Understanding Sin and the Fall

I am puzzled by something. I often hear that we supposedly live in a Fallen world, and that we live in a Fallen world as a consequence of Adam and Eve's sin.

But how does this work?

Is sin supposed to have causal power, so that it can alter the structure of physical reality, changing our surroundings from paradisiacal ones to ones containing all sorts of natural hazards to us, like infectious diseases, birth defect-causing DNA flaws, tsunamis, hurricanes, and so on?

Or, instead, is sin supposed to have upset God, who then had a fit of pique and decided to punish not just Adam and Eve but all of their descendants by changing the world in ways that would make them suffer?

How is sin's making the world Fallen supposed to work?

I would point you to Chapter 3, "Suffering and Sensation," of David Keel's True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of our Complex World as containing a helpful approach to theodicy, etc. 

Does it answer the OP's question?

It addresses evil as an unavoidable side effect of free will, whcih seems to be the meaning of the Edenic story.

My question is not about sin's effect on human volition. My question is not about sin's transmission down generations, either. My question is not about concupiscence.

My question is about how sin is supposed to *alter the structure of physical reality*. Where there were no natural hazards, now there are. The way the world works has supposedly changed as the result of the first sin. How? Does sin have causal effect? Did God get mad and retaliate against humanity? By what mechanism is the first sin supposed to have *altered the structure of physical reality*?

Why the focus on physical reality?

Because when I am told the story about how the Fall was a consequence of Adam and Eve's sin, it's the physical reality part that seems most puzzling and the least accounted for. It's also just the particular issue I happen to be focused on at the moment. And when I've raised it elsewhere, it's been pretty much ignored--as though there were no problem at all, or as though the believers have simply not cared about problems with their own account.

But I know that theologians must have thought about this and attempted to give accounts. They must have. I haven't yet found it in the Catholic catechism, but I'm looking. Surely the problem has been addressed.

But how?

Someone from a more literalistic tradition than mine may have more to say about physical reality.  To me, the story is about the meaning stated above: where you have free will, evil will follow.

It was my understanding that the Eastern Orthodox Church accepted the doctrine of the Fall, though not of the transmission of Original Sin from generation to generation.

If "where you have free will, evil will follow" is taken to mean that it's a virtual certainty that some portion of the time freely willing beings will make wrong moral choices, sure, OK. If it is taken to mean that freely willing beings are evil by virtue of being freely willing, I disagree.

How about sin not being necesary, but being inevitable?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romanides

www.amazon.com/The-Ancestral-Sin-Comparative-Augustinian/dp/0970730314

If nontheists are spiritually blind, what are theists who ignore the question of how sin alters physical reality?

I only see two options. (1) Sin has causal power to change the structure of the physical world. (2) Sin upsets God, who then deliberately alters the structure of the physical world to introduce more causes of suffering.

If there's a third option, let me know. If there's not, which option do believers choose?

What makes you ask about changes to the structure of the physical world?  That does not seem to be a particularly biblical notion.

There are some people who say that the reason the world contains natural evil--tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes, infectious diseases and birth defects--bad features that seem to have nothing to do with human free will--is that we live in a Fallen world. I think even pocklecod took that view.

If you do not hold that view, then the question I am asking might not be relevant to your belief. But then you have to ask why the world does contain natural evil.

I would again refer you to Chapter 3, "Suffering and Sensation," of David Keel's True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of our Complex World as containing a helpful approach to theodicy, etc. 

Here is a WSJ review:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-true-paradox-by-david-skeel-1416607499

Here is a NYT article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/04/us/a-christian-apologist-and-an-atheist-thrive-in-an-improbable-bond.html?_r=0

Just for my own reference, that's "David Skeel." Right?

I am not sure my local university library has it.

Yes.  Sorry.  You are somewhere around Philly, right?  

I don't think it's "hair splitting" to insist that a purported explanation of how it is that there are natural hazards in the world that supposedly weren't there originally actually *explain* how it is that there are natural hazards in the world that supposedly weren't there originally.

A purported explanation of X should actually *explain* X.

Surely that is not too much to ask?

Yes. Why?

The author of True Paradox is at Penn Law School.  Don't know if he gives book talks or debates or discussions, but there may be some opportunity there to hear what he has to say.