"I believe in Original Sin," I said, when George went and when the parson had taken a cool, deep pull, "since I believe every religion is the attempt, the compulsive and unconscious attempt, to make a schemata of instincts that will be palpable to the sense perceptions of human personality--and since I also believe that religions have generally failed in that function--causing the sin." "Failed how?" "Failed by being turned to the support of the ego." "But we'd agree with you, there!" "So I must conclude there is some basic error in the entire religious phenomenon. Believing that religions express a genuine psychological compulsion--a need to discover the inner pattern of behavior, the inner design of consciousness--but observing that the orthodox patterns offered so far have led only to a succession of material advances that ended in social collapse--I must conclude that there is some _human_ error which repeats itself down the millenniums. Some terribly deep perversion of Nature that at first lets man advance a little--then throws him back nearly the whole distance--gets him going once more with a newer, 'truer' religion--and so on, ad infinitum. This perversion is what I call Original Sin." "Pretty abstract," he said. "Not at all. Here's the Sin. Religions have been used not so much as formulations for guidance as to convince their various Believers that man is, himself, godlike, wherefore God. Not an animal with a fresh neurological awareness. Not a beast of the field, who knows it and who therefore knows that what goes on inside beasts is nothing to sneer at. But God Almighty, personified according to His self-personifications of Zeus, Amon-Ra, the Prophets, Jehovah, or Who-not. God Almighty--destined to live forever with all the numerous Gods-Almighties--in the Elysian Fields, Nirvana, or Wherever. You follow me?" "I think so." "You don't. Let's try it again. Imagine a band of apes that developed self-awareness. Apes that suddenly saw themselves _as selves_. Imagine those apes interpreting the new cortical phenomenon not as a fresh and fascinating development amongst animals--but as evidence of their metamorphosis from the flesh to something Higher. They don't know what, exactly. They work out What in a series of mythologies and religions. 'What' turns out, in our era, to be Sons of God, Brothers in Christ, Redeemed Eternally by Grace. That's where they are today. Not humble animals, carrying on the business of Evolution for species yet unguessed. They feel sure (in Christ) that they are the perfect biology right now. They sit at the end of an age-old endeavor to acquire that seeming. An endeavor which has shucked off or hidden every aspect of animal reality it can." He was shaking his head. "I feel puzzled--"