The core assumption made by the world's religions and philosophies is that mankind is innately good. In an ever-changing world, this is one reliable constant.

No evidence exists to support this assumption. Look at history! Where else can anyone go to test the hypothesis that mankind is good, besides the history of mankind? Even a cursory glance at history shows there is no time or place in which innate goodness has been revealed. The more detailed the investigation, the less support can be produced. Even the best times in human history are not revelations of innate good as much as they are better in comparison to other times. I know of few other hypotheses in human history which have been so clearly and completely refuted than the belief that man is innately good. (Anyone who doubts this conclusion needs to spend a while studying World War I.)

Because no evidence exists to support the assumption, what happens is the assumption changes to: Mankind is innately good except....

Different religions and philosophies fill in the blank in different ways. A sampling:

• Hinduism: ... individual consciousness causes badness and must be extinguished.
• Buddhism: ... desires and clinging cause badness and must be removed.
• Rousseau: ... society corrupts mankind.
• Naturalism: ... superstitious beliefs must be overcome with rational thinking, to allow science to solve the problem.
• Humanism: ... spiritual and supernatural beliefs must be replaced by materialism only for mankind to emerge from darkness.
• Communism: ... greed corrupts people, so there should be no opportunity for one person to have more than another.
• Socialism: ... the state must restrain behavior.
• (etc.)

And so on. The key is that each successive philosophy comes up with a new except, and tries to reveal innate goodness through removing the exception. All experiments which aim to remove the exceptions and reveal the innate goodness of man have failed utterly. I am unaware of any time or place when mankind has been innately good.

So that's why I am a Calvinist. As far as I can tell, it is the only belief system which insists on the total (i.e. pervasive) depravity of mankind. Because of this central assumption, Calvinism is the only belief system which could possibly explain the human condition accurately. I used to think "Christianity" was the only belief system which assumed that mankind was depraved, but there are so many different versions of Christian belief that the word "Christianity" is all but meaningless, and many of the versions would say that mankind is innately good. To be specific, I have to be a Calvinist.