Has it occurred to you to question the traditional view that we humans are Fallen - by reason of our abuse of Free Will - and that consequently we are in need of Salvation - which we cannot achieve by ourselves (rather as badly injured people, who have fallen literally, cannot pick themselves up but need someone else's helping hand) ?

Of course, human life with all its follies and wrongs, can be described consistently in that way; we often feel frightened and helpless to an extent that makes it easy to accept the Fall/Salvation idea as though there were no other equally consistent view on offer.

The Fall/Salvation view is associated in people's minds with religious belief that is no longer fully accepted - that the Bible is a literally true account of the way a god, who is almost a caricature of the heaviest sort of human father, treats us, his wayward children in whom he has nonetheless not entirely lost hope. If people do reject that notion - and mostly they do - then the hope element in the Fall/Salvation scenario goes too.

The vestiges of that scenario, remaining in people's minds, therefore tend to give rise to dumb pessimism, a negative dismissal of human potential.

A view which might be more productive of good, less likely to lead to a pessimism that feeds on itself, is one that sees us as a species that is learning, often the hard way, how to make the best of ourselves and each other by individual and collective effort based upon a credible faith that we have what it takes to do just that. That view is (modern) humanism; it does not exclude the possibility that there is a creator who has given us 'what it takes' but it is compatible with atheism - the view that anyway we have, naturally, 'what it takes' without any need to believe in any god whatever.

Can it be shown that widespread belief in the Fall/Salvation scenario is associated with making "the best of ourselves and each other by individual and collective effort" . . . . is associated with high and rising morality in practice?
Several reasons for suggesting that it cannot be so shown might be considered.

One is quite specifically evident in the present state of things in the US. Contrary to the old adage - 'empty pews mean full prisons' - the view that practising a religion centred on Fall and Salvation makes for better behaviour, it is a fact that in the United States BOTH the incidence of church attendance AND the incidence of homicide are very high. Of all the major Western countries, the US has by far the highest rate of church adherence and by far the highest murder rate.

It is of course not to be inferred that church-going criminalises people, causes them to be murderous, but these facts do suggest that high profile religion does not serve dependably to keep crime rates down.

Again, more generally, there is frequently a marked religious element in many of the world's communal conflicts. Fall/Salvation religion - which emphasises the noble and necessary precept "love thy neighbour as thyself" - does not help many Protestants or Serbs to love their Catholic or Muslim neighbours to a morally significant extent in Ireland and in Bosnia.

That of course is not to say that religion actually causes these frightful conflicts but, contrary to what might be expected, religion does much to exacerbate and little to mitigate them.

On a wider historical canvas, and in our own fairly recent history, we have seen mainstream Fall/Salvation religion in decline and we have also seen a marked rise in morality in many areas of life.

We, including liberal believers as much as anyone else, would not tolerate our economy today resting upon brutal race-based slavery or upon the ruthless exploitation of child and female labour; we do not recruit to our armed forces by resort to the press gang; we do not inflict capital punishment, or transportation to the antipodes, for relatively trivial offences; we do not beat 'education' into our children - and one can go on with many examples of moral scruple and ethical practice having advanced while traditional religion has retreated.

Again, it cannot be inferred that religion formerly made people behave badly, and insensitively in the horrific ways cited - there have always been good people among believers - but it can hardly be inferred that the former prominence of religion underscored high moral performance.

The fact seems to be inescapable that the secularisation of society - the shift from the pessimism of Fall doctrine to the optimism of humanism - has been associated with practical moral betterment in may ways.

That is not to say that all moral advance comes from declining religion but it is to suggest that the process of liberal secularisation has done better what traditional religion did not do very well - make us better people, raise us to some degree, however small, from a supposedly fallen state in this the world of daily life.

What can be claimed is that liberalisation, with secular humanism and religious rethinking making the running, has led to much moral advance and - among other things - to much very welcome liberalisation of religion itself.

The key, both to the success of humanism as one engine of moral advance and to the parallel liberalisation of religion, is the recognition - articulated by the former Archbishop of York - that "the lust for certainty may be a sin."

It was the perceived certainty that we are beyond self-redemption (that we are so wicked that, unaided, we will surely go to hell) that excused every sort of ill-treatment of person by person. Whatever people did to one another, sickeningly cruel as it might be, was considered, with fearful certainty, to be nothing compared to the eternal suffering in hell to be endured by those rejecting the opportunity of God-given salvation.

To begin to doubt these demoralising perceptions of certainty - to begin to be self-reliantly sceptical of ALL beliefs - is the basis both of secular liberalisation and of re-thought religion. (It is, of course, also the basis of science).

Our greatest advance has been to recognise, however hesitantly, that what the former Archbishop said was worth saying, is worth heeding.

The alternative to seeing human wrong-doing and human foolishness as aspects of the Fall is to see these things as problems to be addressed in this life in this world - the only life we can be sure we have in this the only world in which we are sure we live it.

The Fall view is simply a means of fostering futile, corrosive, wall-to-wall guilt; the humanist view is a challenge to do something about that which we can do something about - here, where we are.

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