Is it Satan or Human Nature?

Is Satan or Human Nature causing evil in the world?

In the Scriptures, evil is attributed variously to human nature and to Satan.   If it is human nature, then the evil things people do out of greed and malice are a heritage in evolution's DNA and in our ancestors' epigenetics.

The epigenetics we have from when we first lived as modern humans in isolated families in Ice Age caves, doing wonderful paintings on the walls, are for us to be in loving, cooperative, multigenerational extended families that had friendly relations with other families to get mates for our young members.

These family structures and relationships continuted when the weather warmed and we went from hunter-gatherers living in caves to nomadic herders building seasonal gathering places of gigntic stones for the different families to meet.

Then we settled in villages to be farmers, the nature of some people changed because we had houses, fields, orchards, harvests, herds, and social positions to protect and enhance. Some people changed from the friendly caring, sharing relationship among and within families, to relationships of greed, envy, stealing, violence and enslavement.

Was that change in some humans a natural effect of the change in circumstances that brought out what we consider the evil aspects of human nature, which are one aspect of evolutions' behaviors to select and perfect within and between species.

Or was it Satan encouraging and facilitating greed, envy and violence with worldly temptations, one of the worst of which is the ambition for glory that motivates the young to engage in wars.

Whether from evolution's ruthlessly competitive aspect in our DNA and epigenetics, or the work of Satan, we must discern and oppose in ourselves and others, what wisdom in the Scriptures warns us is destructive human behavior. And we must encourage the peace, justice and loving kindness that the Scriptures tell us is the only way to have happiness in life.
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