It cannot be seriously doubted that nowadays people are more scientific than at any previous time. Despite its obvious shortcomings, the technological successes of science have seduced millions into believing that it is the only way to describe the workings of the world properly.
One of the most unfortunate things to emerge from our love affair with science is that it has encouraged the more extreme believers into using the scientific method as the only way to describe people properly. In the departments of the learned, gone are such words as soul, spirit, will, love, hate, and so on. In biology, genetics, medicine, and even in philosophy, people are more and more regarded as physical machines, meat machines, in which the only processes are the ‘bottom-up’, causative ones ; the ‘top-down’, purposeful processes are not even considered worthy of study. Even the lovely, tragic Psyche has been dismissed from psychology.
I wonder if the more enthusiastic believers have thought deeply about what follows from their infatuation with this view of science? It seems to me that supposed causative determinants of personality and behaviour have two major sources : the first is the genes : and the second is behavioural conditioning.
In the case of genetics, it is supposed that our bodily character is determined by the arrangements of certain molecules and their interactions ; and this bodily character is the only character we have. These genes, these arrangements of molecules, are themselves composed of simpler molecules which have their recent origins in the soil and ultimately come from stardust and the Big Bang.
However we dress this belief up, on its own it cannot account for moral behaviour without involving a lot of faith in unspeakable mysteries. One may contemplate a molecule or an atom or an electron for ever and have no hope of discerning any sign of personality – nor any hint of moral behaviour – in them. Nor any sense of purpose. Atoms, etc., just do what atoms do.
In the case of behavioural conditioning we encounter something similar. The child, the collection of genes, behaves in ways that are determined by its environment – principally by its parents and other influences. And the parents, et al, are themselves no more than assemblies of genes.
What distinguishes a saint from a sinner? The mere arrangement of his genetic molecules and/or the conditioning he has received. And he has had no control over either ; and he can never have control over either.
In the best traditions of the best novels, I will leave it to you, dear reader, to work out where such extreme beliefs will lead ; to work out the consequences for a society that accepts these beliefs without some serious questioning.
Adventures of ideas 