Because the idea of original sin doesn't, or only superficially, has anything to do with wrongful acts. What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil. Or if you want a secular version call it injustice, or the ethical and the unethical, but certainly I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'. If there was nothing to the idea of humans being sinful, then living a moral life would not be a struggle, we'd be 'divine' by nature and as Chesterton says just walking across the street rids most people of that idea very quickly.
>If it makes sense to you you probably never thought about it much.
Pretty much the other way around. When I was 15 it made less sense to me than it does now exactly because I hadn't thought about it much. Part of having a proper and mature understanding when arguing about religious issues is to learn to take things seriously and not as literally as many people do today.
> Because the idea of original sin doesn't, or only superficially, has anything to do with wrongful acts. What the idea of original sin is about that humans, by their very nature and in their being are confronted with evil. Or if you want a secular version call it injustice, or the ethical and the unethical, but certainly I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'. If there was nothing to the idea of humans being sinful, then living a moral life would not be a struggle, we'd be 'divine' by nature and as Chesterton says just walking across the street rids most people of that idea very quickly.
Okay, so...why do we need to baptize infants? I don't really see any answer here. If it were just about human nature, then what does pouring water over the head of a baby achieve? I don't see any problem with it as a general ritual to help remind us of our nature, but that's explicitly _not_ what Catholic doctrine teaches; it claims that it has an important, non-trivial effect cleanses the infant itself. Whatever that effect is, it doesn't seem to do much to the human nature that causes it to sin when it gets older.
This is the kind of poetic language behind which people hide confusion so that they can still believe in this. I did the same. I understand the reflexive "let's not think about this too much in case we stop believing".
What does it actually mean to be "confronted with evil" and why is it a problem requiring Christ to die before people with no personal sins could be admitted to heaven?
> I did not need Catholicism to see that humans are, by virtue of simply being human, not 'sinless'.
Clothes by virtue of being clothes are not "dirtless". Dirt exists in the world. Does it mean that before any clothes can be worn to a ball we need to metaphorically wash the generalized dirtiness out of everything? Or do we wash the clothes that are actually dirty and don't wash the clothes that are actually clean?
This confusion of static and instance fields is the main issue with Catholicism.
And to the first point, as Chesterton says you don't need to accept any religious answer at all. As he says, the theodicy question, how the existence of manifest evil can be reconciled with a benevolent god, has driven countless of people away from faith, not to it. And he says that's fine, but you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Some aren't. And certainly washing one cloth because other is dirty or can get dirty doesn't make sense. So how does it make sense when it comes to sins?
> We all confront the same questions.
Meaningless poetic language again. Some of us don't. And even assuming that we all do - we also confront low temperatures and yet Christ didn't burn on cross to heat us all for eternity. And even if he did burn he would only heat the people near him at the time. How does this future-proof abstract-idea-solving suicide work, exactly? Doesn't seem to work that well if we still "confront evil".
The whole point of original sin in Catholicism isn't that we have to confront evil. It's just an excuse for why we need Jesus and baptism.
> As he says, the theodicy question
This isn't theodicy. I'm not asking why is there evil. I'm asking why do we all need Christ to die for us and why do we need baptism if personal sins aren't guaranteed and the original sin is just the capability to sin or possibility of encountering sin.
I don't wash the idea of clothes because some real clothes can possibly get dirty later.
What the original sin actually is in Catholicism is not some capability - it's an abstract idea that makes it impossible for specific people to get to heaven without Christ dying for them. And it makes no damn sense.
Being gay this one made me really laugh. People can hardly agree on what dirt is, and when they do, they often change their mind 100 years later anyway (or wait 500 years to apologize, as was the case with the Church's treatment of Galileo). Society is built on social contracts, compromises we make to optimize our interactions with society as a whole. As an individual you have freedom to ascribe meaning, value, and take stock in whatever moral beliefs you see fit, but it is dangerous to assume that you are "correct" or that there is some ideal set of values that will be correct for all of eternity. Culture evolves, technology evolves, morality has to evolve with it. When morality fails to evolve as fast as culture or technology, we get things like wars, things like apartheid, things like conversion camps, genocide, etc., etc., and there is no greater damper on moral progress than religion.
I'm not sure you've understood the position of most moral realists. Why we should (say) support LGBTQ rights in 2021 is not that morality itself has evolved, which implies that it may have been morally permissible not to support such rights in 1921. It's that when society failed to respect such rights it was making a moral error.
To put it another way, is there a culture or level of technology at which it would have been permissible to ostracize and punish gay men and women? To enslave as the spoils of war? To protect molesting priests over the children they victimized?
That's not to say that religion isn't a damper on moral progress, though I don't think it's fair to say that there is "no greater damper". Abolitionism often had a religious component, for example, while barriers to racial progress in the 20th century were maintained irrespective of religion. Or in terms that I've been thinking about recently, famous TERFs are often nonreligious.
Why do we need to baptize infants? Because they have original sin. How could they get it if they haven't done anything? Because Adam and Eve sinned and their sin is shared with all of humanity. How are we responsible fot their sin? We aren't but God still had to kill himself to forgive us. Cause reasons.
It gets more stupid the more you try to explain this absurd away, and the mess of a quote by Chesterton showcases that. It conflates the original sin with regular sins of adults.
Which BTW according to Catholic doctrine aren't universal "facts" at all - because some people are saints and have no instance sins, just the static (original) sin shared from Adam and Eve. And Saint Mary had neither for some reason (probably because Christ multiple inherited from Human and God and something would break if he inherited the static field).
I was a very religious Catholic for about 20 years and it never made sense to me. If it makes sense to you you probably never thought about it much.