Problems with original sin
The unanswered question
On the face of it, original sin doesn't answer the question as to how evil got into the world; instead it leaves other questions to be answered. As one writer puts it:
Why is there original sin? Because Adam sinned? Then why did Adam sin? If it was because of the serpent, why did the serpent sin? If the serpent is supposed to have been a fallen angel, why did the angel sin? And so on.
Serpent
And there is a second, but related, question. If evil did not exist before Adam sinned, how could Adam know that what he was about to do was evil - how was he to know that it was wrong to disobey God?
It's unfair
For modern people the idea of being punished for a crime committed by someone else is unethical and unacceptable.
Original sin belongs to each of us because it belongs to all.
It's misogynistic
The doctrine of original sin blames Eve for tempting Adam into sin and has been responsible for centuries of Christian bias against women.
It's anti-sex
Augustine's theory of original sin was so intrinsically tied up with his disapproval of human sexual love that for centuries it contaminated all sexual passion with the idea of sin.
It's too pessimistic
Some Christian thinkers are unhappy with the idea that human beings start out so bad that they can't become good without God's help.
It's not literally true
Science shows that the Biblical creation story is not literally true, and demonstrates that Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden are myths and not historical figures.
This destroys the idea of original sin as being caused by the misbehaviour of the first man and woman, and the idea of inheriting guilt or punishment for that misbehaviour.
Most modern theologians don't think this a good reason to abandon the doctrine of the fall. They believe that although the story is not historically true, it does contain important truths about the state of humanity.
It's contradicted by evolution
The doctrine of original sin is based on the idea that God created a perfect world, and that humanity damaged it and themselves by disobeying him.
Evolution, on the other hand, suggests that life in the world is steadily changing and becoming more diverse. Scientists do not tend to think of this as a moral good or evil, but in a sense evolution sees life on earth as moving closer to 'perfection' - becoming better adapted to its environment.
The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.Bishop John Shelby Spong, A Call for a New Reformation, 1998
A more modern idea is to give an ethical spin to the evolutionary idea and suggest that humanity should not be concerned about a past fall from grace, but concentrate on becoming more ethical beings and thus bringing about a better world.
What about unbaptised babies?
Bishop Richard Holloway has described the idea that unbaptised babies go to hell as "one of the most unsympathetic of the Christian doctrines," and not greatly improved by the teaching that there is a special "limbo" for unbaptised babies on the outskirts of the inferno.
This is covered later in this article.
Is guilt good?
Original sin has been criticised for inspiring excessive feelings of guilt. The 18th-century politician and philosopher Edmund Burke once said: "Guilt was never a rational thing; it distorts all the faculties of the human mind, it perverts them, it leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason, it puts him into confusion."
Is the feeling of guilt a vital part of our moral lives or can it do more harm than good? Discussing the question are Stephen Mulhall, Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at New College, Oxford; Miranda Fricker, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; and Oliver Davies, Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London.
In Our Time, 1 November 2007, BBC Radio 4