In a series of posts on how Satan and God are in a warfare over whether or not humans go to hell, this post follows, Humankind’s Original Sin & the Emergence of the Human Soul in Evolution.

In that post, we started with a man and a woman who could distinguish right acts from wrong acts but, as was the case with all members of their species had no concept of becoming the kind of person who always chose the right act regardless of any inclination to do otherwise. The moral concept they lacked has a variety of descriptions. We could say that they had no concept of the moral good of always choosing the right act. They had no concept of a good will. We could say that they had the “local” moral concepts of the right acts to do but lacked the “global” moral concept of becoming the kind of moral person they ought to be, namely a person who always chooses the right act because it is right. We could say that they had concerned for doing right acts but not being a righteous person.*

God brought it about that this man and woman acquired this concept of becoming a morally proper person by having as their maxim for making choices to choose what is morally right,i.e. choosing what they have an inclination for only if it is in accordance with what is right. On a momentous occasion when they were tempted to satisfy an inclination to violate a moral law or command of God, Satan provided them with a second temptation. The second temptation was to adopt as a maxim the policy of occasionally setting aside the moral law in order to satisfy an inclination. The temptation was to set aside the goal of being a morally proper person or one in obedience to God’s will. The original sin is the choice of this maxim. For the line of thought that I am pursuing here, it must be emphasized that the original sin of the original parents was the choice of a maxim or policy of occasionally setting aside the moral law. The original parents committed the original sin. Having original sin is having this maxim or policy. I now argue that we can accuse a person of having original sin independently of accusing the person of committing the original sin.

In this post I speculate how this original sin is inherited. Suppose the man and woman were selected by God from all the homo sapiens at certain time to introduce a new moral concept which would be a cultural universal for all humans. They, “Adam and Eve,” were selected to be the creative geniuses who brought a fundamental concept to humanity along with a host of associated concepts. Whatever God let evolution give them so that they could have this thought will be passed on in their biological reproduction. Also whatever God allowed evolutionary processes to give them so that they could have the thought of setting aside a command of God will also be passed on in their biological reproduction.
Recall that concomitant with the concept of obedience to all the moral laws was the associated concept of occasionally setting aside the moral. Here, though, we are primarily concerned with sociological inheritance; not biological inheritance.

All humans contemporaneous with the “original sinners” can be said to have this defective moral character. For the couple with the concept of moral good but who yet succumbed to the temptation to set aside its pursuit belonged to the community of homo sapiens. Once a concept is introduced by some individuals it becomes a concept of the human community. For instance, when someone introduced the concept of zero, we had the concept of zero. That’s how creativity works. So every one has these concepts of moral good and setting it aside once “Adam and Eve and Satan introduced them.”

Which should we assume to be dominant?. Having the maxim of always obeying the moral law requires a lifetime to exhibit. Setting aside the moral law to satisfy an inclination is readily exhibited from earliest childhood. So the presumption is that every child inherits as its operative maxim the policy of occasionally setting aside a command of God. Thus it is a presumption that every child has the original sin of those original parents. This is not a judgment that every child has chosen to do a wrong act. It is a judgment that every child has a moral character that it ought not have. Discussion of restoration of moral character is for subsequent posts. Satan claims that because of the defective moral character of all human beings, they are all on his side and deserve his fate.

*If we say that being a person who has as a maxim always choosing what is right, is a righteous person, , we can say that a fundamental assumption about human beings is that none of us are righteous.

Subsequent posts in this series will focus on why God did not abandon us although none of us are righteous.

Readers my be interested in my book on sexual morality. The central thesis of my book can be interpreted as a temptation from Satan to believe that in principle any pursuit of sexual satisfaction is morally permissible.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. See Book Web Page for information about the book. The publisher’s listed price is $26.99. Printed copies can be purchased here by credit card for $3.99, plus $3.71 for shipping and handling.

To purchase the printed book by check, send check of $3.99 plus $3.71 for shipping and handling per copy. Send to:
Charles F. Kielkopf
45 W. Kenworth Rd.
Columbus, Ohio 43214
Include your shipping address.