I believe that since everyone started off a baby with no history of doing any cruel action to anyone, everyone is therefore naturally intrinsically innocent and good. Badness only comes into society through books which leave us with impressions of what is right and wrong behaviour. For instance, the Bible tells us to kill animals for sacrifice to God and for food and clothing as a good behaviour when pet owners know that to burn their pet is a nasty thing to do to their dear pet. But the Bible made it look like it was normal behaviour to do this and has now conditioned loads of babies to kill animals when they are bigger and not care about the animals they are killing at all. This does not mean that the bigger babies obeying the bible stories are bad people for killing the animals, it just means that the babies have been brainwashed out of their natural kind behaviour pattern by having to be indoctrinated by the God religion. Imagine killing a kid's pet chicken for food. It would really hurt the kid and make the kid cry. The kid's attachment to the chicken alone should have been enough evidence not to kill the chicken for any religious motive. Religious motivated killing can emotionally detach the killer from feeling for the victim being killed by the killer. The grown babies who kill chickens and cows for a living are emotionally detached from the animals they are killing. They are conditioned like zombies by Christianity or Islam or Judaism to kill the cows and chickens for food. The same applies to war killing for land. The Bible encourages the Jews to kill other ethncities of people for their land because God told them it was alright to do this but without God being a real person, there is no need for any Jews to kill anyone for their land because they can now approach everyone they meet as a growing innocent baby who just happens to live on the land they were born on and the Jews are unlikely now to kill any innocent person for their land anymore but would share the land with them instead as friends. World Peace is when everyone realises that the God of the Bible does not exist and the Bible stops being used as the book our laws of society are built on. And instead of using Bible laws to build our society, we use humane visions to build our society.
I don't believe in locking people up in horrible places for punishment because I don't believe anyone is a bad person intrinsically so I believe that understanding a person't belief system would explain a person's behaviour however bizarre or cruel that behaviour may appear because everyone started off an innocent kindhearted baby and what makes everyone different as they grow is what is defined as right and wrong behaviour to the baby taken mainly from religious books. People should be talking more with people to find out what makes people happy and then doing the things with the person that makes the person happy instead of mindlessly obeying a book like the Bible whom we don't even know who wrote each story in it and whose words we don't all agree are kind words to obey in every situation. Our law courts need to stop being based on the bible laws to be kinder places to discuss problems in. No one should ever be sent to a place they don't like to live in to solve any problem as that's cruelty to the person sent there. For goodness sakes farmers are not locked up in jails for butchering and murdering millions of pet chickens whom they used to feed and nourish with water. It's not fair to jail farmers because they thought they were doing a job not butchering millions of innocent animals so why can't the job stop being seen as a job because chickens are given rights because the Bible is no longer the book on which our laws are being based.
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Except the idea that killing animals for food being wrong is a higher order thinking / belief. People are animals, naturally omnivores, and for thousands of years before Abrahamic religions, before ancestors developed any religions were killing and cooking animals. Our ancestors, just as chimps and dolphins killed between groups and close species it is animal nature. Family and society are supposed to try to improve on that, and at the time of their founding those religions did, but people should be able to evolve beyond them now. Sadly in the last 25 years seems to be going backwards with creationism being more popular and groups being able to live in their own little bubbles. And while I would agree on not incarcerating people for non violent crimes, there is a huge difference between killing even an animal for food versus pleasure, much less raping or murdering humans compared to killing chickens.
During the first few days after being born babies can be classified into one of three "mind states" with regards to their understanding of their interaction with their environment.
1) Those who seem to have an instinctive high-level awareness of their environment. About 5% of babies fall into this category.
2) Those who actively "work at" learning about their environment.
3) Those who never really, even as adults, fully comprehend their environment.
The last two categories are about equal in number.
Here is an excerpt from my book just recently published.
Here is a concept for you to grasp. And this comes from my earning two Associate’s Degrees in Child Psychology while in the Navy. What happens when you tell any child not do something without explaining to them why it is bad to do it in the first place? The child is naturally going to do that something. And it has nothing to with a sinful nature. It is due to the fact that ALL children are born curious about the world around them. They want to learn about the world around them. Ever have a baby get into your pots and pans and make a hellacious racket? Nothing more than the child’s curiosity and desire to learn of his/her world. And guess what he/she learned? These funny looking metallic objects make a most wondrous noise. And it irritates mommy and daddy. Of course, since the very young child’s sense of “wondrous noise” is not as well developed as us adults, us adults find it to be a very obnoxious racket.
I have a proposition for you to consider. What is the one thing that makes a scientist a scientist? CURIOSITY. Thus, I propose that ALL children are born natural scientists. As they grow up, not all shall become scientists. However, like scientists, all children, including all adults, are curious. All humans by our nature are naturally fledgling scientists. Just that some make careers out of studying science and become actual Scientists.
When you tell a child not to do something, that natural curiosity is going to cause that child to seek the answer why you told them not to do that something. It has nothing to with them being sinful. They are simply wanting to know why. Natural curiosity is driving them to discover why. Yes, you can fully explain to them why they should not do that something, but until they actually do that something and learn the consequences of doing that something for themselves, their curiosity is going to drive them to discover the answer for themselves. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING SINFUL. Except in those tiny closed minds of Absolutists.
Children are not born into this world pre-loaded with the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, truth and lie. They learn such by living. By being CURIOUS. There is a saying I have always said my entire life, “You are born into the school of life until they day you die.” Whenever one or both of our daughters did something wrong, I always used psychology to ask them about what they had done. I would ask them, “Was what you did wrong?” No matter how they answered, I would then ask them, “Can you explain to me why it was wrong?” Then I would discuss with them about the merits of what they had done. Then to really throw a monkey wrench into the gears, I would ask them to tell me what punishment they should receive. Of course, they truly despised that, but it was my way of not resorting to the violence of corporal punishment as my parents did to me. Something ALL you Absolutists believe to be absolutely necessary. And if you deny it, then you are a True Absolutist. A LIAR.
And you Absolutists know the Bible verses you use to defend your right to physically abuse children:
Proverbs {13:24} - Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them.
Proverbs {23:13–14} - Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death.
There are more, but I only need these two. Now I am going to pull out specific parts. And see? I can cherry–pick with the best of you Absolutists. The only problem is you Absolutists do not enjoy it when we point out the evil of your deity. Your IT. And thinking about it, when Stephen King wrote that novel, IT, he really depicted your deity well.
Whoever spares the rod hates their children… Sooo…, if I do not beat my children, I must hate them?
Punish them with the rod and save them from death. Sooo, if I do not want my children to die, I must beat them?
In other words, you sorry, damned Absolutists use hate to show love. That is the stupidest bullshit I have ever heard of when it comes to morality. Your Bible is nothing more than the most expeditious means of how to live the most immoral life anyone could live.
Here is a funny story for you. When my daughters were old enough to understand what was meant by the Associate’s in Child Psychology degrees I earned, they confronted me about it. “Dad. We know what that degree means. It means you cheated.” I nonchalantly looked at them and replied, “No it does not. It means I did like any good sailor and prepared for war.” They even told me that they would rather I spank them and get it over with instead of using the psychology I used and having to deal with a disappointed father. I never told them, but I did tell my wife how badly my parents would beat me when I screwed up, especially my mom when it was something to do with religion. I told my wife I was never going to resort to corporal punishment because I was always fearful, that like my mother and father, I would lose control. Thus, I made a promise to myself that I would never touch any child except in such a way to show how much I truly loved them.
I told the story above because I also want to tell you that religion had absolutely NOTHING to do with me breaking the cycle of violence. I forget who said it (MLK?), but someone said, “Violence only begets more violence.” The only thing religion had to do with me breaking the cycle of violence is that I also promised myself I would never treat my children as badly as the Christian God treated his and commands us to treat ours. Thus, I propose to you that it is your God that begets more violence due to the horrific amounts of violence He has commanded His followers to do to the whole human species.
Would you think it moral, ethical, fair, or even rational if your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren were punished for your crimes?
rmfr
I've never met a bad child in my life nor have I ever met a bad adult either seeing that all adults stem from children anyway. Every adult was once a child. I don't believe in punishing anyone because I don't like to do to others what I hate done to me. It's too cruel to do that to anyone. I don't believe in God. I am an atheist but I do like Jesus because he wanted everyone to love everyone. I learnt in history that the Catholic Church burnt up many of the true writings about Jesus' altrustic loving character. Jesus was a very sexual man according to the gospels who loved everyone even those who killed him. Badness is hurting someone on purpose because you really want to hurt them and for no other reason and no one is bad because no one has ever hurt anyone on purpose just because they really want to hurt them. Usually people group together and think they have to hate someone or some people because their group are not allowed to like them for some stupid reason but that is not the same as hating the person or people the group is not allowed to like.
I read crap like this and just want to puke. You have obviously never worked with children. Children are not born "Good." They are born spitting and shitting. They are born screaming and yelling. They are born demanding and selfish. If you do not care for them they die. If you do not teach or train them, they are no different at all than wild animals. (THAT IS A FACT.)
If you do not teach them morality, sharing, kindness, and love,,, THEY WILL NOT HAVE IT.
There is nothing innately GOOD in a human baby. NOTHING/
PUNISHMENT: And yet there are things we must do with human beings who have been raised without the capacity to care for others; with human beings who have no moral structures in place to prevent them from raping, murdering, and stealing. FACT: Understanding their motivation does nothing to alter who they have become as people. NOTHING. Locking them away is currently viewed as the least harmful of the inhumane thing we can do with them. YES, it does no good at all. You are correct. But! We can not have these assholes walking among us killing our kids and raping our daughters. We can not have them pulling us from cars at gunpoint or breaking into our homes to steal what we have. Your beliefs have nothing to do with what is real in the world. If you can think of something better that works, present it and we will all do that.
You do understand that we once had a "penitentiary system" for people convicted of serious crimes. They went to a prison and they did penance. They got bread and water for meals and they thought about the crimes they had committed that got them there. They were forced to do hard labor and there was no counseling, no education, no living assistance, and no aid of any kind.
This changed when we moved from the "penitentiary system" to the "rehabilitation system." Now we offer good meals, education. counseling, religious services, congeal visits, half way houses, probation and a whole lot more.
The recidivism rates in the "penitentiary system" and those in the "rehabilitation system" are exactly the same. 95% of people who end up in prison for crimes, return to prison.
You got something better, let's hear it.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/news-wires-white-papers-and...
"There is nothing innately GOOD in a human baby. NOTHING"
What do you define as "good"?
Good is being kind and friendly and nice and warm and everything lovely in behaviour to the other or others.
Your response generates a lot of heat but little light. For example, you give a statistic of "95% of people who end up in prison for crimes, return to prison". Where did you find that figure? In the UK, for example, re-offending rates (which are not the same as recidivism rates for those who are returned to prison for minor breaches of their licence conditions such as missing a probation appointment) vary according to the category of offence between around 5% to around 70%. The lowest figures are for murder and sexual offences.
These figures, according to most studies, have not changed a great deal since Victorian times. What they might show is the lack of effectiveness of pure incarceration in reducing crime. Perhaps you might consider what works better in other parts of Europe and Scandinavia which have far lower rates of imprisonment and generally lower rates of offending and re-offending.
In the UK, and in virtually every US prison or jail, there are no facilities for "congeal visits" - I assume you mean conjugal visits. Russian prisons have those. Would you prefer that prisoners return to society angry, unprepared and in a worse physical state than when they entered? Are you trying to increase the level of reoffending? As for religious services: they have been universal in prisons as long as there have been prisons in the West. The purpose of prisons in Victorian times was to rehabilitate (in the USA, to "correct") the prisoner and religion was seen as the most useful tool. In the UK, isolation for all prisoners was tried and soon abandoned, because it drove prisoners into mental illness. Even the Victorians had notions of compassion and what works in changing human behaviour that you seem unware of.
"Fourteen prisons in England and Wales, most of which hold short-term inmates, have reconviction rates of more than 70%, Ministry of Justice figures disclosed today reveal.
The reconviction rates for individual prisons published for the first time show that Dorchester, in Dorset, has the highest at 74.7% for adult male prisoners and New Hall, in Yorkshire, has the highest reconviction rates for female prisoners at 76%.
The MoJ's first compendium of reoffending statistics and analysis shows that prisoners starting a community punishment under probation supervision have a reoffending rate 7 points below those discharged from short-term prison sentences of 12 months or less – 46% compared with 53%.
The statistics, based on 2007 data, show that reoffending rates for individual prisons range from 26.7% to 76.6% for criminals locked up for less than 12 months and between 2% and 55% for those serving more than a year."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/04/jail-less-effective-community...
It makes no difference - apply any definition of "good" and it will not fit a baby. There is nothing innately good in an infant.
I may say children are life's greatest treasures. I ain't never said they are good. Scary, hell yeah. A treasure, hell yeah. Good? Not until you properly trained them. Until trained, children are indifferent and plagued with the disease iwantitis.
rmfr
Good means being friendly, kind, loving, sweet, adorable and cute and this matches the character of every new born baby splendidly and is everybody's natural character so we are all naturally good people. Some of us can misinterpret things and so make mistakes but making a mistake doesn't make a person a bad person ever. Love everyone baby xx
@ arakish - I can only agree that "Children are life's greatest treasures" if you place an "I think" before the phrase. Certainly people can believe what they want. The tragedy is 50% of the children born in the world today do not survive. They die in infancy. And we are in the modern world with medicine and knowledge. Imagine the carnage 100 years ago. Traditionally children have had very little value. Here in Korea, boys were valued more than girls. Until very recently, about 20 years ago, girl babies were being aborted. There are still laws on the books in Korea that forbid telling parents whether the babies will be male or female.
I will not disagree with anyone who "Thinks Children are a blessing or a treasure of valuable or good." But if you are stating a "FACT," you just can't justify it in the real world that we live in. I feel sad at times for all the children we simply let die. I walk the streets of the Philippines, Cambodia, or some other country and see them filthy and sleeping in doorways. There is no human way to help them all. Their life potential is lost. They will not attend schools, they will not become success stories. They will live tragic lives and only by some quirk of fate (I do not believe in fate, just using the expression.) will they live something close to a normal life. I tend to regard these suffering children more like sick puppies or kittens than anything else. It will never be possible to feed or care for them all. Occasionally you do what you can, give them a bit of money or buy them a meal but honestly, I care more about my own comforts than starving children on the streets and that is just a fact. It is a FACT of survival in the very real world we live in. "YOU DON'T THINK SO?" I would love to have you come and visit some of the places I have been and witness your "treasures,," I would love you to see how these children grow up and just how "good" they become living on the streets without access to education.
STORY:
A friend of mine was walking through a park in the Philippines when he and his girlfriend were set upon by a small tribe of 8 to 10 year old children with knives. They threatened to stab him if he resisted their efforts to go through his pockets. They attempted to grab and run away with his girlfriends purse. He punched one in the face (A 10 YEAR OLD BOY) knocking him flat and belted another in the head before they all ran away. No one was stabbed.
ANOTHER STORY
As program director for a bunch of GROUP HOMES. I helped counselors and group home parents raise boys from the age of 8 to 18. One small, very small for his age, child was getting picked on by one of the bigger boys. He complained and the boys were all talked to but the bullying continued. One day the little guy went to the microwave, heated up a huge plastic glass of water until it was boiling. Got a towel and pulled it out of the microwave. Walked into the living room and threw it in the face of the boy that was bullying him. Second and third degree burns were the result of the incident. There was no punishment at all for they younger boy. Our system is full and the boy was already a ward of the state. There was nothing else the courts would do to an 8 year old child but mandated counseling.
Children that are not nurtured will typically not learn to nurture. There are exceptions. There can be growth understanding and comprehension as a child develops. And their might not be. There is nothing inherently good in a child.
Evolution has shaped us. It doesn't make sense that pure niceness would out-survive everyone else. Altruism, anger, jealousy, generosity, and revenge can all be advantageous in survival. We're all a mixture of these traits and some of us have more of one than another.
Are you a mother, by any chance? You must not be, otherwise you'd know that babies are not "good". If you judge them so quickly as being "good" or "bad", you're delusional. Babies are in survivor mode from day one. It is not up to you to judge them.
geesch. Trying getting a library card and reading more.. Seriously. Early Childhood Education.
And my daughters accused me of cheating when they figured out what the Associate's in Child Psychology degrees meant I had earned while in the US Navy.
My response, "No. I did not cheat. I did like any good sailor and prepared for war."
rmfr
I hate this OP.
I mean, I really hate it. No wonder children are so unprotected, and our kids are screwed up.
"Babies are intrinsically good." For fuck sake, no they're not! They're vulnerable newborns who need protection, love, and nurturing. They are NOT to be judged, by you, or anybody else. They just ARE.
When you're in labor and screaming your head off, please take a video and repeat this OP. screaming and cursing.
(walking away) I'm eating pork chops tonight. Broiled. With asparagus wrapped in bacon.
I'm eating pork chops tonight. Broiled. With asparagus wrapped in bacon.
I want some...
Anyway. Love your two posts. Completely correct. So is what Cognostic said. I am with you. Babies just are. They are in survival mode only. Feed me. Clean me. Fuck your facebook account. Feed me damnit. Clean my diaper.
Once I was out of the Navy due to an accident, who do you think took over the job of getting up in the middle of night? I did. Hell my wife went through the whole pregnancy and caring for five months before returned home. The mission I was on did NOT allow any contact outside our immediate command. When I came home and saw I was a new father, my captain gave me 30 days liberty and I added another 20 days leave (or was it the other way around?). Since my ship was to be in drydock for the next 8 months, this allowed me to get a jump plane home every weekend when my leave/liberty were over. Five months later, the accident. Thus, I only missed the first 11 months of daughters lives. Not totally, but enough.
Whenever I was home from the Navy, I took over the baby care duties. I felt it was my duty as a father.
I do not know where a person gets that a baby is born good. As you said, they just are. They are selfish. They are wanting. Yes, when they are sleeping, they are oh so cute. Otherwise, they are raging monsters demanding everything.
Let me quite before I start ranting.
rmfr
"raging monsters"
hahahha
OH, dang, that's so funny, because it's true. hahahaha
I love babies. It seems that they are the only thing worth living for. But they can be mean! woah! I've seen two babies sitting next to each other, one pulling the other's ears. LOLOLOL You can't laugh, but it's so dang funny. They are very creative beings that have terrific survival skills.
"children are so unprotected"
What do you mean? There's a plethora of legislation in the US and UK aimed at protecting children from adults. Children's lives have, historically, never been so safe as they are now. Vaccines, state education, health & safety laws, "Safeguarding" rules... Far fewer children die before the age of 5 than ever before.
Just look at nature. It is not good and sweet and loving. It is nasty and brutal and not fair at all. We are just very advanced animals but without civilization we would be acting just like the wild animals currently act. There was a video of a baboon eating a baby impala (or whatever it was) alive, while the baby animal watched in horror and screamed about it. The baboon just kept eating it. We can be taught not to act this way, but we are born with the genes to act like that.
Theists will not believe we are animals. If they admitted they were animals, than they're breaking God's law of "subduing the earth". That's why Genesis is so important to Xtianity, as you already know. They also cannot recognize how humanity has evolved from day one until now. That's completely out of their horizon. To them, it's the Adam and Eve story.
Therefore, since they cannot believe we were ever animals, they cannot recognize the evolutionary survival instinct. To Theists, it's good/bad that they think is innate in every person.
IMO, that's what's sad about religion.
That does seem to be a common theme with them.
My own mother looked at me with big eyes when i said we were animals, (i was watching a documentary). She also did that same thing when i said part of the hindu community was idioit because they were protesting the name Schiva being given to a nightclub.
"since everyone started off a baby with no history of doing any cruel action to anyone, everyone is therefore naturally intrinsically innocent and good" is, logically, a non sequitur. Your conclusion is based on a false premise: that because a baby has not yet committed an act calculated to harm others, therefore it is naturally disposed not to do so. If no-one is naturally wicked, whence originated wicked acts?
"I don't believe in locking people up in horrible places for punishment" - neither do I, but, as someone who has (a) spent six years in UK prisons, and (b) investigated the prison abolition movement and not yet been convinced by its alternatives, I would very much like to know what your ideas are for what society should do with people who commit offences that seriously harm others for their own gain or pleasure.