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Are People Basically Good or Basically Evil?
- Psalm 143:2 - Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.Are People Basically Good or Basically Evil?
Yes. I'm not trying to sound pessimistic but it's true.
Are People Basically Good or Basically Evil?
Sorry, I forgot this was a poll. No, I do not happen to believe people are good.
All of the above. What perfect meal can be topped by a spoonful of rotten mold?
I have no idea what you mean by that.
None of the above. People are neither good nor evil, but have a inclination to sin and a capacity to do evil. In fact, part of the reason why I adopted the Eastern Orthodox view of human nature and original sin is because it fits with what science has learned about human psychology, I cannot reconcile the Western notion, much less the Calvinist's with what I also know to be true about human nature from psychology. The most unsettling books I've ever read is called The Lucifer Effect, written by Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist behind the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" the thesis of the book is not that evil is a matter of pathology or deep desire in humanity, but a matter of situation. Yes, there are people who are prone to do evil, but there is a desire to conform, control, and obey in all, if not a vast majority of us. What Milgram's (the infamous study where people were told to give even potentially lethal shock to another person in order to test their ability to learn, in reality, they were testing obedience to authority), Zimbardo's, and others' studies like it, which the book goes into details about show that in reality, there's something in us that causes us to kill someone if an authority figure tells us and we feel it's necessary. However, on the other hand, after these studies ended, there was major cognitive dissonance. In fact, after Milgram people actually had to take therapy because they thought they killed someone. It's not so much that people are inherently evil, but they have the capacity for it.
This inclination and capacity of humanity's inclination to sin is the result of our fallen nature, it is a disease and defect, not a moral falling or broken law. The Earliest Church Fathers did not talk about Original Sin, but "Ancestral" Sin, which is that no one is guilty for the actual sin Adam and Eve committed but rather everyone inherits the consequences of this act; the foremost of this is physical death in this world, and that mankind still has an inclination for sin (the Reformed concept of "Total Depravity" was not really heard of until the 5th century, first proposed by Augustine but never formally accepted by the Church outside of certain Protestant denominations). These teachings in the West, which I personally think came from an influence of Roman legalism, are what caused the issue over unbaptized infants and children, an issue that never even discussed in the East because it never was a problem. For the Eastern Fathers, as the consequence of Adam's sin, human beings inherited corruption, possibility, and mortality, from which they could be restored by a process of deification made possible through the redemptive work of Christ. The idea of an inheritance of sin or guilt - common in Western tradition - was foreign to this perspective, since in their view sin could only be a free, personal act. Sin is more like a condition, than a list of bad deeds.
People are flawed and inevitably do evil..Are People Basically Good or Basically Evil?
People are flawed and inevitably do evil..
But people can love what is evil.. Or they can love what is good.. irrespective of them doing both.. What one embraces is more important then what one does..