Are people good or bad?

[otseng]

Even if the Bible did not exist, the notion that it is good to love others would still be there. I find it hard to get my head around the need for some sort of instructional manual to tell us how to be good people.

For debate:
Are people good or bad?
Are we inherently good or morally depraved?
Do we need an instruction manual to tell us how to be good people?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by otseng]

Well is the world overall a war free, rape free, corruption free, torture weapons free, haven of peace?

For those who claim humans are essentially good, I challenge them to send their teenage daughter to walk alone through any inner city at 3 am and report back. We need more than a book to tell us the difference between good and bad we need a leader to show us (and possibly draw us a diagram). At three minuites to midnight the chants of "We're doing fine no God required" sounds a little hollow to my ears.

Do we need an instruction manual to tell us how to be good people?

Yes we defintitely do.


Personal opinion.



JW

PROVERBS 14:12- World English Bible

There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

[otseng]

I want to head off the usual response to this about how much good a person can do to show we are good. Yes, people can do good things, but that does not make them a good person.

Suppose someone murders a person. At his defense, he tells the judge, "Your honor, actually I'm a good person. I love my family, I feed the poor, I go to church. Since I do so many good things, I am not a bad person." How would the judge respond? Would he say, "You're right, your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds. You are declared innocent." No, he'd say, "It doesn't matter what you think you are are or how loving you are to other people. Because you have murdered someone, the state considers you to be a bad person and you will have to be punished."

[Adstar]

Even if the Bible did not exist, the notion that it is good to love others would still be there. I find it hard to get my head around the need for some sort of instructional manual to tell us how to be good people.

For debate:
Are people good or bad?
Are we inherently good or morally depraved?
Do we need an instruction manual to tell us how to be good people?

Well the question should be put more like this::

Are human beings Perfect or Imperfect..

Jesus made it clear in the Bible.. That only God was good..

[Elijah John]

I want to head off the usual response to this about how much good a person can do to show we are good. Yes, people can do good things, but that does not make them a good person.

"By their fruits...". So yes, good people do good things, and bad people do bad things.

Suppose someone murders a person. At his defense, he tells the judge, "Your honor, actually I'm a good person. I love my family, I feed the poor, I go to church. Since I do so many good things, I am not a bad person." How would the judge respond? Would he say, "You're right, your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds. You are declared innocent." No, he'd say, "It doesn't matter what you think you are are or how loving you are to other people. Because you have murdered someone, the state considers you to be a bad person and you will have to be punished."

Change "murder" to "someone parked their car illegally". And that person also does all the good things you mentioned in your example. And that person's abiding motivation is habitual lovingkindness. Love of God and neighbor as a way of life. Would that person be a good person or a bad person?

Would a fair judge focus on the preponderance of good in that person's life? Or on the one time he parked his car in the wrong spot.

So it would depend on the severity of the offence, would it not? Whether one sin obliterates all the good in that person's life.

[Elijah John]

Even if the Bible did not exist, the notion that it is good to love others would still be there. I find it hard to get my head around the need for some sort of instructional manual to tell us how to be good people.

For debate:
Are people good or bad?
Are we inherently good or morally depraved?
Do we need an instruction manual to tell us how to be good people?

Well the question should be put more like this::

Are human beings Perfect or Imperfect..

Jesus made it clear in the Bible.. That only God was good..

So it's either "perfect" or "evil"? If Jesus wasn't prone to hyperbole (for whatever reason), a more accurate way to put it would be "only God is perfect".

By Jesus hyperbolic standard, there are a lot of evil people running around out there, and not very many perfect gods.

If a child throws a tantrum on occasion, do you tell that child he or she is "evil"? Do you raise the child to believe they are evil? What good parent would do that?

And our Heavenly Father is far better than any human parent, so it stands to reason that He is far more wise, compassionate and understanding than any human parent.

[Divine Insight]

Are people good or bad?

I think there can be no question that the overwhelming majority of people are good. The bad people represent a very small minority.

Are we inherently good or morally depraved?

Humans are inherently good. If we were inherently bad it's unlikely we would have survived as a species.

Do we need an instruction manual to tell us how to be good people?

Anyone who needs an instruction manual to tell them how to be good is already a bad person. And even if they happen to follow the instructions in the manual that wouldn't make them good.

Besides, why should a bad person even bother to follow the instructions in a manual that claims to be instructions on how a person should act to be good?

If they want to be a good person, then they already are innately good and they shouldn't need a manual to tell them how to behave in the first place

If they are bad, then what would be their incentive to become good? To avoid punishment or be offered eternal life? That would hardly make a bad person good. All it would do is make a bad person act in a manner of self-preservation.

By the way, Christianity is a self-contradictory theology on this very issue.

Christian theology claims that no one is good but God.

Therefore in Christian theology there can be no such thing as a good person.

The only way a person can obtain eternal life and avoid damnation if to confess that they are indeed a bad person and ask God for undeserved grace.

Therefore only bad people can go to heaven. After all there are no good people according to Christian theology so there are no good people to go to heaven.

This is also absurd, because if bad people can be accepted into heaven based on undeserved amnesty, then all bad people can be granted undeserved amnesty and there would be no reason why all humans couldn't have just been created in heaven in the first place.

Finally, Christian theology contradicts itself on this point through Jesus. Jesus himself is quoted as having supposedly said that the righteous will go the way of eternal life and the unrighteous into everlasting punishment.

This requires that there are good (i.e. righteous people) who have earned their own way into heave via their own righteousness. Yet Christian theology also demands that no man can earn his own salvation or gain entrance into heaven without obtaining the free grace of amnesty that Jesus has to offer.

So Christian theology contradicts itself on this very question.

If there are no righteous (i.e. good) people as Paul likes to claim, then why did Jesus say that the righteous will go into eternal life?

Christian theology is self-contradictory on this very issue.

Can we earn our way into heaven via our own righteousness as Jesus has taught?

Or are we all sinners, as Paul had claimed?

They can't both be right.

[Overcomer]

Divine Insight wrote:

If there are no righteous (i.e. good) people as Paul likes to claim, then why did Jesus say that the righteous will go into eternal life?

Jesus Christ was the only righteous man to live and the reason he was righteous was because he was not only man, he was God.

When people accept Christ's gift of salvation in faith, he gives them HIS righteousness in exchange for their sins. Because he has atoned for their sins, they are no longer culpable in the eyes of God. He sees them as righteous. This is why Jesus could rightly say that the righteous will spend eternal life with God.

It really isn't about whether people do good or bad deeds. It's about being born with a sin nature that we cannot change no matter how many good deeds we do. When someone accepts Jesus, the Holy Spirit brings that person's spirit, dead in sin, alive. As Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias put it, Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

[Divine Insight]

When people accept Christ's gift of salvation in faith, he gives them HIS righteousness in exchange for their sins. Because he has atoned for their sins, they are no longer culpable in the eyes of God. He sees them as righteous. This is why Jesus could rightly say that the righteous will spend eternal life with God.

Exactly how naive does a person need to be to believe such a thing?

I mean really. The excuses for this theology are an insult to human intelligence.

It really isn't about whether people do good or bad deeds. It's about being born with a sin nature that we cannot change no matter how many good deeds we do. When someone accepts Jesus, the Holy Spirit brings that person's spirit, dead in sin, alive. As Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias put it, Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

If that apology was worth anything then Jesus could save everyone. Why would a person need to ask Jesus to save them? If that's required then the person has saved themselves by having done that very deed.

You seem to have embrace a theology that makes no sense.

Also since when do two wrongs make a right? Why should condoning having Jesus crucified for you sake make you a righteous person? In fact, to even condone such a thing seems to me to make a person about as unrighteous as a person could possibly be.

Are you aware that you are basically believing in a magical fairy tale. Is you simple click your heals together in what is said to be an obedient way you'll magically be transformed into a righteous person.

You also seem to be totally ignoring the fact that if God could magically make unrighteous people righteous via a free gift, then he could certainly do this for everyone. Not the least of which should have been Adam and Eve.

The whole idea of Jesus being crucified to pay for the sins of men after thousands of people had lived is absurd. What about all those people? They were never given the opportunity to click their heels together and save themselves.

Please explain to me why God didn't offer Adam and Eve free righteousness if they would simply nail Jesus to a cross. Who knows, maybe they would have been unrighteous enough to do it. They could have washed away their sins with Jesus' blood an everyone could have gone to heaven straight away.

How can you not see how absurd this theology truly is?

Ir you need to do anything to obtain salvation, even if it's just accepting Jesus as your penal substitute, then you will have earned your own salvation via that very act.

But that is taboo. That's the very thing that this theology demands we cannot do. We cannot earn our own salvation no matter what. It can only be obtained as a free give from Jesus. If that's the case, then there's no reason Jesus can't give this free gift to everyone. Demanding that people earn by asking for it shoots the theology in its own foot.

If you could earn salvation by asking Jesus for forgiveness, you should be able to earn salvation by asking Yahweh for forgiveness.

The idea that Yahweh can't forgive people until an innocent person is crucified is nothing short of sickness.

Christianity is a theology that demands that God is mentally sick. And that we are ignorant enough to think that being sick is somehow "holy".

Basically what you are condoning is the idea that it makes sense to crucify an innocent person in order to offer an evil person free forgiveness.

Does that truly make any sense to you? Apparently it must because that's the crux of Christianity. That's exactly what you are loaning your support to when you offer apologies for this religion.

[Willum]

Welp, if you believe in a god, that means people should have been programmed good.
If you believe we evolved, then good and evil are empty words, established by social mores.