Are Humans Evil by Nature?

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It all depends on whether you think nature is evil. Is a male lion evil for eating male lion cubs? No, it's just how lions work. No one is wringing their hands and trying to put social programmes in place to prevent lions from eating ther young.

So what is evil? Not nature.

Evil is that we've come up with a moral code that says some behaviours and attitudes are bad and others are good, and we have concluded that people are actively able to choose between the behaviours and sttitudes the moral code says are good and those the moral code says are bad. If you mostly choose the bad actions and attitudes then you are judged by the moral code to be evil.

It's not our nature that makes us evil, but acting in opposition to the established moral code.

So the real question is, should the moral code judge actions as evil which are part of one's nature? And if so who gets to decide what's in and out of the moral code? Certainly not our leaders, as they are some of the most egregious breakers of the moral code.

Some people believe incest should be OK, others believe incest is terribly evil. Who's right? Some species actively avoid incest through some sort of non-moral process, but other species have no biological controls preventing incest. So nature is inconsistent on this matter. Same with eating babies.

We would say human sacrifice is evil. But nature would say, if the strong kill the weak via human sacrifice that simply strengthens the genepool by getting rid of the weak (mostly) and so benefits the population as a whole. It's our current moral code which says human sacrifice is evil, but it's not always been thus.