Hi, I’m new. I am a non-denominational Christian, born-again.
The part of Genesis 8:21 I am referencing is the part where God says that every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood.
As a side note, Abigail Marsh, a neuroscientist and expert on both extremes of the “caring” spectrum(altruistic people and psychopathic people) has lots of studies looking at their brains.
Welcome, KingdomSeeker. On Genesis 8:21, the phrase about “the inclination of the human heart” being evil “from youth/childhood” is doing important work, but it helps to read it carefully: it describes a pervasive tendency or orientation, not a claim that every person is maximally evil at every moment, nor that humans are incapable of genuine goods. In other words, “inclination” can name a disorder of desire that shows up early, without implying determinism or the impossibility of moral agency.
Your neuroscience reference is also relevant: differences in empathy and restraint (and their neural correlates) can help us describe how moral tendencies vary across people—some unusually altruistic, some unusually callous—without settling the theological question by itself. For me, that fits the idea that moral formation and disordered desire are real features of human development, while still leaving responsibility grounded in assent and choice rather than in mere impulse.
Jeremiah 17:9 seems relevant in the same way as Genesis 8:21: it diagnoses the unreliability and self-deception of human desire and judgment, not an absolute incapacity for good or a claim that every act is maximally sinful.
The verb is understood, not stated; the structure is such that the clause of concern may be explanatory for the preceding, i.e. “on account of man, that is because every inclination is evil . . . .” That’s how I take it, anyway.
Hi, welcome to the forum. I would say that the Hebrew Scriptures use all kinds of poetic devices and figurative language to communicate, as do people in every culture, and the verse you quoted is part of a theological narrative (a story) that is using hyperbole to make a point, it’s not an objective scientific statement or some kind of absolute philosophical proposition. It is situated in the middle of a story where the unembodied God of the universe is smelling stuff and talking to himself (anthropomorphism) and promising things using conventional merisms in the next verse. Merisms are a poetic device to talk about totality by mentioning two opposites or two extremes. "As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.” The meaning of this is to clarify that the totality of human existence will not be threatened by God over the totality time, which is another hyperbole. It’s not saying there will never be droughts or disasters that prevent a harvest, or wars that prevent a planting, or that global warming is impossible because God promised cold for eternity.
I’ve just been on the internet for a while. It gives real “everything humans think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood” vibes a lot of the time.
Thanks. That helps a lot–I have been thinking how to discuss this with a godly man who keeps quoting that passage. I think a catching point has been–how does a flood change the seasons? –but that is likely more of a modern mindset, too, as we see things in a longer outcome, and don’t fear the Sea as much as the ANE did, too.
Welcome to the forum! Good question. And it made a lot more sense after a reread it after the comments, as I initially read the title as “…some people are genuinely autistic.”
There would appear to be a general belief that the writers of the bible had full knowledge, not only of God but of all humanity. Not only does that knowledge extend over the known (and unknown) world, but also right up to the present day.
Yeah, right.
Richard
Setting aside for a minute, the obvious possibility that this passage was intended to be hyperbolic, I have always thought that there was a very easy and simple answer to this question. If we recognize, and assume of course, that the word “intention” comes from the Hebrew word Yetzer, then the translation is often said to be “inclination”, “intention” or ever “capacity”. We would all agree that using “capacity” infers the possibility that any of us, and all of us, are capable of evil. But NONE of us are born evil…only the capacity to do evil. I think this is an easy and accurate interpretation, at least for most of us.
Not to mention that in all the equatorial zones of the globe, there aren’t four seasons, and it doesn’t get cold. They just alternate between rainy (or less dry) and dry (or less rainy) seasons.
I’ve had a chance to look for and find Marsh’s book The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between.
Genesis 8:21 is doing theological work, not neuroscience. Spoken after the flood, it acknowledges that despite judgment, the basic bent of the human heart remains disordered from early on, which is precisely why God commits to preserving and governing the world rather than repeatedly destroying it.
Your side note about Abigail Marsh is interesting and relevant, but it needs careful framing. Marsh’s research doesn’t say “some people are good and some are evil.” It shows that people vary in how sensitive they are to others’ fear—altruistic individuals tend to be highly responsive to it, while psychopathic traits correlate with blunted responsiveness. That helps explain differences in empathy and pro-social behavior, but it doesn’t redefine what “evil” is, or eliminate moral responsibility.
So I’d put it this way: Genesis diagnoses a universal moral and spiritual disorder; neuroscience can help explain some of the mechanisms through which that disorder (or its restraint) expresses itself. The two aren’t in conflict, as long as we don’t collapse theology into brain scans or treat biology as a substitute for moral judgment.
As a student of Franciscan theology I note there was discussion among the medievals about the extent to which we may tend to good or evil. Duns Scotus cites the double possibility that although we may tend to our natural and selfish needs we do have a graced capacity to go beyond that and be motivated by God’s goodness and justice instead of our own selfish will.
Also the very negative view of human nature on a lot of Protestant theology is more extreme than in the Orthodox Church that sees us as immature but capable of being beatified by Christ and the Spirit.
So you are saying that, because there is a caring spectrum in the human brain, then this might conflict with the statement in Genesis 8:21 “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his herat, 'Never gain will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.” /?? This is a very dramatic verse, of course. But how do you connect this with Marsh’s studies?
How a static mythological story can declare all of humanity morally corrupt is beyond me. So nothing has changed in 0ver 6000 years?
(Tempted to put in a comment about evolution here…)
Richard
No need for comments on evolution, Richard 
I asked Kingdom Seeker to clarify something which he may already have a more nuanced thought on – a "static mythological story " which “can declare all of humanity morally corrupt” is really not the issue here. “All” of humankind is composed of people who sometimes do good and then other times do evil – and sometimes do “good” for wrong motives --but who are never 100 percent in any of these camps–and if God’s standard is perfection, then the statement about our sullied righteousness stands as stated in the story. And that is another issue. I was asking Kingdom Seeker something in the hopes that he would clarify his own thoughts.
Surely it means that altruism is evil? As menstruous rags?
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