Yes, evil but not robotic. Don't miss that it is culpable evil. What the defenders of the construct forget is that it is our will which makes us culpable. If those Paul describes in Romans 1 and 3 had no will to will to commit the acts he describes, he might as well have written about trees that did not grow straight or crippled people who refused to walk straight. The difference -- and it is all the difference -- is that those Paul describes (in describing the unregenerate state, by the way) willed to do the things they did. I won't bore you by counting them, but notice the number of active verbs -- they 'professed,' they 'exchanged,' they 'burned.' In short, they did willful things and that is why they were culpable.
The construct folks paint a play-acting world where nothing is real -- no salvation, no real sin, no will, no culpable acts. Just a bunch of moral cripples who can't walk straight -- because they were made that way -- but God made them and then decided to kick them down the celestial stairs. [One of the things that makes it fun to be a playwright is that you know the whole story -- because you made it up.]
No, Paul rails against the sins of those he describes, precisely because their sin was willful. And, of course, when he turns to that part of his message, so was their opportunity for salvation in Christ.
A good part of the problem is the message-Gospel is garbled--backward!
"Nor was it to undervalue good works that our Lord gave, what many may deem such a singular answer to the question of the Jews, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" "This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent" (John 6:29). They wanted to work their way into the favor of God. The Lord tells them that they may have that favor without waiting or working; by accepting at once His testimony to His only-begotten Son. Till then, they were not in a condition for working. They were as trees without a root; as stars whose motions, however regular, would be useless, if they themselves were... unlighted."