Safe-Keeper
My avatar is not a Drumpf hat
Something I've heard quite often from believers is that humans are, in the words of the last person I heard it from, "inherently evil". Others have put it in other ways - "humans are wretched sinners", "humanity's fruits are rotten", and so on, but it's always the same basic principle: that we're bad people. This belief is often accompanied by other equally self-hating stances, such as that we deserve all the evil we get in this world, that God is infinitely just because He doesn't kill us or or condemn us to Hell, or that we need Him to watch over us 24/7 and threaten us with natural disasters and threats of hellfire to keep us in line.
I find this philosophy both wrong and incredibly sad. It's in my eyes the belief of the downtrodden and oppressed - the subjects of a brutal dictator, the spouse of an abusive person, or, well, the playthings of an evil god. It must wreck havoc on the self-esteem of whoever believes in it, especially kids. It's used to excuse oppressive and unjust policies and approaches to parenting that I find abhorrent.
Humans are good, is my stance. We have, like many other species, an instinctive urge to do good to one another and to punish evildoers. The majority of us aren't rapists, murderers, war mongers or 'evil' in other ways, and those who are nearly always end up this way as a result of illnesses, defects (such as in the case of psychopaths) or a bad upbringing or environment 'corrupting' them. At the risk of sounding too Scandinavian here ("aww, the poor wife-beater, he must have had a terrible childhood"
), it's no coincidence that most serious criminals have a history of poverty, neglect, abuse, etc.
If humans are inherently evil, how come certain countries such as Iceland can have ridiculously mild laws and a lack of religion and still have very low crime rates? Surely if we're inherently evil and all that's keeping us from going out there to do evil is the fear of prison and Hell, Norway, Canada and Iceland would be mafia-run slums of robbery, abuse and neglect. They're not, in fact secular nations with mild laws top the Human Development Index (as an aside, I'm fully aware that countries with more crime need stricter laws than we do - this isn't a "the US is evil and everyone should be nice to the bad guys!11seveneleven" post).
Is this dog a Christian? Somehow I doubt it very much.
Humans are good. This isn't a "deep philosophical question" - it's basic observable reality on par with the knowledge that the Earth is round.
I find this philosophy both wrong and incredibly sad. It's in my eyes the belief of the downtrodden and oppressed - the subjects of a brutal dictator, the spouse of an abusive person, or, well, the playthings of an evil god. It must wreck havoc on the self-esteem of whoever believes in it, especially kids. It's used to excuse oppressive and unjust policies and approaches to parenting that I find abhorrent.
Humans are good, is my stance. We have, like many other species, an instinctive urge to do good to one another and to punish evildoers. The majority of us aren't rapists, murderers, war mongers or 'evil' in other ways, and those who are nearly always end up this way as a result of illnesses, defects (such as in the case of psychopaths) or a bad upbringing or environment 'corrupting' them. At the risk of sounding too Scandinavian here ("aww, the poor wife-beater, he must have had a terrible childhood"
), it's no coincidence that most serious criminals have a history of poverty, neglect, abuse, etc.If humans are inherently evil, how come certain countries such as Iceland can have ridiculously mild laws and a lack of religion and still have very low crime rates? Surely if we're inherently evil and all that's keeping us from going out there to do evil is the fear of prison and Hell, Norway, Canada and Iceland would be mafia-run slums of robbery, abuse and neglect. They're not, in fact secular nations with mild laws top the Human Development Index (as an aside, I'm fully aware that countries with more crime need stricter laws than we do - this isn't a "the US is evil and everyone should be nice to the bad guys!11seveneleven" post).
Is this dog a Christian? Somehow I doubt it very much.
Humans are good. This isn't a "deep philosophical question" - it's basic observable reality on par with the knowledge that the Earth is round.
