Why did Jesus have to die?

[maurile]

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does that mean if my son lies he needs to sacrifice his pet goldfish to be forgiven.

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If he doesn't have a goat, I guess his goldfish will have to do.

Seriously, the whole sin-and-redemption thing is messed up in Christianity.

Original sin is a crock because Adam couldn't have sinned when he didn't know the difference between good and evil. Even if he did know the difference, he didn't sin: all he did was disobey God. But disobeying someone isn't ipso facto a sin.

Even if eating the apple was a sin, it was Adam's sin and he is responsible -- not the rest of us. The way moral responsibility works is, people are responsible for their own wrongdoings, not the wrongdoings of others. So the rest of us don't need to be redeemed for Adam's "original" sin.

Even if we are somehow responsible for Adam's sin, we are the ones who must then redeem ourselves. You can't redeem someone else by dying for his sins. The guilty parties must redeem themselves by paying restitution to their victims, promising not to do it again, etc.

And even if we could be redeemed by having Jesus take our punishment, Jesus didn't take our punishment. Our punishment was supposed to be hell, but Jesus ascended into heaven.

So like I said -- it's all messed up.