"original sin'', an inherently evil concept.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Really? Are you actually saying that Christians choose God as a result of NOT exercising their free will while atheists choosing "not-God" ARE fully exercising their free will?

(And btw, I'm not sure that explaining to us that Jews have no concept of original sin is really going to make us sit up and exclaim, "My God, you're right! I've been duped all ...[text shortened]... elieve that Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting more than a thousand years for, either.)

Are you actually saying that Christians choose God as a result of NOT exercising their free will while atheists choosing "not-God" ARE fully exercising their free will?

No idea how you drew this conclusion.

I was reiterating the point of the rabbi:

This well-known Church doctrine posits that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, all of their descendants became infected with the stain of their transgression.

Moreover, as a consequence of this first iniquity, man is hopelessly lost in a state of sin in which he has been held captive since this fall. As a result, he is powerless to follow the path of obedience and righteousness by his own free will.
...
Despite the zealous position missionaries take as they defend this creed, the Christian doctrine of original sin is profoundly hostile to the central teachings of the Jewish Scriptures. The Torah loudly condemns the alien teaching that man is unable to freely choose good over evil, life over death.

Of course they have no concept of original sin.

Any chance you can take the time to explain that to jaywill?

Originally posted by sonhouse
Original sin was cleverly designed by men to trap those with weak minds so as to always have a whip to hang over the heads of the duped.

An evil concept by any standard, it should never have been the basis for ANY religion.

First, make up a creation tale, like there was only A&E, then have one of them fall from grace and thereafter the entire human ra ...[text shortened]... ho invented this god to make it more palatable to the population the elders were set to control.

What do you think is true than, that mankind will rape, murder, steal, and a list of other
things just because it is in his normal nature to do? Do you think without religion that would
some how stop, because the very idea of religion itself causes all of that?

Suggesting man was not to do those things that they are a result of sin suggests there is
a better way to live, what you are promoting here is this is it, this is the way it is, and
always will be. Unless you can change man's nature like you could say a Lion's from
wanting to eat a zebra.

Originally posted by KellyJay
What do you think is true than, that mankind will rape, murder, steal, and a list of other
things just because it is in his normal nature to do? Do you think without religion that would
some how stop, because the very idea of religion itself causes all of that?

Suggesting man was not to do those things that they are a result of sin suggests there is
a ...[text shortened]... be. Unless you can change man's nature like you could say a Lion's from
wanting to eat a zebra.

No all that carnage will not stop if the end comes of religion. But you cannot deny there have been millions of deaths directly attributed to people thinking they have some kind of mandate to murder those not of their religion or even the sub sect of their own religion.

I heard, for instance, with my own three ears, on short wave radio, a religious broadcast, some kind of baptist sect, where the announcer was denouncing some other baptist sect saying 'those people don't have the right to live, they should all die'.

Now that was broadcast only a couple of years ago so this kind of anti-human rhetoric is still around and in the Christian world.

You don't have to look very far to see that to an extreme degree in Boko Haram, Taliban, and the like. It is here and it is now.

If there was no religion, at least THOSE kind of killings would stop.

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
You might find this article by a Rabbi regarding "original sin" interesting:
http://outreachjudaism.org/original-sin/

You must not forget that this Jewish man has an agenda to discredit Jesus as the promised messiah, so he will twist truth if necessary to reach his conclusion. That is the sin nature in everyone of us in twisting truth to conform to what we wish to believe. Sonhouse does the same thing.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I am talking about the original people who made up these religions. Now it is just big business. VERY big business. Look at Catholics. Look at Mormons, Look at JW's, look at the tent revivals where the 'preachers' drive Corvettes and have really nice yachts.

Yes, there are many that use it for their own selfish gain, but that does not mean that YaHshua (Jesus) is not the Christ and that He cannot save us from our sins.

How do you explain away the proofs of the resurrection, like the empty tomb in Jerusalem, the Shroud of Turin, and the Sudarium of Oviedo that led to the rise of Christianinity as a religion when these people already had Judaism for their religion?

YouTube

Originally posted by ThinkOfOne
[quote]
The term “original sin” is unknown to the Jewish Scriptures, and the Church’s teachings on this doctrine are antithetical to the core principles of the Torah and its prophets.
...
According to Church teachings, as a result of the first sin committed by our first parents in the Garden of Eden, there were catastrophic spiritual consequences for ...[text shortened]... to keep Christians from fully exercising their free will and "freely choos[ing] good over evil".

Christianity does not prevent people from turning from evil for that is what it is truly about. It is false teachers in Christinity, like the Pharisees of Judaism, that prevent people from being saved from their sin.