What is original sin?

As part of preparing for the last post on Buddhism and original sin I re-read some material on original sin, particularly this and this. I was surprised to find that many people in the Judeo-Christian tradition have and still do deny the existence of original sin. I'm especially surprised by Wikipedia's claim that original sin is not part of Jewish doctrine, since it appears to me to be nothing more than a commentary on Genesis 3, which is certainly part of Judaism.

I guess I'm as surprised to find that there are people in our tradition who deny original sin as I was to find that Buddhism embraces it, because if we disagree on such a fundamental aspect of our natures how can we agree on anything? And if we and Buddhists do agree at this level, then we must agree on many other things as well, because a lot must follow from the way we view ourselves.

But it's clear especially from this that the 670 or so words of Genesis 3 have spawned a lot of additional explanation, and I suspect that when people of the Judeo-Christian tradition reject the doctrine of original sin they are really rejecting one aspect or another of that explanation, and not the central ideas themselves.

So what are the central ideas of original sin? I'm sure I'm not qualified to begin to describe them. But I can describe what the central ideas are to me. To me, original sin is an attempt to explain the mystery of the predicament in which we find ourselves. Again, Paul says it best in Romans 7:15ff:

I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate.
....
so it is not myself acting, but the sin which lives in me.
And really, I know of nothing good living in me -- in my natural self, that is -- for though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not: the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want -- that is what I do.

There is something not quite right about us. We know the kind of people we should be, but we are incapable of being that person. We do evil even though we know it does us harm. Somewhere along the way something went terribly wrong; we have been broken. How did this come about?

The term "original sin" comes from the act that led to this condition, but if we move on to that we've already skipped past the fundamental point. Because what original sin really refers to is this mysterious state of "brokenness" that we recognize in ourselves. I think I'm not alone in this assessment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes original sin this way (CCC 417):

Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice; this deprivation is called "original sin."

(emphasis mine). It's the state of deprivation, the brokenness itself, that original sin primarily refers to, and not the act that led to it. How could any Christian reject this basic diagnosis of the human condition? After all, what need is there for a savior if we're not in a state of needing to be saved? Again, I suspect the beef is with some particular of the doctrine, and not with this basic idea.

Incidentally, an alternative view is presented by the old Harrison Ford movie, The Mosquito Coast. The protagonist in the movie, Allie Fox, believes that evil is learned, and that if you could just roll back the clock far enough and start society over you could create a perfect society without sin. So he leads his family on a series of expeditions, each one traveling deeper into the jungles of Central America in search of ever more primitive societies on which to build his perfect community, and each time finding that sin is already present there. He ends by saying he wishes he could evolve backward into animal form, because only there will a truly pure spirit be found.

One could imagine the question being empirically resolved. If sin is learned then one of the so-called "wolf children" who are lost in the woods as infants and raised by wolves, if there really are such things, would be free of it. You could imagine a psychologist examining such a child to resolve the issue once and for all.