No its not. They’re talking about original sin, they just are forbidden to call it that.
“They’re talking about original sin, they just are forbidden to call it that.”
It’s their analog to original sin, you could argue. Anyone can see the appeal, so ingrained is mankind’s low self-esteem. You could also argue that they wanted to cash in, or that their theory of “alien powers” couldn’t sit by and let anything whatsoever go unexplained through the prism of psychology.
But it’s not “just” that. They had their own reasons, stupid reasons, to believe in it. Psychology’s version is also vastly different from the religious one, in ways I don’t need to elaborate.