Varislintu wrote:
This goes a bit off-topic, perhaps, but would you care to open up a little bit your view on original sin in this kind of interpretation of the universe? As in, what is/was original sin?
In order to understand what the original sin is, we have to acknowledge the profound deep bond which unites man and God at the beginning. If we don't accept this original link, we cannot accept the original sin either. This sin is indeed a break in the relation between man and God.
In Heaven, where the first couple lived, everything was perfect: all the live beings lived in harmony with the rest of the world. In Genesis 1, 28-30 there's a clear description of the harmony that ruled this primeval world: "I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food" (Genesis 1, 28-30). The supremacy of man over the rest of the creation is affirmed and at the same time it is specified that this supremacy has to be employed without overstepping the limits that are inherent to the creation, which is already "good". But man could cross these limits, since it was made in the image of God (Genesis 26-27)
The story told in Genesis 3 affirms a primordial event that took place at the beginning: the man, tempted by the evil, setted himself against God and sought to attain his goal apart from God. This self-exclusion from the original relation from God is represented in the Bible in the story of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3). We cannot say that God didn't want us to be ignorant about the good and evil - in fact, God created the first couple with a complete knowledge of good and evil. The evil was outside the world that God created (since the creation was good - Genesis 1,12). Human beings had already free will, but they desired the good - that is, they wanted what God wanted. They could also want something different: they could freely desire to attain something different from the good that God decided for the sake of the creation - if they thought it was good (even God could want something different from good, since God is almighty). So, the decision to freely determine what is good and what is evil - apart from the will of God about the good and evil - is the original sin.
Why the first "good" man could be tempted by the evil? Maybe because God could abstain from creating. This is evil. We can say that God created in order to limit the reality of evil before the creation. The first men had to to continue this work, but they failed.
These were the consequences of this first disobedience: Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness and become afraid of the God. From that moment, they have a distorted image of a God - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.
The original harmony is now destroyed. Even harmony with creation is broken: the creation has become alien and hostile to man (Genesis 3, 17-19:" Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again"). The Bible says: "Because of what you have done" (Genesis 3. 17) "you go back to the soil" (Genesis 3, 19). So, the death is a consequence of the original sin. We were immortal at the beginning, and after the original sin we became mortal.
This change involved the whole creation. Because of original sin made by man, creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay" (Romans 8, 20).
How can we now still believe in this story? We know know that the universe started likely with a big bang, that the life is probably subjected to evolution, etc...
How can an act performed by a microscopic being (in comparison with the universe) change the laws of the universe? I don't know. The only answer I can find is that either all this story is a myth, or (this idea is mine) it has happened in another dimension of time and space - that is, outside our universe - and it is connected to our universe through a relation of causality. This means that our universe is caused by that universe. Our universe is the opposite of the primeval universe, where everything was perfect. The original irreality of our universe was transformed into reality by a single act, committed by a single person. After that act, a new course of events began.
A new universe began. Maybe this new universe started with a big bang. This universe is the one in which we live now.
Anothe answer is this: the story of the Genesis is a myth. The writers of this story, if they lived nowadays, would write a different story. They simply had to remove the connection between the original sin and the consequent decay of all the creation. But they also had to rewrite the story of the creation and say that the original good creation was already penetrated by death. The problem would be how to combine the omnipotence and goodness of God with this new kind of creation. It would be impossible to describe such creation as a "good" one. Thus, either God could not be at the same time good, omnipotent, and comprehensible, or there would be two Gods - a good one, and a bad one - the latter contrasting the original good creation by inserting in it the death and the evil.