Here are some basics for me when exploring this issue, especially as it treats the consequences of the Fall:

1) Evil is a privation, or distortion of the good, as all creatures, even Satan, are upheld by God their creator; for any creature to be essentially evil, or bad, evil itself would have to exist as substantially as God, rather than emerging as distortion within the creature's acquired character;

2) We are still free to choose God and love of neighbor, however imperfectly, given that our consciences still operate from birth if given the proper nurturing environment;

3) Most of the research to date on the criminal personality shows its etiology to be primarily abusive early home environments impacting the child's growth and security; if evil were a primary condition of human existence, then we'd see genetics having the strongest influence in these more demonstrable expressions of our fallen nature;

4) Newborns show an early tendency to empathy, which has much to do with their experiences prior to birth and shortly after during early attachment with their mothers; this is supported by a growing body of research data, summarized in "Pre-Parenting: Nurturing Your Child From Conception," by Thomas Verny, M.D.;

5) A purely evil human being would have to be one completely invulnerable to/threatened by, love, from the beginnning, which again isn't the case with an infant Hitler, infant Stalin, or infant Osama Bin Ladin.

And so the premise of this thread, as I conceive it, which must be shown in error, is that we human beings do most of our harm through fear of intimacy, yet remain conscienably aware of that fact with a persistant longing to give and receive and love which is the worst of fears in a presumably evil creature.


Here is a lengthy discussion of such matters between Phil, myself and some others, with a forum member who seems to share more of Apoltrosis' view of human nature than anything resembling orthodox Christian theology:


http://shalomplace.com/ubb/ult..._topic;f=13;t=000059