People: Inherently good or Inherently evil?

[James_2_24]

I was in a discussion with a co-worker who believes people are inherently evil and I argued that people are inherently good.

His argument was very similar to this one which I found on ConvinceMe.net:

People are inherently bad.

ARGUMENT 1: People show no regard to welfare of others, and help people only when THEY get something.

EXAMPLE: A baby will attempt to take toys from others until learning that sharing will earn their parent’s approval.

ARGUMENT 2: People are, inherently selfish and only do some thing when they can get something out of it.

EXAMPLE: those who are altrurists, in the race of evolution, will fall behind and therefore disappear, and only the selfish will survive.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, people are inherently bad and becomes good only after they attain more knowledge.

One more thing, I countered argument 1 by talking about Saints and Holy People who do things selflessly to help others… he maintained that those people were inherently evil at one point and it was only religion or the society they grew up in that made them the way they are.

If you have good arguments for either side please chime in. I would like to hear good, logically sound arguments from Philosophy from either side…

 

[cor5755]

I don’t believe that the instinct to survive or succeed makes a person inherently evil. We become evil not in what we do, but why we do what we do. The act itself is not evil, but the intent behind the act is what constitues something as being evil. Example: Say that I throw a rock over a hedge and it hits someone. I had no intention to hit anyone and although my actions were somewhat reckless I would not say it was an evil act. Now, I throw a rock over a hedge, knowing that someone is there and my intention is to hit them with the rock. The intention makes all the difference.

 

[AgnosTheist]

ARGUMENT 1: People show no regard to welfare of others, and help people only when THEY get something.

EXAMPLE: A baby will attempt to take toys from others until learning that sharing will earn their parent’s approval.

babies dont understand property rights. taking stuff is only wrong when you know it belongs to someone else.

ARGUMENT 2: People are, inherently selfish and only do some thing when they can get something out of it.

EXAMPLE: those who are altrurists, in the race of evolution, will fall behind and therefore disappear, and only the selfish will survive.

humans are social creatures. the survival of our species depends on our ability to cooperate with each other. selfish people has a higher death rate.

 

[fhansen]

Substantially, by being a part of creation, people are inherently good. Relative to God, Who is goodness itself, people are morally neutral as when Jesus says, “No one is good except God alone”. Selfishness entered mankind’s world as a result of the fall-it was a choice Adam made, not a part of the original plan, and results in the evils we see. Rejection of God’s authority means selfishness. There is a confusion about and a conflict between whether “being out for number 1” is the right and natural way or if altruism is right. Your friend certainly seems confused. If the saints were made holy, if they lost their “inherent evilness” by way of following a religion which pointed them to a higher standard, shouldn’t that point to the validity of that religion? Also, Jesus message could be characterized as saying that survival- on this planet- is not the most important thing-that altruism, or love, is worth dying for. Since human beings can’t help but know that survival is only a temporary condition for the individual anyway, it would make more sense to me to live for something greater, even if it means being willing to lay down ones life.

 

[BlaineTog]

People are inherently selfish, but it doesn’t follow that they are inherently evil. Your average person knows right from wrong and when it comes down to it will generally choose right, but they will take any opportunity to avoid that moment that they can.

 

[AgnosTheist]

People are inherently selfish, but it doesn’t follow that they are inherently evil.

 

[vz71]

Man was made good.
But corruptable.

 

[Sideline]

I’m not a great philosopher, but I’ve actually studied a fair amount of human evolutionary psychology. The idea being that people developed certain behaviours to ensure their reproductive survival.

Even if you don’t believe in evolution, the idea still makes sense. Why would God design a species that couldn’t survive from one generation to the next? It would be pointless. Either through evolution, or by design, humans are programmed to procreate. If we are inherently anything, we are inherently breeders.

What does it take to be a good breeder? Well for one thing, it requires staying alive until you are old enough to breed. That means having a healthy self-interest. Initially we express this by trying to take all we can get.

It doesn’t last long though. Unmitigated self-interest doesn’t usually last past a person’s 3rd birthday. At that point people realize the joys of reciprocity. This comes later in our development, but it is every bit as innate as our initial selfishness. We realize that we are a part of a social network at a really young age. We come to take greater joy in satisfying our social obligations than we do immediate gain.

Our behaviour has nothing to do with being evil, it has to do with our survival as a species.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

I doubt humans are inherently anything, no more so than any other animal is. The reason other animals do not exhibit the selfish and “evil” traits that humans do, is because they have little concept of ownership, other than a limited “territorialism”. Humans appear as far as we can tell, to have gotten along pretty darn well until they formed large groups and settled down, leading to specialization. As people began to specialize, they began to acquire “things” in return for their services. Jelousy, greed, and other negative emotions seemed to follow.

We note that small children are sharing, comforting, and otherwise social in all the good ways until they grow older and fall into the mine-yours dicotomy.

Perhaps we all should have stayed hunter gatherers. We seemed to get along better then.

 

[mike7795]

People are inherently good. It is only when the “I” concept is learned that selfishness/sin/evil is born.

Thought itself is the source of all “evil”.

 

[pismopal]

Men are inherently sinful but not evil. That evil thing is a little overworked IMO and leaves no description for the truly evil…Hitler…Manson etc.

 

[coda]

I was in a discussion with a co-worker who believes people are inherently evil and I argued that people are inherently good.

His argument was very similar to this one which I found on ConvinceMe.net:

People are inherently bad.

ARGUMENT 1: People show no regard to welfare of others, and help people only when THEY get something.

EXAMPLE: A baby will attempt to take toys from others until learning that sharing will earn their parent’s approval.

ARGUMENT 2: People are, inherently selfish and only do some thing when they can get something out of it.

EXAMPLE: those who are altrurists, in the race of evolution, will fall behind and therefore disappear, and only the selfish will survive.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, people are inherently bad and becomes good only after they attain more knowledge.

One more thing, I countered argument 1 by talking about Saints and Holy People who do things selflessly to help others… he maintained that those people were inherently evil at one point and it was only religion or the society they grew up in that made them the way they are.

If you have good arguments for either side please chime in. I would like to hear good, logically sound arguments from Philosophy from either side…

We are born with both natures; its called concupiscence. We will ALWAYS have to battle to continually put God’s Will above our own. It is because of original sin…

 

[catholic2]

Short answer: All of us need a Savior.

 

[geekborj]

ARGUMENT 1: People show no regard to welfare of others, and help people only when THEY get something.

EXAMPLE: A baby will attempt to take toys from others until learning that sharing will earn their parent’s approval.

By “people” you mean everyone? Or just most?

I bet it is “most people” since there are a handful of people who do without regard of “getting something.” The “only” is also questionable. Thus, the statement is wrong (both clauses).

ARGUMENT 2: People are, inherently selfish and only do some thing when they can get something out of it.

EXAMPLE: those who are altrurists, in the race of evolution, will fall behind and therefore disappear, and only the selfish will survive.

“Therefore disappear”? I don’t think all altruists have disappeared. In fact, there is an active question of the very reason why altruism exists.

Is there any proof of “inherence”? Again, the “only” is dubious.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, people are inherently bad…

Wrong conclusion. Based on the rebuttal, the conclusion would be: “People must be inherently good.”

… and becomes good only after they attain more knowledge.

Same as above. Thus: “… and becomes bad only when they do not acknowledge rules/laws or an absolute concept of good and evil.” The Church says that the design of Man started to decay the moment the same Man placed upon himself the definition of good and evil, by disobeying God’s Word: “thou shall not…”. (i.e. eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil)

One more thing, I countered argument 1 by talking about Saints and Holy People who do things selflessly to help others… he maintained that those people were inherently evil at one point and it was only religion or the society they grew up in that made them the way they are.

No, it was religion that points them to back to their original state. Ask him how he knows that something is moral or not. I believe, this is the spirit of God in us that instructs someone about good and evil. Man is so corrupted by Pride that this little voice is always refuted by a JUSTIFICATION made by misguided reasons of the human heart. Read CS Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”

 

[jman507]

People are inherently good. It is only when the “I” concept is learned that selfishness/sin/evil is born.

Thought itself is the source of all “evil”.

Would you also say you would need to have I and thought inorder to love?

 

[Hastrman]

People are inherently good. It is only when the “I” concept is learned that selfishness/sin/evil is born.

Thought itself is the source of all “evil”.

Um…when the “I” concept is learned by what, exactly?

Now if you were to say, “Evil is caused by the delusion that there is such a thing as a self,” that’d be a respectable thought.

See, to be consistent you have to fundamentally deny that there are any people…and really, you probably have to deny good, and evil, as well.

In other words, what you are saying is only acceptable as a part of Buddhism, specifically the Mahayana interpretation of the Not-Self (and even probably only the Zen interpretation); divorced from that all-encompassing metaphysical framework, it simply doesn’t work.

 

[Keito]

I think people start out as nothing, neutrual. I’ve seen babies that do share without really being thought. I think it’s also the atmosphere that makes people good or bad. Then once they come of age it’s entirely up to them. I guess you could say it follows the same likes as free will. People have the choice to be either it on just depends on the individual.

 

[Chuck_H]

Evilness is a characteristic that requires an action so that it has a frame of reference.
The question is not so much are humans inherently evil but what makes humans capable of evil?

What sets the anthropoid apes and then man aside from the rest of the natural world is the capability to “create” reality. In order to lie, the brain must conceive of a reality where what it thinks (right or wrong) is real. A man of good conscience makes a miserable liar since the brain is connected to the reality of the situation. Jesus gives us an excellent example of the pharisee and the publican praying. One has his reality as being righteous and wonderfully good and puffs up as he is praying. Unbelievably he is “creating” a situation in his own mind where he can brag to God. The other is firmly grounded in his sinfulness and simply begs for the strength and forgiveness to keep trying.

This penchant for creating self serving reality is seen almost immediately in children since it seems to them to have a protective power against chastisement. A good parent knows this right off the bat and understands that the child must be brought back into reality over and over again until they are old enough for the brain to fight this tendency.

The answer then can be found in the premise that people are inherently capable of creating self serving reality (lying) to themselves. Hitler believed his diatribe of hate toward the Jews. Stalin believed that the only solution to capitalism required the death and imprisonment of people. The promulgators of the Spanish Inquisition were absolutely convinced what they were doing was justified. All share the same phenomena of creating a reality in themselves that allowed such behaviors that are now seen in reality as intrinsically evil.

Johnathan Winters (older comedian to you “kids”) got into a character so deep one time he had to stop and commented on the side “I got to believing my own stuff”.

 

[elt1956]

I was in a discussion with a co-worker who believes people are inherently evil and I argued that people are inherently good.

His argument was very similar to this one which I found on ConvinceMe.net:

People are inherently bad.

ARGUMENT 1: People show no regard to welfare of others, and help people only when THEY get something.

EXAMPLE: A baby will attempt to take toys from others until learning that sharing will earn their parent’s approval.

ARGUMENT 2: People are, inherently selfish and only do some thing when they can get something out of it.

EXAMPLE: those who are altrurists, in the race of evolution, will fall behind and therefore disappear, and only the selfish will survive.

CONCLUSION: Therefore, people are inherently bad and becomes good only after they attain more knowledge.

One more thing, I countered argument 1 by talking about Saints and Holy People who do things selflessly to help others… he maintained that those people were inherently evil at one point and it was only religion or the society they grew up in that made them the way they are.

If you have good arguments for either side please chime in. I would like to hear good, logically sound arguments from Philosophy from either side…

There is a big difference between evil and less than perfect. If you have ever looked into the eyes of an infant, or a young child, one could not say humans are inherently evil. The innocence in those eyes should make one aware that trust and love lurk there. A child, before the age of two, will take toys away because s/he is ego-centric, not realizing “others” exist outside of themselves. This is a stage which, if taught in love and given security, the child will overcome. Most adults are not evil, but we are flawed. That is why Christ came to Earth. To teach us a better way to be. Peace.

 

[jman507]

There is a big difference between evil and less than perfect. If you have ever looked into the eyes of an infant, or a young child, one could not say humans are inherently evil. The innocence in those eyes should make one aware that trust and love lurk there. A child, before the age of two, will take toys away because s/he is ego-centric, not realizing “others” exist outside of themselves. This is a stage which, if taught in love and given security, the child will overcome. Most adults are not evil, but we are flawed. That is why Christ came to Earth. To teach us a better way to be. Peace.

I would disagree with you on the part that if taught in love and given security the child will overcome. My arguement is over “will,” I think would propose that it is not “will,” but “in a better position to overcome.” I would still say while it may be generally true someone in an environment of love and security may do better than someone in the opposite environment, humans are of the such you will be able to find exceptions to the rule easy enough.