Go to any of the Canadian Reddit forums for example that allow discussion and man, it's fuck the government, fuck immigrants, who do you think controls everything, etc... it's not what it was like 5 years ago.
Meanwhile on here it's like hello KIA2, I'd like to have a discussion on... Banned. DOM didn't like your haircut.
This is a complicated question. One that many smart people still haven't fully solved. Do I believe we have complete autonomy outside of God such that we can act in a manner God does not want us to or doesn't already know we will do? No, I do not. When it comes to God, we do not have free will. We cannot do something unexpected from God's point of view. God already knows exactly what we will do before we do it and he knows exactly how the story of humanity will unfold before it does.
Do we have free will in relation to God? No.
Do we have free will in relation to us? Yes. From our perspective we have choice but only because we aren't God so we don't know what we're going to do before we decide to do it and therefore we believe we have choice; however, this choice is ultimately an illusion from the perspective of God. We evaluate the actions we're going to take by envisioning multiple different actions and then decide on one. We have free will in the sense that we could pick absolutely any option and nothing is stopping us from doing so but God already knows exactly what we're going to pick before we've picked it and God knows the formula to change reality such that we would pick something different if that is what God wanted.
I think many people have the wrong idea about God. God isn't testing you to see if you will be good or evil. Imagine you were an all powerful God that knows everything. Omnipotent. Supreme. Etc... What's the one thing that you would truly be concerned with? It wouldn't be whether some humans you created were good or evil. Good and evil are trivial concepts to you that don't matter. What does matter is NOT KNOWING. The one thing God doesn't have is the ability to not know. God created humanity to try to not know. He gave us "free will" in hopes of us doing something he didn't know we would do. He's not trying to get us to be good or evil, he's trying to get us to surprise him but we can't. God still loves his creations but unfortunately, we are actually incapable of fulfilling our purpose in relation to God. God keeps the world going and changes the parameters all the time in hopes of being surprised though he gave up that hope long ago and now entertains himself with repetitive stories he already has seen a trillion times before. The evil person redeems himself to be good is a redemption story God has done infinite number of times or the good person who is corrupted. We believe we have choice in the matter but we were always going to be that part of the story if that is what we were destined to be.
You may say something like well if you believe that why don't you just go full evil and start killing everyone for sport and raping whomever you want? Why don't I indeed. I'm not doing it. Why aren't I? Shouldn't I? But I don't. Interesting... isn't it. Because I wasn't meant to or I would be.
The concepts of heaven and hell do exist though which is basically God just placing "evil" people/souls with other "evil" people/souls because he knows these evil aligned people are better suited to be with other people like them and "good" aligned people/souls are better suited to be with people like them. God already knows where you're going before you do and when you get there it will be where you were meant to be.
I do believe I am good aligned but maybe I'm wrong. I'm not God so I can't say for certain. Just based on my observation and evaluation of people, that's where I believe I am. From what I know of Mao, Stalin and Hitler? Mao = Evil, Stalin = Unsure, Hitler = Good. But my answer is biased and truthfully, we really don't know enough to pass judgement because what we know about these people is pretty warped given their significance. There's a reason the bible says not to pass judgement and to leave that for God because most people are probably going to get things wrong but we can make a good guess anyhow. Mao was objectively making his people's lives worst and killed a lot of good people to achieve his aims which were not good aims from the perspective of enhancing the people he represented. Stalin to me seems like he may have had good intentions and managed as best he could given the situation he was in. I can't say for certain he was evil. Many of the evil things attributed to Stalin are actually pet projects of other powerful men within the USSR regime not necessarily Stalin himself and I think people overexaggerate his power over the entire USSR, hence why Stalin was such a paranoid man also. Hitler clearly was trying to do what was best for his people and came across resistance from not-so-good of people. Did he make all the best decisions? No, but he wasn't meant to either. Of course everyone's understand of Mao, Stalin and Hitler is pretty biased. You might be better off asking me about less significant and controversial figures that each have billions of pages of writing on them.
Good and evil is another really complicated subject. It is not easily understood. Good and evil exists within everything. The same action can be both good and evil depending on circumstance, which is what makes good and evil so complicated. If I had to reduce good and evil down to anything, I think good people promote equity and bad people promote inequity. I don't mean a modern leftist take on equity either. Equity just means getting what you deserve (fairness). Much of what people say equity today is actually inequity. That is one aspect, furthermore I think good people understand and accept their nature and promote values/beliefs that are inline with their nature while evil people either don't know their nature or accept their nature so they promote values/beliefs that are in conflict with their nature. At a high-level, if you were a vacuum cleaner then an evil vacuum cleaner would be one that blows dust everywhere and then demands to be paid half your income. A good vacuum cleaner would be one that sucks up dust everywhere and then demands to be paid a price you both agree to be fair given the supply/demand for the work of a vacuum cleaner.
In my opinion it is wrong to suggest power corrupts but rather it's just that the people currently with power are corrupt. If power corrupts then God is the most corrupt force in existence. Those who wield power can be good or evil, like all things. It's just currently evil wields more power than good which doesn't always have to be the case. I think historically, this has changes from time-to-time from era-to-era. It is true to say that good people in power won't last forever even if those good people never become corrupted themselves, they eventually die and things change.
Very well written and very interesting perspective. You've certainly given me a lot to think about.