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.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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