Final Blog Post

(1) Question:

Do human beings have a natural tendency to good, a natural tendency to evil, or some combination of tendencies? What are the implications of the answer for ethics?

(2) Conceptual Clarifications:

Tendency - a proneness to a particular kind of thought or action.

Good- of a favorable character or tendency

Evil- morally reprehensible, arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct

Implications- a logical relation between two propositions that fails to hold only if the first is true and the second is false; a logical relationship between two propositions in which if the first is true the second is true; a statement exhibiting a relation of implication

(3) Answer:

I believe all people are born good, that is all people have a natural tendency to do good, or want the best. I think evil is created through life experience that is of course, a bad life experience. Because I don’t believe there is such thing as an evil child maybe a bad kid, but definitely not evil. Evil is such a strong word that has to be very carefully used. Osama Bin Laden, murderers, rapist’s, yes these are evil people. A person who seems to always be in trouble for the pettiest things, however is not evil, they may not even be a bad person, they may just have bad circumstances. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t born an evil person, but through what he was taught and how he was raised to view others, forced him to be evil. So the only logical answer to the question would be people tend to lean towards a combination of good and evil tendencies. How far they lean towards one or the other however is based on their life experiences, how they were raised, and the circumstances under how they acted the way they did. There are just too many factors to list. The implication of this answer for ethics is tough, because in my mind by saying no one is born evil, they become evil through their life experiences, is almost implying that it is okay to be evil if you have a bad life. It almost justifies a person becoming evil. It works the same way for a good person though, it’s almost justification for a good person to act evil, if something bad happens to them and they have an evil response to it. No one in this world is 100% good, or 100% evil, we are all a combination of the two, just some more than others.
(4) Example:

Like I said before, Osama Bin Laden is a prime example. He was not born an evil child. He in all likely hood wasn’t an evil kid. But through his upbringing, his surroundings, and everyone telling him America is the enemy, destroy them. He became evil, he was force fed these thing from the time he was young till the time he could take over Al-Qaeda. Now look at him he is the most sought after man in American history. He is the most evil person in many people’s minds today. But no one could make a good argument saying he has always been that way.

(5) Word Count: 531