Sartre

You are saying Adam chose to do bad, but was not inherently evil and so had the free decision to do that. Whereas you are then painting humans all the same in saying we are all inherently evil and so will continue to sin like Adam did, but without the freedom of will to stop ourselves? I hear religious people say over and over again that all humans are sinners and we all require forgiveness, does that also entail the fact that we do not have the free will in which to not sin? Or is it just so damn ridiculous that in the enviroment that we live in we can't help but sin? Was Adam capable of sin before he ate the apple? By our standards would we have said he lived a sin free life, or did he live an amoral lifestyle since sin did not exist? After Adam ate the apple God then creates the laws of the world, whats sinful and what is not. Did he create humans as sinners? Or did he create laws in which to entrap humans as not being able to live a life without sin?

How are humans inherently evil?

If you say that if a person, left to raise themself will ultimately turn out selfish in their actions because of this inbuilt selfishness you must agree that this selfishness is ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬Åhuman natureÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

What is the general difference between the essence of human and the essence of animal? The distinction is that we as humans are always transcending our situation. Do chimps live differently now than they did one hundred years ago? They walk around different areas of jungles and so on, but their general existence is the same. Humans move forward all the time so it is reasonable for me to say that, that factor in itself is what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We are beings who create our purpose and our essence, animals do not. Animals are static in that sense, and that is how we differ. If I may quote Ortega: "Dante would have likened him [the human] to a boat drawn up on the beach with one end of its keel in the water and the other on the sand". In this the distinction is made between animal and human through saying it is true, we have similarities with the animal kingdom but on the other hand there is much more to us that make us human. There is this whole difference in our existence and therefore essence that makes humans ontologically different. You can call that a higher evolved intellect or something handed to us by a divine creator. I just thought it would be useful to point out that the difference in animal and human is not completely down to abstract questioning and reasoning.

To argue that we are evil by instinct would be to argue that we are evil in essence. It is that point that troubles me as first you have to understand what exactly that essence is. The essence of the human being isnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t necessarily one thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s inherited, it is one that is defined historically and so can change at any time as the present and the future will be past and therefore history. What makes humans evil, or good, or moral is what we have been taught. We always have the choice to go against what we have been taught, and so we are not thrown into the world with a pre-built mode of evil because we are human, as humans we are condemned to choose. Even to not choose is a choice we make; we can not escape our freedom, to say that it is in our nature to be evil is an escape and denial of us being human beings, and simply becoming a thing. We are palming our freedom away, just like a person who says ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅIt is not my fault I did X, It is just the way I amÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

Surley these abstract questions of whether we have a soul or not will lead us nowhere, can anyone give us a factor which actually distinguishes us as humans from the animal kingdom. Which does not require us to dwell on whether we believe it to be true or not, just for the sake of this discussion, since it always seems to end in the soul debate.