do all humans have the potential to do evil? what holds you back compare to a criminal?

Question

do human have a on/off switch for such thing? modern sceince calls it "insanity", religion calls it "being possessed".

please comment. thanks in advance.

evil is hard to define coz we define it with a yard stick of measure taken from personal values or religious beliefs. these may be 1 factor that hold us back., but we believe there r more factors involved.

Answer 1

First, evil is not some kind of substance or task. We cannot do evil. We do things that people judge to be evil, based on whatever criteria we consider evil to be.

Humans have the potential to be human. This includes the full range of urges and biases that we're born with and a few we learn along the way. Usually, none of them are particularly bad, unless taken to the extreme.

For example, we have various emotions including love, hate, lust, hunger, and so forth. Those emotions have helped humans, as a species, survive for hundreds of thousands of years. However, we live in a society where, in order to live nearby other humans, it is advantageous to hold back some of those emotions and only use them at appropriate times. Of course, repressing those emotions completely can also be bad for us.

So, at what threshold and in what situations are those emotions considered bad or even evil? That depends on the situation, and the rules of society we have in place. Those rules are constantly evolving. Therefore, any outdated fixed list of commandments just won't apply anymore. Everybody has to think for themselves. We have to keep the dialog going so we can keep meeting new societal challenges and continue to live in relative peace.

Answer 2

No On/Off Switch.
1) My Conscience.
2) Knowing what is Right, and what is Wrong. 3) The Conviction of The Holy Spirit.
These are what holds me back from doing evil. I am no better than a Criminal, no worse either, but I am lead by all that I mentioned, I have just as much potential to do evil as the Criminal does.

Insanity, and Demon Possession are two different things, and have nothing to do with the Human Potential to do evil.

Answer 3

The monkey-wrench in your argument is the unverifiability inherent in the concept of "potential." I believe I have known people who cannot commit an act of "evil" in any real sense. (For the record, I am not one of those.) I think some of these people will literally give up everything for their concept of morality - their fortunes and even their lives. I'm not talking about saints, these are just very moral people who live by their concepts of it.

Unfortunately, that teeny group is VASTLY outnumbered by the rest of us, who seem capable of horrors of all sorts under the right (or wrong) conditions. In my life I've seen where it resembles the "on/off" switch you mention. I've also seen where too many existing social structures and institutions collapse or become discredited and numbers of people become murderous hordes.

Obviously there are people who cannot distinguish right from wrong, and that could be for a number of reasons. We are learning that many of these are associated with physical flaws in how the brain develops. But a lynch mob is not composed of escapees from asylums - they are often the "pillars of the community."

We can probably continue to develop strategies to protect ourselves from the odd psychopath, but we're not doing so well when it comes to the evil of tyrannies and the horrors wrought by political and religious fanatics.

Lastly, this is a human enterprise and I doubt religious dogma has much to contribute. It's record on this score in less than enviable.

Answer 4

When I was young I did things that were evil-as I've got older I don't do anything evil and I pondered why that was. The answer is becoming aware of consequences. When I was young I never considered the consequences of any action but as I've got older for some reason I've developed an awareness of how my actions affect others. I don't think I developed any high minded sense of morality just a realisation that if you treat others badly you tend to get treated the same.

Answer 5

Sure we have potential to do evil. I think that the worst kind of evil is doing something evil supposedly in God, or goodness's name or sake. For example, stoning someone to death for religious transgression. How righteous can you feel if you are the one to denounce someone and their punishment is death. I'm talking about one of those 'sins' that if ignored would not hurt anyone else of course.
Try to imagine yourself, a righteous Christian baker in Victorian England. A starving waif grabs a loaf of bread from your table. Do you let him/her go with that, or do you have that waif prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Transport to Australia and subsequent slavery was the punishment. Are you evil or righteous? This would depend on the era that you live in.
Point is that this is not an easy question. Donald Rumsfeld is always saying, "Oh, my goodness gracious..." while in my view he is an evil person, willing to lie to the people and thereby allow innocents to suffer and to die. But, apparently, there is a lot of leeway here.

Answer 6

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God.

Often what holds many back is the fear of being caught or knowing how it feels to be wronged.

Since God has told us that when we trust Christ, we become new creatures, then our hope lays in Jesus to make us new creatures.

Answer 7

Human nature includes, to a greater or lesser degree, empathy and compassion. We have evolved and retained these traits because they are a good survival strategy for a social species, and they are part of what motivate or restrain our actions. What we characterise as evil is behaviour that is grossly inconsistent with what we would regard as the normal restraints on behaviour.

Answer 8

Yes, all humans have the ability to do what is considered evil. Most choose not to do anything that would land them in jail and some do things out of religious beliefs, not meaning christian only because as a Wiccan I choose to do good because I want to receive good in return and we believe in karma and whatever we do comes back to us threefold.

Answer 9

All humans have the potential to do evil. What holds me back is imagining the effect my bad actions would have on other humans and animals.

Answer 10

You must define "evil". Also, do you mean individually or collectively? For example, there is Jeffrey Dahmer, and then there are Nazi concentration camp guards...