I adopt the modern Catholic and scholastic treatment of original sin as a privation of original justice and holiness.
My view is tied into a literal Adam and Eve, the first ensouled and full metaphysical humans. They were put in a sacred space with preternatural gifts where they would not have tasted death or suffered. By violating that covenant, everyone after them feels the effects—- they lost it for all subsequent descendants.
The analogy is parents who squander a bunch of wealth someone gave them that they were never entitled to by their nature. This lack of wealth doesn’t spread via genetics or anything like that. It’s not a physical disease so much as a state. But their children will lack access to what would have been theirs if their parents did not screw up.
No guilt is inherited and the Catholic Church teaches that sin is only transferred in an analogical sense. It’s rather a privation than the actual spread of something. Ed Feser came up with the following analogy:
“You might compare the situation to that of a landowner who has sold an unimproved parcel of land to a certain family – which, just to be cute, we’ll call the Adams family. In allowing the Adamses to take possession of the parcel, he’s given them everything he owed them. But suppose he offers to throw in, for free, something extra – to plant on the land a vineyard using the finest quality vines, whose fruit will make possible the best wine. This is something that all the of the original Adamses who bought the land will profit from. But the landowner makes the offer only conditionally. He wants to see how Mr. and Mrs. Adams are going to handle things before turning the vineyard over to the Adams family as a whole, including the many descendents who are not likely to do any better with the vines than their ancestors are. So if Mr. and Mrs. Adams do well with the first vines planted, they and their descendents will get to keep them and reap the benefits. If not, the landowner will tear them out and leave the Adamses and their descendents with only the original unimproved parcel, which is all they were owed in the first place.”
My view of original sin has nothing to do with inheriting guilt or God inflicting some sort of positive punishment or taking something away we deserved given our natures. The gift (GIFT) of God is everlasting life. This was always a gift and something we didn’t deserve nor something we could ever earn given our natures.
Christians generally believe at least 100,000,000,000 people have failed at earning this of their own accord— maybe even a trillion if you extend full humans back a long time. What more do we need to say it’s just not possible?
People still ask all sorts of questions after this is explained. For example, this is from a recent thread:
When a baby is born to a mother who is a crack-head, does God apply the drug addiction to the baby? Your question is odd to me. You are viewing it as if God is inflicting a positive punishment on everyone. He is just leaving us as normal humans in our normal environment—exactly how you believe we were born in the first place. Do you think God applies the “selfishness” of evolution to everyone? Do you even think this question makes sense?
Vinnie