Importance of Original Sin

I think the entire concept of original sin is about the most evil idea ever cooked up in the fevered minds of shamans.In this I agree with Ayn Rand, who devotes a page or so in Atlas Shrugged to the subject.Humans need to evolve beyond that type of thinking if we are going to get anywhere.

I contributed a post way upthread in which I opined that the concept of original sin is about the most evil idea ever to enter the fevered minds of shamans.I have yet to see a meaningfulresponse to this opinion.Is belief such a powerful force that it can't tolerate any dissent? Or are contrary opinions better just ignored?From my view, the whole idea of "the fall" is religious belief with no empirical evidence to support it. It is worthless and completely evil.I have seen no evidence presented to challenge this opinion.Is the belief system surrounding "the fall" not worth defending, or is it only defensible among those who already believe?I would like to see some evidence for this "fall" which does not rely on religious belief. Is there any such?If not, why should I accept it?

A short part of Ayn Rand's passage on original sin, from Atlas Shrugged:

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledgehe acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evilhe became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his laborhe became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desirehe acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joyall the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he wasthat robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without lovehe was not man.

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—Ayn Rand Lexicon

I don't see where Rand ever made such claims, certainly not in Atlas Shrugged.It is religious believers who consider humans to being inherently evil through original sin, a concept which I reject.Nor do I consider Rand's atheism, based on rationalism, to be a problem.

In many of those stories Coyote was the favorite character. Think of a cross between a deity and Wiley E. Coyote.And that is my namesake!

I presented an alternate view of the importance of original sin in a previous post: Message 316I think it is one of the most evil ideas ever to come from the fevered mind of a shaman.