I would say 50/50 and the negative part is usually hidden until provoked, so the normal behavior is what we see, try not to derive a yes or no and right or wrong attitude because no one can win since non can convince each other with qualification and proof.

Beginning to sound like ego talk.

This post has been edited by 3dassets: Nov 17 2010, 01:14 AM

So far all you have given me is sketchy anecdotal references and your personal opinion. While i do agree it is difficult to measure the level of hate in a society, but I do expect some level of hatred to manifest in physical world in some form of indexes that may suggestively support what you claimed. Do you have any?

Even if I were to accept your observation about the world around you as an indication that hate level has always been on the high side, that does not mean human nature is destructive and violent. We don't see any violence more than peaceful times in the world may be because of the good side of human nature suppressing it?

So aside from these convoluted factors that govern certain human behaviors, what i do see is simply a net result which suggests strongly we are peaceful, cooperative and altruistic more than violent, hateful and selfish.

yea . we do .
so that we can do something by believing in something .
is a motivating power .

I don't need a religion but I believe in my ability and ready to face death, my conscience is my only guide. I do believe we are created but not necessary by god.

religion can shaped a country to be united.
however, religion is not the future for a country to advance further.
religion is just psychologically controlling your behavior or desire.
is science where people will find reasoning and fact.

Religion is for the weak minded, and churches exploit this. Instead of asking vital questions in life, people prefer to hide behind a book of bed-time stories made centuries ago to put the children to sleep. It's much easier if you just need to believe in this guy in the sky, much nicer to simply pray away your sins when you need to. Religion as a whole is a cult.

Religion has become more like music or art because we don't need religion to tell us how to behave or how the natural world works anymore. Most of it that contained in holy texts, particularly in abrahamic faiths are either wrong, inaccurate, outdated or simply not relevant. Take the case of 7 days creation or noah's ark or morality which many believers embrace these stories as symbolic, parable where moral lesson can be drawn or as a general guidance to living. So what is left is the feeling part of religion, believer will argue for phenomena like love, hate, violence, joy etc .. are indications of validity of a belief. So the question is do you like rap music or classical music, where sometimes people are puzzled and greatly trouble why in the world some crazy teenagers are hooked to heavy metal and paint their bodies with bizzare art. Can the world do without music? I like music a lot, while I find it gives me inspiration and peace at times, it is only a natural human reaction that does not require any supernatural explanation.

I don't believe there is god means I think there is no god, its not a believe. No worshiping and no one above me only nature and behavior at work.

Just do a search like crimes per second on google. FBI in 2002 says that a property crime occurs every 3 seconds, larceny every 4.5 seconds, burglary every 14.7 seconds, etc.

So, saying that there is 1010 crimes commited per day is completely off the mark.

Ok I admit then it is completely off the mark. But how about the argument? Do you see crime every 5 seconds happening around you or every 5000 seconds? Or your friends? Or maybe we can compare that with the number of meetings with people and see how many times these meetings turn out to be nasty? That would suggest we are inherently hateful, wouldn't it?

This is why statistics cannot be absolute, just because bad things didn't happen around us, we thought it is save until we were hit. Just because we don't show our bad side, people thought we are friendly, much like this forum.

Did you not see crime happening every 5 or 5000 seconds because it did not happen, or because you weren't there when it happened?

What you've been missing isn't a DISASTER or a TRAGEDY to happen. What you're really missing is the chain reaction of HIDDEN NEGATIVITY, i.e. insecurity, that leads up to the tragedies. Human nature did not suppress the tragedy from happening. It is simply at its right course of time until the chain reaction reaches the catastrophic level, which is war.

Take this for example. You, for example. Have you ever been hypocritical, or are you a morally perfect being? Of course you knew the answer. But the problem is, someone next to you, or around you, takes your imperfection as an excuse, a leverage to justify to himself that having a lilttle negativity is no big deal. And soon this chain reaction continues to the next person, and the next, and the next, and the next, until it reaches to a person who finally thinks it's completely justified to start a murder, or a war. This ongoing chain reaction is the subtlety of deceit, fear, laziness, and insecurity. Everyday we seemed to justify our vices, without realizing that although we are not the ones who caused the murders and wars, but indirectly, we are the chain reaction to those who finally did it, and we are guilty.

That my friend, is human nature. While you may still argue that people are still not the barbarians you were exposed from televisions and books, have you ever asked why haven't anyone start helping each other helplessly out of pure HUMAN LOVE? Instead, what did you get?

Quiet isolation, ostracism, and xenophobic tendencies, the act of not giving a d*mn about each other. Selfishness. Haven;t you experienced any of this human nature tendencies around you? Or are you deluded to live in your dream utopia that everything is actually peaceful as it is? Has anything changed so far from the beginning of history itself?

This post has been edited by Deadlocks: Nov 28 2010, 05:42 PM

Religion is plain business and political back in Rome thanks to Ceaser

Let me put it simply that I don't believe what you guys are saying is true. i believe in this positive side of human nature, that we are not that selfish, uncivilized barbaric cannibals we once were. The raw survivalist instincts that drove our ancestors to torture, murder and plunder, to ensure their tribes stayed alive in a harsh wild world, grabbing any resources available, are being suppressed or replaced by the better or positive side of human nature. The xenophobic, territorial, hateful, murderous, warmongering animal urges while are still very much alive in most of us, now remain subdued, hidden, diluted and tamed because of our development, our understanding, our globalization, our management of world resources that help strengthened altruism, cooperation, morality, love, compassion etc .. To take the argument further, surely the relative peace and crime free world we enjoy now, as compared to say 2K years ago where human lives were cheaper, brutality were much more rampant, murder was as easy as killing a cat, we must have changed something in us. We have 6 billion people in the world today much more than anytime in history, living in packed cities with relative comfort and contentment. How could we do that if we have so much negativity in our lives every day for the past hundreds of years over tens of generations?

Hence there are always balances in life, when say, your basic needs like food and water are threatened, you could transform from a loving compassionate altruistic human to a barbaric selfish cannibal trying to keep your family alive. We are not there today, we may be someday. We must diligently work on not letting this day come to us.

This post has been edited by SpikeMarlene: Nov 28 2010, 06:24 PM

We do indeed have 6 billion people on the planet, here's how some of them are living:

Colombia: An armed conflict has been ongoing since 1964, with over 2000 military deaths in 2010 alone.

India: The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups since 1967, known as Naxalites or Naxals, and the Indian government. More than 1,000 deaths for the year of 2010.

Afghanistan: Civil war ongoing, estimated between 600k to 2 million killed and 5 million displaced. Children, both male and female, are sold as prostitutes to feed the families.

Somali, Iraq and Sudan are also in civil war or at the least frequent battles between government and rebels.

Brazil and Mexico are losing the war against drugs in their own capitals, with people dying daily as a result.

North Korea is basically starving, as is a lot of places in Africa.

Closer to Malaysia, there is an insurgency in Thailand and Philippines that is ongoing although violence has dropped. East Timor, Chechnya and Bosnia were at war in the last 2 decades.

Middle East is, according to Amnesty International a great place to be a muslim man, but not any of the following, i.e. a non-believer, a woman, a homosexual, a prisoner or a Jew.

China is not a great place for political dissidents.

The above are just some of the major things going on in the world, all of which is caused by humans. I haven't even touched on crime, perhaps the poor lady who was killed because she refused to let go of her handbag (don't ask me which, there's just too many).

Then there are also the cases where family was killed for insurance, latest one in India where two girls were killed by the neighbour for 50k rupees or about RM3.5k. The dad insured them for something like RM200k each.

Do I have to go on? Drug mules, forced prostitution, slaved labour, child pronography, torture, raping, etc., all of these are happening around the world as a direct result of the brutality of mankind.

Then how did we get to 6 billion?

With all the attritions you attributed to bad human nature, how could we have possibly grown tremendously over the past 1 hundred years? What are the good human nature contributions that you did not mention that are not involved in wars or crimes?

Year Population
1 200 million
1000 275 million
1500 450 million
1650 500 million
1750 700 million
1804 1 billion
1850 1.2 billion
1900 1.6 billion
1927 2 billion
1950 2.55 billion
1955 2.8 billion
1960 3 billion
1965 3.3 billion
1970 3.7 billion
1975 4 billion
1980 4.5 billion
1985 4.85 billion
1990 5.3 billion
1995 5.7 billion
1999 6 billion
2006 6.5 billion
2009 6.8 billion
2011 7 billion


This post has been edited by SpikeMarlene: Dec 2 2010, 03:26 PM

Simple, we breed damn fast with no natural predators. Here's one more survey that was just released:

One in three man in South Africa admit to rape.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/2...can-rape-survey

This post has been edited by athlee: Dec 2 2010, 03:27 PM

So what allow us to breed fast (low mortality rate) and nurture the youngs (basic needs) to maturity to reach 6 billion?

The killing is much slower than new born, you can't count the number of good and bad.

I think it is called natural / survival instinct. It has little to do with good versus bad. Neither does it have anything to do with religion.