Despite the sounds of it, this term does not refer to an act of gravity upon the Earth causing it to go hurtling through space on a downward trajectory. Though both religious and irreligious observers would tend to agree that this particular planet is going downhill, this is not to be taken literally.

When practitioners of Christianity talk about a fallen world, they are talking about a particular and unfortunate incident near the beginning of human history where humanity's forefather was convinced by its foremother, who of course was convinced by a serpent to openly rebel against God.

This was seen as an act of high treason and was dealt with accordingly. The serpent's legs were hacked off and his tongue mutilated, he was sentenced to crawl on his belly like the slithering slimebucket he had become, the woman was sentenced to a life of emotional distress, pain in child-bearing and a strong desire to prove her husband wrong in all aspects of life.

The man was sentenced to a life of toil and tumult, and was of course given a particularly wretched case of body odor. In addition, he lost his ability to subdue his wife, the animals and the very earth itself. Under this new world order, the land and the animals would no longer cooperate with mankind and would in fact work against him in a similar nature to the way mankind had worked against God.

What's more, the condition of this fallen world would be degenerative. Mankind was also stricken with sin and would not be able to recover from the condition on his own.