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?

[Purple Knight]

The problem with Christianity is that the religion demands that no human is worthy of God on their own. That's a seriously disgusting accusation right there.

Moreover, even if this was this case, who could possibly be blamed for that other than the creator himself?

Which (let me be charitable) is why he offered a sacrificial lamb to cleanse us of our sins.

It does have a certain horror to it, though.

Why do we have to make up for (or let someone else make up for) something we can't help?

I happen to be terrified of cockroaches. I hate and despise everything about them. But I certainly don't blame a cockroach for being a cockroach and expect it to be something better. Now imagine I made the darn thing in the first place, to my exact specifications, and I did blame it. That would be (or at least, seem) awful.

But that's not even the extent of it. To get this to Christianity, you also have to imagine that not only did I make the thing to my exact specifications, but I made two of them, the first female ate something it wasn't supposed to (that I put in front of it), and I now blame all their nasty little children for that act, saying the reason they're cockroaches and can't be saved unless I kill myself a little is because she did that and subsequently had sex, which transmits the guilt for that act to the children, and the children's children.

I wonder that Catholics don't keep themselves virgins and impregnate themselves without sex. It would be an immaculate conception every time, and the chain of at least original sin would be broken.

[Divine Insight]

Which (let me be charitable) is why he offered a sacrificial lamb to cleanse us of our sins.

It does have a certain horror to it, though.

Why do we have to make up for (or let someone else make up for) something we can't help?

My thoughts as well. Besides what good does it do to beat someone to a pulp and nail them to a pole to die? How do two wrongs make a right?

The very idea that beating the hell out of someone somehow justifies a crime is an idiotic idea as far as I'm concerned. Yet this is the very idea that all of Christianity is based upon.

I wonder that Catholics don't keep themselves virgins and impregnate themselves without sex. It would be an immaculate conception every time, and the chain of at least original sin would be broken.

Agreed again. If Christians truly believed in their religion they shouldn't be procreating.

Also, the God of the Bible should have never instructed humans to multiple.

This religion doesn't make any sense. Why would God tell people to multiple when all humans have already been sentenced to death anyway?

Christianity is truly hilarious when we stop and think about it. How anyone can take it seriously is beyond me.

Why have babies when according to Jesus the vast majority of humans will be cast into everlasting punishment?

A person would have to be either crazy or seriously sadistic to have a baby while believing that there is a far greater chance that the baby will end up in hell than in heaven. A far greater chance according to Jesus. Because according to Jesus only few will make it into the kingdom of heaven. Therefore any babies we have are far more likely to end up in hell if Jesus words can be trusted to be truthful.

Why in the world would any believer ever dare have a baby? That would be ludicrous.

The theology clearly makes no sense.

[otseng]

We would like to think we are good people, but others, like those who worked in the Nazi concentration camps, could be evil people. But, experiments show that normal, ordinary people can commit such atrocities.

Exhibit #2 - Milgram experiment

Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular contemporary question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

They predicted perhaps less than 2% of people would be willing to administer lethal levels of electric shock to another person.

The actual results showed "65 percent (26 of 40) of experiment participants administered the experiment's final massive 450-volt shock, and all administered shocks of at least 300 volts."

Milgram concluded:

Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority

[Zzyzx]

.

We would like to think we are good people, but others, like those who worked in the Nazi concentration camps, could be evil people. But, experiments show that normal, ordinary people can commit such atrocities.

Exhibit #2 - Milgram experiment

Excellent point.

'Good' people can be induced to do 'bad' things when following an authority figure. Humans being herd animals and 'following the leader' may have had survival value in primitive times, but seems counter-productive now. The world's greatest atrocities throughout what we know of history tended to be the result of following a leader.

How does that balance against any instances of a leader producing beneficial / positive long-term results?

Perhaps an ideal is some form of diffuse leadership, as 'democracy' has occasionally provided (until it is usurped by the power-hungry and greedy).

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 23 by otseng]

The problem is that religious people have been incited to do terrible things in the name of God. Why didn't religious people object when women were being burned at the stake as witches?

Instead they were probably contributing to inciting the mob.

Where they evil people? Or were they as "righteous" as they believed themselves to be?

A lot of atrocities were done in the name of religion, Jesus, and God. Including horrific acts in America against black slaves. Were the Bible-toting people who did those things "evil"?

Why bring up Hitler and the Nazis when Christians have committed similar atrocities in the name of Jesus Christ?

I'm not so sure that people in those situations were necessarily responsible for their actions.

What would Jesus have to say about this?

Well, we all know exactly what he would say. He would say:

"Forgive them for they know not what they do".

I'm sure this would apply equally well to many of the Nazis, slave owners, and mobs that incited the burning of witches at the stake.

People make mistakes. And they often regret them later and wish they could go back in time and erase what they had done.

I'm not convinced that making those kinds of mistakes qualifies a person as being "evil". A better description of them would simply be "stupid". And I think we have all been stupid at one time or another in our life.

Does being stupid qualify as being evil?

And if so, then why did our creator create us with such stupid brains?

We could hardly be blamed for that.

While I have never done anything as bad as torturing someone, egging on a crowd to burn someone alive, or beating a slave for trying to run away, I can't say that I would be immune to any of these things had I been raised within a family or culture where I was taught to think like that.

In fact, there was a time when I was younger when I contributed to the mocking and degradation of homosexuals. They weren't referred to as "gays" back then. And in the culture I lived in it was common place to hear people refer to anyone who was gay as a "faggot", or "fag".

It was ignorance. And I had been raised in a religious community that openly embraced that kind of ignorance. Fortunately I was able to grow beyond that culture. Although I have to say that this was largely due to gays "coming out" and information about being gay was made available. I now realize that the previous things I learned from my culture was nothing more than pure ignorance.

I think we need to realize that much of this also applied to the Nazis who had been taught by their own societies, doctors and scientists that the Jews were an "inferior race". When your own culture teaches you these things you don't normally reject what your culture is telling you.

Same thing goes for the Christians who supported the burning of witches or the enslavement of the "Negros". Their own Bible told them that their God not only condones slavery of other cultures, but also condones the beating of slaves to within an inch of death. As long as you don't kill them, is all "Good".

That's what the Bible teaches.

So no need to point to the Nazis if you want to find the source of evil teachings. Just open up a Bible and it's right there in "God's Word". Beat your slaves to near death if you want, and suffer not a witch to live.

And how do you kill a witch? Well, I don't know if it came from the Bible but religious people seemed to accept the superstition that the only way to kill them was to burn them alive! How disgusting is that?

By the way, if you take words attributed to Jesus seriously, then you should really think long and hard about his quote:

"Forgive them for they know not what they do".

This tells you right here that, according to Jesus, it's not what a person does, but rather why they are doing it. If you do bad things without realizing that what you are doing is actually a bad thing, then apparently Jesus will forgive you right there on the spot. No need to even ask him to forgive you. He already knows that you are stupid. After all, he's the one who created you, right?

If Jesus forgives everyone who's stupid I would guess that the overwhelming majority of us are guaranteed a place in heaven.

But then there's the question of why he wasn't better at designing our brains? Right?

[Bust Nak]

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

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[Bust Nak]

Are people good or bad?

A mix of good and bad.

Are we inherently good or morally depraved?

Inherently good.

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

No.

Yes, people can do good things, but that does not make them a good person.

That depends on the ratio of good and bad surely? Your example is a case where the bad far outweigh the good. Had the good outweigh the bad, then good deeds would make them a good person.

[otseng]

Studies of atrocities show that evil is not committed by the fringe groups of evil people. Rather, evil is perpetrated by ordinary, "good" people.

Concerning people who worked in the Nazi concentration camps, Professor Jim Waller (the Cohen Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College), remarked, "Who are these people and how are they enlisted to perpetrate such extraordinary evil? These perpetrators are ordinary people in the majority of cases."

Tina Rosenberg (author of "Children of Cain") said about violence and corruption of Latin America, "I would have preferred them to be monsters. Coming to understand that this is not the case was disturbingfor what it taught me about these people, and ultimately, about myself. I did not want to think that many of the violent are 'people like us' so civilized, so educated, so cultured, and because of that, so terrifying."

http://www.bu.edu/jewishstudies/becomin ... s-killing/

We would like to think we would not be capable of atrocities, but pushed, many of us would succumb to evil actions depending on how severely we are tested. Some might do evil at the slightest provocation. Some might require tremendous pressure. But it is during the tests of life that reveal who we really are. It's easy to be good when we're well-fed, have a good job, and live in our American suburb. But what if you're living in the inner city, your father has abandoned you, your mom is on drugs, you haven't eaten for days, and the only food for miles around is a Dollar store down the street. How many would resort to stealing? Or what if you are a manager and had to choose between firing a subordinate or losing your job? In my experience, all managers would choose to keep their job. What if you had to choose between losing a lot of money and hurting someone or losing a little money and killing someone? In my next exhibit, I'll show people who chose the latter.

[Zzyzx]

.

Studies of atrocities show that evil is not committed by the fringe groups of evil people. Rather, evil is perpetrated by ordinary, "good" people.

Agree:

Let's also consider

On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students.
https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy

Over just a 13-second period, nearly 70 shots were fired in total. In all, four Kent State students—Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer—were killed, and nine others were injured. Schroeder was shot in the back, as were two of the injured, Robert Stamps and Dean Kahler.
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam- ... e-shooting

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 28 by otseng]

I feel you are wasting your time. No amount of people doing bad things would change that people are a mix of good and bad. Typically more good than bad because we are biologically wired to be social.