Holding onto the belief that humanity is inherently wicked prevents us from emerging into the next great chapter of human achievement.
I have a problem with Christianity that has very little to do with the existence of God. My problem is not with only Christianity, but with all major monotheistic religions to influence human history.
There are certain beliefs that have stemmed from the Great Belief that have permeated the psyche of western culture, beyond the faithful. Though these beliefs are actively practiced by the religious, they have also been adopted without awareness by many who live on this planet.
The doctrine that I believe to be greatly damaging is the concept of being born wicked and needing God for goodness. Holding onto the belief that humanity is inherently wicked prevents us from emerging into the next great chapter of human achievement.
Christianity and other popular religions of similar origin teach that the human heart is born bad. The blood of Jesus Christ (or simply the forgiveness of God) is needed to wash us clean, not once in our lives but constantly because we are incapable of ever having a pure heart. We are always wicked, no matter the individual.
This aspect of faith has been the fuel for religions expansion and also many other aspects of human life.
Now in my position, I can feel two things in my species around me. I feel the excitement of being on the cusp of a great enlightenment. We are on the verge of a change that will alter the course of human evolution.
The second thing I sense in my peers is constant self-doubt. No one has confidence in their lives, in themselves as people, nor in their place in the universe.
One of the major things holding us back from this potentially brilliant chapter of human history, I believe, is our common thought that we are inherently wicked.
I encourage everyone to imagine that they are not born evil, but instead good. Just telling oneself that one is truly good at the heart of it all is an uplifting experience in great ways.
The next step is to imagine a world in which everyone believed that themselves and everyone else are, by default, good. That is much more difficult, we have no grounding reference.
Thousands of years of human history have been forged in this belief. There are few times in which man did not think in such a way but it is easy to see that our history is not one without great sin and evil in huge amounts. The history of humanity and the ancient beliefs of inherent wickedness make it difficult to imagine a world of inherent goodness (or the belief of such), it takes much imagination.
The damage the doctrine has had on the psyche has been dealt for thousands of years of written history in such effective ways, it's impossible to comprehend. It could very well be a possible cause of the bloodier parts of history.
The change I call for does not necessitate a divorce from God. Instead, we much change the relationship we have with ourselves and then reevaluate our relationship with God.
