Original Sin in Non-Christian Religions?

[Geremia]

Do other religions believe in something akin to original sin? Do they believe, e.g., that humans tend naturally to choose evil over good? Viz., is their philosophy anti-Rousseau? Thank you

 

[kenofken]

Do other religions believe in something akin to original sin? Do they believe, e.g., that humans tend naturally to choose evil over good? Viz., is their philosophy anti-Rousseau? Thank you

Not I, nor most of my ilk…

 

[Sufjon]

Hi Geremia:

Do other religions believe in something akin to original sin?

In my faith sin doesn’t carry the same connotation as it does in Christianity. For us it means to be out of alignment with your proper nature. To have sin doesn’t mean to be bad. There are consequences for sin, in that within the natural order of things means there is cause and effect. If I drink heavily and am sexually promiscuous, I can come down with liver disease and maybe an STD or two. That means that in our view, God doesn’t say that Sufjon has been bad and needs to be punished. He doesn’t push the buttons - we do.

Do they believe, e.g., that humans tend naturally to choose evil over good? Viz., is their philosophy anti-Rousseau?

We believe that you are a soul or jivatman who temporarily has a body. You are the driver of the bodily chariot, with the five senses being the horses. Conditioning caused by living in the material world causes one to become blind to the nature of what we really are, which is spirit. We start to associate with the body. We fail to get the sense horses under proper reign, and therefore on our journey from birth to death, they pull off in this direction and that, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Without getting these in check, we arrive at the end with nothing but a series of fruitless ventures to look back on and bewilderment about what it all meant. This is how a 200 pound hulk of a man ends up being dragged hither and thither about life by a few microscopic taste buds or some other sense organ. These are the natural proclivities of an unchecked humankind. We are not inherently bad. We are inherently blind. In our faith we tell the story of the male musk deer. He spends his whole life in search of the source of the mesmerizing smell of the musk, not realizing that it is he that gives off the aroma. What he seeks comes from within himself, yet he searches and searches the vast without of the external world for that which was within all along.

 

[meltzerboy]

Do other religions believe in something akin to original sin? Do they believe, e.g., that humans tend naturally to choose evil over good? Viz., is their philosophy anti-Rousseau? Thank you

In Judaism, there is the concept of sin, but no concept of original sin. Jews do not believe humans are born with a proclivity toward evil; just the opposite: they are born with the potential for good. Nonetheless, they do fall short and commit sins against both G-d and other people. The sins must be atoned for. Those sins committed against others must be atoned for by directly asking forgiveness from those whom we have wronged: they cannot be atoned for only by asking for G-d’s forgiveness, as opposed to sins committed directly against G-d, such as not obeying the kosher laws or not resting on the Sabbath.

 

[seeker57]

No, we have no concept of sin within our faith.

We do read about it in our studies of other faiths, such as Christianity.

Seeker