Are some people born evil?

Daily Mail ^ | 7 Feb 2007 | Brian Masters

[Texas_shutterbug]

I guess the question would be "How sociopathic?" Just like there's various degrees of depression from mild to severe.

I was just talking about the fact that not all kids with Reactive Attachment Disorder will grow up to be Jeffrey Doemer (sp?) or Charles Manson. :(

[Diamond]

The notion that people are born evil is nonsense. Evil behavior stems from fear - and the only fears we are born with are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. Everything else is learned.

The notion that people are born evil is nonsense, is among other things, a Marxist notion, and completely foreign to predominantly Biblical world-view of those who created this Nation.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

The sad thing is that today no one has read "Human nature in its fourfold state" (Boston) or Calvin's "Institutes of the Christian Religion" or Jonathan Edwards, or Luther's "Bondage of the Will" or ANY of the classical works that deal with the effects of fallenness and sin on the human soul. As a result, we have a secular society which is genuinely perplexed over what is clearly evil, yet it has no grounds for classifying it as such.

Great post. Beautifully said.

With regard to the role of Calvinism in the formation of this country:

All this has been thoroughly understood and candidly acknowledged by such penetrating and philosophic historians as Bancroft, who far though he was from being Calvinistic in his own personal convictions, simply calls Calvin "the father of America," and adds: "He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty."
Calvinism in America
By Loraine Boettner

It's not a coincidence that the further we get from the Biblical view of human nature, the closer we sink to socialism and the resultant loss of liberty.

Cordially,

[ctdonath2]

Evil behavior stems from fear

Huh?

A thief steals things not because of a fear motivator, but because of a greed motivator: it's there, he wants it, he takes it - despite any fears of being caught.

Ditto for a host of other evils.

Sometimes the motivator may indeed be fear, but usually the behavior is like anything else: done because it is a means to an end ... just that for evil behavior, that the means may harm someone is discounted.

If anything, evil stems from a lack of fear. Small children will steal, hurt, break, lie, etc. - with absolutely no sense of fear, and no care, because they don't know better. That they "don't know" doesn't justify or excuse the behavior. In adults, the same behavior stems from equivalent don't know & don't care.

[nmh]

No, people aren't "born evil" BUT they do inherit tendencies from their parents. A watchful parent strives to bring out the BEST in the child and lead them in the right direction.

As the saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree but that doesn't mean the apple HAS to be rotten. In other words, you can MOLD a child's will one way or the other.

[Irene Adler]

"Evil behavior stems from fear..."

A lot of us would say it stems from sin. I can think of no justification at all for the idea that it stems from fear.

[fatez]

Very interesting statement of the problem. I think when people such as I say 'free will', we are saying we do have a choice in how we respond to the gospel (accept or reject). Otherwise, I think Romans is very clear in that either way, we are slaves, either to righteousness or to wickedness.

Good post.

[Mr. Jeeves]

A thief steals things not because of a fear motivator, but because of a greed motivator: it's there, he wants it, he takes it - despite any fears of being caught.

He's afraid of not measuring up the expectations of others, or he's afraid he'll never have the lifestyle he sees on TV unless he takes it from someone else, or he's afraid he won't have enough money for his next fix or his next meal. Greed is a fear-based emotion.

The kids are afraid they won't get any love or attention so they force the issue by misbehaving. Brattiness is a fear-based emotion.

Every murderer on death row is there because, down in the depths of his soul, something scared him so much that killing seemed like the only escape. Even serial killers of women are terrified of women on some level, and seek to exterminate what they are afraid of.

There is only love and fear - everything else is a derivative of one of those two.

[-=SoylentSquirrel=-]

What is the "Reactive Attachment Disorder" you speak of?

Is it why girls from single-parent (no dad) homes tend to get pregnant out of wedlock at a higher rate than their 2-parent peers?

[gcruse]

"Are some people born evil?"

Normal Mailer was, I believe.

[tiki]

I just wonder if it is a case of "but for the Grace of God, there go I". If I was put in the situation would I have done what they did? I'd like to think that you couldn't MAKE me be that awful.

[tiki]

Hmmm, most of the atheists I know are very well educated and think they are smarter than the sheeple who believe in
God.

[gobucks]

Very interesting info .... given that you have this level of detail squirrled away, I have a question:

I have read accounts which argue emphatically that a significant core of the original nazi party leadership was overtly homosexual, in the pederasty sense, especially the leaders of the precursors of the SS and Gestapo.

Does this ring a bell with you?

[Revolting cat!]

[DreamsofPolycarp]

You are too kind. My response to a person who says that we "have a choice" as a definition of "free will" is to agree that we have a choice, but insist that we ALWAYS choose according to (as Edwards pointed out in his great great tract on the will) what the primary MOTIVATOR of our hearts is. We choose according to what appears to us to be "best" for us, and what is the most appealing. In that, man left to himself is completely unable and unwilling to choose grace, because we are dead in our sin. We cannot and will not choose God and His mercy extended to us in the gospel. We are "dead in our trespasses and sins" and cannot see the light of the glory of the gospel. Waving about the beauty of Christ and the wonderful love of God is like waving a juicy steak in front of a dog who is lying dead on the interstate. We are unable to choose because we, by nature, hate God.

That is why GRACE is so phenomenally beautiful. We will not and do not respond to the overtures of God until he regenerates us (makes us alive). When that new life comes, then we freely and happily choose, because our eyes are opened and we see what we did not see before. This means that even our very act of choosing is a gift, and faith itself is also a gift, and that salvation is from God from first to last. Man centered theology insists that we are not REALLY that bad off, and that we do have the ability to choose (we are not dead, just really really sick), and that regeneration follows faith (we believe, and then are reborn). Although I would not insist on a sequence of events IN TIME (regeneration and faith may be so close together as to be indistinguishable in time), I will insist that regeneration precedes faith. Otherwise, we "save ourselves," in that we "do" something that the unregenerate do not do, and we share the glory for our own redemption. Furthermore, we begin to organize our church around programs and plans, rather than asking God work, as we are helpless to make anything happen.

The most powerful incentive for me to declare the gospel to my friends and family is the realization that God can sovereignly regenerate ANYONE, no matter how full of hate and wickedness. It is also the most powerful prod to pray for the fools of our generation who have no idea where all the evil in our world comes from. Finally, it is the only motivator I can think of that causes me to pray that God will, once again, pour out his goodness on a dying culture. May it start with me.

Thanks for putting up with a rather long rant.

[PzLdr]

Homosexuality in the SS was punishable by death. On the other hand, the SA [Sturmabteilung] was riddled with homosexuality, from Ernst Roehm down though the senior ranks [Edmund Heines], to Roehm's staff - and Hitler knew , and ignored it - as long as the SA served his purposes.

Roehm and the boys were bumped off because they kept yelling about the "Second Revolution", and Roehm publicly announced he wanted to consolidate the German Army and SA into a defense corps - with himself as chief. His head was the price the German Army demanded for first accommodating themselves to the Hitler regime [they provided the SS with weapons and trucks for the "Night of the Long Knives"], and then swearing personal loyalty to Hitler.

What the Army didn't see was that by colluding with the Nazis to get rid of the SA, they cleared the way for the SS [at the time a subordinate formation of the SA] to become their rival, and the most powerful faction in Nazi Germany.