No, humans born with brains that abnormal may or may not. Example: I can’t see a Downs Syndrome human being evil as they would have to fully comprehend evil or good.
Anyone can be (and quite often are) taught to be “beastly”.
I don’t believe any human can be evil but I do believe any human can perform evil actions (even young children).
What is meant by the word “evil”? “Beastly”, describing human acts, denigrates the normal activities of the other animals.
People have the potential for a vast range of actions.
What’s the point in sticking on the ‘EVIL’ label? Historically it was misused and it carries a lot of baggage.
What appears to me to be evil about humans is the fact that, worshipping the idols of nationalism and progress, they lay waste to the ecosystems that sustain life.
Some call it progress.
It is used to emphasise and categorise extreme behaviours such as raping, murdering and dismembering children which doesn’t really emotionally-fit into the category of “vast range of actions”.
The point is that the “World Citizen” longs to prove that Islam, via the Arab race, is EVIL.
The “world citizen” will be longing for longer.
Norms, morality, ethics are not based on DNA, but the learning of what norms, morality, ethics mean (note: they change) is based on DNA. Learning, which is mainly based on DNA, is not the same as norms, morality, ethics, which are not based on DNA but on culture, education, learning.
I defined “evil” as any act that is of net-negative to the well being of the individual and therefore collectively to humanity. Generally what is not good is ‘evil.’
I quoted the following to Phyllo, but there was no response to this;
To ensure full coverage of those negative acts, including ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ or even ‘very very wrong’ or ‘very very bad,’ vile, abominable, evil, etc., I find it effective to generalize all these acts as into one general term i.e. ‘evil’ with a qualification in term of degrees for the various range of evil from Low [1/100] to very high [99/100].
In addition, I believe the term ‘evil’ [which is appropriate anyway] do trigger greater attention than those wide varieties of words represent the various types of negative acts by humans.
Any thing wrong with the above views?
Btw, the above is not related to any ontological evil such as the existence of Satan, the devil and other beings who seduced vulnerable humans into committing evil and sins.
What is the POTENTIAL for evil, and how it came about?
This POTENTIAL embedded within the DNA i.e. nature drives the following;
- The physical anatomy to enable the act of evil
- The mental propensity to commit the act of evil.
1. The physical anatomy to enable the act of evil
The physical anatomy that enable a person to act out evil is the neurons and their specific pattern of connectivity as determined and driven by the DNA and RNA.
All humans has inherent neural connectivity with the brain for the following;
2. The mental propensity to commit the act of evil.
To ensure basic survival, all humans are encoded to be endowed with the following neural patterns within their brain;
- The fight or flight response.
- The kill living things program.
- The harm program.
- Others.
For food, all human has the potential-to-kill embedded in their brain.
The above is my argument how all humans has the POTENTIAL to be evil.
While all humans has the above physical and mental POTENTIAL, this potential is not activated in all humans.
In the course of humanity’s progress in time from over 6 millions years ago, the above potentials are modulate by inhibitors in various degrees depending on various circumstances and conditions.
This is why the majority of human do not kill on instincts like most animals as the majority of human has strong inhibitors to modulate the inherent impulse to kill when exposed to certain triggers.
However a percentage of humans are born with various degrees of weak inhibitors to suppress the above inherent potential evil impulses within them. An extreme example is the serial killer who has very loose and weak inhibitors to suppress its “kill” program is activated by certain stimuli.
Killing is one type of the most evil. There are a wide range of evils [low to high] and they are acted out by the 20% of human who has weak inhibitors which are triggered by various stimuli.
Even those outside the 20% of human who are prone to evil are not guaranteed to be good at all times. Their ‘strong’ inhibitors could suddenly turned weak if there are serious damage due to disease, accidents, stress, chemical [drugs] etc.
Why Evil?
All human [in contrast to animals] are also endowed with a potential for basis good moral, e.g. those like the Ten Commandments.
What is sense as evil is when human acts contradict what is deemed good.
Note cheating, petty crimes, stealing a pencil, bribery, lying [black or white] are evil, albeit low level ones.
Any counter to my above argument to support the OP?
What is critical is, as a human being you must understand the above potential is in your brain!
Thus one must take extra ordinary care to manage one inhibitors less they go haywire and lead one to commit evil.
There is a ‘Nature’ and ‘Nurture’ aspect to Morality [What is Good and What is Evil].
DNA wise, all humans are born with the POTENTIAL with basic morality.
There has been lots of studies relating to inherent morality within humans via the study of babies which are less than one year old, i.e. to discount the ‘Nurture’ element.
Here is one article from Scientific American to lend greater credibility of my point;
scientificamerican.com/artic … of-babies/
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU[/youtube]
If one is highly perceptive one would have noted this fact from observations within humanity.
The Nurture factors [learning, improving, etc.] merely enhanced the Morality that is innate [Nature] within humans.
Animals follow their instincts to kill, fight, injure and they do not has any strong potential for morality like humans and high level of self-consciousness to contrast what is good against what is evil from the moral perspective.
Humans are not evil, but instead can perform evil (not good) actions; where evil actions are defined as anything that is contrary to the specific social norms (moral system) of a particular collection of individuals.
False!
FALSE !
NONSENSE !
You are speaking of adult humans. So this of your statements is FALSE too !
They were merely noting the natural propensity for intelligence to discern between what to love and what to hate. All surviving creatures have such instincts born within, else they could not survive as a species (even insects).
Psychologists (just barely on rare occasion fitting into the category of “scientists”) most certainly cannot be trusted to experiment and attempt to analyze complex systems or creatures more intelligent than their own cognitive comprehension skills. Infants fit into that category, as do almost all animals. The cognitive comprehension skills of the average psychologists are embarrassingly low. More to the exact point, none of those psychologists in that video actually understand what “morality” is. That is an issue for philosophers to decide. And no science can be conducted without proper definition. Ask any of them to exactly define “morality” in an unambiguous way. They would probably tell you that such isn’t necessary, which is largely why they are (still) not really qualified to be referred to as “scientists”.
Anyone can trump up what superficially appears to be a scientific experiment with all of the buzz words in place: “this was a double blind study”, “81% of the non-control group responded positively”,… The sad fact is that most people doing such things are very, very sloppy and often have ulterior motives.
Ask what the scientific definition of “morality” is. Without such a precise definition, no measure of it can be scientifically made.
And all of that is not to discount Arminius’ point that the very concept of morality, and thus good and evil, does not apply to animal behavior, and that includes human infants. Homosapians aren’t all that much different than other animals. What doesn’t apply to other animals only might barely apply to homosapians.
Your psychologist references are off mark for the same reason that you are - a complete lack of understanding of what morality and evil actually is and is actually all about.