In the Book of Genesis, we meet Adam and Eve, a couple of schmucks who, we are told, brought sin and pain into this world. After their expulsion from the Garden of Eden (they quite literally ate themselves out of house and home), their son Cain kills his brother Abel, bringing us murder. Because of this one dysfunctional family, we are told, we're born into a sinful nature.

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks all of this is silly.

Even when I was a Christian, I didn't buy into the Bible wholeheartedly. To see Genesis' myth of the Creation as more than a myth, one must picture God as a real jerk.

I mean, really, let's be objective -- God puts the Tree of Knowledge in there with Adam and Eve, who presumably have that human trait called curiosity, and tells them, "Now whatever you do, do not eat anything from that tree. Just pretend it's not there." That's what I call a set-up.

If God created humanity, God oughtta understand human nature. The God we see in Genesis is either a fool or a demagogue. (And don't get me started on Job.)

The story of The Fall really puts God into a bad light. It's also sexist as all get out, with the woman causing the man to stray.

The story of Eden is a poetic attempt to explain why we do wrong; I understand that. It's just not a very good one, not relevant to scientific creatures with the least bit of gender equality.

I don't think much of the Original Sin doctrine, either. It's another case of Christianity contradicting itself -- on the one hand, you have the idea of free will, but on the other you have this mumbo-jumbo about evil being a genetic tendency.

The thought that we share in Adam's sin because we were "seminally present" is just silly. The fact that we now know we're the result of evolution, not creation, and that the Genesis account is then a myth no more valid than any other should put this whole idea in the ground next to to heliocentrism. No Garden of Eden? No Original Sin! It's quite logical...

But the Original Sin doctrine persists, even among those Christians educated enough to realize that Genesis can't be taken literally. Our misdeeds are still blamed on our ancestors.

I'm in full agreement with Rush Limbaugh and his ilk on, as far as I can tell, one and only one point: using some imagined victim status to explain away your irresponsible behavior is just bullshit. Take sex offenders -- many of them claim that they can't help but do it, that abuse in their childhood forced them to do it. Andrew Vachss rightly calls this argument a slap in the face of every abuse victim who has overcome his or her suffering to become a productive member of society.

The "I'm a victim" rag gets tiresome almost immediately. We can all make the choice to do better. A bad childhood doesn't make a criminal -- a choice to disregard the law makes a criminal. I'm in agreement with Rush on this one point.

Where I would go a step further is here: the Original Sin doctrine is the ultimate cry of victimhood. It's an even bigger cop-out than "The Devil Made Me Do It."

Even if Adam and Eve and the Serpent and that Tree were all real, even if it weren't all myth and propaganda, smoke and mirrors supposedly legitimized by age, it still wouldn't matter. Adam's sin could not have left a mark on his descendants... His sin would have been his and his alone. No one could predestine another to suffer in hell; to say that denies our individuality. The worst Adam could have done would be to set a bad example for those coming after him.

Now that concept of Original Sin would be a lot more believable -- we are bound to the past insomuch as our predecessors set some bad examples and created some unjust situations.

Racism and homophobia. Land rape. Spousal abuse. You can see that kind of evil passed from one generation to the next. But it's not supernatural, it's not genetic, it's certainly not predestined. We can always choose to break the chain and do better, and many do.

That's not dogma. That's life.

God is Dead -- Now What?