Does the existence of psychopaths and radical leftists disprove special creation?

[Soothfish]

[This question is placed here because I believe that the political "radical leftist" is more accurate than "sociopath" since sociopaths lack the emotional drive to believe that they are truly good people. So this is technically a political question as well as a psychological and spiritual question]

Many Christians believe that God specially created all of humanity in his image and that it was not just "good" but "very good" aside from the fact that choosing the tree of knowledge of good and evil separated them from a greater source of life. I don't understand how psychopaths and radical leftists fit in with the paradigm.

Perhaps it was possible that God created nature and then allowed these monsters along with the rest of humanity to evolve through natural selection and other natural forces. My question is: how could a benevolent deity specially create psychopaths in 4% of the population and radical leftists in 30-50% of the human population? Or does the special creation only apply to Adam and Eve and all other humans are mere products of nature?

This is how I view this situation. I apologize if this offends people but this is my view of up to half the world:

This isn't a matter of free will because these animals can't imagine alternatives to their evil let alone choose the alternative! He created them incapable of godly love! You cannot explain love to a psychopath or a radical leftist because the only love he/she ever knew was self love. These things are genetically human but they do not seem to be people in the normal sense. As far as I can tell, they can only mimic love and selfless devotion to get something in return. They will show affection towards their family members to get affection in return. Likewise they will support social programs to get a more comfortable life in return. There are many many reasons why I make this claim but for the sake of simplicity I will stick to two issues and that is the issues of unborn life and justice for the innocent.

The life of an unrelated and "useless" child is worth NOTHING to them. Nothing whatsoever. The idea of loving a stranger's child is so foreign to them that they can't even imagine it. They'll even kill their own unwanted child because they can't imagine how anyone other than them would even be willing to provide for that stranger's child. Adoption just doesn't make sense to them. It is not part of their nature...except if they feel like having kids and IVF is too expensive. However, it is never done for the sake of love, just as their marriages are all about getting happiness from their partner. Their family is the "happiness dispenser" and nothing more.

Here is a story to illustrate the inhumanity of psychopaths and to illustrate the comparison with the radical left. A psychologist was interviewing a woman who was diagnosed with psychopathy. Her ex-husband (another psychopath) is on trial for smashing the skull of her two year old daughter. When asked "does this make you sad?", the woman replied "No, not really, I can always have another one".

The male psychopath had no use for the human child and is probably a bit angry that they are wasting his time with a murder trial. The 2 year old baby girl was a pet, an object, an accessory of mild pleasure for the female psychopath. In her world, no one could possibly love that little girl for the sake of her inherent dignity. This love simply did not exist and that was fine. It was like losing a pet rock. The psycho's life went on as normal.

Meanwhile, the radical leftist states the following: "Don't like abortion? Then don't have one! My bed, my body!"

As if no one in the universe loved that baby or could ever possibly love that baby from that moment and throughout the course of the baby's life. Slaughtering that child, even half-way out of the womb, was a decision like any other. Pulling a fully developed infant out half way from the womb and then killing him or her was like getting a pilonidal cyst removed. The radical leftist's life went on as normal.

We see more and more parents being convicted and then RELEASED on low bail or "scant evidence" after murdering older children. There is, of course, the famous case of Casey Anthony. The radical leftists who compose up to half the population could care less about justice for little Caylee. They will not charge anyone with negligent homicide or worse or less. There are also some other less famous but equally horrifying cases. One is the case of a woman who slashed the throats of her two infant sons. Her bail was set to $250000 and she was released. There was another case of a woman in Illinois who murdered her two daughters ages 8 and 11. She was not only released on all charges "by plea of insanity" after a short stay in a psych ward but also granted full custody of her 10 year old son who survived by hiding in the garage.

He'll probably be sliced to ribbons any minute now by a wild humanoid animal.

 

[Simon_Templar]

First off, there are two views (at least) in terms of whether each individual is specially created.

It is obvious that we are not physically specially created. Our physical make up is created by natural process through combination of the genetic material of our parents.

Many Christians believe that each human soul is specially created, but there is also a view called traducianism which holds that an individual's soul is actually also inherited from their parents.

There is merit to both views and neither one can be conclusively proved from scripture.

However, all should agree that our sinful nature and all that this entails was not created by God but rather was inherited down the long line of descent from Adam.

There are a few problems when you begin talking about things like pscopathy because the reality is there is a lot we simply don't know about it. For example, we really don't know for sure how much of psycopathy is pysical (ie an actual neurological disorder in the brain or something like that) or how much is environmental (ie something in the person's childhood inhibited the natural development of empathy and emotion).

It should also be noted that psycopaths are not inherintly immoral more than anyone else. Psychopaths simply do not feel empathy or emotion the same way other people do, which in turn enables them to act out in ways that most people wouldn't simply because their emotions and their empathy for others would get in the way.

When it comes to radical leftists etc, I would say that they are not born so much as made by bad philosophy, bad teaching etc.

 

[lifesinsane]

Yes like Simon said, these people made a choice about what to believe and their belief drives their errant actions. It is not God that created their beliefs rather it is what they have chosen. Yes God created all people and in that creation we are all equal. From then on each persons development depends on the choices they make. And to further complicate matters satan is busy trying to deceive as many people as he can. Unfortunately that is a rather large group of those who have been fooled into believing something that is not the truth. Only God can save any of us in the midst of this worldly insanity and this is why it is important for us to witness to the multitudes of lost individuals. There is always a chance that God can find them and save them, we just need to point the way to the savior.

 

[Soothfish]

I don't believe that all people are born exactly the same. There are genetic factors that influence the various types of intelligence. It would not be very hard for a person to commit a horrible crime if they are lacking the brain functions that allow them to "visual" the reality of what they have just done.

This is far more common in psychotic people but can also occur in the truly evil. By "truly evil" I mean the type who are insane 24 hours a day. There is not truth or goodness in them whatsoever.

I truly believe that an enormous percentage of the population doesn't even know what beauty looks like.

 

[Soothfish]

What exactly is "free will"? What does it mean to "make choices"?

 

[Simon_Templar]

Equality is often misunderstood and misapplied.

People are born with equality of essense, but not with equality of ability, or attributes.

In more common terms, all people are born equally human, but they are not guarenteed equal intelligence, equal emotional stability, etc.

From a christian view point, all human beings are born sinners, and born in a state of spiritual death. This was not by God's desire, but it is what we inherit as a result of the fall.

Adam was created with spiritual life, which is another way of saying that he was created in communion with the life of God, but that connection, that communion died when Adam sinned. As a result all of Adam's descendants are born without it. IE we are born spiritually dead, lacking connection to the life of God. What we have a is a shadow of life, as we remain a shadow of the image and likeness of God.

In this state of being born sinners, and mortal, we are often born with particular weaknesses or temptations that plague us. It is possible that some people are born with more predisposition towards psychopathy, but this alone does not determine what manner of person they will be.

I should also point out that there is a difference between psychopathy and psychosis (or a psychopath and a psychotic).

A psychopath is one who does not naturally develop normal emotional ties and particularly does not naturally feel a normal level of empathy or compassion.

A psychotic is a person who is suffering from a significant mental break with reality. In other words, their mind has lost touch with reality to a significant degree and it is creating its own twisted version of reality.

Again, while it is possible that someone could be born with a weakness towards psychosis, no one is born psychotic. Psychosis generally requires some kind of traumatic trigger or event that pushes the person past the breaking limit of their mind.

What exactly is "free will"? What does it mean to "make choices"?

I would think making choices would be fairly obvious. People make hundreds, or thousands of choices every day.

What to wear when you get up in the morning, what to eat for breakfast, how fast to drive, what route to take to work.

However, people also make much more subtle choices about things like what attitude they will have, how they will react to events that occur each day etc.

This is not obvious to most people because they think of things like emotion, attitude etc, as uncontrolable, or simply natural reaction.

For example, if someone is mean to you, we say "they made you angry". In point of fact this is a fundamental surrender of control over yourself. You have the choice of whether to be angry or not.
You may have an emotional impulse to be angry, but you still have the choice of whether to accept that impulse and give in to it.. or to refuse it.

Most people do not practice "self-control". They allow themselves to be controled and driven by their passions and desires, rather than making the choice to control their passions and desires and live according to higher reason.

Free-will would usually be defined as the ability to choose. Or in other words, free-will would often be described as having a set of options from which you can legitimately make a choice.

I personally don't think humans in their fallen state have perfectly free will. We have mostly free will, but we are slaves to sin and even more so, we are dead in our sins. Thus we can not make a choice to save ourselves, or to become free.
Jesus Christ came to set us free and the grace that he gives to us does exactly that. The more we are living by, and feeding upon the grace of God, the more perfectly free we are.

 

[Soothfish]

Yes, Simon. I'm fully aware of the differences between psychopath and psychotic and I used the correct terms.

 

[Soothfish]

The question remains: how can people choose between good or evil when they don't even know that they are choosing between good or evil?

The evil comes so naturally to them that it's like a eating a piece of toast in the morning (or some other suitable analogy).

They do not even believe themselves to be in conscious rebellion against the will of God. They just think that they are doing a normal activity and those "bigoted Christians" are making a big deal out of nothing and ought to "get a life".

I met one radical leftist who called me a "misogynist" and thought I was just "obeying ancient doctrine arbitrarily". He truly believed that to love a baby means that you MUST hate women and that it was not possible for a human mind to love both. It was so completely incomprehensible to him how anyone could love the youngest members of society.

What is the "choice" being made here with this? When I look at radical leftists and psychopaths I don't see creatures made in the image of God. I see primitive animals. They are not capable of functioning as human beings.

 

[miamited]

Hi SF,

It would seem that you have not understood the consequences of sin in God's creation.

God bless you.
In Christ, Ted

 

[Chabah]

although i am not a Catholic, I have read some articles written by a gentlemen whose name is Doug MacManaman. He has some excellent insight on the subject of: evil, narcissism, psychopathy, etc.. Because i don't have enough posts, I can not post a link for you. So if you are interested, do a search on this gentlemen and look for an article titled: Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil.

 

[Girder of Loins]

The question remains: how can people choose between good or evil when they don't even know that they are choosing between good or evil?

The evil comes so naturally to them that it's like a eating a piece of toast in the morning (or some other suitable analogy).

They do not even believe themselves to be in conscious rebellion against the will of God. They just think that they are doing a normal activity and those "bigoted Christians" are making a big deal out of nothing and ought to "get a life".

I met one radical leftist who called me a "misogynist" and thought I was just "obeying ancient doctrine arbitrarily". He truly believed that to love a baby means that you MUST hate women and that it was not possible for a human mind to love both. It was so completely incomprehensible to him how anyone could love the youngest members of society.

What is the "choice" being made here with this? When I look at radical leftists and psychopaths I don't see creatures made in the image of God. I see primitive animals. They are not capable of functioning as human beings.

God has written His law on our hearts. It is known as our conscience. As we know, the fall of Adam caused sin to enter the human heart. This redefined humans from "made in God's image" to "made in Lucifer's image". God gave humans a way to come back to "made in God's image" through Christ. So, psychopaths and such have not come back and have embraced Lucifer's image. It may seem animalistic to us because we have Christ, but they are still human.