Am I totally wrong?

by REBORNAGAIN 19 Replies latest jw friends

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  REBORNAGAIN

  I've been thinking something these past couple of days. There are soooooooooooooo many wonderful and loving people on this earth. Even though the Jdubs made us feel they were the only caring and loving people around. Is wickedness really within us from birth on? The tendency to steal or lie, yes, but to commit murder and other atrocious crimes, are these tendencies really within us too? I personally do not think so. I think the culprit to these crimes and behaviors are drugs (even Rx's), alcohol and maybe a birth defect, related to these chemicals or medical goof-ups. What are your opinions? Am I missing something? I have a more positive view of us humans and cannot put the blame on the individual him/herself but rather on something that influenced them.

  LINDA
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  nvrgnbk

  There are reasons why people do what they do.

  Some genetic.

  Some having to do with environment.

  Some people that one would consider "good" have done some very "bad" things.

  Some that one would consider "bad" have done some very "good" things.

  That's reality.
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  Gopher

  I quickly learned upon exiting the JW's that most people are kind and helpful, struggling to get along and trying to enjoy life like I do.

  The teaching of religion about wickedness and sin is meant to do what marketers call "creation of a need", then those marketers will sell you exactly what you have to have to "satisfy" the need they created. "Original sin" is an attempt to explain why we grow old and die, or why the world isn't a perfect place.

  Actually the crimes are often due to environment and the opportunity to harm or take advantage of others. They are choices that certain people make. I do slightly differ in that criminals very often do deserve the blame themselves, and are punished or imprisoned and justly so. Other times they need help or treatment. I say that because not everybody from a bad environment succumbs to a life of crime.
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  Sad emo

  You can run circles around yourself thinking about that one lol!

  Personally, I do think those tendencies are within us - the bottom line is that we're just other animals, with the same primal instincts to survive and reproduce, it's just that these instincts have been either evolved out of us or culturally masked (or maybe a combination of both).

  What brings those primal instincts back to the surface? Any combination of things - drugs/alcohol/cultural upheaval (eg breakdown of society, anarchy etc)/diet to name a few,

  My dad used to blame increasing violence and aggression on having too much red meat in our diet - strangely he said this many years before it was discovered that beef cattle were being stuffed full of steroids to produce more meat.
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  REBORNAGAIN

  Good point Sad Emo! I forgot about things such as peer pressure too. The influence from others behaviors. *duh* Well, since I forgot about that tendency and your mentioning of cultural upheavals that tells me that the majority in the world are still good ones otherwise only the bad would have come to my mind. This reminds me now too of Hurricane Katrina, the one police officer looting along with other criminals. Maybe she was a decent and honest person before that and the turmoil etc. compelled her to resort to the unthinkable. Ok, so we have tendencies brought upon us due to circumstances and influence. So they are only tendencies, in other words, take the influence away, everyone would be good? I still think so!

  LINDA

  Am I going around in circles as you said? Probably.
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  JK666

  To be honest, I really don't know. I am believing less and less in THE HORNED ONE. Da Devil made me do it seems pretty lame. I think with a lot of people it is their instincts run amuk. JK
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  Anti-Christ

  My dad used to blame increasing violence and aggression on having too much red meat in our diet - strangely he said this many years before it was discovered that beef cattle were being stuffed full of steroids to produce more meat.

  You should see chimpanzees when they attack an other troop. They attack other troops to take there territory, for example, if one troop is getting bigger and the territory they occupy does not have enough food they will take an other troops territory. It get very nasty!! Chimps are omnivores but they mostly eat fruits, nuts and insects but sometimes when they "capture" a member of an other troop ( most often a little one) they kill it and eat it.
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  eclipse

  i think it's just human nature.

  Good and Evil.

  Devils and Angels

  Ying and the Yang

  Negative and Positive

  It's been the question of humanity since we first became self aware.

  It can't be nurture really, think about what is the origin of that tendency to hurt others?

  I discussed this topic at length with AO and it was exhausting....where does evil come from?

  Is it born in us? I think it is. I think we are both good and evil.

  Depending on how we are raised, or the chemical processes in our brains are triggered,

  we are either good, evil, or a little of both. Me thinks most of us are the latter.
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  Anti-Christ

  I think first you have to define what is good and what is evil. I think we evolve to be mostly "good" because our survival depends on helping the rest of the clan/tribe, we have a better chance for survival if we help each other out. I think that's where we get our sense of what is good. If one member of the group is not helping out or is behaving in a way that is damaging for the group well the natural tendency would to get rid of that member or strongly encourage him/her to change the behaviour. So maybe that's where we get are sense of evil
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  Sad emo

  Ok let's take a circle lol!

  What is 'good'? What is 'evil'?

  Who or what defines them?

  For example, cannibalism is considered to be bad in most cultures, yet in some remote tribal areas, it isn't.

  Who is right and who is wrong?

  ------

  anti christ, your post plus REBORNAGAIN's tie together quite well. I'm thinking chimp behaviour may be very similar to the mob mentality displayed by humans in times of crisis such as hurricane Katrina.

  But if that's our primal nature showing through - is it 'evil' behaviour or are we merely folowing our instincts?

  more circles!