Misanthropy. "Are humans fundamentally good or evil?"

[devonin]

Originally Posted by rising crescent

some knowledge cannot be thrown away just because improper spelling and grammar.it will lost vital force within the words.

The vital force of poor communication, and simple mistakes that you should know better than to make even with a basic understanding of the language you're trying to communicate in.

When you come to an English forum, and post in English to other speakers of English, you use proper English, or you stop posting.

if you kick me out or delete it or other ...
it prove you dont have adult minds yet which appreciate no matter what other opinion is.

In the Critical Thinking forum, making an accusation like this constitutes flaming, and more than a little trolling. This is your warning, if you continue to insist that people are close-minded, immature or stupid simply because they don't feel obliged to try and delve for meaning in your brutalized excuse for English communication, you'll be banned.

For the last time: This is 100% entirely, purely, a criticism of your poor communication skills. The content of your statements, your opinions and beliefs, are 100% irellevant to the problems being presented to you.

[Master TAnK Evans]

good and evil are both prospective because an "evil" person will think he is "good" and vice versa now if you want to look at facts i don't beleive humans are evil per say for the simple fact that we can't tell the future so we have no idea what would really happen. for example it is natural for a being to establish territory for example dogs urinate. Well we just happen to build homes, roads, gates, and any other type of boundries that we can think of. Who would of known at the early points in time that it would have a big hit on the ecosystems eventually...sure eventually (like today or a few years back) we would finally notice because the animals would ya know flip a lid and care far less. (bears come in town more often because they are forced to basically) essentually humans are very smart but at the same time very stupid if you get what i mean.
Humans cannot be branded as evil or good in my opinion because we are doing what everything else in the world is trying to do " Survive" I say we are good because at least we can learn from our ways...don't get me wrong it is a shame we made so many and they were this bad BUT we couldn't possibly know soon enough
My opinion were definately not evil. were definately not really "good" either but at least we can try to be good and hopefully we will succeed eh ^_^

[s0ulst0n3]

Everyone has a potential for good or evil, it just basically depends on what sort of events that has happened in their life, and how they respond or deal with it. Humans really are not good or evil though. Many humans want power; in their quest for power, they tend to try to increase their boundaries; countries invade, people buy bigger land, countries fight for new found land across the sea (hint: North America).

Just because a person has done many good things in their life, does not make them a "good" person. A person who has given as much money as they can to the homeless people, to try to help, can as much be shaken in the wrong direction, or towards bad things after being mugged by a homeless guy who steals all their money.

EDIT: Many people tend to hold onto grudges, when bad things happen to them, even if they were a "good" person. People tend to seek revenge on their wrongdoers, in immoral ways.

[Xx{Midday}xX]

Originally Posted by s0ulst0n3

Everyone has a potential for good or evil, it just basically depends on what sort of events that has happened in their life, and how they respond or deal with it. Humans really are not good or evil though.
Just because a person has done many good things in their life, does not make them a "good" person. A person who has given as much money as they can to the homeless people, to try to help, can as much be shaken in the wrong direction, or towards bad things after being mugged by a homeless guy who steals all their money.

Reminds me of me. So I'll agree with this.

I don't think I would've grown up to be as twisted in both mind and body if I hadn't experience the childhood I experienced. I may have been someone more socially accepted/likable had I not experienced the childhood I experienced.

However, this only proves that environment influences a human being. It doesn't disprove that a human is fundamentally good or evil. A fundamentally evil person may be influenced by the environment to become good, and vice versa. Even if the environment has a forceful magnitude, that doesn't mean that human beings don't have an initial bias towards one side or the other. I would like to believe tabula rasa, but I have no means of siding against fundamental moral standards.

Hence, I could have started out twisted in the first place, and got 100x worse because of my childhood, or I could have started out blank, and got twisted by my childhood. Either way works, but unfortunately, the result is the result...

EDIT: This thread is still alive? gj Zythus rofl. I'm going to reread the first few posts.

EDIT2: This thread started out with the initial assumption that humans are born as fundamentally good or evil? Can't humans be born without such things? =S

[Cursebred]

I'd have to say, that humans are not good are evil either way to start out with. This is because, just being born, there is no actual choice made on the side to act on. Unless the newborn child is just some freak of nature that can actually do good or evil for the world just out of the cradle.

Evil can be inherited just as well as good. But to say, a few years after birth, then the human child may be basically evil, because we supposedly have "free will". And therefore, humans are fundamentally evil, according to what is written in the "holy books". Even if you are baptized or taken through whatever ceremony for whatever religion, humans can still be evil while thinking that they are good, just because they are following the rules. If sins are told to be evil, then who's to say that anyone is completely good?

[trillobyite]

Good and evil are human-invented terms, and what qualifies as good and what qualifies as bad are determined by culture. Fundamentally all we are is a very unique complex life form that should broaden our horizons and power, by exploring methods of leaving the dying Earth and colonizing and terraforming other planets.

[itonlytookakiss]

i would like to discuss this topic, in a sort of twisted philosophical sense, so please bare with me.

I do not believe in "good" and "evil" being applied to a living entity, only their actions, because what is good and evil is all a matter of perception. especially when people are born into the never halting gears of commercialism, where your forced to conform to the social standards of the country, slave your whole life away at some job you hate, then only at retirement are you entitled to live freely with that nice fat social security check. that is evil....to me. your grandpa might have something else to say about it, but **** him. (sry, bout the rant)

humans are survivors, and at the exponential rate in which we clog this planet, the conceptualization of boundaries, to abide and protect those few most powerful enough to enforce them, was bound to happen. but humans are adapters as well, meaning that these certain ideas can be twisted and altered as the needs arise.

i dunno. i haven't slept in 2 days, so i hope this makes sense to someone.

[Master_of_the_Faster]

I will say this like I have in a billion other posts of the past: Individuality determines everything. Humans are what you make of them (my split personality decides whether I like or hate humans at the moment). Even if a god/goddess came, I would care less about what he/she thinks if it goes against my own thoughts (of course unless the god/goddess could justify its actions and I would agree with that justification). Just as trillobyite stated, "good" and "evil" are just human invented terms like "normal" or "strange".

[Arch0wl]

Humans are not fundamentally anything except their material attributes. The notion that humans are "fundamentally good" or "fundamentally evil" is a philosophical red herring typically the subject of intro courses that "makes people think." Any concept of "good" and "evil" is going to be a construct, and will be determined entirely by how many people agree, support, or believe in the truth of that construct. Asking this question makes about as much sense as asking whether lightning fundamentally sucks, or if Britney Spears is fundamentally a bad dresser.