I have studied child development thank you very much, education is my specialty. You obviously have not been to kindergarten in a while. Kids steal from each other, horde toys and other objects, lie, etc. That is natural because of sin nature. The problem is that you do not want to say things as they are. I sure you say pro-choice instead of pro-death/murder. Let us call things as they are and not try to brush it over in order to calm our own conscious. You hit the nail on the head, you have to teach kids to share because the desire to share is not inborn like sin is.

So you admit that there is right and wrong. The reason that sinful thoughts are wrong is because every action that we take comes from the mind, thinking about it and then doing it. If hate is in your heart/mind then it will manifest itself in actions (Jesus says ultimately murder if not dealt with). You are desperately trying to justify sin and that will never work. Liberals try to justify murder by calling “choice” but the fact is that it is still murder.

You can choose not to believe in sin, that is your choice. Just because you believe something does not make it true. I can avoid believing in gravity but the cold hard fact is that if I jump from a building (believing with all of my heart that there is no gravity) I will fall down.

I would advise you to read the Scriptures a little more carefully. God taught right and wrong much earlier than when Moses wrote it down. He taught Adam and Eve right and wrong as well as Cain and Able. So your argument does not hold much water in the fact that the laws were older than Moses, we know that, the point is that the laws came from God.
Just because God knows your action does not mean that He forces you to act in a certain way. We have free will even though God knows what we are going to do. You make the choice every minute of every day. How does free will say that God is not all knowing? He knew Adam and Eve would sin. He knew that they would need a Savior (that is why He was prepared before the foundation of the world) but He gave them the opportunity to make a choice. The made the wrong one but God was not shocked.

You do not have to teach children to steal, you have to teach them not to steal.

Actually, Erik, it can take years of training before a kid is even ready to knock over a convenience store. As for more complex jobs like robbing future generations in order to finance an illegal war, that takes an advanced degree in Reagonomics and neo-conservative ethics.

Seriously, Erik, you might want to brush up on child development, as well as a number of other topics. From the point of view of a small baby, objects simply occur, and the baby’s developmental task is to grasp and investigate them. The concepts of “stealing”, and “not stealing” only arise when the child learns that he is a “me”, separate from other “me’s”. She learns that others have a concept of “mine” that is felt as passionately as her own concept of “mine.” So while I guess you could characterize an infant’s drive to grasp interesting objects as “knowing how to steal,” I don’t think it’s particularly helpful. Also consider that as soon as they are able, children love to play games that involve sharing and reciprocity. Soon after they learn to reliably grasp and manipulate objects, they start offering objects to caregivers to hear the response, “Oh, you’re sharing your toy with me. Thank you very much!” Then the caregiver might mime some action with the toy, and hand it back to the baby with some additional comment. The baby imitates the caregiver’s action with the toy, and offers it again, and so on. Usually the caregiver tires of this before the baby.

I do not believe in sin. I understand productive and destructive behaviors among members of social species. Many actions that the Bible declares to be sins were proscribed in writings from many centuries earlier than Moses, who supposedly lived many centuries before the Torah was first anthologized, but after the pyramids were already old.

Man (in the gender-neutral sense) is not inherently sinful, he is inherently selfish. It takes a village to teach him to coexist with a village. Those who adapt will thrive.

I do not believe in sin, since sin is an affront to a God who a priori knows every action of everyone. How can he possibly be offended? In a deterministic world view, our every action was pre-ordained, an inevitable result of God’s own first action. A free-will point of view implies that God is not all-knowing. Can’t have that. Well, his non-existence helps me with that one.

Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. You want to say that you have never lied, stolen, had sexual thoughts about a person who was not your spouse, hated someone etc.? I do not believe that for one moment. You say that you do not believe in sin, so why not murder someone? Why not steal from people’s homes? You see that everyone believes in sin whether admitted or not! Again, you do not have to believe that it is cold in Siberia in the winter time but that does not change the facts!!!

If I say the Bible says so then that will probably not be enough for you. As I mentioned earlier, you do not have to teach a child how to lie, you have to teach them not to lie. You do not have to teach children to steal, you have to teach them not to steal. The desire to sin is inborn no matter where you are born or grow up. Why do we have laws? Because there is appropriate and inappropriate behavior. We as people know how to act inappropriately but we must be taught how to act appropriately.

You say:

Mankind is inherently wicked, born into sin.

I’m curious as to how you know this to be true. Are you suggesting that a human infant is capable of intentionally committing a wicked act? I agree that children have to be socialized, but I see no reason to label them as inherently evil. In fact, I see a good reason not to, because parents who interpret age appropriate-behavior as intentional wickedness may be more prone to child abuse.

My friend, Christianity is about setting people free from their slavery to sin, something that nothing else in this world can do, not religion, mode of ethics, etc. because they do not change the heart/mind. Through faith in Jesus Christ and obedience to Him God changes your mind and sets you free from slavery to sin, you now have the ability to say no to sin every single moment of every single day!!! Get your facts straight. If you would study the Bible instead of what others say about the Bible then you might know this.