Saturday Reflection #54

I don’t like to see “man’s nature” described as if it were some sort of virtuous ideal. After rejecting religion, I have seen many atheists (sometimes under the guise of “secular humanism”) cling to a vicious fallacy: that deep down, we’re all inherently good. I’m not suggesting that we are evil at our core. We are not born immoral, we are born amoral, and in order for us to become socially acceptable people, it takes quite a bit of explanation, persuasion, trial and error, contemplation, a varying degree of effort, and even luck of circumstance. What has made us great as a species is not our nature, it has been our ability to surpass our nature.