- Oct 31, 2012
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I was reading a book by Dennis Prager, "Genesis" in which he asserts why having the world view that men are inherently good is dangerous.
These are the reasons why he asserts it is dangerous
1. Children are not taught to be good. Parents and teachers who believe people are basically good do not feel the need to teach children how to be good. Why teach what comes naturally? Only when people realize how difficult it is to be a good person do they realize how important it is to teach goodness. In our time, there is virtually no character education in schools, and parents are more likely to be concerned with their children's self-esteem than with their self-control, and more concerned with their children's grades than their goodness.
2. God and religion become morally unnecessary.
If we are basically good, who needs a transcendent source of morality--a good God or a Bible? In the West and elsewhere, the more people have come to believe people are basically good, the less religious and less Bible centered they have become. And the less religious and less Bible-centered they have become, the more they have to come to believe that people are basically good.
3. Society, not the individual, is blamed for evil.
Another dangerous conclusion drawn by people who believe people are basically good is outside forces rather than the individual are to blame for human evil. If people are basically good, the reasoning goes, the evil that people do must be caused by something outside them. Why else would a basically good creature commit evil? This is why the most widespread explanation for violent crime has been poverty. "Poverty causes crime," the argument goes.
But this is just not so. For one thing, the great majority of poor people do not commit violent crimes. They don't because they have a moral value system that tells them criminal violence is wrong. And what could possibly link poverty to, let us say, rape? If one argues poor people steal because of poverty, at least there is a plausible link between the two. But what has poverty to do with rape?
The Carter Center, named for its founder, former US President Jimmy Carter, issued a statement, one of whose subjects was "Poverty and Terrorism". Under the heading, it wrote: "Effectively addressing poverty can make an important contribution to avoiding conflict and combating terror." Likewise, when he was the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, also a one time Presidential candidate, said, "We have a huge common interest in dealing with the issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism."
Those who link terrorism to poverty might consider, for example, the economic backgrounds of the Islamic terrorists who killed 2,977 people on September 11, 2001 in the US. The terrorists came from middle and upper-class families. And the architect of the attack, Osama Bin Laden, was a multi-millionaire.
Since people who believe in evil ideologies are as likely to be wealthy as poor, ending poverty does virtually nothing to end ideological evil. It also does nothing to end non-ideological crime. If escaping poverty made people better, the rich would be the kindest and most honest people in the world.
Another outside force frequently blamed for violent Criminality - when the criminal is a member of a minority race or ethnicity-is racism. Yet the same arguments against attributing violent crime to poverty apply to attributing violent crime to racism. The great majority of individuals who are members of a racial minority-such as blacks in America-do not commit violent crimes-and did not do so even when they were subjected to systemic racially based persecution. And this reason is clear: their moral values did not permit them to do so.
Values and moral self-control matter far more than outside forces. Nearly all people who commit violent crimes do so because they possess a malfunctioning conscience, a morally defective value system, and/or lack of impulse control. The best way to make good people is through the combination of good values, good laws, and a God who commands goodness-such as that of the Bible. If people lived by the 10 Commandments alone, the world would be a beautiful place.
The Biblical view of human nature was perfectly described in secular terms by Professor James Q. Wilson, a Harvard political scientist: "The forces that may easily drive people to break the law, a desire for food, sex, wealth, and self-preservation, seem to be instinctive, not learned, while those that restrain our appetites, self-control, sympathy, and a sense of fairness, seem to be learned and not instinctive."
Those who blame evil on outside forces-i.e., "society"-rather than on the individual will encourage people to battle society rather than battle their own nature. Indeed, the need to change society rather than have people control their nature has become the dominant outlook in the Western world.
The Torah teaches that, especially in free society, the battle for a good world is not between the individual and society but between the individual and his or her nature. There are times, of course, when the battle for a better world must concentrate on evil emanating from outside the individual. This is always true in a tyranny and is sometimes true in democracies. But even then, in a free societies, the battle for a moral world is waged primarily through the inner battle that each of us must wage against our nature: against weakness, addiction, selfishness, ingratitude, laziness, and evil.
The most important question a society that wishes to survive can ask is this: "How do we make good people?" But societies that believe people are basically good will never ask that question.
These are the reasons why he asserts it is dangerous
1. Children are not taught to be good. Parents and teachers who believe people are basically good do not feel the need to teach children how to be good. Why teach what comes naturally? Only when people realize how difficult it is to be a good person do they realize how important it is to teach goodness. In our time, there is virtually no character education in schools, and parents are more likely to be concerned with their children's self-esteem than with their self-control, and more concerned with their children's grades than their goodness.
2. God and religion become morally unnecessary.
If we are basically good, who needs a transcendent source of morality--a good God or a Bible? In the West and elsewhere, the more people have come to believe people are basically good, the less religious and less Bible centered they have become. And the less religious and less Bible-centered they have become, the more they have to come to believe that people are basically good.
3. Society, not the individual, is blamed for evil.
Another dangerous conclusion drawn by people who believe people are basically good is outside forces rather than the individual are to blame for human evil. If people are basically good, the reasoning goes, the evil that people do must be caused by something outside them. Why else would a basically good creature commit evil? This is why the most widespread explanation for violent crime has been poverty. "Poverty causes crime," the argument goes.
But this is just not so. For one thing, the great majority of poor people do not commit violent crimes. They don't because they have a moral value system that tells them criminal violence is wrong. And what could possibly link poverty to, let us say, rape? If one argues poor people steal because of poverty, at least there is a plausible link between the two. But what has poverty to do with rape?
The Carter Center, named for its founder, former US President Jimmy Carter, issued a statement, one of whose subjects was "Poverty and Terrorism". Under the heading, it wrote: "Effectively addressing poverty can make an important contribution to avoiding conflict and combating terror." Likewise, when he was the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, also a one time Presidential candidate, said, "We have a huge common interest in dealing with the issue of poverty, which in many cases is the root cause of terrorism."
Those who link terrorism to poverty might consider, for example, the economic backgrounds of the Islamic terrorists who killed 2,977 people on September 11, 2001 in the US. The terrorists came from middle and upper-class families. And the architect of the attack, Osama Bin Laden, was a multi-millionaire.
Since people who believe in evil ideologies are as likely to be wealthy as poor, ending poverty does virtually nothing to end ideological evil. It also does nothing to end non-ideological crime. If escaping poverty made people better, the rich would be the kindest and most honest people in the world.
Another outside force frequently blamed for violent Criminality - when the criminal is a member of a minority race or ethnicity-is racism. Yet the same arguments against attributing violent crime to poverty apply to attributing violent crime to racism. The great majority of individuals who are members of a racial minority-such as blacks in America-do not commit violent crimes-and did not do so even when they were subjected to systemic racially based persecution. And this reason is clear: their moral values did not permit them to do so.
Values and moral self-control matter far more than outside forces. Nearly all people who commit violent crimes do so because they possess a malfunctioning conscience, a morally defective value system, and/or lack of impulse control. The best way to make good people is through the combination of good values, good laws, and a God who commands goodness-such as that of the Bible. If people lived by the 10 Commandments alone, the world would be a beautiful place.
The Biblical view of human nature was perfectly described in secular terms by Professor James Q. Wilson, a Harvard political scientist: "The forces that may easily drive people to break the law, a desire for food, sex, wealth, and self-preservation, seem to be instinctive, not learned, while those that restrain our appetites, self-control, sympathy, and a sense of fairness, seem to be learned and not instinctive."
Those who blame evil on outside forces-i.e., "society"-rather than on the individual will encourage people to battle society rather than battle their own nature. Indeed, the need to change society rather than have people control their nature has become the dominant outlook in the Western world.
The Torah teaches that, especially in free society, the battle for a good world is not between the individual and society but between the individual and his or her nature. There are times, of course, when the battle for a better world must concentrate on evil emanating from outside the individual. This is always true in a tyranny and is sometimes true in democracies. But even then, in a free societies, the battle for a moral world is waged primarily through the inner battle that each of us must wage against our nature: against weakness, addiction, selfishness, ingratitude, laziness, and evil.
The most important question a society that wishes to survive can ask is this: "How do we make good people?" But societies that believe people are basically good will never ask that question.
