On February 22, 1943, in Munich, the German student Sophie Scholl went to her death on the guillotine. A member of what is known as the "White Rose" group, she had been found guilty of distributing pamphlets against the war and the Nazis. Her last words, as she walked bravely to her death, were: "How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?"
I give this as background to another (in what has become a series) of assaults on the Christian problem of original sin. I use the word "assault" not in the sense of denying original sin. If what happened to Sophie Scholl was not the result of original sin, I don't know what could be. But rather in the sense of seeing how the notion can be reconciled with modern science, specifically with modern paleoanthropology (the study of human origins).
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