Original Sin: Can't Live With It; Can't Live Without It

ORIGINAL SIN: CAN’T LIVE WITH IT; CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT Richard Schoenig Abstract In this paper I argue that Christianity "can't live with its Doctrine of Original Sin" because it is implausible and morally indefensible; and I show that Christianity "can't live without its Doctrine of Original Sin " because the doctrine has in the course of nearly 2000 years become so insinuated into the vitals of the body of Christian doctrine that removing it at this stage could be fatal to the host. I. INTRODUCTION II. DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN (DOS) Nonliteral interpretation of Genesis creation and Garden of Eden story Hybrid interpretation of Genesis creation and Garden of Eden story III. CAN'T LIVE WITH IT (DOS) (1) G's evolutionary science problem (2) DOS's moral problems Preternatural Gifts Defense against the claim that the DOS has a moral problem Responses to the Preternatural Gifts Defense "Creator Card" Defense against the claim that the DOS has a moral problem Responses to the "Creator Card" Defense (3) DOS's knowledge problem IV. CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT (DOS) (1) Not all people are sinners (2) Christian claims about the excessiveness and irremediableness of human sinfulness are exaggerated (3) Sinfulness can very often be attenuated by altering certain environmental factors V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION Orthodox Christianity[ [] By “orthodox Christianity” I refer to Christianity as practiced in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and most versions of main line, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist Protestantism. ] (henceforth simply "Christianity") has a big problem with its Doctrine of Original Sin (DOS), a problem which falls under the rubric "can't live with it; can't live without it." In this paper I argue that Christianity "can't live with it" because the DOS is implausible and morally indefensible; and I show that Christianity "can't live without it" because the DOS has in the course of nearly 2000 years become so insinuated into the vitals of the body of Christian doctrine that removing it at this stage could be fatal to the host. II. DOS The DOS is extracted from the larger Genesis creation and Garden of Eden stories, hereafter abbreviated as G. The G describes how God created the world and the primal human pair, Adam and Eve, and placed them in a garden of delights filled with pleasing flora and fauna. At this point Adam and Eve were immortal and immune to pain and suffering, as presumably were the fauna in the garden. Though they were invited to enjoy the garden, God commanded the pair not to eat the fruit of one tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest they die that very day. Nevertheless, they succumbed to the wiles of a talking snake (the devil, Lucifer), and ate from the Tree. Christians refer to this first human moral transgression as the Original or Ancestral sin which resulted in The Fall of Man (from God's grace/favor). As punishment, God exiled the pair from the garden and sentenced them to an existence replete with pain, suffering, hardship, and eventual death. Their punishment also included receiving a nature which rendered them inclined to sin and unable to rehabilitate or redeem themselves by their own efforts from their punishment. In addition, God decreed that their punishment be passed on to all their descendants and shared as well, where applicable, by the members of the animal kingdom. III. CAN'T LIVE WITH IT In order to show that Christianity can't live with the DOS I will show first that the G from which the DOS is extracted has a serious problem with science, and subsequently that the DOS itself has a number of serious moral problems as well as a challenging knowledge problem. (1) G's evolutionary science problem[ [] The material in this section has benefitted from Bart Klink's recent article: "The Untenability of Theistic Evolution (2009)," The Secular Web (<URL:http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/bart_klink/evolution.html>). ] As mentioned earlier, the DOS is a part of the G. If the G is not historically factual, then original sin is not historically factual either. This explains in part why fundamentalists, for whom the DOS is so integral to many of their other Christian beliefs, are very insistent on affirming the literal truth of the G. They have not been alone in this insistence throughout the history of Christianity, far from it. For nearly two millennia virtually all major Christian sources, including such Christian luminaries as the Apostle Paul and Church Father Augustine, have held that the G describes a literal set of historical events which actually transpired. As Bart Klink points out, such sources even include Jesus himself. In the … Bible, Adam is consistently treated as a single historical person … . This is why various biblical genealogies trace back to Adam. Genesis 4-5 lists Adam's descendants and their ages. The first chapter of 1 Chronicles mentions Adam and his pedigree as historical persons, too. Jesus is considered a descendant of Adam by the author of the Gospel according to Luke: Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, … son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God. (Luke 3:23-38) According to the Gospel of Matthew, even Jesus himself seems to speak about Adam and Eve as historical persons: He answered, 'Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning "made them male and female."' (Matthew 19:4)[ [] Ibid., p. 6. ] The problem with all the authoritative Christian endorsements of the historical facticity of the G is that the G is clearly inconsistent with numerous important tenets of virtually universally accepted evolutionary science. Among other things, there is no evidence that the universe or homo sapiens arose as described in Genesis, or that there was ever a tree the eating of whose fruit would impart a knowledge of good and evil, or that there were ever snakes capable of talking, or that there was ever a time when humans or animals were immortal or impassible. Not only is there no significant evidence for these parts of the G, there is a great deal of probative scientific evidence against these claims. Thus, the historicity of the G, and therefore also of the DOS, is belied by the authoritative testimony of science. Nonliteral interpretation of G Fashionable recently in some moderate to liberal Christian circles is the view that the G should not be understood as literal factual history, but as an interpretive myth. As such, it is taken to be a story which is true, although it never really historically happened. It is true in the interpretive sense that it presents truths, for example, that God created the universe and human beings, that people often misuse their free will to do what they know they should not, that this inevitably has negative repercussions for them and their descendants etc. In effect, interpretive myths are to be understood the way the Gospel parables or Aesop's Fables are to be understood. However, this retreat to a nonliteral reading of the G does little to uphold the DOS. First of all, such a reading would require Christians to admit that the Christian church has been wrong for nearly two millennia in teaching the historicity of the G. This is an embarrassing admission of no small importance for an institution that claims to have inerrantly channeled apodictic truths under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to human beings for almost two thousand years. Second, for Christians the price of détente with evolutionary science via any nonliteral interpretation of the G is the surrender of the historical reality of original sin. Any nonliteral interpretation of the G must admit that the G, and therefore original sin, never really happened. This admission would vitiate the very DOS that the nonliteral interpretation of the G was created to defend in the first place. Hybrid interpretation of G Finally, there is what I call the hybrid view, namely, that the G is part real history, part interpretive myth. The following excerpt from the organization Catholic Answers on the proper understanding of the Fall in the G is a good example of this approach. The story of the creation and fall of man is a true one, even if not written entirely according to modern literary techniques. The Catechism [of the Catholic Church] states, "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 390).[ [] “Adam, Eve, and Evolution,” (with Imprimatur) Catholic Answers: (<URL:http://www.catholic.com/library/Adam_Eve_and_Evolution.asp>). ] I judge that the hybrid interpretation is unhelpful in that it provides no articulation of the crucial yet slippery "primeval event." It is difficult to know in what ways that event is supposed to be like, and in what ways it is supposed to be unlike, what is described in the G. Until that information is provided it is difficult to say much about the hybrid interpretation. As the saying goes, "the devil is in the details," and it appears that the Catechism entry takes that adage as a caution and so gives no details about the "primeval event." I suspect that providing details would likely lead to telling criticisms. Instead, the Catechism explanation seems to be more an affirmation of faith that there is some defendable explanation of the "primeval event" ("Revelation gives us the certainty of faith"), rather than a presentation of that explanation. Thus, I conclude from this section that the DOS is implausible because the story from which it is derived, the G, is unlikely to ever have occurred. (2) DOS's moral problems There are serious moral problems for the DOS with respect to the punishment that God is said to have meted out for original sin. Recall that the punishment included that Adam and Eve, all their (now billions of) descendants, and all the animals would thenceforth be subject to pain, suffering, deprivation, and death, often of the most excruciating varieties. Among the factors indicating that these punishments are morally questionable are the following. (i) It is not clear that immorality can be justly imputed to Adam and Eve's actions since the pair apparently lacked the requisite basic knowledge of morality before they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. (ii) A just punishment should have taken as a legitimate mitigating circumstance the fact that the recently created, perhaps childishly innocent, primal pair was no match for the wiles of the talking serpent who, according to Biblical tradition, is identified with the devil, that is, Lucifer. According to that tradition, Lucifer ("the shinning one") is the most powerful and brilliant creation of God. The fact that Adam and Eve succumbed to such an extraordinarily resourceful and clever tempter should have been a morally relevant extenuating factor, at least in assigning the punishment in their case. (iii) A life of pain, suffering, deprivation, and death for Adam and Eve as punishment for a simple act of mild disobedience was unjust because it was too severe. After all, Adam and Eve were apparently motivated to eat from the tree in large measure by their desire to be like the God they admired and perhaps loved. Their transgression might be said to be analogous to that of an impressionable youngster who disobeyed his parents and stuffed himself with Wheaties so that he could "be like Mike" (Michael Jordan). A moral transgression? Perhaps. But if so, surely a very minor one and understandable in light of the star power of MJ at the time and the persuasive power of advertising. It was certainly not an act which deserved the death penalty. Analogously, eating the fruit, a moral transgression? Perhaps. But if so, surely a very minor one and understandable in light of the star power of God and the persuasive power of Lucifer. It was certainly not an act which deserved the death penalty. In effect, no one was harmed by the eating the fruit, certainly not God, a being so perfect as to be beyond harm. Denis Diderot, French thinker and critic of religion, wrote mordantly in 1762 in Addition aux Pensées philosphiques, "The God of the Christians is a father who is a great deal more concerned about his apples than he is about his children." (iv) It is immoral to collectively punish with corrupted natures, pain, suffering, and death all subsequent human beings and animals for an action for which they could have had no conceivable responsibility. Preternatural Gifts Defense against the claim that the DOS has a moral problem Some Christians have pushed back against the objection that the DOS has a moral problem regarding God's punishments for original sin by advocating what I call the Preternatural Gifts Defense. According to this defense, Adam and Eve were created with a particular nature to which God added some preternatural properties such as immortality, impassibility, possessing sanctifying grace, having the ability to talk directly with God. After they committed original sin God punished them by revoking their preternatural properties, leaving them with just a standard human nature. It is this nature which has been passed on to all their descendants. According to the Preternatural Gifts Defense there is no immorality in any of this. First, God's response toward Adam and Eve was not immoral since all it amounted to was the revocation of gift preternatural properties to which Adam and Eve had no moral claim in the first place and, a fortiori, certainly not after they disobeyed God. Second, God did not act immorally toward Adam and Eve's descendants because they had no moral claim to the preternatural properties that God had given to Adam and Eve. The following excerpt from the Catholic Encyclopedia expresses the Preternatural Gifts Defense. But according to Catholic theology man has not lost his natural faculties: by the sin of Adam he has been deprived only of the Divine gifts to which his nature had no strict right, the complete mastery of his passions, exemption from death, sanctifying grace, the vision of God in the next life. The Creator, whose gifts were not due to the human race, had the right to bestow them on such conditions as He wished and to make their conservation depend on the fidelity of the head of the family. A prince can confer a hereditary dignity on condition that the recipient remains loyal, and that, in case of his rebelling, this dignity shall be taken from him and, in consequence, from his descendants. It is not, however, intelligible that the prince, on account of a fault committed by a father, should order the hands and feet of all the descendants of the guilty man to be cut off immediately after their birth. This comparison represents the doctrine of Luther which we in no way defend. The doctrine of the Church supposes no sensible or afflictive punishment in the next world for children who die with nothing but original sin on their souls, but only the privation of the sight of God [Denz., n. 1526 (1389)].[ [] “Original Sin,” Catholic Encyclopedia (<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11312a.htm>). ] Responses to the Preternatural Gifts Defense (1) The case of God punishing original sin and the case of the prince punishing infidelity from the Catholic Encyclopedia article are at best only weakly analogous for the following reasons. (i) Under certain circumstances when the revocation of a gift would bring about great harm, it is morally impermissible to revoke it. For example, morally speaking, I cannot demand my donated kidney back even if the recipient was disobedient. For a second example, if someone underwrites the expenses for economically poor breastfeeding mothers to forego using their own breast milk and instead to feed their babies with formula, then it is not morally permissible for the giver to rescind that gift since doing so would likely have serious life threatening implications for the babies. In the case of God's original sin punishment it is obvious that revoking his gifts would be catastrophic for the life, limb, and wellbeing of Adam and Eve, for the billions of their descendants, and for animals. The revocation would therefore not be morally justified. The prince's revocation of the title he granted, on the other hand, would not result in the kind of universal catastrophic harm that followed God's punishment for original sin and so could not be said to be immoral on that basis. (ii) There is not only much greater harm that results from God's rescinding his gifts to Adam and Eve compared to the prince's revocation of the hereditary title, but the infraction for which God revoked those gifts was less serious than the infraction that caused the prince to revoke the hereditary title. The prince is likely operating within a system that requires loyalty from those so benefited with a hereditary title, such that his wellbeing and that of his principality could be put into significant jeopardy by such breeches of loyalty. In the case of Adam and Eve there is no jeopardy attached to their infraction; no one is harmed by their eating the fruit. (2) The distinction between preternatural and natural properties of Adam and Eve in the Preternatural Gifts Defense seems rather ad hoc given that it is a distinction nowhere spelled out in the G. Its only function seems to make it easier to defend God's punishments for original sin. (3) The Preternatural Gifts Defense jeopardizes the claim of God's omnibenevolence. As mentioned above, the Preternatural Gifts Defense claims that when Adam and Eve sinned, their descendants inherited their general human nature sans the preternatural properties. But Christianity tells us that according to that nature human beings are born into God's disfavor as indicated by the fact that perdition awaits those who die without remitting original sin through baptism. This means that, unrelated to anything they ever did, people's human nature estranges them from their creator/parent God from the moment of conception. It is not just that all people come into the world having to deal with an indifferent creator/parent. That might be tragic enough. Rather, they come into the world with what amounts to a hostile creator/parent who has arranged that their default fate is eternal perdition. It is as if God decided to pick an arbitrary fight with all his human creatures before they ever had a chance to freely choose anything with respect to him. In short, the nature described by the Preternatural Gifts Defense that people get from God weighs heavily against the claim that it was received from an omnibenevolent, all loving, providential deity. Aside I found the last sentence of the Catholic Encyclopedia article noteworthy. It reads: "The doctrine of the Church supposes no sensible or afflictive punishment in the next world for children who die with nothing but original sin on their souls, but only the privation of the sight of God." First, I find the use of the phrase "but only" to refer to the fate of unbaptized children who die to be very surprising. If the Beatific Vision ("sight of God") is indeed everything Christians crack it up to be, then being deprived of it would hardly be adequately expressed by a "but only." Second, such a situation where unbaptized children are denied any chance to experience the Beatific Vision simply because they had the bad fortune to die unbaptized is, like the punishment of Adam and Eve's descendants, grossly unfair. These children did nothing to merit their eternal deprivation of the Beatific Vision. Yet, on the other hand, if such unbaptized infants were to be admitted into the Beatific Vision, that would be unfair to the many people who were not so privileged to get such an automatic admission into paradise.[ [] For more on all this see my article: "The Argument from Unfairness," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 45 (1999), pp. 115-28. ] "Creator Card" Defense against the claim that the DOS has a moral problem Christian defenders of God's original sin punishments may claim that, even if the Preternatural Gifts Defense is not probative, there is still another defense which can be employed. I will call it the "Creator Card" Defense. It holds that, as their creator, God had the moral right to give his creatures any nature or properties he wanted and also to change any nature or revoke any property (whether a part of a nature or not) at any time for any reason without incurring any moral censure. Responses to the "Creator Card" Defense I argue that a creator is not morally permitted to give his creatures any nature or property that the creator chooses. There are natures or properties which involve so much pain, suffering, deprivation, and hardship for creatures that a morally responsible creator should never embody them. We can see this exemplified at the human level. It would be immoral to procreate when it is known that the nature, properties, or circumstances of resulting children would likely conduce to pain, suffering, deprivation, hardship, or premature death. Divinity, especially omnibenevolent divinity, has no moral license to bring about such unwarranted harm. To the extent that God's original sin punishment did this, it would be immoral. (3) DOS's knowledge problem If God is omniscient, then he would have known that Adam and Eve would fail to resist the temptation that he had prepared for them. Why would a good and loving deity let a lengthy teleocosmic drama of punishment play out when he knew it would result in mammoth amounts of pain, suffering, deprivation, and death for so many humans and animals, especially as there were more benign alternatives? Being omniscient, God knows everything that has happened and everything that will happen. Many prominent Christian philosophers[ [] William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, Terrance Tiessen, and Thomas Flint are examples. ] claim that an omniscient deity would also have knowledge of what are known as counterfactuals of freedom, that is, events involving human choices that neither have happened nor will happen, but are parts of some logically possible world or worlds. This knowledge of counterfactuals is often called "middle knowledge." For example, if God has middle knowledge, then he knows what Abraham Lincoln would have ordered for breakfast on his 85th birthday in all worlds in which Lincoln would have ordered breakfast on his 85th birthday. Now with respect to the DOS, instead of creating Adam and Eve in a world in which he knew they would invariably freely fail his test, God could instead have used his middle knowledge and created them in a world in which they would have freely passed his test. He could thereby have obviated all the pain, suffering, and death that billions have otherwise experienced. To the response that perhaps God knows that Adam and Eve would have failed his test in every possible world, I would respond that he should then have created a different primal pair instead of Adam and Eve who would pass the test. To the response that perhaps there is no possible primal pair who would pass God's test, I would say that that would suggest that the test was too difficult or that there was a design flaw in the creation of humans in the first place. An omnibenevolent god should then have changed the test or created no human beings at all. I conclude, therefore, that Christianity really "can't live with" such a flawed DOS. IV. CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT Unfortunately, Christians also cannot live without the DOS either, though some might wish they could. They cannot simply evict this embarrassing old crazy aunt of a doctrine from the attic of the Christian mansion because the old girl holds title to the property, as it were. For example, without the DOS the truth of the following Christian signature claims would be in jeopardy: that all people are guilty of serious sin, that all suffer from a debilitating corruption of their natures which renders them inclined to sin further, and that their corrupt natures prevent them from rehabilitating or redeeming themselves by their own efforts from the bondage of sin and the harsh punishment which it will inevitably bring them. These claims are important in the Christian scheme of things because they provide the main rationale for the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Paul speaks to this in Romans 5:18-19. Therefore, as by the offense [original sin] of one [Adam] judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. So, remove the DOS and it becomes more difficult to explain why the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection were required. One will not be able to provide the rationale for them by establishing the existence of universal, excessive, debilitating, and irremediable sinfulness in the world without reference to the DOS. Let me show why this approach will not work. (1) Not all people are sinners Without relying on the DOS, it is difficult to establish that all people are sinners. For starters, people who die before reaching the age of moral accountability are not sinners. In addition, people who have mental handicaps which prevent them from ever becoming morally accountable are not sinners. If one accepts the Christian view that from the moment of conception a person exists, then induced or natural abortions involve persons who are not sinners. This last fact is significant as recent research in the science of human reproduction has shown that only about 31% of human fertilized eggs grow and survive to become living newborn babies.[ [] Kathleen Stassen Berger, The Developing Person through Childhood and Adolescence 6th ed. (Macmillan, New York, N.Y., 2003), p. 94. ] Furthermore, experience suggests that there have been some people, not included in the groups just mentioned, who also in fact never sinned. These include those who have particularly saintly characters or those who arrived at the age of moral accountability and then unfortunately died shortly thereafter without ever having sinned. All of this means that without relying on the DOS one can say that only about a quarter of all the people who have ever lived have been sinners. (2) Christian claims about the excessiveness and irremediableness of human sinfulness are exaggerated Without citing the DOS, it is difficult to establish the excessiveness and irremediableness of human sinfulness supposed in the Christian assessment of the world. Experience suggests that the degree of moral transgression of most people is modest. To be sure, there have been despicable malefactors such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Jack the Ripper etc., but there have also been untold numbers of people (not necessarily all Christians by any means) who sacrificed life, limb, and property to stop evil doers, as well as large numbers who have labored tirelessly and selflessly to reduce the amount of pain, suffering, and premature death in the world. Thus, instead of the bleak Hobbesian view of humankind's moral failings presupposed by Christianity, experience rather suggests that some form of bell curve more properly represents the distribution of people's moral behavior. At one end of the curve there are a (relatively) few people who are guilty of the most flagrant and appalling immoral acts, while at the other end of the curve there are a (relatively) few people who commit very few or no immoral acts. In between, the vast majority of people lives with some modest moral failures but for the most part with a greater degree of moral rectitude. Not only has the level of moral transgression for most people been modest but, contrary again to the deficiency claimed by Christians, evidence shows that people are far from impotent in affecting both personal and social moral improvement without supernatural involvement. For example, in a recent article, Steven Mohr showed that the religiously tinged Alcoholics Anonymous had a rather dismal record of success and that alcoholics were able to do better on their own without AA.[ [] Steven Mohr, "Exposing the Myth of Alcoholics Anonymous,” Free Inquiry, April/May (2009), pp. 42-48. ] Mohr reports: In 1995, the Harvard Medical School reported evidence that a significant number of problem drinkers recover on their own. Researchers wrote in the Harvard Mental Health Letter of October, 1995: "One recent study found that 80 percent of all alcoholics who recover for a year or more do so on their own, some after being unsuccessfully treated."[ [] Ibid., p. 44. ] Moreover, atheists and agnostics have been well represented among the ranks of those who have lived decent to exemplary moral lives.[ [] For an excellent bibliography on the issue of atheism and morality see the following from The Secular Web (< http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/more-moral.html>). ] (3) Sinfulness can very often be attenuated by altering certain environmental factors Without relying on the DOS, it is hard to dispute that in some instances human beings have morally improved societies without overt deference to supernatural agency. Although the causes for criminal activity are many, most sociologists are in broad agreement that environmental factors such as poverty, ignorance, fear, deprivation, bad fortune, insecurity, physical and psychological pathology are significant contributors to crime or other immoral or, if you will, sinful, behavior.[ []Adrian Raine, PhD; Patricia Brennan, PhD; Birgitte Mednick, PhD; Sarnoff A. Mednick, PhD, DM, "High Rates of Violence, Crime, Academic Problems, and Behavioral Problems in Males With Both Early Neuromotor Deficits and Unstable Family Environments," Arch Gen Psychiatry,  53(6) (1996), pp. 544-549. Bruce P. Kennedy, Ichiro Kawachi, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Kimberly Lochner and Vanita Gupta, "Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime," Social Science & Medicine, Volume 47, Issue 1, 1 July (1998), pp. 7-17. "Tackling the Underlying Causes of Crime: A Partnership Approach," Submission to the (Irish) National Crime Council by the Combat Poverty Agency of Ireland (2002)(<URL:http://www.cpa.ie/publications/submissions/2002_Sub_Crime.pdf>). References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.] In recent years human beings, especially in the more secular developed societies in the world, have produced societies with first rate levels of prosperity, progress, safety, and justice by providing decent levels of education, health care, jobs, security, opportunity, and justice without any necessary genuflection to supernatural doctrine.[ [] Gregory S. Paul, "The Big Religion Questions Finally Solved," Free Inquiry, Dec. 2008/Jan. 2009, pp. 24-36. See especially Figs. 6, 7, and 8. Richard Schoenig, Ph.D. Department of Language, Philosophy, and Culture San Antonio College (210) 486-0251 rschoenig@alamo.edu ] If, as John 16:3 proclaims, God so loved human beings and wanted to save them from sin and its harmful effects, then, there were clearly morally and practically superior ways he could have used to do that. For example, rather than arranging the brutal, bloody murder of an innocent man, God could have simply offered forgiveness to truly repentant and, where possible, restituting sinners as well as improved the world by ameliorating negative environmental factors such as those listed above which conduce to sinful behavior. This approach would still allow God to show his love for people while encouraging the attenuation of sinful behavior, without compromising libertarian free will, if such there be, and without countenancing the primitive blood sacrifice of his own son. I conclude from this section that Christianity "can't live without" the DOS. The requisite rationale for the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus limps without it. V. CONCLUSION I have argued that Christianity has a problem. It can neither defend the plausibility of the DOS nor excise it from the list of its requisite beliefs without doing significant damage to Christianity's cogency and plausibility.   10