I have been asked this question many times. I have seen it and often debated it, as nature verses nurture. The question has to be asked, are ethics something that is found in our DNA; nature? This debate would require us to look at all aspects with “nurture” removed in order to evaluate the question. What we fail to understand, from the time we are minutes old, nurture begins its influence. It can never truly be removed from the variables; thus evaluating nature verses nurture is a moot point. If we were to accept absolute truth in its entirety, then we would have to accept that humans are all sinful by nature. This means that there would be no good inherently in us, thus no basis would exist to distinguish good from bad. This would mean that the only way we would learn to distinguish good from bad would be for someone to explain it to us. Think about this for a moment, isn’t this how a child truly is? Do we not have to “teach” our child this concept? Many times we see our children do something and correct them; assuming that they “knew better”. In some situations that may be a correct assumption, but in some it may not. I believe what is in our “DNA” is more of a “willingness” to see what we do as being wrong, maybe not that it is wrong, but the ability to accept that idea. We develop our standards of ethics and morality by what we see, what we do, how we are treated, and what we are taught; all of these are learned behaviors. How could individuals like Hitler and Mussolini have been the way they were if good was in us by nature? To accept this argument, it would require us to believe that we would by choice ignore good for the ideology of bad. I find this concept much harder to believe rather than believe that we are bad by nature and learn what is good.