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If you don't mind the diversion, which branch of Christianity has this doctrine?
At least a few local flavors of Catholicism that I've come to contact with (thinking Eastern Europe, specifically).
I've just become aware that in the Polish branch of the Catholic church, the part of the confession when you ask God for forgiveness differs from a few English versions I've sampled just now. It includes a piece that goes a little something like "(...) my fault, my fault, my great, great fault (...)". I think this describes the general spirit of describing man as forever tainted.
Edit: I just realized that something I thought as core to my knowledge about Christianity may very well not be true (https://www.themotte.org/post/193/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/35768?context=8#context) and may, instead, be a distortion of memory.
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To be fair, @thomasThePaineEngine didn't say "there's no way out of original sin", he said "one cannot cleanse oneself of" original sin. Which is technically true in Christianity, one can't cleanse oneself. Which is why Christ had to cleanse us from what we can't cleanse ourselves from.
Though on the other hand, it also isn't true that one must "regularly and harshly atone for" original sin either. That has been paid for, we don't need to keep beating ourselves up for it.
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Well I'll be damned. Maybe my memory of Christian theology is not as strong as I thought. Admittedly, it's been quite some time since my teenager years when I did most of my exploration. I'll have to revisit this branch of knowledge at some point so that I don't make an ass out of myself again.
Thank you.
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Yeah, very true. And I think that is one thing that is... kind of unfortunate about the woke perspective. One of the things that (to me) makes Christianity not horribly oppressive is that hey, we don't have to try to atone for this inherent sin we can never get rid of. Not that we aren't expected to try to do right (grace isn't a license to go out and willfully sin), but the price has been paid. Good news, as the kids say.
Honestly, there are a couple of really wonderful things in Christianity that I appreciate now which I didn't as a teenager growing up in a Christian environment. I used to worry so much about sin, and whether I was irreconcilably screwing up by continuing to struggle over and over and over with the same things (like lustful thoughts or looking at porn). But the things that didn't really sink in for me then are a couple of big ones. First, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". Yeah, I am a sinner (boy am I), but so is everyone. Even the people in church who seem like they have it all together and never sin? Yeah they're sinners too. I'm not uniquely bad, and shouldn't beat myself up as if I were.
Second, "if we confess our sins, he is faithful... and will forgive our sins". That is a verse that gives me a lot of comfort now, and I wish I had found it sooner. Yes, it's bad when I sin. No, I shouldn't do it. Yes, I should work to do better. But I also should take comfort that God is going to forgive me if I confess my sins. And not only is he going to forgive me, we have reason to believe he will forgive me a whole lot of times! Even us mortals are expected to forgive wrongs done to us "seventy times seven" times, so one can safely assume that God is going to forgive at least that many times (and more likely he's going to forgive a whole lot more times than he expects us to).
So when I was a teenager beating myself up because I couldn't stop sinning in the same ways, I really shouldn't have. Because I did truly regret those things and try to stop doing them, so God is going to forgive me. And while I had those struggles, I wasn't like the worst person or anything like that. I was just another flawed human being who had, like everyone else, missed the mark and was trying to do better. And after all, if my father here on earth loves me enough to forgive me even when I make mistakes (even repeated ones), why wouldn't my Father in heaven love me enough to do the same?
That assumes that becoming Christian isn't itself horribly oppressive. I mean, you're telling me that in order to get rid of this original sin I not only need to convert out of Judaism, but I have to accept a whole bunch of doctrines that seem to be intellectual nonsense, such as transsubstantiation, the Trinity, and the doctrine of original sin itself. Then I need to accept what God says about gays, birth control, abortion, and every other issue that your church is stuck with.
Atonement would be nicer than that.
Really? The guy coming from the religion that believes in Eruv wants to criticize intellectual nonsense?
Infinity can be divided into multiple sets, so the Trinity makes perfect sense. Hanging a line around a city to try and trick God is literal nonsense. Does God believe in the rules you have for the Sabbath or not?
This is based on a misunderstanding of the Eruv. In Jewish law, there are public domains that are biblically forbidden from carrying in. An Eruv does not work to let you carry in those. There are other semi-public domains that the rabbis categorized which they said must also not be carried in. Those same rabbis said that their prohibition is lifted if an Eruv is in place.
This is a little bit of an oversimplification, but if you want to take a deep dive, you might start here.
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If the rules allow you to do something, following them isn't "not believing in the rules".
Saying that the rules are divine commands and then trying to hack them so that they are effectively rendered null is not believing in the rules.
Hanging a line around an area is purely a hack for convenience, not a principled distinction. Hanging a line around an entire city is a hack of a hack for convenience.
If the law is a divine mandate, you should actually follow it! Creating your own loopholes and then acting like observing the Sabbath is still somehow sacrosanct is pure intellectual nonsense
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It wasn't oppressive for me. So, YMMV and all that. I mean, being raised in the faith means no culture shock for me, which helps. But on the other hand I would point out that there are people all the time who convert to Christianity and don't find it oppressive. On the contrary, they find it beautiful and freeing. So like I said, YMMV.
As far as doctrines which seem like intellectual nonsense, it really depends on your perspective. From a materialistic standpoint, yeah those things are absolutely bonkers. But... I also don't think that the material universe is all that exists. I believe that there's a spiritual component to our existence, and as such the things you mentioned aren't actually that hard for me to accept as reasonable.
Those things aren't bonkers because they're not materialistic, but because they make no sense. They are incoherent.
If you told me that ghosts could fly, I find the concept "ghosts can fly" to make sense. Ghosts aren't material and I don't believe they exist or can fly, but I can make sense of the concept "ghosts can fly"; it's false, but it's logically coherent.
Many of the things Christians want me to believe don't make sense. I don't mean I think they are false, nor do I mean they're not material; I mean that they describe no logically coherent concept.
Transsubstantiation is literally nonsense.
Then don't be Roman Catholic.
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I'm going to have to respectfully disagree here. Transubstantiation is neither nonsense, nor incoherent. But I also am in no way a skilled enough writer to make an argument better than what the various theologians and apologists have had to say over the years, so I will simply have to refer you to them. And if you still think it's incoherent, then we will have to agree to disagree.
I'm also not sure why you are picking on transubstantiation in particular as a flaw of Christianity in general. That is not a doctrine shared by all Christians, it's just Catholics as far as I'm aware. So at worst it's a flaw in Catholic teachings, not Christian teachings as a whole.
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The closest might be the New England Puritans
And their doctrine of original sin, though they have the strongest possible interpretation, gets me accused of being someone who see no need for adherence to the law at all when I profess it.
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