human nature. you wonder whether humans are inherently evil or inherently good. this is a tricky question because terms such as good and evil can mean different things to different people. for example, one may think the raping of the environment by corporations and governments as "evil" while another person may think of it as good wholesome capitalism or industriousness. some would consider all forms of killing evil while another might find righteous justification for it. so good and evil would require clear and precise definitions before proceeding. what usually ends up happening is that the terms are used to stir emotional responses. those people over their are "evil" and we are "good" so that gives us justification to war against them. so it is hard to even give definitions to the terms because there are emotional responses associated with them and your perspective plays such a key part. well guess what then? those terms "good" and "evil" are useless for a rational and objective discussion on human nature. a dog kills and eats a rabbit. was the dog evil or just being a dog? a human kills another human. was the human evil or just being a human? well since the term "evil" is just a magical, emotional, and loosely defined word then i suppose the human that killed another human was just being human. we were born with the ability and the desires to kill. that is part of being human. a dog was born with similar abilities and programming. yes we have the ability to bypass our initial programming to act like an animal. but it is only with training, practice, and knowledge that we can bypass our natural animal instincts. a dog can even be trained to alter some of its natural programming. remember when you see a news story or anything else that makes you see "evil" in others that those others are just being human. our heritage is no different than the beasts that live in the jungles of the world. don't be so shocked when our natural instincts are difficult to control. it is an artificial world that you live in that you think humans are not capable of acting like animals. accept what we are and start from there. we are not idealistic images of a pure and holy entity. we are animals. from there we can be trained to live however we want. we can't start off thinking that we are supposed to be pure and wonderful or we are doomed to fail. you don't train a dog to not pee in the house by just assuming he should just know better and will do the "right" thing do you? no you assume he doesn't know a thing about not peeing indoors and you train him accordingly. make sense?