John Loftus points toward a quote from Karl Giberson, a prominent Christian apologist and founder of the now-insignificant Biologos.
I have become convinced that the only origins issue that really matters to most Christians is Adam and Eve. Leave Adam and Eve — and their Fall — in place, and most opposition to the Big Bang, evolution, and the great age of the earth will recede. The historicity of Adam and Eve is the single most important issue driving evangelical Christianity’s widespread, deep, and disturbing opposition to science.
Just so. It isn’t difficult to imagine a Christianity without the virgin birth or, even, a Christianity without the resurrection. But Christianity without Adam and Eve? Without the Fall? Without Original Sin and the need for salvation?
What does Christianity have an offer then but a mediocre, at best, and sometimes quite bad, set of ethical teachings? Nothing.
This goes to something important, something vital to understanding how Christianity’s teachings subvert healthy impulses. There is only one sane and healthy response to learning that it is a bona fide, rock solid, bolted-down fact that the story of the Fall, and Original Sin, is bogus: NO NEED OF “SALVATION” OR DANGER OF HELL IF I’M NOT “SAVED” (whatever that means, clubs differ)? I NO LONGER HAVE TO LISTEN TO STUPID AND BORING SERMONS? YIPPEE! That is some Really Good News — right?
But … no. Not to believers. They just go looking for some other reason to need ‘salvation’ — e.g., “we all sin eventually” — and continue to be led around by the nose by some noisy fraud. There is a good deal of talk about the need for ‘community’ as a motive for perfervid religiosity, and I don’t doubt that’s true in some cases — but I don’t think that gets to the heart of it.
A lot of people just want to continue to be children, escaping the responsibility of being an adult.