I hope we're basically good with a few mean streaks in us...cuz that's why I give anyone a chance. If we're bad, I will always be disappointed and so what's the point?

I agree we choose our course every day.

I.do imagine the behavioral foundations we adopt during childhood probably sway us toward the familiar as adults...making it more difficult to go against that which is more deeply embedded in us.

The way I see it, it's part of a belief system that you have made a choice to subscribe to. They may be Gods words, but to follow are your actions alone. Free Will baby!

I am duality !
{It is a delicate balance}

Yeah, but everyone here has chosen to subscribe to some kind of belief system, even if that belief system doesn't pertain to a particular theistic faith.

It appears to me that I was correct in my first post in this thread.
As soon as someone expressed a belief in the Christian concept of "good", an argument against that belief was started.

Yes we do have free will. And I choose to follow God's Word. Way I see it, God's Word surpasses just Opinions.

Toodygirl5, I could be mistaken, but it appears to me that you have gone from simply stating your belief to arguing against the beliefs stated by others here.

i dont think we are born good or evil

I think we are born selfish and primal and have to be taught about right, wrong, conscious, and consderation for others,,,,

How am I arguing against her beliefs Dodo?

Have I missed something? Toddy said it's God's word not hers...and I said but God doesn't make you do it...it's your choice to guide your actions. I may not be a Christian, but I am more aware than most as to what Christians believe. I know no Christians who think God is a puppet master. So, not arguing...supporting.

I was just trying to make her accept my original compliment.

we're neither good nor evil we're born we're taught the difference between right and wrong and we then make our own decisions on how we're going to behave

I think most are inherently neutral and environmental factors determine much of how we will behave including our moral development and a sense of right and wrong.

How well we understand, perceive and handle our motivations/choices is a function inherent to intelligence...often " good " or moral choices require enough intelligence to discern possible consequences, and moral consistencies....as we strive for happiness, it takes intelligence to understand these connections and functional mental health, high functioning.

If you ever get to deal with people who make poor choices over and over again you'll see they were either raised that way, or they are not that bright and easily lead into a poor choice

as a catholic christian I am most suspicious of those who feel they need a God as a crutch to justify moral behavior or it's definitions. christianity is only one ethical code of value. I fine value in others, but I do not find value in old testament morality and reject it as did the christ

Yes I like this one best by a long shot ! This is true,, our instinct is to be bad but todays society in the
western hemisphere today is very civilised for the most part but have very recently evolved to that
statue.
children are very cruel and insensitive by natue, how many times you turn back around and the toddler
hitting the dog or cat with a stick or they hit each other for minor things there ruthless little people.
This is our natural instincts, just as the puppy thats never seen dirt will dig or have sexual tendencies.
These behaviors do not need to be taught people! there in our DnA.

Time has changed our age and our age has changed the times.
We now live a lot longer today than even a few hundred years ago, modern civilisation would not even
exist had man still had a life expectancy of aprox 30 years, just look back in history and lets not be
naive.
You may be making a judgment on what is now a society ran by geriatrics and not driven by testosterone.

We may live a good life according to what "society" says is a good life.

But yet many of these people are the sickest people among us, some politicians, prosecution lawyers.
How can they sleep at night or look in the mirror, some very ruthless people in higher society.

They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other. They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite natures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm, but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth—and that the good is to defeat his body, to undermine it by years of patient struggle, digging his way to that glorious jail-break which leads into the freedom of the grave.

They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two elements, both symbols of death. A body without a soul is a corpse, a soul without a body is a ghost—yet such is their image of man’s nature: the battleground of a struggle between a corpse and a ghost, a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-existent, that only the unknowable exists.

Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed to ignore? It was man’s mind that had to be negated in order to make him fall apart. Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the mercy of two monsters whom he could not fathom or control: of a body moved by unaccountable instincts and a soul moved by mystic revelations—he was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle between a robot and a dictaphone.

JOHN GALT

“It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept “human” mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure—as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not—as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.
JOHN GALT

!!!

morning Lee? I thought for sure this was going to be a nice guy thread lol

I think we are inherently good. Think about it... when you do something bad, you are guilty stricken. If you help others, you feel happy.

morning sweet.. im nice lol