“People Are Basically Good” – Proof To The Contrary
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Many present day philosophies and worldviews claim people are basically good and that bad or immoral behavior is the exception. The Bible states quite the opposite – that “They are evil, wicked, and greedy, as well as mean in every possible way. They want what others have, and they murder, argue, cheat, and are hard to get along with. They gossip, say cruel things about others, and hate God. They are proud, conceited, and boastful, always thinking up new ways to do evil. (Romans 1 29-30)” Because of this fact, people need a Savior in order to be acceptable to God. In contrast, the implication of the “people are good” worldview is that good people dont need a Savior. Likewise, the examples of human atrocities, communism and outright greed show that mankind as a whole is evil.
If you examine the atrocities perpetrated by people within the last century, you find an enormous number of murders. Prior, as well as during the Second World War, Adolph Hitler killed six million Jewish people on his path to creating the perfect Aryan race. Between 1929 and 1939 Joseph Stalin killed as many as twenty million Soviet citizens because they were not “politically correct”. Mao Tse-tung killed thirty-five to sixty million Chinese during the Chinese civil war of the 1930s and 1940s on his quest for Communist rule. The leader of the Marxist regime in Cambodia, Kampuchea Pol Pot, in the 1970s killed over 1.7 million of his own people. These do not include all the people killed in “legitimate” wars. “Legitimate” wars referring to the wars these men got involved with, claiming it was for the protection of their people, but in reality were just spreading propaganda. Many would object to this analysis, since they could claim that these atrocities were perpetrated by only a few individuals. However, these individuals could not have done anything if they were not backed by others who agreed with their “values”. The vast majority of Germans willingly followed Adolph Hitler and gave their consent to his policy to get rid of the “Jewish problem”. The same goes for Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Kampuchea Pol Pot. They would not have accomplished what they did if they did not have the supporters, thus showing the evil within those people. The followers of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Kampuchea Pol Pot are just as much murderers as their leaders, because they did nothing to stop it, instead they went a long with it being too afraid to revolt. And in simple fact, murder equals sin and therefore evil, showing the example of evil and sin among entire nations.
A great experiment was performed in the last century that definitively demonstrated the sinfulness of entire generations among an entire group of people. The experiment was called Communism. What is being referenced is not the attempt by Communists to spread Marxism throughout the world through civil wars, what is being referred to is the reaction of the Russian people themselves to the “equality” created under Communism. The basic tenet of Communism is that all people would share equally in the resources of the country. On the surface, that sounds good. In fact, this is what was practiced by the Christian church during the first century. The problem with Communism was not the philosophy per se, but the realization by the people that they would not be rewarded for hard work. It didnt matter how one worked, one got the same
reward. At this point, the sinfulness of man stepped into the picture and everybody in the Soviet Union became lazy and indifferent to their responsibilities. This lack of accountability has led to an alcoholism rate of forty percent and an abortion rate of nearly seventy percent! The sinfulness of all humans was definitely demonstrated in an entire society, so much so, that it led to the eventual economic