are you smarter than a pastor?

My pastor realized for the first time in his entire life (I think he's under 40?) that sin was in the world before Adam & Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree.  I was just kinda like "what?  How is that not obvious?"  I mean, unless there's some possibility that they could have taken the fruit and put it toward their mouth and then put it back before taking a bite out of it, I mean, the intent to disobey God was there.  How can someone be tempted to commit sin if sin is not in them?  That's kinda like turning on the faucet when your water supply has been cut off...
I do appreciate his spiritual weight though.  He seems more motivated to do right than I am.  I guess being in a post-Christ earth makes it easier for my short attn. span to take stuff like that for granted.  For one thing, I still don't understand how sin is such a big deal.  I mean, I understand it from a text book stance, but the text book stance says it keeps us from being close to God, thus our access to the fountain of eternal happiness, so to speak, is on hold until we leave our fleshy vessels.  The thing I have a hard time with, is I don't know what happiness is like.  I know what feelings I prefer, some of them aren't exactly "positive" - the oceanic melancholy that some concepts wring out in me is not something I shy away from.  I wouldn't want to feel that way all the time, some ups are needed, but my ups are not very high.  When they are high, it's usually as a result of anticipation of an oceanic sadness, i.e.: "I rented this movie that's supposed to be drenched in melancholy, can't wait to see it!"  Reading Michael Crichton's JURASSIC PARK brought about a fire in my belly that makes absolutely no sense.  Seeing Ian Malcolm (the "chao-tician"(sp???)) being proven correct in his assessment that the park was a disaster in the making is not good news.  But it's nice to see a bunch of dumbasses like John Hammond and his soldiers being given a gigantic "I TOLD YA!".  But the solution is really non existent.  How does one keep stupid people from making mistakes?  Heck, I'm not exactly an idiot, but I'm extraordinarily ignorant.  So I'm probably just about as likely to make the mistakes Hammond made, supposing the premise that you can abstract enough DNA from fossilized tree sap containing mosquitos that bit one or more dinosaurs isn't too far fetched to be realized and I had enough money to make it a reality and hadn't already been warned by Dr. Crichton not to...

AS I WAS SAYING...man, how do I get so off topic?  JP is based on the idea that the Earth was NOT created by God, and, with that in mind, the earth MUST BE 4.? billion years old.  Obviously, the Earth is pretty old and it may be a million years old for all I really know, but anyway...along with the idea that the earth is super-ancient, the idea that the dinosaurs died out before man kind came along etc. gets tagged along with it, so it's, really a non-issue.  But, as I was saying, the EMOTIONS that come from reading the book make no sense, unless you believe that judgment and anger are positive things.  Obviously, they aren't; to say they are is to openly disagree with my source of happiness for all time.  Hell may not be as bad as they say, but do I REALLY want to go out of my way to find out??  NO!!  If I do go that far south, I guess come what may, but I'm not going to put a gun to my head for no reason...I mean...yeah, you ought to know how much of an understatement the words "dumb" and "pointless" are to describe such a thing...
  So...seems like I had more to say on something I had sorta started saying, I don't remember what it was...xx