this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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I was fully evangelical as a kid so this was what I was taught, eventually it became way too obvious that fossils and stuff disprove this so there's a thing called the 'gap theory' where there's millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 where god made the world with dinosaurs and maybe prototype humans. How clearly they were scrambling to make a unified field theory on how the earth has fossils but also is only 6000 years wasn't what made me stop believing but afterwards I did realize why it's so important to the literalists: If we evolved when did the original sin happen?
Most people don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve any more but if they never existed then who did the first sin? Can Australopithecus sin, too? Does Jesus's self sacrifice cover Neanderthals' sins? When does a gorilla stop being an animal mind and need to start making burnt offerings to god or they go to hell?
If it was the 1500s all of these questions would be hotly debated by 500 monks over the course of a century and end in a minor schism but we don't have time for that we're trying to make a sale here: You, in this religion, today.
I don't think Evangelicals care about the specifics of original sin. I'm not even sure they believe in sin, really. The point of literalism is demanding compliance, not real belief. It's an exercise in force.
I mean in Catholic teaching of Felix Culpa the sin is deliberately baked in to allow humanity to become more than it could be without it. To have a soul is to have the capacity to defy god, and the knowledge of lost communion with the divine when you do. Jesus' redemption thus allows a recommunion with god, but as fully realised beings.