Reader Asks: Why Do We Need a Savior if The Story of Original Sin Is a Myth?

Reader Feedback (only the blog owner can see these comments):

My name is ______. I’ve been reading your articles recently. I’ve been struggling with liberal Christians still believing the resurrection occurred even though they think genesis 1-11 is metaphor. I don’t really see the reason for him being god if original sin doesn’t matter.

I have to be patient with myself, but I still get nervous about hell because I feel like spirits and ghosts could exist. Especially when ppl who’ve had near death experiences report info that they shouldn’t know.

Then, you have liberals saying that Licona and Habermas arguments are great and helps them keep their faith.

I’ve been reading your articles on Bauckham because I keep wondering if witnesses of the resurrection really kept up with the oral tradition. Then, whatever Paul experienced must’ve been real for him to change his life and be a Christian ambassador.

Lastly, have you heard of David Rohl? I heard about him finding Jacob’s house lol.

Thanks,
X

Gary: You are correct, no one needs a savior if the Garden of Eden Story is allegory (fiction). If The Story of Original Sin is fiction, we humans are not born infected by sin. If we are not born infected with sin, why do we need a Savior? Moderate Christians will say that we still need a Savior because we all sin. But since Christians cannot prove to me that human beings have the capability of being perfect, this argument doesn’t work. You can’t judge people for not being perfect if they are incapable of being perfect.

Nope, you don’t need a savior, my friend.

Here is a comment I found on the internet on this topic which you might find helpful:

I have written about this several times on here. It’s true that almost all western Christian theologians and ministers, and certainly the heads of the major churches (including the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury) believe in human evolution.

But I wrote that I find this incongruous. The problem is not so much that the Bible says that humans were created ex nihilo but that, as you say, it makes a mockery of the idea of original sin, and therefore salvation. St Paul makes a very big deal in his exegesis, of Jesus as the “second Adam” and tells us that just as sin and death came into the world through the first Adam, so salvation comes through Jesus, the second Adam. Even without the ramblings of Paul, systematic theology has long taught that.

Also, it’s Christianity’s answer to the “Problem of Evil”. Christianity has traditionally taught that God designed the world perfect, but that it all fell apart because of Adam and Eve’s sin.

This is, of course, a rather unsatisfactory explanation. Why should aardvarks and agapanthuses be subject to death and decay because of something that two humans did thousands of years ago? And so many other things that make no sense. But at least it was an attempt.

But with evolution, humans were not the first animals. And evolution relies on natural selection, on the Malthusian Trap. So it is an unimaginably cruel process. Evolution only works because most individuals die before they ever get a chance to breed. Even more problematically, in evolution there is no first person. So you can’t even say that non-human suffering doesn’t matter, because whoever you think Adam and Eve were, if you believe in evolution, if Adam and Eve were human, their parents were human too!

This is one of the reasons I became an atheist.

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End of post.