Are humans innately good?

First, as context, "nature" has caused some massive pandemic killings of mankind: (1) the "black plague" of the early 1300s = 75,000,000 died & (2) the 1918-1919 "Spanish flu" = 50,000,000 died & 24,000,000 have died from 1981-2006 due to AIDS...to name just 3. And definitions vary, depending on the religion.

**Killing in the name of God!**
As ELCA Bishop Mark Hansen so correctly & approximately stated in December 2007, " Bad done in the name of religion is not a testimony to religious faith but to the sinfulness & brokenness of human beings...using religion as an excuse [hijacking religion] to justify their own aggression and hunger for power & domination!"

Persecution of Christians by others:

"There are 200 million Christians suffering for their faith every day, from Cuba to North Africa to the Muslim Middle East, India and the rest of South Asia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, to name a few."...(check ¹"church resources" & "press releases" here [International Christian Concern website]).

Martyr: As to religious martyrdom, a Christian martyr is a Christian who has willingly died of persecution for his/her faith; a Muslim martyr is a Muslim who is willing to risk death or even deliberately dieing while killing for his/her faith.

I know of no modern persecution of others by Christians!

To refresh our memories of (and none of this was under western [American] capitalism;...know & remember history in order not to repeat it...) some of man's recent inhumanity to man (for more detail, see Wikipedia concerning "democide"):

The Armenian genocide of 1915-1923...1,500,000 Armenians kicked out of their homes and businesses and driven to the hot desert to die of starvation and torture by the Ottoman Empire of Turkey.

Colonialism 1900 (?)-Independence: 50,000,000.

China (Mao Soviets) 1923-1949: 3,465,000.

China (KMT) 1928-1949: 10,07,000.

Germany 1933-1945: 20,946,000 total...The Holocaust of the Jews in Germany under leadership of Adolph Hitler, 6,000,000 killed (and about 5,000,000 Christians).

WWII: 60,000,000.

Korean war: 1,300,000.

China (PRC) 1949-1987: 77,277,000.

USSR 1917-1987: 61,911,000.

11 Sept. 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks on the USA and about Feb. 21st, 2002 video-recorded throat cutting and beheading of Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl, by terrorists in Pakistan.

In Sudan, two million Christians have died (from 1985 to the end of 2000 ¹)...(320,000 in first half of 2004) as a result of their government's attempt to impose Islamic law on its non-Muslim population (Arabs determined to kill off all blacks). Nigerian Christians face similar pressures.

Congo civil war: 3,000,000.

Vietnam war: 1,900,000 & many more millions the killing fields of Viet Nam and Laos before & after the war.

the killing fields of Iraq under Saddam Hussein are of at least 270 mass graves containing over a million bodies (info as of 13 Dec. 2003)

check out "The Brotherhood of Man" article by Thomas Sowell.

"Christians" persecuting others:

Misguided groups (were they just cultural or nominal Christians or true Christians ?) identified as "Christian", on the other hand, have done the following:

	the "Crusades" 1095-1272: 1,000,000.
	Witch Hunt 15th-17th centuries: 40,000-60,000.
	Spanish Inquisition 16th-18th centuries: 3,000-5,000.
	David Prosser notifies me of even more [HERE].

Thanks to Ingmar Bitter, PhD. for much of the above, especially the link to Wikipedia info. In the fall of 2007, I became aware of this (his book) source, too.

**Attempts to exterminate Christians:**
Finally, what about attempts to exterminate Christians? One's blood curdles at the horror of Christians being thrown to the lions while the ancient Romans watched in their coliseum. The TRUTH, however, is that recent history is much worse: it is said that more Christians have been killed worldwide simply BECAUSE THEY ARE CHRISTIAN since 1900 and until the present than in all the time between 30 AD and 1900²!! [documentation...I'm indebted to Professor Warren Larson's efforts in pulling this documentation together].

**Modern burnings of just Methodist Churches:**
It is even shocking to just look at an incomplete listing of church fires (arson ?) in the USA, just for the United Methodist Church denomination (and only since 1990) alone, under the title "burned Methodist churches". And, we must not forget that Christians are not the only religious persons who are killed (note the attacks on both Jews & Muslims daily).

**Modern USA: only Christians can be insulted openly...**
And, Bill O'Reilly, more than anyone since 1997, has increasingly pointed out how even the free society in the USA exerts little or no political-correctness (PC) shame at those who openly degrade, legally attack, and openly express disdain or even raw hatred for Christians...acts impermissible in the USA toward persons of any other religion.

EVIL:

Evil: I doubt that mankind is innately evil. If mankind were innately evil, it would mean that evil is part of the basic human make-up; and that would have two unacceptable implications:

that it would make God responsible for our sins, because God created us, and whatever is part of our essence, whatever we are innately, is His creation.

that it would absolve us of sin, because we can hardly be responsible for things that are innate characteristics. For instance, innately I have two legs, but that is nothing I could brag about or regret.

So, humans are innately good because God created all things and pronounced them good, and that includes us humans. Mankind became flawed when it underwent "The Fall of Adam & Eve"...a consequence of The Fall being an inclination (as persistent as the force of gravity) on the part of all humans (manifested in some persons much more than others) to be tempted into sin...into evil...to be bad (sometimes the flaw maximally amplified by a psychopathic mind). And that bad comes from within...others don't put bad in us (according to Jesus). So, while humans are not innately bad, we are now flawed by that consequence of The Fall. Every human on earth has a "sin problem". Bad parents amplify bad consequences. Satan is ever ready to take advantage, and we fallen persons of mankind are, to varying degrees, almost lusty to go bad...to go downhill. Ask church leaders how hard it is to lead even the faithful to do good. Yet, throughout history, look how easy it has been for Satan to hijack even an entire segment of a religion and do awful things in the world & make it sound like it was "in the name of religion"..."in the name of God".

Through coming to belief in Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit rebirths us. And part of that rebirth is that the slave-like inclination toward yielding to the temptation to sin has been cancelled (believers no longer slaves to sin...but they still retain part of their "sin problem"). The spiritual forces of evil have not been cancelled...all humans can be easily tempted! We Jesus followers are, then, alone responsible for our own sins because Holy-Spirit-indwelt believers now have the power source to be enabled to refuse sin. If we hear God, and realize that He redeemed us & comes to save us, not to punish us, we should submit to Him (and not delay), and He will not only clean us up but make us even better (sanctification) than we were with just innate potential!

References:

According to studies by The Voice of the Martyrs organization as noted in a 1999 essay on the Focus on the Family website (put the word "martyr" into that website's search engine).
A contact tells me that, in his book, The Truth of Catholicism, the Roman Catholic writer George Weigel gives an estimate of 27,000,000.

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(posted March 2002; latest update 26 December 2007)