Are people inherentely GOOD or EVIL? WHY?

Question

And did Hitler think he was a good person?

PLEASE NO BIBLE VERSES or QUOTES from any other books..I WANT TO KNOW YOUR OPINION IN YOUR OWN WORDS.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Good people are free while bad people are in jail or maybe is the opposite valid? Hard to tell. Free will is responsible for good and evil. We are not made to be evil but we have the free will to decide to do something good or something evil. About Hitler: He was an educated and very artistic person. He could have been a great leader if there were not some evil people behind him to influence him adversely. Unfortunately he decided to to support the evil.

Answer 2

I think there is very fine line between good and evil. How far does a person have to go to be evil. Are little kids that throw sand in other kids eyes evil? lol..I have no idea where I'm going with this. I think people are neither at first and it really depends on the circumstance. Then they just get used to being evil or good. and thats the end of that chapter.

Answer 3

People are born with their individual personalities. Perhaps, environment will play a part in the development of the Good or the Evil.

Some enjoy being evil and revel in their deeds just as being good will offer feelings of gratification and fulfillment.

Hitler, just as any criminal knew what he was doing was evil and he was more interested in not getting caught and paying the price.

Answer 4

Good and evil don't exist in reality, at least not outside of the mind that believes in them. They are only judgments passed by the individual from their own unique perspective. What one person sees as bad or evil may seem to be the only logical thing to do from some other perspective. The ideas of both good and evil are point of view specific. This is why people like bush and bin laden are either loved or hated. Bush is seen as good by people who share his fear based thought system. Those who have a compassionate concern for all of mankind often see him as evil.

Bin laden is much the same. He is a villain in much of the western world, but he is somewhat of a celebrated pop star on the Middle East. There are T-shirt shops that sell items with his picture as though he was Jesus. It all depends on your point of view or perspective.

To sum it all up good is the name we give to people who do things that we think we like.

Evil is the name we give to people who do the things that we don’t like.

This is of course based solely on our particular point of view.

Love and blessings

Don

Answer 5

People are not ordinarily inherently either good or evil, in my opinion; those are viable concepts, of course, but infants are incapable of assimilating such arcane ideas until an adult or experience enlightens them. Much of behavior is learned, so a child will act in the manner which affords it whatever is the object of its desire, including attention, positive or negative. Likewise, peer pressure or association can greatly infuence a person's responses to life situations. As adults, generally, I think, those whose activities would be recognized as evil have often experienced childhoods of deprivation or abuse. One bit of evidence for inherent "evil", however, could be the male with an extra Y chromosome which apparently predisposes the possessor to antisocial or criminal behavior. As for Hitler, surely he was deranged! I can not see how he could have considered himself a good person unless he was able somehow to rationalize his deeds (which any sane individual would consider evil) as necessary to the future of humanity and the world. Perhaps he was not introspective enough even to judge himself personally...

Answer 6

Some are born good others bad and still others can be shaped by the events in their lives.

There is tons of evidence that Hitler thought he was doing the world a favor with the extermination of the Jews and others and his attempts to create a master race. Others like Idi Amin, Pol Pot and Stalin did what they did to wipe their enemies off the planet.

Answer 7

Well that is a really confusing question.
IF we are born good by nature then how we 'learn' to be evil ,where that evil came from? if not from human?
Maybe we are born without anything inherented in our personality? And in early stages from our childhood we become either good or evil or somewhere in the middle (majority of us).
Then again another question comes up, if humans learn to be good or evil, how do we learn it, and from the first place WHY there is evil?

Answer 8

People are like a tilled but unplanted garden. If you plant what you want in it, and cultivate it, you get emotional development, bonding, and growth. If you don't, you get weeds. The weeds are analagous to evil. With love, people develop into warm, decent, loving and caring people. Without love, people slowly die inside and in great pain, so they end up dead, angry and dis-attached from others. Evil is perhaps a biblical concept, but it works just fine for describing how people get in the absence of love. So each person has the potential for both, depending on whether they are nurtured.

Answer 9

There is no good or evil. Everything that is viewed as good is evil(or harmful) when it is used or done in extreme excess.

So I guess the only true form of evil is not being true to yourself and living in hipocrocy.

Answer 10

I believe in general, that people are born good and that the surrounding environment makes you good or evil. The only acception is when there is a chemical deficiency in the brain that causes certain personality traits.