Top 6 Psychologial Threats to Human Race Sustainability

1.) The fears related to death
2.) The torment of suffering
3.) The vulnerability of the weak
4.) The disposition of greediness
5.) The evil of malice
6.) The tragedy of ignorance

Moreover...

The fear of death (whereas death entails losing contact with loved ones forever, feeling isolated in an unknown region of space/time, being alone, etc.) leads most of us toward wanting an afterlife. The specter of hell as a possible afterlife destination leads us hoping for a better place - e.g., heaven - and requires us to invent rules for getting in. The need to understand and follow heaven's entrance requirements leads us to invent doctrinal moral rule books (which sometimes include funky or harmful rules and value statements). The process of getting into heaven requires that someone judge us when we reach the gates. We've created several moral rule books and judges so that we can choose the path to heaven that best suits our tendencies. Even if we screw up and fall off the moral wagon, we've made some rule books that allow us to get in anyway, so long as we vow to have faith in the judge and ask him to forgive us.

Consequences: The accept-God-and-ask-for-forgiveness loophole that we've created allows some people to commit malicious acts without fear of going to hell. Some of the funkier/more dangerous rules and value statements encourage violence or intolerance toward certain groups of people. An ignorance as individuals of our interconnectedness to each other and hence the importance of group sustainability further leads us to act as loners, less inclined toward empathy, less inclined to work and live together without fighting.

Finally, a narrow focus on the rules themselves- including a preference for specific, select rules- distracts some from any original sense of what it meant to be "good" to begin with. People - both greedy/powerful and weak/suffering - are capable of anything when they are bankrupt of actual goodness (and are not even held in check by fear of God's wrath).

Put another way, Rule books and religions - the catch all enforcers for the morally unsure and/or underdeveloped - also have the unintended effect of diminishing the high moral functioning of some of their followers by encouraging drone-like adherence and focus on the letter of the law.

Is there a better way to model the behavior of those who are less morally evolved (while sparing high moral functioning people) for the sake of protecting humanity from the 6 threats? Breaking free from the trappings of trivial moral legal code, what is the true core substance of "actual goodness" or good behavior that enables gene reproduction and species continuity? Not convinced that morality is an evolved faculty? Check out Hauser's "Moral Minds"