ORIGINAL SIN
This is the Granddaddy of all sin.  This is central to the core of the conservative ideal of Catholicism.  When measured against the message of love conveyed by Jesus, it necessitates the existence of a depraved Deity incapable of forgiveness; a God so callous that he sends his own son to be tortured and executed in order to satisfy his own sadistic sense of justice.  So how do you rescue Catholicism from this premise?  How does the life of the Nazarene and his legacy have any relevancy if we discard the notion of original sin?  How does mankind exorcise himself from a God created by our less than enlightened forbearers?

I believe it is easier to understand this if we can remove ourselves from our own culture and look at it objectively.   

In another Universe far far away on a planet called Glob, there was once a Neanderthal humanoid who called himself Bob.  Bob was a good man.  He was dearly loved by his incredibly ugly Neanderthal wife and his equally apelike children.  Bob invented stand-up comedy around the fire one night by telling the first joke.  

“Why does chicken cross road?” he asked.  
“Me not know, Bob.  Why chicken cross road?”  said his best friend, Jim.  
“To keep Bob from eating!  Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!” bellowed Bob.
“That funny!  That make me pee a little bit, Bob.”  said his Uncle Kogar.  

Bob began to spend his days thinking up hilarious anecdotes so that he could regale his witless peers at fireside by night.  Gradually, his hunting companions began to excuse him from his role in the daily predatory necessities and Bob became the first man of leisure.  His skills at the campfire were valued so highly that he was given extra portion of food and drink and a chair was fashioned for him that would recline at the touch of a stick protruding from the base.
As his popularity grew, Bob found himself the object of desire for the most beautiful Neanderthal in the tribe, Marilyn.  Marilyn was subtle.  Instead of getting down on all fours and waving her posterior at Bob, Marilyn merely drooled in his presence.  Most of the other women recognized her advances but the males were unable to recognize this new, understated form of flirting.  Soon Bob and Marilyn were sneaking away, making the beast with two backs while the rest of the clan prepared the food.  Bob’s wife left him and took his club, shoes and shaving kit.  

To put it mildly, Bob was full of himself.  He began to think his shit did not stink.  He decided he was a philosopher.  And he began to weave moral lessons into his jokes.

“How does Neanderthal screw in light bulb?”  he asked one night.

“What light bulb?”  said Kogar.  

And for the first time, despite inventing the first anachronistic joke, Bob’s act bombed.  He was just too far ahead of his time.  

“Tell chicken joke,” demanded Reek.  

“How chicken cross path?”  Stubby tried to grab the stage.

“Not tell right, WHY not HOW.  Joke not funny if say HOW.”  Bob jumped up.  

“Me tired of joke.  Me want to tell story.  Me want to tell what me learn today.  Me talk to Mr. Big today,”  Bob tried to explain.  

“Mr. Big talk to me in river.  Mr. Big talk to me.  Tell me how we get here.  Tell me why we here.”

“What he talk about?  We know why we here.  We here because Monkey tribe kick asses.  We here because Bruce fight like woman,”  said Kogar.

Bob tried to get them to understand.  “Me talk to Big Man.  Big Man who make us all.  Big maker.  Me talk to him.  He talk to me.  Him tell me to tell you what he tell me.”

The tribe pretty much sat in stony silence wondering what Bob was trying to say.  Where was the punch line?  Then Bob realized how to get through.  

“Big man make magic.  Big man make water go away.  Big man make creek dry up.  Big man pick up fishes and give to Bob.  Bob eat them.  Big man make fire fly from fingers.  Big man big magic.”  Bob could not stop himself.  The longer he talked the bigger the lie.  But the tribe was so completely absorbed in his story, he dare not stop.  Bob had made the transition from performer to preacher.  

Later that year, Bob was killed by his wife in the middle of copulating with Marilyn.  Marilyn was stoned to death by the women in the tribe.  

But Bob’s stories lasted long after his last sniff of forbidden marital fruit.  In fact, as the years passed, Bob’s stories became bigger, longer and more sophisticated.  The magic was embellished and Bob’s stature in the tribe was exaggerated.  Less than a hundred years after Bob’s first stand up act, he had been elevated to the status of a sage prophet.  For thousands of years, his stories were told and retold by the campfires.  His progeny evolved into a complex civilization and his stories were finally written down and stored on holy scrolls.  Wise men studied the book of Bob and concluded that Bob was actually Bigan’s direct translator.  

Bigan was the god unwittingly created by Bob in his stories about Big Man.  As generations passed, Bigan was named the Lord Creator, and the humanoids on Glob worshiped him and made sacrifices to him.  Bob’s jokes were turned into prayers.  Bob would never have recognized them.  The chicken story became the book of Rooster.  It was translated and retranslated into so many languages that it taught different morals to different cultures. Two very similar cultures adapted the story and called it by different names.  One called it the Bigle and the other called it the Kogan.  In fact, two of the largest sects went to war over the holy campfire site, both claiming the land and caves for themselves.  

It would have stunned Bob to learn that he had created not one but two religions and that those two cultures hated one another so much that two thousand years after his death, they destroyed their entire civilization in a nuclear holocaust.  

Thank God we humans are much too sophisticated to make such stupid choices.  Yeah.