Original sin

The eminent cleric was poking fun at original sin. ‘That sin is your meal ticket. Without it, you’d die of hunger, for your ministry would then no longer have any meaning. If man is not fallen from the very beginning, why did Christ come? to redeem whom and what?’ To my objections, his only response was a condescending smile.

A religion is finished when only its adversaries try to preserve its integrity.

Cioran

Original sin haunted Cioran's work. He believed that man first sinned by deeming himself more important or on par with God. Since man cannot live with the possibility that life has no meaning and individual existence is insignificant, a rotten seed lies in the core of man-- a seed which germinates from the desire to imagine himself the centre of the world. Because life must have meaning, man starts creating ideas. But neutral ideas do not comfort man-- they are too sterile-- so man attaches his own passions to these ideas. Thus man lights the pyre.

Alina Stefanescu