctrine, a child is born sinful (& therefore punishable?). I cannot accept this. All children are born innocent. Does a 3-year-old go to hell? They may be mischevious at times but their intentions are nothing more than to experiment to find out the rules.

Without original sin there is no need for any idea of a great event to remove this burden from human beings. The idea that Jesus (peace be upon him) was crucified to take away the sin of man looses its meaning when sin enters and leaves life in the same way it has always done - through the actions of individuals; there is no need for 'salvation' except through repentance and forgiveness of God (as Adam did, as Abraham did and as all believers until the beginnings of Christianity did and they were not Christians.) ; there is then no reason to accept the divinity of Christ or that his mission was profoundly & essentially different from that of previous prophets.

Original sin makes the whole concept of sin confused in Christianity. How do I know if I did something wrong? I didn't someone else did and I get the blame for it!
Another thing I find confused is the idea of sacrifice. The Christian idea seems to be that "the innocent (such as a lamb) must die to save the sinful. (i.e. Christ must die to save man). This seems to miss the point that sacrifice is where people give up something they value highly. I might sacrifice my time, money etc.Who sacrificed what in the story of Christ's crucifixion? Certainly no human being. And how can God sacrifice something. - He owns everything & has absolute power over everything.
How can he give up anything?!
This is just one aspect of what to me seems the basic problem with Christianity: If Christ died to atone for our sins then this great act must have changed something about the way to salvation, i.e. that before the act people had a certain route to salvation and that after the act the route to salvation is profoundly different. Indeed this seems to be the claim at the heart of Christianity. But if God fundamentally changes the way he judges people in different times from being harsh to being easier, then this can hardly be justice! On the other hand, if there is no fundamental change in the route to salvation, then why all the fuss? - it doesn't really matter whether Jesus died on the cross or not.

Besides, what evidence do we have that Jesus actually died on the cross? We have no physical evidence, we have no accounts of eye witnesses, all we have is the hearsay evidence of 1 person. This sort of evidence would be inadmissable, even if the event
happened yesterday, in a court case to prosecute someone for any minor offence. Yet it is acceptance of this event which determines whether or not Christianity condemns 80% of the worlds population and which guarantees the remaining 20%
slavation! - For the (sinful?) disbelief in such a barely credible event there seems a huge price to pay.

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