The Original Sin: An Authoritarian and an Anarchist interpretation.

In this article I want to discuss "The Original Sin".

Wikipedia defines "The Original Sin" as:

"Original sin, also called ancestral sin,[1] is the Christian doctrine of humanity's state of sin resulting from the fall of man, stemming from Adam and Eve's rebellion in Eden, namely the sin of disobedience in consuming from the tree of knowledge of good and evil."

But that always confused me. Isn't "knowledge of good and evil" a good thing? How can people be good, without having the knowledge of good and evil? If it was up to me, knowledge of good and evil, would be the most important knowledge one must gain, and the basis and foundation to society and culture.

One way to look at it is this: (Authoritarian interpretation)

Religions are not created so that people become good. Religions are created so that people obey the authority. The last thing any kind of authority wants, a people who can discern what is good, what is evil, on their own. Especially so, when the authority figure does an evil act, and then people will rebel against him.

Therefore, any authority that wants to create obedient subjects, of course would not want a group of subjects with independent critical thinking skills. They don't want people to know good and evil.

And now, here is a twist, and an anarchist way of looking at things:

The original sin was to think "Only I know what's good and evil, but others do not, so I have the right to rule over them"

That is the sin of the psychopathic ruling class.

And there is the other side of the coin too, that of obedience: "I do not know good and evil, only the authority can know that, so I have an obligation to obey the authority to become a good person".

And that is the sin of the obedient population.

Think about the worst dictators of all times, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and others...

They were only but one man. If masses of people didn't obey them, they would have no power. And couldn't possibly cause massive damage.

In this sense, to me "the right to rule over others" and "duty to obey the rulers" is the original sin, under which greatest crimes in history, have been committed.

What do you think? Discuss in the comments below.