Born Evil?

[Bathsheba]

I've been mulling over this for a few days and I still find it hard to believe that a person can be born with the predisposition to behave in an evil manner for the rest of their lives regardless of upbringing or early experiences. If this predisposition was hardwired then that person would not have the ability for kindness and any kind of empathy. You would also see it run in families. Maybe there are some "evil" families but I still strongly feel that if a child, if it had the 'evil' gene was raised in a loving family in a loving community would not all of a sudden turn on this family/community. I don't believe there are children like Damian from the The Omen. Nearly every case where children have harmed other on done 'evil' there has been a reason in their 'nuture'... or it has a mental illness... i don't think there is a third reason; that the child is simply evil.

Maybe it's just my spiritual beliefs but my God clearly states that every child is born innocent. If we start to believe otherwise then that gives us the right to suspect certain people of being born evil (with an evil gene) and therefore 'write them off' as hopeless cases that need to be removed from society, locked up and key thrown away. This also makes us dismissive of the reasons why they committed their crime/s. We can tell ourselves that it doesn't matter why they did it.... they did it because they were evil... and if we go down that path, I think, a lot of opportunities for preventing further tragedies will occur.

I also agree with Kellieem that many evil acts are the result of mental illness. The examples such as killing for insurance money etc, I think, are a nuture issue. Rarely do people do those type of things out-of-the-blue. We might only hear of that extreme act in the news but i think with examination you would find the person had a history of not thinking through consequences, being selfish etc.

I think it would be more beneficial for our society to recognise the anti-social tendencies of some children (which I do agree exhibit early) and provide them with the necessary therapy, medication etc. However this should, I think, always be done with HOPE for the child's future. Hope that the child's soul has the potential for good. We can't deny responsibility for children. We can't write them off. And if children like these progress to adulthood without diagnosis then we still can't write them off as evil without first analysing their histories. This is a human right. To 'write off' a human without first trying to understand them is denigrating them as less than human.... and this in itself is something that so-called evil people often do: eg Hitler. If we the "good" start to take on traits of those the "evil" then it is a very slippery slope.