Is it nature that makes us what we are or nurture? Are we predistined to be a certain person in our life and our actions are basically rooted to our genetic code and it is inevitable to to escape them? Or are we nurtured in what we become by our surroundings ,by our family friends etc etc. Or maybe a combination of both? What holds true? If nature is what makes us then how does that leave room for free will? What scietific studies have been done to the argument and what did they show?
Last but no least if free will doesnt exist (which im driven towards that it might doesnt?) then how does that have an impact on the whole theology of our faith?
Since Jesus says that no one is sinless but you have the choise not to sin that seems contradictory ro me
I don’t know what day it is most of the time, so I have little to offer such a topic.
Seems to be a combo of genetics, experiences and choices. Peer pressure often dominates our thinking and behavior. The food I eat makes a difference. The amount and quality of the sleep I get influence my thinking and choices.
God can make all the difference in what I think about, my decisions, my emotional state, what I fear and love and avoid, etc.
Sin is a force within me like gravity, or the strong or weak forces, pulling or binding me to tendencies focused on me, my desires, my preferences, my will, my ego regardless what is beneficial to others and ultimately what is best for me. God can and will break through my sinful, destructive, selfish tendencies in varying degrees.
He can take a lustful, animalistic driven human being and by His presence create within that same person a loving, giving, helpful attitude and desires for the same people He once wanted to use and discard.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
3
Both and more. I am not even sure these are even the only way of dividing the causes involved into different categories. There is also divine creation and our own choices, and these may be found mixed up in both of these other categories of nature and nurture as well.
predestined? No. The characters in a novel/movie/game written by someone else are not conscious beings no matter how sophisticated the technology may be.
I was watching this lecture by Jordan Petersen “Who Dares Say He Believes in God?” where he said, “the purpose of consciousness is to transform the possibilities of the future into the actualities of the present and past.” I was startled by how similar this was to my own thinking on the subject. Without this measurement collapse of a superposition of possibilities into the actualities of our own choices, I don’t believe consciousness is possible.
It is Paul not Jesus who says no one is without sin. And this does not mean that we do not have a choice not to sin because there are many many different sins and people do not have all the same ones.
Paul ONLY says that nobody can say they are without sin. That is all! He does not say that that we all have the same sins or that we cannot choose not to sin. The point about there being so many many different sins is that we are too overwhelmed by bad examples which it is our nature to learn by imitation that we cannot recognize, confront, and refuse them all.
Its like telling me that because gravity pulls everything down it is therefore impossible for anything to fly.
OH!! I get it. When you say “choose not to sin” you mean “choose to never sin” where I was taking it to mean “choose not to do a particular sin at a particular time.” Well of course we cannot choose to never sin! It is because we don’t make absolute choices like that. It is like saying we cannot choose to never fall. We might exercise great caution in an particular instance so that we do not fall in that case, but no we cannot make absolute choices to never fall. Our free will doesn’t work like that.
OOPS… part of the problem was also a particularly bad typo. I fixed it.
I vote both. I think there is solid evidence for genetic contributions to mental health, such as schizophrenia. However, our experiences in life do change our brains quite a bit. The athletes you see in the Olympics are probably a good analogy, being a combination of good genetics and a lot of hard work. At the very top level of athletics you need to win the gene lottery first, but you still need to put in the work.
That’s a 2,000 year old debate still isn’t anywhere near resolution.
