OK, thanks to Pharyngula, I was directed to this blog post, which takes a weird and disturbing stance:

Researchers are just discovering what Bible-believing parents have known for centuries: Children are sinful from birth. A recent study found that infants learn to deceive from a far younger age than anyone previously suspected–as early as six months. Dr Vasudevi Reddy, of the University of Portsmouth’s psychology department, thinks children use early fibs to discover what kinds of lie work in certain situations (for example: using fake crying and pretend laughing to win attention).

Parents: What stories (humorous, preferably) can you share about how your children demonstrate they, too, are sinful from birth?

Needless to say, most of these stories would be more humorous if we knew that the writers were locked up in a nice, safe place.

While a couple of dissidents make comments and attempt to interject some reason into the discussion, they are roundly chastized, and then the philosophy begins. . .

According to the Bible, children are sinful from conception. The only exception from this was the immaculate conception.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. Psalm 51:5

No one wants to hear this really, but it complicates the issue of infant death. Children are not innocent until the age of reason. No one really knows when the age of reason is anyway. So then, do all infants go to heaven? Tough question without a satisfactory answer.

All we can do with infant fatality is trust that God is good and will always do the right thing.

Posted by: Xion at July 2, 2007 08:57 AM

Oh, boy. And here it was I thought that children were supposed to be innocent until the age of reason. That age being, of course, 7. An age chosen, clearly, by someone who’d never tried to reason with a 7-year-old.

Second, the Bible teaches that Jesus avoided man’s sinful nature because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit within the virgin Mary. So, yes, even this piddling little behavior, which is sinful because it arises from a sinful heart, was absent in our Lord. Absolutely amazing. Having kids really brings home to you how incredible the sinless nature of Christ was.

It’s not semantic sophistry. Just because some human behavior is normal doesn’t mean it’s not sinful.

This is a serious response to a silly question as to whether Jesus was a sinful little baby that cried for attention or food. Every time I see another normal human behavior being redefined as “sinful”, I just have to roll my eyes. Later in the comments, several questions are raised, both serious and facetious, about whether this or that normal behavior is sinful, since we see that not only do human infants do it to survive, but animal infants do as well. Don’t worry, folks. Clearly the answer is that it is sinful, but not in animals, since they don’t have souls. Kittens crying for food is OK. Babies crying for food are paving their pathway to eternal damnation.

In addition, many of these folks are convinced that embryos can sin even before they have brains because the Bible says that people can sin without knowing they’re doing it. Not one gives any definite answer as to what sin a clump of cells could possibly commit; about the closest anyone comes is hinting at the fact that the mom and dad had to have sexual intercourse, which could possibly be sinful. Some try variations on sin vs. “sin nature”, which is an argument that could make your head really hurt, as it kind of sort of implies that the capacity to commit sin is the same as committing it, except that you can be redeemed from sin if you do commit it, but you can’t be redeemed unless you accept Christ, which babies can’t do, so that sin nature is equivalent to sin if you’re an infant but not an adult. OK, go take a few painkillers now and come back to finish reading later.

So, it doesn’t take too much time for the conversation to degenerate into a cornucopia of creationist misunderstanding of evolution, origins of the universe, and science in general, peppered with AiG-approved quote mining and vocabulary. One woman tries to post an amusing anecdote about her child DELIBERATELY spilling coffee on her, and another DELIBERATELY knocking food over – tools of the devil, for sure – and her special technique for spanking the sin out of them, but it’s not enough to turn the subject away from the Darwinist Smackdown.

I was kind of sad about that. I mean, what with all the new declarations by the pope about the destination of unborn souls, I thought there might be a lively debate about where all those sinful fetuses would end up. (or at least about how the sinfulness behind their conception might affect their “sin nature” – would an in-vitro baby be more or less sinful than one from planned marital intercourse? How about rape – if the mom was a virgin, which parent’s sinfulness would be more influential on the child’s “sin nature”, eh?) I mean, first we have the two made-up places – heaven and hell. Later on, someone decides that there should be an in-between place for souls that don’t quite fit, and makes up purgatory – some souls don’t stay there for eternity, but move on to heaven a little later. Next they create limbo, an OK place for souls that died too soon to sin, who can’t repent and get promoted, and it makes people feel a little better about the aborted babies, but then there’s the problem about previous teachings that said they couldn’t sin until the age of reason, so they should go to heaven. OK, so now they really go to heaven, actually. I don’t know if this immediately whooshed all the limbo babies up to heaven, or if they’re stuck there while all the new babies get to go straight to heaven. I’d think that either scenario would create a little resentment. Gotta be careful or you’re going to have baby wars in heaven. (Infant wrestling matches on celestial PPV? Hmmm. . .) But then all the good religious folks are a little peeved that all those sinners get to have their babies go to heaven, contaminating the heavenly population of truly sinless babies. But if the babies are sinful from conception, as the blogger insists, then they’d all be going to hell instead of heaven, regardless of the faith of the parents, and that would just be horrible for believers who’ve lost a pregnancy, so maybe if purgatory or limbo are inappropriate, they should make up a new place for the sinful embryos and fetuses, and then whoosh all the unbaptized, sinful babysouls that were just getting used to heaven to this new place.

I swear, in-utero baptisms will be all the rage. I can’t see any other way of getting around it. And infant confessionals. And, unfortunately, parents ignoring and mistreating their infants because they exhibit “sinful” behavior. Ugh. How about, instead, learning that a child behaves in a certain way to get a certain response, and will repeat successful behavior and not repeat unsuccessful behavior? How about, instead, understanding that a child is limited in how to express his or her needs and wants, and is unable to conceive of others having needs and wants as well that might conflict with his (mom taking care of older brother right when baby gets hungry, for example. . .not a valid excuse as far as baby’s concerned.) How about trying to take care of the children you have now and prepare them for the world they’re going to most definitely be a part of, rather than trying to fit their behavior into some preconceived mythology, and worry about some imaginary place they might end up in when they die? Sheesh. It’s sadistic and morbid, and seems to be aimed towards making as many people unhappy as possible by setting unattainable goals (and continually moving the goalposts in the event that success might become conceivable.)

Actually, now I’m feeling a little better that the comments became creationist blather. If they’d kept on with the debate about how sinful babies were, this post would be a lot longer, and I have to go make dinner now.