RE: The Human Brain: Hardwired to Sin
May 2, 2010 at 5:11 pm
(This post was last modified: May 3, 2010 at 6:08 am by Caecilian.)
First of all, thanks to PTH for posting the link. A very interesting article.
But maybe more than just interesting. It seems to me that its the sort of work that can be used as ammunition against a particular theist counter-argument. I'll explain what I mean.
Most (maybe all) of us will be familiar with the 'problem of evil' argument against the existence of God. It runs something like this:
God is alleged to be both omnipotent and infinitely/ perfectly good. And yet we see evil all around us in the world- genocide, child abuse, torture etc. How can God allow these horrors to occur? Surely this implies that the Christian God is conceptually incoherent- He is either omnipotent or infinitely good. He can't be both.
One of the stock theist replies goes as follows:
Ah, but God has given humans free will. The horrors that you refer to are the consequences of freely chosen human actions. They don't in any way impinge upon the infinite goodness of God.
Now this theist counter-argument has plenty wrong with it. It doesn't touch the issue of horrors that aren't due to human action (like malaria, or the Haiti earthquake). And it relies on a libertarian account of free will (not to be confused with political libertarianism!), which is itself highly suspect and open to attack.
But what if we were hardwired to sin? It seems to me that this is a very strong objection to the theist position. If God has designed us in such a way that we have an inherent, biologically-based bias towards certain sinful types of action, then the 'problem of evil' can't be just down to our free will. It must also be a design issue, and thus at least partly down to God, pointing towards the incoherence of the whole 'God' concept.
I'd be very interested in getting some feedback on this, especially feedback from theists.
But maybe more than just interesting. It seems to me that its the sort of work that can be used as ammunition against a particular theist counter-argument. I'll explain what I mean.
Most (maybe all) of us will be familiar with the 'problem of evil' argument against the existence of God. It runs something like this:
God is alleged to be both omnipotent and infinitely/ perfectly good. And yet we see evil all around us in the world- genocide, child abuse, torture etc. How can God allow these horrors to occur? Surely this implies that the Christian God is conceptually incoherent- He is either omnipotent or infinitely good. He can't be both.
One of the stock theist replies goes as follows:
Ah, but God has given humans free will. The horrors that you refer to are the consequences of freely chosen human actions. They don't in any way impinge upon the infinite goodness of God.
Now this theist counter-argument has plenty wrong with it. It doesn't touch the issue of horrors that aren't due to human action (like malaria, or the Haiti earthquake). And it relies on a libertarian account of free will (not to be confused with political libertarianism!), which is itself highly suspect and open to attack.
But what if we were hardwired to sin? It seems to me that this is a very strong objection to the theist position. If God has designed us in such a way that we have an inherent, biologically-based bias towards certain sinful types of action, then the 'problem of evil' can't be just down to our free will. It must also be a design issue, and thus at least partly down to God, pointing towards the incoherence of the whole 'God' concept.
I'd be very interested in getting some feedback on this, especially feedback from theists.
