I've always likened it to a cake or cart
If you or I build a cart and we build it improperly so that the cart overturns in a ditch, who's at fault -- you or the cart ?
You are, obviously. You have total responsibility for the failure of that cart to match your expectations
If you or I bake a cake and for whatever reason (poor ingredients, improperly set oven, etc.) that cake is a failure, who's fault is that failure --
your's or the cake's ? Your fault, obviously. The cake will only be as good as you make it
It's the same with humanity. We're links on a chain. Everything we are is determined by our DNA and this becomes more obvious daily as DNA research
discovers such things as the ' Warrior Gene' as announced the other day. That gene determins aggression etc. in all its forms and is responsible for
most of the ghastly crimes ever to occur
Years ago, I accepted without question that ' Nurture' was the predominant force in our development, i.e., the way we're raised, the things which
happen to us, etc.
I wanted to believe that - wanted to believe that babies were born as almost blank slates and that even those negative inherited traits could be
ameliorated via good parenting, good education, good environment, etc.
Now, being very much older and having observed both Nature and Nurture in action AND having seen the imprint they did or did not leave on the growing
and then end product, I state that beyond all doubt, Nature is by far the stronger influence
Everything we are, from the colour of our eyes to our predisposition to depression or our talent for drawing, is determined at the moment of
conception -- is inherited from the millions of ancestors we each have
At the moment of conception, it's a lucky-dip similar to the Lottery balls bouncing in the perspex sphere before one makes it down the tube with the
potential to change one or more people's lives
That's why two brothers can be as unalike as chalk and cheese
It's why families who provide superior education and training, opportunities etc., nevertheless produce criminals and killers
Had another sperm won the race to fertilize the egg, or had our mothers conceived at a different hour, different night -- we would be entirely
different to the way we are now
Each of our ancestral chains contains millions of individuals and it is they, and not the sort of bedtime stories we heard or the school we attended,
which determined who and what we are. The blueprint is set in our flesh and bones and brains, at the moment of conception. The best Nurture can do
is smooth off the edges a bit
You can call it an equation or whatever you like, but in the end we return to one thing --- God, if he exists and has any interest at all -- cannot
judge us, cannot sentence us to an eternity of hellfire
No, God -- if he/she is a god worth bothering about -- can only apologise wholeheartedly to us, and applaud us, and reward us for enduring our
sentence on Earth. Because if God claims to be our creator, then it is God alone who is responsible for the way we are
This won't appeal to those who choose to believe the writings of men thousands of years ago and who needed to create a Boogey-Man-In-The-Sky to keep
the natives in line with horror tales of judgement and punishments
.
edit on 7-4-2011 by Dock9 because: general tidying up
