Do you Believe Human Nature is Essentially Good or Bad?

Question

Answers thus far show me, we are essentially good natured. Thanks all.

Answer 1

Its a matter of perspective. If you look at the thinning of the ozone layer, pollution, green house effect, crime, the disparity in the distribution of income between the rich and the poor, the prospect of Armageddon, then it would be bad.

If you look at our programs to help the poor, our nature to reach out and help the less fortunate in other countries, our advances in technology to aid mankind, then its good.

If you balance the two, and weigh the number of bad, versus the number of good, then it would be bad.

Answer 2

Gee Wicks, I hate to spoil the party, but you have to have a gold standard to answer this question. If we humans go by our own standard of human nature we would, of course, be essentially good. If we go by God's standard of human nature we would not be essentially good. It is written, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." Jeremiah 17:9. I think man has the "capacity" do good obviously, but he also has the capacity to do evil. The environment and circumstances in which we live will determine which will rule in our hearts. Good question, very thought-provoking.

Answer 3

Essentially Good, I worked as a prison psychologist for 8 years and can still honestly say that 90% of even the more hardened criminals were still basically good people who just crossed a line for many reasons. I did also counsel maximum security with serial killers and such, in there I did not find many essentially good people at all.

Answer 4

Human nature is essentially good. It cannot be any other way. We are all one with each other, and with God. Separation is mere illusion, and God is the whole of which we are all parts, or offshoots. We are literally, each a part of God, in the very same way that a drop of water is part of the ocean, or a grain of sand is part of a beach. So, our souls can be nothing short of the perfection that is the God in us. But, when we come into physical life, we choose to forget who and what we really are, so that we can know ourselves experientially! *sm*

Answer 5

regardless of what faith has to assert approximately human beings and "unique sin," we are extra good than evil. The data is that we are nevertheless right here. If all human beings have been like barbaric Nazis, we could have wiped ourselves out some time past. regrettably we are truly evil, and as a result have not progressed almost as a procedures in peace, civilization, and technology as shall we've. The dark a while by myself in the back of schedule and set decrease back progression through over 1000 years. in basic terms think of: shall we be as progressed immediately as we now ought to assume to be in yet another thousand years!

Answer 6

I think the good out weighs the bad by far BUT if you hear something bad we become more focused on it opposed to the good .
heres a fact : If you go out to eat and have a good experience you will tell up to 4 people.
If you go out to eat and have a bad experience you will tell up to ten people.
Look on here everyday there are many saying so many positive things but look what will stand out..maybe one or two negative! Sorry for being on a roll...Human nature is almost always good!

Answer 7

The longer I live the more I believe we each do the best we can at any one given time. It may not necessarily look to others as if we are, and we may look back and decide later we could have done things differently, but all in all I do believe we are working from a foundation of goodness.

Answer 8

There is nothing but good about being gifted with life. To 'thank' the almighty giver with poor attitudes and bad behavior is small thinking and evil. Not to mention selfish. Raise yourselves away from bad things and focus on great things and your rewards will be great. True. Amen. Merry Christmas!

Answer 9

I was raised during times when most people had it rough but still had the goodness in their hearts to help others. As I grew older I saw less compassion and more and more greed, people willing to walk over friends and even relatives in order to get ahead. I've lived long and I'm sorry that as my days draw near to an end that my opinion of the majority of this nations people is that we aren't as good as we used to be.

Answer 10

Human nature is essentially flawed. Meaning that we are neither good or bad, and depending on how we are raised depends on how we react to a situation. It is nurture not nature that truly makes us who we are.