SIN AND GUILT. The human being, as homo religiosus, is a creature that worries. This worrying is both a burden and a distinction. In the dark age of mutation to Homo sapiens, at the turning point between animality and humanity, the human intuition of the presence of the surrounding numinous tipped the balance toward humanness. As soon as this ape could stand on its feet, its glance could lift itself from the earth, the source of food, and direct itself toward the stars, that is, to a sphere higher—not only spatially—than that of the satisfaction of its bodily needs and functions. In this way humans discovered the universe and, concomitantly, the existential problem of their place in the cosmos, assigned to them by some power, for some particular reason, toward some goal. They thus invented an entire mythical universe in answer to...