The Forbidden Fruit

I used to believe--when I was much younger and a very new Christian, long before I was a rationalist--that every person, were he or she in the place of Adam and Eve, would have eaten the forbidden fruit in Eden.  But this was an illogical belief that I shed upon becoming a rational thinker as the years since that time passed by.

It is a false belief.  Why?  Because if a person in a situation sins, it is not true that any other person would have committed the same sin in the same scenario.  Just because one person murders another in a specific chain of events does not mean that another man or woman would have done so as well.  Just because one person steals from, rapes, kidnaps, abuses, objectifies, or lies to another human does not mean that another person would have carried out the same action.  The specific logical errors here are the non sequitur fallacy, meaning the conclusion (that all people would have eaten the fruit) does not follow from the premise (that Adam and Eve ate the fruit), and the fallacy of composition, meaning that the argument asserts that what is true of the part must be true of the whole.  The proposition in question, that all people would have acted like Adam and Eve did by eating the fruit, cannot survive a confrontation with logic.

I suspect that some people who believe this fallacious proposition may feel better about their own flaws in thinking that no person would have simply obeyed God in Eden.  Maybe it makes them feel less responsible for their own sins.  Perhaps a person who holds this belief really would have made the same choice as Adam and Eve--this doesn't mean that another person would have done the same, and proves only the moral weakness of that individual.  The moral guilt of a person depends on the actions of that person, not the behavior of any other individual.  Just because Adam and Eve carried out a sinful action does not mean that I would have done the same, that any of my friends would have done the same, or that anyone else would have done the same.  Sin may exist, but it does not exist by necessity; it is an unfortunate deviation from righteousness that never had to come about to begin with at all.

Any Christian who believes that all people would have done the same as Adam and Eve needs to stop with this silly illogical (and unbiblical!) nonsense.  Could any human have eaten the fruit?  Of course!  But it does not follow in any way that any human would have eaten it.  Human sin is not an unavoidable thing.  It is only engaged in because humans choose to act in evil ways.  Each person is different, and it is entirely untrue to suppose that all of them act or would act identically in the same situations.