As true as these evolutionary and neuro-biological observations may be, we must also say that racism is an explicitly theological product. We humans project upon our gods our own prejudices, and in so doing, those prejudices become divinized. They are no longer just our opinions that can be easily outgrown; they are God's opinion (or judgment), and as such, they are absolute and unquestionable and supreme. Religious supremacy and racial supremacy, it turns out, are two sides of one dirty coin. This absolutizing of racism explains why, in Blaise Pascal's words, "Human beings never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

Our "original sin," in this sense, involves a willingness to "otherize" a fellow human being, calling him or her "evil"; whom we otherize as evil we find it easy to dehumanize, and whom we dehumanize, we find it easy to exploit, oppress, incarcerate, enslave, or even kill.

And religious people naturally take it a step farther: they otherize in God's name.

But something changed in the lifetime of our parents and grandparents. We humans developed nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons which pushed us to and past a historic tipping point: if we allow our fear of the other to dominate, and if we allow ourselves to play into vicious cycles of violence, leading eventually to one lobbing nuclear bombs against the other, we will self-destruct.

In other words, if we don’t find an exit ramp off this superhighway of other-izing, will we will destroy not just "them," but us as well ... not just the other, but one another ... in a mad orgy of mutually-assured destruction.

Nobody tells the story better than the young Bob Dylan, as you'll see in this video:

Here's another live version of the same song, a little slower: