This is what me and my friend was arguing about.. Is a human being innately good or innately bad?

Question

Is a person leaning to do the right thing or the wrong thing? help me with this. thanks

Answer 1

This topic was also covered by 2 great Chinese philosophers, Confucius, who believed everyone is inherently good and Mencius who believed everyone is bad.

Inherently Good

All children are born innocent. They learn from their parents and people around them. They also tend to be more expressive, and normally are more compassionate than adults. A young children may see an injured animal and wants to tend to it, for they equate care and concern to everyone, and not with themselves. As adults, we are too caught up with our own welfare, and we care less about the people around us. We are also more cautious and defensive in showing our feelings and thoughts, for many had been subjected to painful memories and have learnt a lesson.

Inherently Bad.
Children have no concept of right or wrong. They do things, just for the whim of it, and not considering the subsequences for the act. Like breaking a vase, they are ignorant of the sentimental value of the item, and to them, its just another object. Maybe bad isn't the right word, I guess Chaos is closer.

Adults too tend to lean towards the bad, for it had been shown that many normally upstanding citizens, had also regressed to violence whenever the opportunity arises, e.g. lynching or the Salem witchhunts.
Law and order is required to enforce the need to be good. By stating down the strict guidelines, people will then know what are the boundaries and are more careful as to not break the law. If Man are inherently good, laws and order will not be required, as they will always do the good and proper actions.


For me, when it comes to the end, it depends on the very concept of right and wrong. Man are social creatures, and in a community, we will try to help one another, in order to survive better as a species. However, in times of crisis or troubles, our concern of the overall species is negated by our concern of our own survival.

Many morally aware people remain silent in the face of injustice, in fear that when they speak up, they will be deemed as "Satan lover" or similar. They would then be punished together by the crowd. Hence, many withhold their voice for their own safety.

Answer 2

At the core of what all animals do is for survival. Humans are no different. Given the choice of to survive or not to survive, most people will choose the former no matter what the consequences.

This is where the artificial constructs of good and bad come in and create a mess. There is no inherent good or bad in most people. Most people will do anything from nothing to helping as long as there is no chance that harm will come to them.

To directly answer your question requires a lot more time than I am willing to spend. The short answer is that people with fully developed frontal lobes usually respond to protect themselves and others. It is for the common good of the species to help another of your kind. What we call bad is actually a form of genetic brain damage as well as a form of sociopathic tendencies. These types of people do not know or care for or about others. When this behavior manifest it self in say a murder or a school shooting or stealing we say that these people are BAD. They are not bad their brains are not fully developed. Look up the research on frontal lobe development and it will give you a different take on why certain people behave the way they do.

Answer 3

Evolution made primates to be very self-concerned. We want to avoid pain at all costs. We naturally have very strong desires to obtain food and sex. If we hadn't been built like this then the human race would have died out long ago.

Unfortunately sometimes this powerful self-concern makes us hurt others, e.g. stealing, rape, not sharing wealth etc. Nobody teaches us to be so selfish. It is mostly innate. Nature not nurture.

However, nature also compels people to care for their children *intensely*. A lot of parents would even give their lives to protect their children. If only everybody was like this to everybody else! We wouldn't have wars, starvation or impolite farting in lifts.

Answer 4

A human being is innately neutral. A human being is taught to be either good or bad. If you teach a child to try to do the right things for the right reasons he/she will try to always do right. Conversely, if you teach a child to lie, cheat and steal and be selfish, then that is what they'll learn and they will be a bad person unless someone re-educates them.

Answer 5

Your question has no meaning without God. Without God, no one action is inherently any better than any other. It's like we're cheering for some football team and we fervently hope our team wins but when you think about it, which teams wins or loses makes no real difference. It's just that we're emotionally attached. We're emotionally attached to other humans so we cheer them on and from that emotional attachment, we get our ideas about good and bad.

But if God, then good and bad can be real.

The biblical view seems to me is that we are "slaves to sin" which does not mean we are innately bad.

Answer 6

Neither... and they also don't end up being either good or bad later in life. 99% of human actions and thoughts are rudimentary and functional--neither good nor bad. The other 1% involve choices that the person chooses to make; some of them will be wise, some unwise, some in line with what their society values, some out of line with it.

We're amazing creatures with deeply complex thoughts living complicated lives among conflicting networks of values, and we're often called upon to make split-second decisions that will help some people and harm others. It's much more complicated than saying mankind has this one kind of nature, bam, there it is, end of story.

Answer 7

This, then, is what happened. Sin made its entry into the world through one man, and through sin, death. The entail of sin and death passed on to the whole human race, and no one could break it for no one was himself free from sin. Sin, you see, was in the world long before the Law

Your answer: innately bad

Answer 8

let's not make this long.

a human is neither innately bad nor innately good when he is born.

the only thing innate in us is the power of choice. freewill. there will come a time that we just have to choose. bad or good? ^_^

Answer 9

Technically there is no good or bad because someone might think something is good while another thinks it's bad meaning that I human is born in what they think in terms of good and bad and right and wrong

Answer 10

before i even attempt to reply to this question: define then what you advise is undesirable without ethical huge-unfold. define what's morally stable. ok, on a similar time as you attempt to try this, enable me inform you this: as quickly as you're saying it is undesirable and this stable, i will inform you that what you think of is stable i will say is undesirable. you're saying killing unborn infants is stable i say its incorrect. you're saying killing previous, stable for not something people is inaccurate, and that i say its appropriate. Who judges you're appropriate and iam incorrect? you do not want faith to have peace in the international, count of certainty selection of religions reasons civil unrest. what you may desire to understand is that all of us could desire to understand and understand that one that gave righeous judgment (and its impartial on human reason or thinking) and the holy huge-unfold, no1 could desire to degree as much as this, not one faith is right what you want is an instantaneous connection with the regulation giver. And the redeemer for people who fell decrease than the huge-unfold. definite there could be choas without absolute ethical huge-unfold. it says in the Bible that the coronary heart of guy is desperately depraved and deceitful especially issues. occasion: you do not could desire to coach a baby to mishbehave, yet you may desire to self-discipline hie/her to act. certainty: if a 18month had the potential of an 18 12 months previous, he/she might harm you and kill, and stroll away with none be apologetic approximately or understanding of what it merely did. Now if that looks okay to you, then particular, i assume we are able to stay without an absolute certainty.