Original sin. The Christian term for what Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden. If you're unfamiliar with it, God put a tree in the middle of Eden and said that if they ate from the tree, they would die. In truth, it simply meant if they ate from the tree then they would become mortal, and die of old age (at least that's what I've heard). Alternatively, it could mean their souls died, but I digress.
You can guess what happened. Eve ate from the tree, and made Adam eat, after being asked to by a devil-figure in the guise of a snake. Because of this, they and the rest of humanity were flung out of Eden. They 'died' as the Bible said. And because of this, their descendants, their children were all punished for this iniquity.
The children were put to death, if you will.
Deuteronomy 24:16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
You have brought out an excellent point with reguard to a pattern of twisting what scripture says - often for various ulterior purposes.
I wanted to say that back in the 1950's John Romanides, a greek writer, wrote a book entitled
Original Sin According to Saint Paul
http://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.10.en.original_sin_according_to_st._paul.01.htmwhich was subsequently expanded to
'The Ancestral Sin'
http://www.amazon.com/Ancestral-sin-John-S-Romanides/dp/0970730314which explains how Augustine (and the medieval west which adopted his erroneous ideas beginning especially during the time of Charlegmagne and the Carolingian Franks who even captured the papacy by the year 999 - the year of the last Roman pope) perverted the ancient Christian understanding of this subject. I will not go into all the detail, but Romanides says that Augustine originated the false idea that guilt is inherited by the descendents of Adam.
Romanides book was controversial in 1950's Greece because western ideas including Augustinianism ironically enough began to penetrate greek speaking Orthodox Christians precisely because of the 1820's greek revolution against Turkey (which muslim state actually served as a blessing for eastern Christians because it ultimately tended to protect their Church from infiltration by western ideas). Unlike the ancient Theological School of Salonica, the University of Athens Theological Seminary was founded in the mid-1800's by protestant and papist influenced individuals (basically papists in greek dress), and its theology in the 1950's still reflected this westernism. Hence, Romanides's anti-Augustine thesis was initially rejected, but was eventually accepted and papism's greek champion Panagiotes Trembellas lost much influence. The papists changed their strategy by adopting a less intellectual approach known as the "Zoe" ("Life") movement in an effort to appeal to young people in Greece. The rise of the Zoe movement in the 1960's was promoted by the right-wing Greek junta government which is no surprise since the Vatican (after 999 A.D.) has always been associated with despicable right-wing causes from the crusades and inquisition to colonialism, nazism and anti-communism, etc.
Augustine has many other problems such as a thoughtless approach to understanding women and their relation to men which ideas are foreign to the Church Fathers in the east and west. A balanced book which is neither mysogynist nor feminist, the Fords often aptly quote well known feminist writers who corroborate their case. One such example is a feminist writer who pointed out the mysoginism (hatred of women) which was common to both Augustine and the heretic Tertullian, and this same feminist author asserted that this mysoginism was not to be found in the writings of Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, a disciple of Saint John the Apostle and a second century western Church Father. (Augustine himself is not a Church Father and was only accepted as such in Greece for the very first time in 1965! when the apostate so-called patriarch of Constantinople recognized the papacy for the first time since 1009 A.D. - an indication of apostasy - not progress). David and Mary Ford have written a definitive answer to western ideas about men and women including both Augustinianism and more modern ideas from the west.
'Women and Men in the Early Church: The Full Views of Saint John Chrysostom'
By David and Mary Ford
http://www.amazon.com/Women-Men-Early-Church-Chrysostom/dp/1878997556http://www.amazon.com/Women-Men-Early-Church-Chrysostom/product-reviews/1878997556The late John Romanides is the strongest and ablest critic of the papacy I have ever come across largely because of how he understands it including how it degenerated into the evil force that it has been for so long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._Romanideshttp://www.romanity.org/I wanted to add that Adam knew that what he did was wrong which makes him more guilty than Eve, and that this digression into sin by Adam and Eve was reversed in the case of Jesus and Mary. Sin entered into humanity through a woman, but its abolition was also facilitated by a woman.