dusio

I do agree with Hobbes. I know his work. And agree with bellum omnium contra omnes. I also believe that our bad nature is connected also with one of our main features- weakness. Yes, we are weak. And we need to be "bad to the bone" to hide it. Our second main feature as a species is a self destruction feature/drive. We love to spoil everything, to make wars, kill, rape, see other creatures suffering. We need it in our life. And we do kill for fun, it gives us so much pleasure, to see the pain...We cannot live without it. There are exceptions, of course, but not many, I believe. Have u ever seen an animal hunting just for fun? I don't think so... God? We need God not to kill each other. We need a moral backbone, let's say. So, we need someone... We need a kind of probation, I'd say. "Don't do it, or U will go to hell", they're telling us all the time - and we are good, because we do not want to go there. We love to think about our salvation. If we had no vision of God... ALL-IN WRESTLING. And this terrible fear of death...that's why we need good and merciful God too.There is no GOD in my opinion. We did create a God. Why? Because we are bad, but sometimes we want to be good when the whole evil of the world ( our own evil ) suppose to be too big for us...

Mijzelve

When you say men created God in order not to be evil, how are you able to tell what is evil and what is not. On what ground can you say that men is evil? Enjoying the suffering of others would only be a way of the 'survival of the fittest'? Wouldn't Nietzsche be right when he said that to be truly free is to create your own values? (Interpretation) And that would (in my opinion) not be ethical, but just practical.

dusio

I do agree with Nietzsche; we need to create our own values, that's for sure for me. The world will enslave us with it's own values, especially the values given by the church. Evil? We create the evil. Is there any evil in the Nature? I mean, the real evil. Not the evil which is required to survive but the evil itself? The answer is no. Ther is no other creature like human, who do LIKE to do somethin' as bad as it can be. We are the creators of evil. Just as we are the creators of god. We need God to feel more secure, more good than we really are. To hide that we are not as good as we would like to be. In some way God justify the things we do. But if we only have the opporunity to live forever and to have everything we need...Who will need God than? No-one. We are weak, that's true, so we just need a "some" vision of God to be more stronger, to feel more stronger, I should say. We need a good father to keep an eye on what we do... But we do not care about the vision itself. We do not need it to be clear at all. There is God. And we think: ok. But how many of us ask: what God? What kind of God? A God of what? The nature of God is not that important for us. And I do not believe that objective existence/ the matter could be created by something subjective. Aristotle said that existence cannot create a non-existence. So how God ( non-existence coz there is no God beside just an idea of it, and we are not sure about it at all ) could create the whole existence ( everything , and we know that it really exist, we can feel it, we can see it and so on...) If my vision is not very clear, sorry for that, but I'm a bit drunk today, so sorry one more time. Hope you are able to forgive me...

Ximing

To dusio:

Great, you are clever enough to know the truth: man created God in order to be not evil.

But, then how can the “God” have any authentic effect to discipline you? And do you mean you are an evil one and are going to conduct any evil for your benefits? If you are not going to conduct evil things even you know that there is not a genuine God to discipline man, there is something else that restrains you from being evil.

In Taoism, this is called the “liangzhi”, or “inner good” of every human-being. And the religious practice of Taoism is to reveal and promote this inner good as much as possible.

__________________

Krotz

I think that before we can talk about good or bad nature we have to decide what is good and what is bad.
You can say killing is bad, but you can also say it shows your superiority. So it depends on what you think is good and what is bad in order to decide if people are good or bad by nature.

dusio

True thing...

dusio

I'm not a "taoist", but good to know...