From what I understand, we do have an inherent mental self-image that is better than the reality. I don't think that's pride, at least not as inferred by religious thinking. It's just a way our minds work. After all, the person telling you that your mind is corrupted by the prideful thinking of this world is convinced that he has found the one universal truth and will be saved for his insight, unlike all of those poor schlubs who are earning an eternal punishment.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould