Is the concept of “Original Sin” a circular argument?

Thanks but I've had 16 years of formal religious education. That's how I know what a load of crap it is.

Wonder about the whole fruit thing in the Eden Story or why Eve was created from a rib? Ask the Sumerians. This is a summary of a story from The Sumerian seven-tablet epic, "Enuma elish" which means "In The Beginning."

The story tells about the god Enki, the god of water and wisdom and one of the central and most popular deities in the Sumerian pantheon, and of the paradisical land of Dilmun (today’s Bahrain). Dilmun is said to be to the east of Sumer. In the Biblical story the Garden of Eden is situated “in the east” (Gen 2,8). According to the myth Dilmun is a bright and clean place, without disease nor death, - a land of the living, a land of the immortals.

However, Dilmun lacks one thing: water. But the water god Enki knows what to do since water is his specialty. He creates a river that turns Dilmun into a divine garden with an abundance of fruit trees, flowers and green meadows.

Then the great Sumerian mother-goddess Ninhursag enters the picture and creates eight different plants in this divine garden. The creation of these eight plants involves an intricate process with births of three generations of goddesses, and the story emphasizes that these births are all happening without the slightest pain or discomfort.

Enki wants to taste the fruits of these eight plants and makes his servant Ismud (a god with two faces) to collect the fruits and he eats them one by one. This makes Ninhursag furious and she casts a lethal spell over Enki, and then disappears from the scene. Enki then becomes ill in eight different organs or body parts, one for each fruit. Enki’s condition is rapidly deteriorating, and the other gods are flabbergasted by this and do not know what to do to help the popular Enki. Finally a fox gets Ninhursag to come back, exactly how is unknown because this part of the story is missing.

When Ninhursag returns she places Enki between her legs and asks him in what body parts he is ill. Then she creates eight healing goddesses, one for each body part, and soon Enki is well again. One of the sick body parts is the ribs, and in Sumerian the word for rib is “ti”. The goddess created to heal Enki’s rib is called “Nin-ti”, which means the “rib woman”. However, the Sumerian word “ti” also means “life” or “to make life”, so “Nin-ti” also can mean “the woman who makes life”. The Sumerians were very fond of such puns, but this pun was of course lost on the bible authors, since the name Eve in Hebrew (Chavvah) may resemble the Hebrew word for “life” (Chay), but have no resemblance with the Hebrew word for “rib” (Tsela)(or `ala` in Aramaic).

The story’s emphasis that the births of the creation-goddesses is without any pain or discomfort, is an element we find in Gods punishment of Eve for causing the fall of man: “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children” (Gen 3,16).

The very name “Eden” is also originally a Sumerian name and simply means “plain/flat terrain”. The name originates from the controversy between the Mesopotamian city-states Lagash and Umma about whom should rule the fertile river-valley of Gu-Edina (The banks of Eden) located between the two cities.

The Old Testament rips off the Sumerians, therefore it cannot be true.