Is competition the root of all sin?

I have already written a number of posts on the subject of competition, but this post is not looking at the idea itself, but at its history.

I heard an advert for a forthcoming TV series this morning. Someone, I forget who, is going to explore the roots of sin. Well, he actually identified the root of all sin as competition. We are competitive beings, he said, and being such we inevitably do bad things to one another at times. So what he proposes to do it to go around the world and seek out sin and see what can be done about it.

So in his view sin is down to basic human nature and is therefore inevitable.

This is an old idea with a long history: most religions have considered human being to be sinners who need to be ‘saved’, either by some special person, a ‘saviour’, or by following a set of rules that will hold their bad nature in check and allow them to save themselves.

Science is perpetuating this view of humanity. It no longer makes the moral judgements, but it views war and killing and all sorts of bad behaviour as inherent in human nature, as being due to our competitiveness which, in turn, is a strategy for survival in a harsh, dog-eat-dog world.

I find myself wondering if science has just taken on an old idea and justified it, rather than starting with a clean slate and a clear mind.

There have been some philosophers (inevitably), most notably J.J. Rousseau, who have taken the opposite view i.e. that humans are basically good but that circumstances, society whatever, corrupts them. But the idea that people are basically good has never attracted the same support as the converse.

So, I am left wondering if scientists have approached nature with an open mind, or had they already decided that ‘badness’, ‘sin’, ‘selfishness’ or whatever were inherent in nature.