Are some people born evil?

reply to post by Haydn_17


Stellar thread topic. I have yet to read through it, I actually just logged in so I could post this comment.
Despite the apprehension of cringe-worthy replies to this thread, I think this is an interesting notion to explore. I believe this is something thought-worthy of any person of faith-- regardless of denomination, culture or creed.
Where would one start?
The scientific platform, giving argument through the known biological processes of living things?
The quantum platform, giving argument through the microscopic level of existence?
The spiritual platform, allowing the lines to be grossly blurred between opinion & faith, doctrine & dogma?
The philisophical platform, allowing tortuous hours upon hours of waxing eloquence and waning pontification?
Having said all that, I'm being summoned to make macaroni and cheese so I guess being able to actually read the remainder of this thread will have to wait. Such is life.

Originally posted by MischeviousElf

He postulated to the psychopath, that if he had been born to a Marine Sergeant dad, a loving mother if strict, had stability and care shown when younger not sexual, physical and emotional abuse etc, had the same malfunctioning or turned of genes which made him an "sociopath/Psychopath" but had been controlled and directed in life, had then gone on to join the army, or be a fire-fighter, his lack of emotion or fear in any such incident would mean he would now be an

"Hero"

not an Sociopath/Psychopath.

He would have medals and honours! if his behaviour had been learnt and directed to use his ability not to be emotionally attached to situations, for situations of controlled murder or fearlessness such as fire-fighters, if he was made to feel proud for "country" or whatever, If he had learnt when younger to do this rather just being raped by his step dad and belted every day, so that is how he learnt to treat others.

I found that very interesting.

What a cute postulation, but I think it's rather naive at best. I'm an example of someone who would fit into the "hero" category from time to time. I can emotionally detach when I must. The difference is that it's only used as a tool of my conscience to get done what must be done. I don't use it for any type of exploitation of others, or to merely get what I want. That would be wicked and pathetic.

I don't think I've got these sociopathic genes which went right, or whatever. I was born into a fairly broken home, and certainly didn't learn morals from family. While I do agree that the environment plays a role in how our genetic propensities are actualized, I don't think this is the whole story.

To the OP yes people are born EVIL just ask my wife and her mom

IMHO I would have to say it may be possible to be born evil just look at animals and insects they have genetic memory that is predetermined for what they do and how they act. With Man being such a sick and petty species (with a little good thrown in) It would be possible for some genetic memory to come out, you know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Basic human nature is one of two choices.
Good or Evil.
I profess it is evil.
It does not have internalized rules to foster good conduct.
Birth to six months: Eat, scream for food, eliminate waste, scream for clean pants. Demand attention, affection with no concern of how others are feeling. It is a me, me, me centered universe.

6-18 months old. Same behavior but begins to be more mobile and verbal.

Must begin teaching this person to deny desires, say no to impulses and urges.
To not spit on others, not bite others, not to piss on furniture, or poop on floor. Not throw food, color on walls, run into street, play with wall sockets. Child will throw fits and stormy protestations resisting these lessons.

18mo--60 mo share your toys, do not lie, do not steal, do not fight, do not ...
as none of these rules of conduct exist internally from birth.

Humans are taught to choose good over evil, how to discern the difference.

There is a code of morality and conduct that is eternal and unchanging and it does not exist internally from birth.

This made me think of a quote I saw somewhere that really struck me......

"I have 2 dogs living inside me who fight all the time....one good and one evil....which one will win?....the one I feed the most"

However.....I still believe that evil can be inherent (though rare). Some children have wonderful parents and childhoods and grow up heartless and vicious killers. Others endure horrible abuse, yet turn out to be kind, compassionate people........these traits are there from birth in some people.

[edit on 20-7-2010 by StealthyKat]

Just something I found interesting.......

By Shirley Lynn Scott

Natural Born Killers I

Genetics/Bad Seeds Are the psychopathic criminals really different from birth? Many parents say that their children who grow up to be violent offenders are markedly different from their non-violent siblings. Three-year-old Ted Bundy sneaked into his teenage aunt Julia's room one morning, and slipped butcher knives under the covers of her bed. "He just stood there and grinned," she said. Serial killer Carl Panzram himself wrote: "All of my family are as the average human beings are. They are honest and hard working people. All except myself. I have been a human-animile ever since I was born. When I was very young at 5 or 6 years of age I was a thief and a lier and a mean despisable one at that. The older I got the meaner I got." German child killer Peter Kurten had drowned two playmates by the tender age of nine.

Are these children just born bad? Environment alone cannot explain deranged behavior — too many abused and neglected children grow up to be law-abiding citizens. If there is a genetic explanation, its a slippery, discreet mutation. We don't see entire families of serial killers. There is no such thing as a "kill gene", but research is revealing some genetic tendencies to violent behavior. In other words, bad seeds blossom in bad environments.

One study of twins who were raised apart, done by Yoon-Mi Hur and Thomas Bouchard in 1997, revealed a strong link between impulsivity and sensation-seeking behavior, "attributed almost entirely to genetic factors." Both sensation-seeking traits and impulsivity have been "found to be higher in drug abusers, delinquents, and psychopaths

Contributing factors and high risk factors, genetics, environment, ...

The cause versus predisposing potentialities.

Free will employed in choice between good or evil.

If you look at it the bibical way, yes we're all born with sin which is why we need a 'savior'. If you look at it the scientific way... we're not 'evil', we're just animals. Animals that have evolved to such great intelligence. We still rape, kill, show lack of emotion about things, reproduce like crazy and act weird.
Thats pretty much an animal right there for you.

Originally posted by LuckyMe777
If you look at it the bibical way, yes we're all born with sin which is why we need a 'savior'. If you look at it the scientific way... we're not 'evil', we're just animals. Animals that have evolved to such great intelligence. We still rape, kill, show lack of emotion about things, reproduce like crazy and act weird.
Thats pretty much an animal right there for you.

We are animals and worse or animals and better, depending on whether you see the glass as half empty or half full.

Animals mate.
If we were like animals we would not rape for psychological power over another, or for hatred and domination, we would not torture or kill indiscriminately, we would not deliberately starve another, wage war, or be dispassionate about life.
We would savor life. We would act as we were intended to.

We are not like animals at all.
Animals have a reason to behave the way they do. We do not know what that reason is, but we chalk it up to instinct.
We assume it is because we are smarter.
I think we assume wrong. We are too smart.
Correction. We are not as smart as our free will requires and demands for survival. Animals are.

reply to post by rusethorcain




Hahaha. you seem to have missed my point. I was more or less talking about sarcasm hence the 'wink' face. Im saying we ACT like animals, because our actions are disgusting. Nevermind, you dont get what im saying.

Originally posted by LuckyMe777
reply to post by rusethorcain

 

Hahaha. you seem to have missed my point. I was more or less talking about sarcasm hence the 'wink' face. Im saying we ACT like animals, because our actions are disgusting. Nevermind, you dont get what im saying.

I think on this we probably really do agree. None the less...

It is my belief there are some "souls" that are evil and they keep incarnating into various people on the planet. When the body that houses them dies, they are born again in another body.
There is a finite number - they do not ...just keep coming.

Some of the horrors I see seem repetitious and almost as if they are copycats. I think the same set of "evil" souls are going around and around...same with the good. As a mathematical equation, there are always more good souls...It doesn't always seem that way however.
Good souls can be loud or soft...the good are softening, you cannot make out their faces in the fray.

It is not supposed to make sense to anyone since this is just a personal feeling I have....it came to me while reading a Ziggy comic strip. "With all the troubles in the world I have got to believe some of these people are going around twice"

Yes, I think they are!

Another "Ah ha" moment

reply to post by rusethorcain




I guess thats a good way to look at it. Never heard of that side of the spectrum before, but I dont blame you for thinking it.

BORN EVIL? READ THIS,THEN DECIDE....... WARNING....this article contains disturbing content, so if you are sensitive, please don't read.This hoffific murder of a 3 YEAR OLD boy was commited by 2 TEN YEAR OLD boys. They found that these boys had been wanting to kill someone since the age of 7! Thier initial plan was to grab a child, and walk him to a busy street, then push the child into traffic so they could watch him being hit by a car!!! But they decided instead to torture and beat the child to death instead. IF THIS ISN'T AN EXAMPLE OF BEING BORN EVIL.I DON"T KNOW WHAT IS!!
Murder of James Bulger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Bulger


James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a two-year-old child from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was abducted, tortured and murdered. The perpetrators were two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables, (born 13 August 1982). Bulger disappeared on 12 February 1993 from the New Strand Shopping Centre, Bootle, while accompanying his mother. His mutilated body was found on a railway line in nearby Walton on 14 February. Thompson and Venables were charged on 20 February 1993 with the abduction and murder.

Thompson and Venables were found guilty of the murder of Bulger on 24 November 1993, making them the youngest convicted murderers in modern English history. They were sentenced to custody until they reached adulthood, initially until the age of 18, and were released on lifelong licence in June 2001. The case has prompted widespread debate on the issue of how to handle young offenders when they are sentenced or released from custody.

In March 2010, Jon Venables was returned to prison for an unspecified violation of the terms of his licence of release. In July 2010, he pleaded guilty to charges of downloading and distributing child pornography, and was given a sentence of two years' imprisonment.

The murder
CCTV evidence from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle taken on 12 February 1993 showed Thompson and Venables casually observing children, apparently selecting a target. The boys were playing truant from school, which they did regularly. Throughout the day, Thompson and Venables were seen stealing various items including sweets, a troll doll, some batteries and a can of blue paint, some of which were found at the murder scene. It was later revealed by one of the boys that they were planning to find a child to abduct, lead it to the busy road alongside the mall, and push it into car traffic.


James Bulger being kidnapped by Thompson (above Bulger) and Venables (holding Bulger's hand) in an image recorded on shopping centre CCTV.That same afternoon, James Bulger (often called "Jamie" by the press, although never by his family), from nearby Kirkby, went with his mother Denise to the New Strand Shopping Centre. While inside a butcher's shop at around 3:40pm, Denise realised that her son had disappeared. He had been left at the door of the shop while she placed an order, and was spotted by Thompson and Venables. They approached him and spoke to him, before taking him by the hand and leading him out of the precinct. This moment was captured on a CCTV camera recording timestamped at 15:42.

The boys took Bulger on a 2.5-mile (4.0 km) walk across Liverpool, leading him to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal. During the walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people. Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene, assuming that he was a younger brother. Two people challenged the older boys, but they claimed that Bulger was a younger brother or that he was lost and they were taking him to the local police station. At one point, the boys took Bulger into a pet shop, from which they were ejected. Eventually the boys led Bulger to a railway line near the disused Walton & Anfield railway station, close to Walton Lane police station and Anfield Cemetery, where they attacked him.

At the trial it was established that at this location, one of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint into Bulger's left eye. They kicked him and hit him with bricks, stones and a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate. They placed batteries in his mouth. Bulger suffered ten skull fractures as a result of the iron bar striking his head. Alan Williams, the case's pathologist, speculated that Bulger suffered so many injuries that none could be isolated as the fatal blow. Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger's shoes, stockings, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist's report read out in court stated that Bulger's foreskin had been manipulated. When questioned about this aspect of the attack by detectives and the child psychiatrist Eileen Vizard, Thompson and Venables were reluctant to give details.

Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident. After Bulger's killers left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger's severed body was discovered two days later, on 14 February.[5] A forensic pathologist testified that he had died before he was struck by the train.

The police quickly found low-resolution video images of Bulger's abduction from the Strand Shopping Centre by two unidentified boys. As the circumstances surrounding the death became clear, tabloid newspapers denounced the people who had seen Bulger but had not intervened to aid Bulger as he was being taken through the city, as the "Liverpool 38". The railway embankment upon which his body had been discovered was flooded with hundreds of bunches of flowers.

The crime created great anger in Liverpool. The family of one boy who was detained for questioning, but subsequently released, had to flee the city. The breakthrough came when a woman, on seeing slightly enhanced images of the two boys on national television, recognised Venables, whom she knew had played truant with Thompson that day. She contacted police and the boys were arrested.