I believe the exact opposite. I believe humans are inherently good, and religion in all its forms has been the most evil enterprise, and the propogator of history's worst evils, since its inception. It is right up there with races and nationalities as the greatest barriers against our enlightened, united path to whatever lies next in our evolutionary path. And I have no doubt that unless these three are once and for all eliminated, our species will go extinct without making any significant contribution to life...an evolutionary dead end, if you will.

But back to your question: I think that each and every person is born with a mind capable of objective, rational choices. "Good" and "evil" are ideas that come into play as they grow up and learn to understand the actions and ideas around them, and group them largely into these two epistemological umbrellas. I don't think anyone is born "more" good or "more" evil than anyone else; like all concepts, they have to be developed.

I suppose this might conflict with what I said above, that I believe humans are inherently good, or good by nature. I think that, all other things being equal, a person will choose that which is good, i.e., that which will benefit himself and those he cares about (no, I'm not sexist, I just hate writing "him/herself" and "s/he"). Outside factors, chiefly religion, racism, and nationalism, cloud a person's ability to rationally choose between the good and the evil, so each must rise above them in their quest to define and practice what is good.

However, as any rudimentary student of philosophy or indeed life already knows, the concepts of "good" and "evil" are in no way agreed upon. Things like murder and incest might be (nearly) universally abhorred, but what about abortion? Or drinking alcohol? Or reality TV? Many things we regard as one or the other are only so because the particular society we are randomly born into has decided they are so, and these do not always match the individual, who is "encouraged" to conform (that, by the way, is something I consider to be among the greatest evils).

Well you made some interesting points there. Before replying I must say I'm not a student of philosophy nor have read many books about this matter, I'm just a casual reader that came across the idea abovementioned.

I am not fond of religion at all (I do respect the ones who believe in this stuff though) and I think it's a horrible control mechanism, to be honest. The idea of encouraging people to do something (no matter what it is) should be considered a bad thing to do as you said. I think religion has very much to do with this and influencing people, 'leading them to the path of Good'. In many ways religion takes advantage of people's ignorance and lack of self-thinking capacity and that is the main reason I went off it in the first place.

I know that there's no such thing as Good or Evil, those two are concepts that were conceived through History by human beings, but by nature we all preserve life over death. Instincts lead us to survive in this world and reproduce among other things. Those instincts have been replaced with moral values, which are a filthy try to control people and swamp them into beliefs that influence their actions under the threaten of physical/spiritual punishment whatsoever.

I have just posted a question and haven't answered it so here goes my humble opinion. I don't think we are born with the will to harm other people, but we are able to do so if wanted. I think that 'Evil' comes when someone prioritizes self-benefit over a 'more ethical choice' (according to religion or universal moral values), which makes logic with what I said above about instincts. Each person is a different entity, which doesn't have to do anything for anybody, such as a wolf doesn't have to give half of his prey to another wolf, a person doesn't have to kill himself in order to preserve someone else's life. Of course I am talking about extremely rational human beings, almost robots but as Evil and Good go we have to be objective.

To sum up a little bit I'd say that we are born to take rational decisions in order to preserve the most valuable thing we have, which is life, and that Evil and Good are just concepts which people use to catalogue our actions in an attempt to control us, human beings, by threatening our own integrity.

I want to hear more people's opinions