Shamar.Org
If You Believe That People Are Basically GoodBy Dennis Prager
No issue has a greater influence on determining your social and political views than whether you view human nature as basically good or not.
In 20 years as a radio talk show host, I have dialogued with thousands of people, of both sexes and from virtually every religious, ethnic and national background. Very early on, I realized that perhaps the major reason for political and other disagreements I had with callers was that they believed people are basically good, and I did not. I believe that we are born with tendencies toward both good and evil. Yes, babies are born innocent, but not good.
Why is this issue so important?
First, if you believe people are born good, you will attribute evil to forces outside the individual. That is why, for example, our secular humanistic culture so often attributes evil to poverty. Washington Senator Patty Murray, former President Jimmy Carter, and millions of other Westerners believe that the cause of Islamic terror is poverty. They really believe that people who strap bombs to their bodies to blow up families in pizzerias in Israel, plant bombs at a nightclub in Bali, slit stewardesses' throats, and ram airplanes filled with innocent Americans into office buildings do so because they lack sufficient incomes.
Something in these people cannot accept the fact that many people have evil values and choose evil for reasons having nothing to do with their economic situation. The Carters and Murrays of the West — representatives of that huge group of naive Westerners identified by the once proud title "liberal" — do not understand that no amount of money will dissuade those who believe that God wants them to rule the world and murder all those they deem infidels.
Second, if you believe people are born good, you will not stress character development when you raise children. You will have schools teach young people how to use condoms, how to avoid first and secondhand tobacco smoke, how to recycle and how to prevent rainforests from disappearing. You will teach them how to struggle against the evils of society — its sexism, its racism, its classism and its homophobia. But you will not teach them that the primary struggle they have to wage to make a better world is against their own nature.
I attended Jewish religious schools (yeshivas) until the age of 18, and aside from being taught that moral rules come from God rather than from personal or world opinion, this was the greatest difference between my education and those who attended public and private secular schools. They learned that their greatest struggles were with society, and I learned that the greatest struggle was with me, and my natural inclinations to laziness, insatiable appetites, and self-centeredness.
Third, if you believe that people are basically good, God and religion are morally unnecessary, even harmful. Why would basically good people need a God or religion to provide moral standards? Therefore, the crowd that believes in innate human goodness tends to either be secular or to reduce God and religion to social workers, providers of compassion rather than of moral standards and moral judgments.
Fourth, if you believe people are basically good, you, of course, believe that you are good -- and therefore those who disagree with you must be bad, not merely wrong. You also believe that the more power that you and those you agree with have, the better the society will be. That is why such people are so committed to powerful government and to powerful judges. On the other hand, those of us who believe that people are not basically good do not want power concentrated in any one group, and are therefore profoundly suspicious of big government, big labor, big corporations, and even big religious institutions. As Lord Acton said long ago, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton did not believe people are basically good.
No great body of wisdom, East or West, ever posited that people were basically good. This naive and dangerous notion originated in modern secular Western thought, probably with Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Frenchman who gave us the notion of pre-modern man as a noble savage.
He was half right. Savage, yes, noble, no.
If the West does not soon reject Rousseau and humanism and begin to recognize evil, judge it and confront it, it will find itself incapable of fighting savages who are not noble.
There are people that become evil due to circumstances or environment......where as maybe if they grew up in a more affluent area they would have flourished. But there are definitely people who are born evil and are the spawn of Satan. No matter what you do for them they are evil and are capable of heinous acts.
I didn't bother to read it.
I... didn't read all that crap, either, but I think we are born... "neutral." Experiences with our friends, families, and peers make us who we are. More accurately, how we choose to react to such experiences defines us.
It was a very good article. Thank you, Wednesday.
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PenWing said:
It was a very good article. Thank you, Wednesday.
Very good article. And I agree that your answer to this question has a huge impact on how you react to... well, pretty much everything.
Some people are born good. Some people are born evil. Some people are born somewhere in between.
I may be the only one here who votes "Born evil" or the term I prefer "Totally depraved from birth"
No one is born evil. Thats just nonsense that they teach people at church.
Some people are born sociopaths. Sociopaths are, in essence, evil.
Looking at people in terms of good and evil is fucking stupid. I try not to see the world as black and white.
G-Man: If they are a sociopath, and they can't help it, how can you say they are evil?
the acts they commit are evil
Exactly
The mind of a true innovator - always quick to cite something someone else said.
I said what I had to say before I posted that.
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PCG342 said:
I... didn't read all that crap, either, but I think we are born... "neutral." Experiences with our friends, families, and peers make us who we are. More accurately, how we choose to react to such experiences defines us.
I love that pretty much nobody has explained why, in their POV, people are born either good or evil - or why we shouldn't see the world in black and white.
What would a person have to be like to be considered, as a whole, good or evil?
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JQ said:
Looking at people in terms of good and evil is fucking stupid. I try not to see the world as black and white.
G-Man: If they are a sociopath, and they can't help it, how can you say they are evil?
you're confusing sociopath with psychopath. psychopaths don't know the difference between right and wrong. sociopaths know the difference, they just don't care.
And apathy is the greater evil in this case.
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JQ said:
G-Man: If they are a sociopath, and they can't help it, how can you say they are evil?
Usually, I'd agree with this line of argument (although you're confusing "socio" for "psycho"). But when I went to my mom's Church the other day, I met a priest who was sociopathic. I asked him the essentials--Like what it felt like and such. Anyhoo, he told me that he was definitely prone to more sadistic thoughts throughout his life. He couldn't tell me why aside from a few assumptions regarding defining moments. Later on he discovered Catholicism, and while it was a struggle to understand the principles of Christianity and the logic behind them from a sociopathic viewpoint, he stayed with it...Yet, he's still struggling to further understand it. Anyway, the point is, it taught him restraint, and that, in essence, alludes to, at least, the understanding of a conceptual composition of good and bad, right and wrong, and how that can affect a person.
Sociopaths understand the difference between right wrong. They just can't feel the difference between the two. And that is what makes them not care.
Yeah, sociopaths are aware that what they do is wrong. Psychopaths aren't. That's why sociopaths are far, far more dangerous.
You're talking about a mental illness, not fundamentals of good and evil.
Someone provide a definition of each, and I'll argue that its so inherently subjective, culture-based and intuitive as to be irrelevant.
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First Amongst Daves said:
Someone provide a definition of each, and I'll argue that its so inherently subjective, culture-based and intuitive as to be irrelevant.
Good
Evil
Mental Illness
Explain away.
Edited because you can never fit too many avatars into a post like this...
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First Amongst Daves said:
You're talking about a mental illness, not fundamentals of good and evil.
Someone provide a definition of each, and I'll argue that its so inherently subjective, culture-based and intuitive as to be irrelevant.
Good: 1. Pleasant, propitious, of moral excellence. Showing benevolence. Kind, loyal.
Evil: Morally bad or wrong. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.
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Wednesday said:
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First Amongst Daves said:
You're talking about a mental illness, not fundamentals of good and evil.
Someone provide a definition of each, and I'll argue that its so inherently subjective, culture-based and intuitive as to be irrelevant.
Good: 1. Pleasant, propitious, of moral excellence. Showing benevolence. Kind, loyal.
Evil: Morally bad or wrong. Causing ruin, injury, or pain; harmful. Characterized by anger or spite; malicious: an evil temper.
Even Satanists, who consider "evil" to be "good", know how to seperate that definition. So, yeah. I disagree with Dave.
I agree with Dave in that I think most of our ideas about good and evil are responses conditioned by the culture we live in(and, truthfully, most of the time I think that's just fine).
I don't think there are any purely evil or purely good people. There are just people, who in certain situations can do either harmful things or kind things, unintentionally or not. We spend way too much time trying to label everything so that we can feel more comfortable explaining what isn't explainable.
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Captain Sammitch said:
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First Amongst Daves said:
Someone provide a definition of each, and I'll argue that its so inherently subjective, culture-based and intuitive as to be irrelevant.
Good
Evil
Mental Illness
Explain away.
Edited because you can never fit too many avatars into a post like this...
I think I'm just glad you didn't include me anywhere. I'm not sure I want to know whose camp you'd put me in.
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Jim Jackson said:I'm not sure I want to know whose camp you'd put me in.
If this thread now turns into a "is homosexuality a mental illness" debate between yourself and Pariah, you have no one to blame but yourself. 
Pedophilia = Gay = Mental Disorder
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Pariah said:
Pedophilia = Gay = Mental Disorder
Wrong thread.
Just because Pariah is gay and has a mental disorder, that doesn't mean that all gay people do.
Pariah, f**k yourself with a rusty chainsaw.
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the G-man said:
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Jim Jackson said:I'm not sure I want to know whose camp you'd put me in.
If this thread now turns into a "is homosexuality a mental illness" debate between yourself and Pariah, you have no one to blame but yourself.
I am not responsible for what Pariah does or does not do.
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Captain Sammitch said:
Mental Illness
I think most of us can agree on something.
Do you believe that people are basically good or are we born evil?
Neither. I think at birth, we're nothing... well, "neutral" was the word I used...
Neutered?
Have you taken Bio 1 yet?
Actually, I'm in Bio II and Physics, so blow off, pal!
Anyway, back on subject, yes, I think we're neutral. Maybe it's because I feel that the "good/evil" thing as just as stupid as the concept of predestination.