Hello Penelope, thank you for joining the discussion on the good Dr Dawkins. If I may comment on your response here, your phrase 'others inherit the selfish gene' is a misunderstanding of Dawkins' intent. Individual genes are selfish, but a range of strategies at the organism level, ranging from selfishness to altruism, can lead genes to increase. There is a real disconnect between the genetic and the cultural (memetic) levels of selfishness. I think that 'selfishness' in culture is more a matter of nurture than nature, so more meme than gene. Human genes evolved to be social, to cooperate with a clan, whereas individualist private property only emerged in the last 2% or so of the time since our genus split from australopithecus two million years ago. For most of their existence, our genes have been intrinsically social. The atomised world of modern capitalist selfishness is only a very recent aberration by evolutionary time scales.Penelope wrote:This is backside foremost - If you are taking The Bible's version of God, because the Bible says all of us are sinners, born in sin and it also advocates 'spare the rod and spoil the child'. No, I just think that as some children have red hair or fair skin, or dark hair and olive skin, depending on which genes they inherit, some children inherit a good, kind or loving nature and others inherit the selfish gene. There seems to be truth in the maxim that there is good in the worst of us and bad in the best of us......and it depends what hand life deals you, as to whether the good is allowed to surface, or the bad. Perhaps??Interbane: D) The children were children of god, created in his image and thus blessed with his kindness while in the innocence of youth.
Your claim that Augustine's doctrine of original sin is found in the Bible is not right. Paul says all have sinned, not that all are born in sin. The Bible presents a gracious innocence as the natural state of humanity, with the disorder of sin introduced by the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise and then Cain killing Abel. The Roman Catholic doctrine on original sin has a weak Biblical basis, let alone its completely absent empirical basis. The purpose of the doctrine of original sin is more about manipulation of the community by priests to enforce their role as mediators between ordinary people and God and bolster the power of the church. Original sin has been a successful meme, central to the ability of the church to grow.
Dawkins notes in The Selfish Gene that the mistranslation of the Biblical term 'young woman' as 'virgin' enabled a significant cultural mutation with the rise of the cult of the virgin birth. I suspect a similar cultural mutation occurred to produce the Christian doctrine of original sin, which when you look at the details is really a misreading of the intent of Christ.