During a meeting this morning my wife and I exchanged a
brief conversation between ourselves. It went a little something like this…
Adam: “I
really need to go to the toilet.”Megan: “You
should have gone beforehand”Adam: (With
a smug smile because I knew that’s exactly what my wife would say) “You’re so
predictable.”Megan: (With
lightening quick wit) “So are you.”
I’ll return to this momentarily.
Richard Dawkins writes the following in The God Delusion
The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the
male line – transmitted in the semen according to Augustine. What kind of
ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to
inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? Augustine, by the way, who rightly regarded
himself as something of a personal authority on sin, was responsible for
coining the phrase ‘original sin’. Before him it was known as ‘ancestral sin’.
Augustine’s pronouncements and debates epitomize, for me, the unhealthy
preoccupation of early Christian theologians with sin. They could have devoted
their pages and their sermons to extolling the sky splashed with stars, or
mountains and green forests, seas and dawn choruses. These are occasionally
mentioned, but the Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin sin sin sin sin sin
sin.