This is Luna, and this is Éowyn. I mean, that’s not really their names… I haven’t
a clue who they are; this is just a stock video that I brought with Patreon money (yeah,
that’s right, this is what your money goes goes on – how do you feel about that, huh?
Hmm?), but for allegorical sake, play along now! This is Luna, and this is Éowyn, and
they are sisters who love each other dearly… most of the time, at least, I mean, they’re
sisters. Anyhow, before Éowyn was born, Luna had an adorable finger-painting experience.
Her father laid out a sheet of paper, placed her upon it, and gave her the most colourful
of paints, and he said it was good (which is a tad arrogant, but, you know, no one’s
perfect). He then said unto her (because he spoke weirdly), Luna, my child, you can paint
on any inch of this paper, but you are not to spill paint beyond it. Luna, however, was
a baby… so was too young to understand. Duh. In a cute-rage of excitement, she then
did the unthinkable… she got paint damn on floor! *sigh* Her father then smiled warmly,
let out a heartful chuckle, and said unto himself, you know I’m not sure what I was
thinking putting you in this room Luna, I could’ve just put you in the Kitchen where
the titles are much easier to clean. Aw, aren’t you just adorable, my sweet, innocent child…
except no, not really! “Bad girl”, he bellowed! “What is this that thou hast done?”
“Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle (honestly, I really don’t
know what he had against specifically cattle… he’s a bit of weird bloke. Probably has
a repressed bovine fetish. That’s my guess *cough*)-- he continued, thy belly shalt thou
go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. He then snatched the paper and paints
from under Luna, cast her outside of his home, and watched from a distance as she struggled
to survive. A few years later, the father’s marketing team has a great idea (and yes,
I stole this background music from the Internet Historian – he is one true god, and he’s
really got me into Jazz as of late *cough*). And thus, Éowyn was born, and while holding
her tiny, precious hand, the feather got serious, and said unto Éowyn, blood of my blood, “Just
as sin came into the world through one [messy child], and death came through sin, and so
death spread to all because all have sinned”, including you, little one. And he then cast
Éowyn to the streets because of her sisters’ “crime”… of spilling a bit of paint.
Upon the streets,Luna soon found Éowyn (which their father tried to take credit for, as
it was a good thing), and then the two sisters endured a very hard couple of years (which
their father did not try to take credit for, as it was a bad thing), but eventually, thanks
to Luna’s sharp wits and the evolved empathy of older apes, they found themselves a safe
and stable environment in Fosters Home for Children who’s Parents have Imaginary Friends.
They did not live happily everafter, however, as their father kept sending them letters
in which he threatened (loving, he insists) to infinitely torture them for Luna’s spilling
the paint, but the two sisters didn’t care, for they were strong. A few years later,their
father had yet another child, Akara, and in a moment of clarity, in the reflection of
her beautiful eyes, he saw the folly of his ways. “What have I doneth?” He said unto
himself. “I am a terrible father! I must apologise to Luna and Éowyn at once, and
whether they find it in their hearts to forgive me or not, I must love them with all my heart
for the rest of my days.” … But then he had another great idea: “I’ve got it!”
he gapsed, “I could forgive them by torturing and crucifying my newborn, Akara! Of course!
Why didn’t I think of this before?! And so obvious! I’m-- I’m so moral! I’m
so loving, and perfect, and oh… I’m touching myself tonight! The end. What you’ve just
seen, as given away by the annotations, is a parody of the morally bankrupt Christian
doctrine of Original Sin – that is, the abominable notion that a child (you) can inherit
the sins of another (Adam and Eve) – and whilst I’ve had a memeliciously fun time
depicting the depravity of this teaching (and hopefully it’s at least given you smile),
I now want to get a lot more serious (and so, please forgive the change in tone). According
to the Christian narrative, god created man, gave him a garden, told him not to do something,
and then created woman to get man to do that something (which is just one of countless
examples of Christianity’s deep disdain for half the human race). And in response
to this transgression, god cast man and woman from the Garden, and cursed them to eat of
the ground for the days of their lives, and additionally cursed women to have very severe
childbearing, but he didn’t stop there, oh no, his misogyny was only just getting
started! “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception;
in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee”, effectively rendering half the human race as cattle… and I say
“half the human race” because, of course, according to Christianity, all humans inherit
this curse. You, me, and everybody else are guilty of Adam and Eve’s sin of eating a
fruit from a tree, and consequently we all deserve eternal damnation (hell), in which
our eyes will be burnt from our skull, our skin stripped from our bones, and our bone
crushed to dust, only for us to be at once rejuvenated to experience it again and again
and again and again, forever… Or, if you squint real hard, you can conjure a slightly
more tolerable interpretation (as is the case with Jehovah's Witnesses’), but in any case,
you are condemned by the actions of an ancestor. Now it has to be said: This is not only grotesquely
immoral, but logically insane! And yet, Christians, in the greatest display of stockholm syndrome
of all time, defend and worship such ghastly story and immoral monster: “We are sinners.
We are fallen short of the glory of god.” “God planned to magnify the mercy, and grace,
and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and wrath, and justice of his son before Adam
ever existed!” “The Bible is clear about the impact of Adam and Eve's disobedience.
Their sin brought corruption and death to the whole world and all their children.”
“The bible tells us that we have inherited the guilt of Adam. Through the sin of Adam,
all men sinned. We carry the guilt of Adam’s sin!” “I would say that Adam can be regarded
as the federal head of the human race. That is to say, he is our representative or proxy
before God so that what he does he does as our representative.” “Look, what Scripture
tells us is that all of mankind are children of wrath. We are objects of the hatred of
God by nature.” “He affirmed that all humanity – all subsequent humanity – inherited
from Adam both legal guilt and moral corruption.” “Just read this book, and believe it all!”
It’s ironic, don’t you think? That these pathetic apes lecture us on what’s moral,
whilst they parade the worst moral teaching of all time as if it’s worthy of veneration.
To go back to the parody that opens this video, any decent human would look upon the suffering
inflicted on Luna, Éowyn and Akara with disgust, and would utterly condemn the moral immonster
responsible, but decorate such depravity in religious garments, and you’ll get otherwise
decent humans to not only pardon the immoral monster, but worship him (especially, it must
be said, if you promise them great rewards for their credulity, and offer just enough
ambiguity for them to resist their torments of cognitive dissonance). The subtitle of
Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great is that Religion Poisons Everything – it makes
otherwise decent people say and do atrocious things, and the veneration of Original Sin,
ladies and gentlemen, is a textbook example! And talking of Hitchens, here’s an irresistible
fruit of knowledge plucked from his mind: “Is it moral to believe that your sins,
yours and mine, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, can be forgiven by the punishment
of another person? Is it ethical to believe that? I would submit that the doctrine of
vicarious redemption by human sacrifice is utterly immoral. I might, if I wished, if
I knew any of you, you were my friends, or even if I didn't know you, but I just loved
the idea of you (compulsory love is another sickly element of Christianity, by the way),
but suppose I could say, look, you're in debt, I've just made a lot of money out of a God
bashing book, I'll pay your debts for you. Maybe you'll pay me back someday, but for
now I can get you out of trouble. I could say, if I really loved someone who'd been
sentenced to prison, if I could find a way of saying I'd serve your sentence, I try and
do it. I could do what Sydney Carton does in A Tale of Two Cities, if you like? I'm
very unlikely to do this unless you've been incredibly sweet to me. I'll take your place
on the scaffold, but I can't take away your responsibilities. I can't forgive what you
did. I can't say you didn't do it. I can't make you washed clean. The name for that in
primitive Middle Eastern society was, was, scapgoating: You pile the sins of the tribe
on a goat and you drive that goat into the dessert to die of thirst and hunger, and you
think that you’ve taken away the sins of the tribe. It’s a positively immoral doctrine
that abolishes the concept of personal responsibility, on which all ethics and all morality must
depend!” And lastly, I simply have to share a beautiful insight regarding Original Sin
from no other than Mark Twain, who’s work titled Letters from the Earth I am currently
reading, highly recommend, and have given a free link to below. But before doing so,
I just want to sign off by saying that I’m Stephen Woodford, thank you kindly for the
view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and those of you who’ve
supported the channel via other means. You enable me to move old trees that still bare
fruit to our new fields, such as the one to follow: In Letters from the Earth, Twain speaks
of the innocence of Adam and Eve before they consumed from tree of knowledge of good and
evil, and compares them, as I did in my parody, to children. Twain writes: “God had warned
the man and the woman that they must not eat of the fruit of a certain tree. And he added
a most strange remark: he said that if they ate of it they should surely die. Strange,
for the reason that inasmuch as they had never seen a sample death they could not possibly
know what he meant. Neither would he nor any other god have been able to make those ignorant
children understand what was meant, without furnishing a sample. The mere word could have
no meaning for them, any more than it would have for an infant of days.” Indeed, even
if the stories of the Bible were true, before eating from the tree of knowledge of good
and evil, Adam and Eve had no concept whatsoever of good and evil, and thus they couldn’t
intend to act in accordance to either – as highlighted by them not recognising their
lack of clothing. Before The Fall, they were naked, unaware of evil. They were, like Luna
in my parody, utterly ignorant. Even according to the Christian narrative, Adam and Eve were
innocent children who no more could be held accountable for their act of eating from the
tree, than Luna can be held accountable for spilling paint, and yet god (who’s adherents
claim is all-powerful and all-loving) condemned not only his children, but all children to
come! This is a grotesquely immoral, repulsive story, and the fact that we teach this to
children, as fact – with tax payers money no less – is an insult to human dignity!
Here’s the truth, according to the emancipation of science: You are not born evil. You do
not deserve eternal damnation. You are simply an imperfect ape – an evolved mammal that’s
a single member of a single species on a single planet in a single solar system in a single
galaxy in grand cosmos, and while you’ll never be perfect, if you do your best, your
best will be good enough.