February 26, 2010

Good and Evil, by nature and by Teaching

Ary Scheffer: The Temptation of Christ, 1854Image via Wikipedia

I think we human beings all have some moral standards by NATURE called "conscience". This means even without the teachings of Jesus Christ or Confucian or whatever, we should still be able to comprehend things such as "love", "understanding", "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", etc.. We also without teachings should be able to recognize "evil spirit", because we understand what hurt ourselves must also hurt others.
This is what I meant earlier "human beings are born both Good and Evil". They come to us as part of our Nature. And the morality created by such nature like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", is something representing truth and we should never give them up.

However, there is another kind of moral standard made by MAN, usually under the name of "God", or "Saint", teaching us what is Good and what is Bad, such as pagan, adultery, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, etc.. These teachings were/are usually set up for certain purposes, and they all changing through history (I mean a history in a large picture, not history within hundreds or couple of thousands years). They may have done lots of "Good" but also lots of "Bad" at the same time, so they remain controversial to scholars or whoever asking questions.
These types of moral standards, are belong to what I said earlier as "Doctrine" (or someone help me to find a better English word please). They do NOT necessarily represent TRUTH.
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