If it's too good to be true, then it probably is

Every single person that has ever lived or ever will live on the earth is fatally guilty of trespassing the mandates of the eternal god of christianity. We will all die and spend eternity in unending agony for simply being born into the original sin perpetrated by Adam and Eve. There is no repose from this fate; either for those who have lived, are living now or will live at some time in the future; no possibility of escaping the fires of hell. Except for the life of a man named Jesus. Approximately 2000 years ago, this man magically appeared on the earth, claiming no biological father, but only a biological mother and none other than god almighty himself as his father. He lived a life as we all do and died when he was in his 30's (I'll be no more specific as I am unaware of any definitive length of this man's life ever having been recorded), but his death was prearranged, by the man upstairs who oddly enough was also him, to satisfy himself? that all humanity should be given an opportunity to evade the damnation planned for them. By dying, he would represent the death of all of humanity, taking on the original sin that the species procured at birth and satisfying the edict of death as payment for sin, or so we are told by the christian church. Seeing as he was actually god, he only stayed dead for three days, at which point he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and came back to life, proverbally sealing the deal. The devil was satisfied (or was he), god was satisfied (how obtusely grotesque is that), and of course, all of humanity was satisfied, right?
Wrong. All of humanity was not satisfied, indeed hardly any of humanity even knew of the sacrifice made on their behalf. even to this day there are plenty of people who could give a rip about jesus and his ultimate sacrifice, having never heard of the christian belief system.
Now, we've all heard the phrase "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is".
It is a rule of thumb we all live by on a regular basis, without even thinking about it. Imagine not living by this rule and you'd be in a world where you'd not only open every piece of junk mail you got, advertisements shouting at you about outrageously fantastic deals, but you'd jump at every single one you read, immediately. Unfortunately, a lot of us do this anyway, hence the inherent success and badness of advertising flyers (another blog, another day). In this world, you'd never think twice about taking prescription medication, wondering if there'd be any side-effects. Gamblers live in this world sort-of, if only in the sense that they operate on the assumption that they can buck the odds enough times to make a living at it.
But, if it's too good to be true then it probably is!!!
So, we left off at the point where we were all headed for hell and then jesus showed up as the answer to our (at that point) unvoiced prayers, salvation for us all. What's great news, in fact christians even call it the "good news".
What "good news" could possibly be better than " You're not going to be spending the rest of time in agony, flesh burning continuously. I've paid your debt, you can now come live with me and my invisible father (who's also, curiously, me) in a paradise of your dreams, where everything you could imagine will be there for your pleasure. Just think, rivers of milk that somehow never curdle, even in the open air and warmth of sunlight, and honey that never sours despite the same exposure to the elements. Roads will be paved with gold (although as we all know, abundance causes decline in value) and the whole of limitless heaven will be enclosed(however that's possible) with gates made of pearl (which as I understand it is a substance akin to pretty, hardened, oyster vomit). Doesn't that sound like a deal and a half? How could you say no?"
It does sound like a fantastic offer, doesn't it; one which comes with only one caveat; believe everything that jesus said, no matter how stupid it sounds.
So who is it that offers the incredulous? Who are they that offer something for nothing, or something so great for something so small? Is it our parents? Do they deliberately tell us lies in order to get what they want, with a total disregard for the detriment to us? Do trusted officials such as the supreme court justices ascend to their positions by practicing sleights-of-hand? Do our most closely-held friends and associates regularly deceive us for their own benefit and amusement? For the most part, the answers to these questions is no. We do not count these people (people we trust) as those who would trick us, or who would promise us something they knew they couldn't deliver on. No, it is the used car salesmen, the conmen of this world that we expect such behavior from. It is they who prey on our geatest weaknesses. The sheepishness of some, the trust of others are what play right into the hands of the conmen of the world. Jesus was just such a conman. He played upon the fears and hopes of the people he was around. His familiarity of the jewish traditions (being jewish) was good homework for him, and he did his homework. He duped enough people to ensure his name would be in the headlines for a long time, but a conman is a conman.
OK, enough with the inanity.
IF we were all sinners, guilty of our supposedly common progenetor's disobedience, and IF we were all subject to spend eternity in a hell for this transgression of guilt by association, and IF jesus were sent to save us from this because he was truly the son of god and the only one capable of doing so, then and only then would this be a good deal.
If, however, none of the preceding conditions were true, then the deal was and is irrelevent. So some guy died 2000 years ago. I feel bad for him, as much as I can feel bad for someone who lived that long ago. As crass as it might sound to the ears of some, I simply don't care about him or his "sacrifice". An event that, at best, might have happened over 2000 years ago rightfully has no bearing on my life today. I believe I am a good person. I know my wife is a good person. I know our son is a good person. If every person on the face of the earth would concern themselves with being good people all the time, what need would there be for religion?

On Original Sin

As we all know, the foundation of all the Abrahamic religions is the downfall of man in the garden of eden through the commission of "original sin" by Eve and consequently Adam. God forbade them specifically from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did anyway at the suggestion of the "serpent" and as a result were banished from the garden and forced into a life of grief and toil. Adam and Eve had children and the "sin" they committed when they ate the fruit was inherited by their children, Cain, Abel and Seth, and, I assume, all the other non-named children they must have had.
As an assay, by the logic of its bible, why doesn't christianity recognize that the whole of the human race must be descended from this first necessarily incestuous family. Cain, Abel and Seth had to have successfully mated with females, else we would not be here. It must have either been their mother or their unmentioned sisters. Disgusting.

How did we as the children of Cain, Abel and Seth come to acquire the "sin" of Adam and Eve?
Was it physically? Did we inherit it somehow? If so, this means we must necessarily have a sinful physical nature. What I mean is, if god created us in his image, never once "tweaking" us after the initial creation, then our physical makeup is the same post-original sin as it was pre-original sin, which in turn means that our ability to pass on genes to our children through the process of inheritance has been with us since our creation. Physically, there is only one way to pass on something biological from ourselves to our children. This is called inheritance and involves the replication of DNA sequences of amino acids called genes. Genes are what we inherit from our parents. If this is the case, then what sequence of amino acids would equate to "sin"? Is there also a "meekness" gene which we inherit? How about compassion? The ability to "hear" god speaking, perhaps? Infact, science hypothesises there might very well be certain sequences of amino acids that coorespond to the affects of humanity, although they are yet to be deciphered.

If we inherited original sin from adam and eve then this means we've had the gene for sin as a part of our genetic makeup since our creation, which of course would negate the very idea of original sin. Having the "Sin" gene in us from the get-go disallows the "sinfulness" of disobedience, unless you admit that god set us up to fail. In Logic, this is what is called an argument of Self-contradiction, where the very argument presents two points which cancel each other out. The argument of Self-contradiction is not a valid form of argument.
For argument's sake, however, let's say we do spiritually inherit the sins of our parents through genetics. How then does our spirit or soul survive the death and subsequent decomposition of our physical bodies of which our DNA is the most fundamental part? How could our spirits "go to heaven or hell" after we die if our physical genes are the mechanism of spiritual survival ?
The answer is we did not physically inherit either a soul that is immortal or "sin".
If we did not physically inherit sinfulness, then we must have spiritually inherited it somehow.
If that is the case, then what is the mechanism for this inheritance? It is certainly not DNA, as genetics is physical. Religion offers no explanation for this mechanism. There is no "Religious Method" to counter the Scientific Method of understanding, unless you consider the idea of simply believing what you have been told to believe a method of understanding, i.e. faith.
Curiosity by itself would ask that we try and discover the spiritual mechanism through which these "sinful" attributes are being replicated and passed on to subsequent generations. To date, the only mechanism that we know of that does this exact thing is the DNA in each cell, which is a purely physical entity, requiring no spirituality.
Faith doesn't explain how we inherit the spiritual doom of our parents, it only tells us we do, no explanation needed.
The concept that we "inherited" original sin actually relies on a particular scientific precept, transference, which is also one of the foundations of the theory of evolution.
Attributes are transferred to future generations from previous ones. In evolution these are attributes that are favorable to the survival of the physical being.
Religion perverts this concept into one where the transference does not ensure the survival of the spirit, but the likelihood of its permanent death. "The wages of sin is death", Romans 6:23

If science is not the answer to our questions as religion supposes, then why does religion base its most fundamental precept, the "sin" of which we are all guilty, on the scientifically discovered mechanism of replication and transference, namely DNA?

If on the other hand, we don't inherit our sin, but are given it, by god at the very moment of our birth, then god is a truly malicious being. Adam and Eve sinned and earned god's eternal wrath. We, however, did not. We did not eat of the forbidden tree, we weren't around yet. By the same reasoning, we also did not have any bearing on their commision of original sin.

We, as their descendants, either inherited the problem of sin physically through replication and transference, spiritually through some unknown mechanism that is actually scientific in nature, or god himself bestowed us with this malignancy at the very moment of our births . If god did decide to simply confer on us this spiritual vexation on an entirely individual basis, then he did so knowing the damnation of eternal destruction and torment he was annointing his own creation with. Again, if he did this, he is not a god worth recognizing, let alone worshipping.
Of course, science is the true answer. God is too human, to be anything but.
Religion itself uses science for its own purposes.
Only when science blatantly and completely discredits religion's fantastic claims of the supernatural does it divorce itself from the truth of the scientific method.
This alone is enough to discredit it.