Is Humanity Inherently Flawed or Fundamentally Good?

[olde drunk]

this is an offshoot from another thread.

if, as most of the recognized religions say, man is flawed and needs a messiah or savior. how can we accept the path that the leaders of that cult promote, if they themselves say that man is flawed.

in short, how the hell can we accept anything from any other person, except as hearsay?

on the other hand, if we accept that the nature of man is good, then we can accept and work with the additional information gained from a reasonably trusted source. we are free to accept or reject without judgement.

love & peace,
olde drunk

 

[selfAdjoint]

Or you can believe that man is flawed and just not accept any supernatural suggestions from anybody.

In that case you need to define flawed, at least to your own satisfaction (since we are all flawed, anyone else's opinion would be discounted).

 

[Njorl]

this is an offshoot from another thread.

if, as most of the recognized religions say, man is flawed and needs a messiah or savior. how can we accept the path that the leaders of that cult promote, if they themselves say that man is flawed.

in short, how the hell can we accept anything from any other person, except as hearsay?

on the other hand, if we accept that the nature of man is good, then we can accept and work with the additional information gained from a reasonably trusted source. we are free to accept or reject without judgement.

love & peace,
olde drunk

Why would we need to "accept that the nature of man is good"? It seems to me to be an unnecessary, and possibly false assumption.

Njorl

Njorl

 

[confutatis]

on the other hand, if we accept that the nature of man is good, then we can accept and work with the additional information gained from a reasonably trusted source. we are free to accept or reject without judgement.

Man's nature may be good, but his actions often are not. I don't believe there is such a thing as an evil person, but it's a matter of fact that evil behaviour exists. If we learn to separate the deed from the doer, then we may get a better understanding of what evil is. As far as I can tell, it is nothing but behaviour motivated by ignorance.

 

[olde drunk]

Why would we need to "accept that the nature of man is good"? It seems to me to be an unnecessary, and possibly false assumption.

Njorl

i did not post it as an assumption. i stated it as a belief and the potential consequence of that belief.

the inter-relationship of all our beliefs are operative in a multi-demensional reality. while our conscious mind is focused in the physical present, our beliefs, feelings, emotions, desires and subconscious are also reaching out to assit the conscious mind in creating the next moment.

if you accept or believe that man is flawed, what do you have to work with? do you expect to be lied to and mislead whenever you interact with another.

looking at the way nature provides for all her creations, i doubt that we would be short changed in the 'goodness' category.

it is all part of the 'you reap what you sow' maxim. you plant the idea of a flawed human, and you reap a world full of untrustworthy companions.

why can't we supplant that tired idea with a new one? i make a motion that:

"WE ALL BELIEVE IN THE GOODNESS OF MAN" from this date forward. even the lowly devil deserves a break.

love & peace,
olde drunk

 

[olde drunk]

we are all flawed, anyone else's opinion would be discounted).

why? i submit that we are all in the process of becomming. within the process we are always as pefect as we can be 'for that moment'. as soon as you try to compare, you lose!

every gunslinger in the old west knew that no matter how fast he was, there was always going to be someone faster.

when you accept that man is flawed you immediately stimulate self doubt. no matter how you slice it, self doubt is a very slippery slope.

so, with a very basic concept, if accepted, you trigger all manner of negative thought. gee, I'm flawed-->i'm not good -->i'm unworthy -->i'm deserving of my trials and tribulations --->why bother --> I'm hopleless and helpless AND that's when the real serious crimes are committed. they got nothing to lose.

by convincing the faithful that they are useless, they can offer that you will be made worthy and get 69 virgins IF you take this sideways(suicide) mission.
don't be mislead into thinking that they are the only ones being propagandized. they are simply the most obvious at the present moment. it is the subtle programming that gets us into trouble in the mundane day to day living.

love & peace,

 

[Royce]

Is being less than perfect the same as being flawed; or is being flawed the same as have fallen from perfection as in the Christian doctrine?

It is my belief that we are less than perfect; though, as you say, as good as we can be at this moment. Perfection is a goal or an arrow pointing in the direction to which we should grow or evolve.

The image of perfection before us all is no more than a road sign in our journey. It indicates that which is before us not that which is behind us.

Is a child flawed because it is a child and not an adult?

 

[Dayle Record]

This is one of the things that I always ask the religious, especially when they start saying things like, "should", or "proper direction", and etc..."If God made this whole thing, then, is it not perfect?"
My answer to this is that on a grand scale our individuality is insignificant. God had better not be some nitpicker, "picking up on our breadcrumb sins". Even if as children of God, we rose from a table somewhere in heaven and took the bet that we could be a truly great human, and failed in the bet; would it not just be one more little thing, in a landscape so huge, that we would be far less than a grain of sand? I think that humans have very limited personal resources to do with, and it is best to focus on our strengths and apply them to the matters at hand. Even taking the time and energy to worry if we are flawed, leaves with less time to do something, anything. Worrying about our flaws, certainly puts us at the mercy of the sellers of absolution, sellers of image, sellers of myth. I think that we deserve what we want.

 

[olde drunk]

Dayle

i agree wholeheartly. how can we hope to be successful at anything if we doubt our innate goodness (+the creators love) and ability to understand the universe.

we learn more just by living life than by reading all the books ever written.

love & peace,
olde drunk

 

[Royce]

we learn more just by living life than by reading all the books ever written.

love & peace,
olde drunk

That's why we're here!

 

[kronchev]

Even saying that herasy is bad because isn't doubt just another form of a flaw?


As for a messiah, that has always bothered me. Possibly that is why I don't find myself religious anymore (agonstic is probabily the best description), too many flaws in the thinking. However, most religions do make allowances for flaws in people (at least modern ones do).

 

[Atrius]

man is flawed, mainly because we need food, water, and air to breathe

 

[kronchev]

man is flawed, mainly because we need food, water, and air to breathe

I don't think he means physical flaws, he means that we all do things that arent the best. We all are selfish, we all work towards our own self interest.

 

[olde drunk]

it is my contention that we are all flawed when measured against an ideal, HOWEVER, within working toward fulfillment, we are as perfect as we need to be at any given moment.

whatever 'flaw' that might be operative is there for experience &/or knowledge purposes.

we are always perfect and will never attain the ideal perfection since the universe is continualy expanding. there is no end to infinity.

love & peace,
olde drunk

 

[Atrius]

oh, yes, i see, man can only be "not-flawed" if they were raised in a container with nothing, no sound or anything for their entire life, with food and water pumped into them. so man by definition is flawed, atleast imo.

 

[loseyourname]

Every man that has ever existed has been unable to do something he attempted to do. Does that not constitute flaw?

However, I doubt that's what this thread was meant to be. I think the author of the thread is asking whether or not we believe man to be inherently sinful. I don't particularly like the word sin, but still, the way the world is set up, we have many organisms striving to obtain relatively scarce resources. This inevitable leads to competition. This is what allows evolution to take place and is the reason we came into existence in the first place, but it also means that all life has in it the tendency to fight when it comes down to it. Because we have evolved to the point where we are aware of what we are doing, we are able to see a better way and have come to the conclusion that hurting each other to get what the other has is wrong. Man has become a moral agent only by his own awareness of morality. The way morality has come into existence, yes, we are immoral creatures by nature. Virtue is a constant struggle.

 

[KingNothing]

If man is flawed, it does not mean that everything he says is false.

Likewise, if there is a scratch on the upper-left corner of your mirror, it does not mean everything it reflects is wrong.

 

[Ebolamonk3y]

Well... There is yes. there is no. we usually do it or have an excuse not to... then we created the word maybe... Is there such a thing as dichtomy when our minds are so clouded by the vast number of possible choices?! Just be! Screw Shakespeare! And Hamlet for that matter.

 

[olde drunk]

ok, what i originally meant was that we were born with a black mark on our soul and, as such, unworthy.

i would like to see us remove this kind of thinking from the nurturing influence of our personalities. i am not espousing an arrogant, egotistical view of ourselves, but rather a worthy, confident explorer of life. this would be an honest view of what we are and are not (our strenghts and weaknesses).

love & peace,
olde drunk

 

[quddusaliquddus]

I completely agree with olde_drunk. But I also believe the concept of the innate evil of man suits certain individuals. It can destroy most people IMHO.

Live for the present. No regrets about the past. No worries about the future. I think only this kind of thinking can make sense of the relationship between determinism and freewill for most religions with a creator who detrmines and yet-gives out freewill. That the past cannot be regretted of because of it's determined nature. That the future cannot be worried about as it is determined. The moment on the other hand is free and it's reaction in the future. Therefore you can only work with the moment and don't stress about the future.

Thoughts?