Yes,I am ten.So what?

because that means that you have virtually nothing of importance to say, fuckhead. Now leave the thread before you think you can debate somebody who know what they're doing.

IMO, Humans are generally good, with bad tendencies. Those bad tendencies are horrible, but compared to how far we've come as a species, it's safe to say we're a good group of people.

Quote from epicwarlordofpyroland

dude.it was an EXAMPLE!!!!!!!!you probably didnt even enjoy Rambo...you probably hate star wars,too.IM DEBATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!dont get i my way.

Ahem, you do realise by stating he was a fictional character, I was OVERTURNING YOUR EXAMPLE, showing that it dint have relevance and ence destroying your argument? You know what I'm doing? DEBATING BACK!!! The purpose of a debate is to debate back. If you see it as 'getting in your way', the purpose of a debate is to 'get in your way'.

Furthermore, I have never seen Rambo (and star wars is epic! How dare you accuse me of such a thing?!?!?!) and whether I liked it or not, it's still a crap example.

Quote from walker90234

Ahem, you do realise by stating he was a fictional character, I was OVERTURNING YOUR EXAMPLE, showing that it dint have relevance and ence destroying your argument? You know what I'm doing? DEBATING BACK!!! The purpose of a debate is to debate back. If you see it as 'getting in your way', the purpose of a debate is to 'get in your way'.

Furthermore, I have never seen Rambo (and star wars is epic! How dare you accuse me of such a thing?!?!?!) and whether I liked it or not, it's still a crap example.

you're a fag too. If you have nothing relevant to say, leave the thread.

Again, humans are generally very good beings with a few bad tendencies. However, those tendencies are easy to exploit, thus making us seem like we're much worse than we really are.

Also, people care a lot more that 20 people were killed in cold blood than a nice kid started a fundraiser just to help people. Everyone will forget the second within a year, but the first will be in history books. People just notice negative things a lot more, and they stick in people's minds a lot easier.

that's because we expect good behavior from good people, so we shrug and nod when we hear about the fundraiser.

Also, it's safe to say that currently, we are the safest we've ever been, so murderous rampages capture not only our attention, but excitement.

This thread really caught my fancy :3 (woot, first post is in discussion thread!)

So I heard some people talking about how evil is when people kill, steal, rape, pollute, cause extinction, etc. Then someone else said something along the lines of that someone only does these things if they are psychopathic or under high levels of stress. Then someone said that our choice to do so or not is what makes us different from other species. Okay, now I will relate all these things into my argument!

Humans have the same capacity to do evil as does a dog, cow or any other animal for that matter. As far as I know, humans started off as Herbivores, eating fruit and veggies. Somewhere along the line we started to eat meat, I'm sure that has to do more with environmental changes rather than morals or laws. Cows eat whatever is fed to them, no? If they start getting chunks of meat in their food, chances are, they're going to eat it anyway. Animals need to pass on their seed, at least those with alpha traits do. Humans needed some way to continue surviving (after the fall of Adamah, if you're a religious type), so sex was invented in some sort of subconscious way.

All animals, including humans, develop traits that make us seem better for breeding than others do. The whole point of being attractive is so that you can find a mating partner (think about that when you dress up your daughter in something "cute"). As birds usually have the males have colorful feathers that attract the females, human girls try to stay curvy and such (child bearing hips, breast milk, etc.), those with better genes get all the attention.
Gluttony is a learned trait, if you don't give an animal a good first meal, it will eat as much as it can for it's next meal. And habits die hard. The same goes for Envy, Sloth, and Greed. Every animal lives to survive instinctively (EVEN HUMANS).

Wrath is a special case. There's also something else that all animals want, love. They strive to find it in any way, a gluttonous person may be receiving comfort from their food, someone will envy when they perceive someone has stolen their love, a sloth(ish?) person wants to stay in the moment, one that greeds believes it will attract attention, lust is a primal urge of love, someone with pride strives for attention. These are all corruptions of what we see as a need for compassion and companionship.

ERGO: Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite" Wrath is having uncontrollable anger, which (in it's basest form) is not a selfish thing without having another cardinal sin attached to it, like pride or envy. It can also be attached to Virtues and corrupt them, such as the above example from Dante. Wrath is also connected to anger at oneself, the cause of suicide (possibly the worst sin attached to Wrath). Animals don't commit suicide if they know that they are, and you can argue that animals don't get angry to the point of rage.

THUS: The fact of the matter is, humans are capable of social constructs such as Righteousness, Evil and Sins. I'm not trying to be anarchist, but humans would be capable to survive without these, we see animals in the wild do it every day. In the old testament of the Hebrew bible, laws were given to Moses for his people, not because God didn't believe that the people were incapable, but because they had nothing to go off of since their culture was lost years before when the Egyptians first enslaved them. You could argue that the commandments were laws that the Israelites had before being enslaved and were just being reinstated, those laws worked back in those days for that specific community, as the laws we have now were made for our Millennium.

Conclusion: "Good and Evil" are what you want them to be, you have your own set of morals (your own interpretation) and the hive-mind set (those that the community have agreed upon). Humanity is not "evil", just distinctive among it's peers.

sorry for the rant, if there are any questions, I'll be happy to clear up any misunderstandings.

Quote from GiriX

The fact of the matter is, humans are capable of social constructs such as Righteousness, Evil and Sins. I'm not trying to be anarchist, but humans would be capable to survive without these, we see animals in the wild do it every day.

Do we really see what you are implying that we do? All species have self-preservation in mind, and that invariably results in some sort of system of what one 'ought' to do and what one 'ought not' to do, even in non-human species. They don't call it 'good and bad', but there is definitely a set of 'beneficial' activities that all animal species run under within their own communities. The same idea is what all basic human morals run under.

BUT, human social construct (which I do admit now that I really think about it, animals do have) can lead to the cardinal sin of wrath. Humans commit suicide based on their moral and ideologies, and animals don't. There is a level of "structural morals" that only humans have. The ones that, in the end, probably don't matter.

Not all societies have people who commit suicide. In at least one non-Western culture it's a foreign concept. Even less people commit suicide based on their 'morals'. And how do you know some animals don't kill themselves?
Also, animals can be angry. I don't see how wrath is a relevant thing at all.

I just think our morals are more complex. Concepts such as utilitarianism and other philosophies are moral ones that are much more complex than simply saving yourself or the pack you are in. It makes perfect sense to assume that our emotions and morals are more complex than other animals considering our minds are much more evolved. This being said, they are based on base animal morals/instincts, due to our evolutionary past.

Quote from Automaton

I just think our morals are more complex. Concepts such as utilitarianism and other philosophies are moral ones that are much more complex than simply saving yourself or the pack you are in. It makes perfect sense to assume that our emotions and morals are more complex than other animals considering our minds are much more evolved. This being said, they are based on base animal morals/instincts, due to our evolutionary past.

I wasn't denying this, I just thought it was weird to say that people could survive without a distinction between what is okay and what isn't.

I think a much more meaningful distinction is what enables survival, our morals are far too complicated to be actually relevant to survival beyond the very basics.

I don't like the assumption that 'animals' don't do what humans do. I was reading recently that elephants understand and conceptualize death in a deep emotional way. On that note, here's a video of an elephant painting better than my girlfriend. I find any notion that humans are the only species to do anything ridiculous. It's not quite so black & white. You can't just say 'Humans' do this, 'Animals' don't, therefore humans are/aren't evil.

Originally posted by walker:Furthermore, I have never seen Rambo (and star wars is epic! How dare you accuse me of such a thing?!?!?!) [/QUOTE]Hmm.can you PROVE you think star wars is epic?you probably hate it.