Alin75's advice column

Is it possible that you could be born evil? or even to do bad? I always hear people saying they were born to do something... and there is the belief that homosexuals are born that way... Furthermore I see serial killers on the news and people say they were just born that way...Is it all about how you were raised or is it just the way you are? So is it possible to be born to be bad person?

First of all, let me say that I agree with Razhie's answer, so I won't repeat any of that.

I just want to expand on a few things, and then throw a more philosophical idea at you- its going to be kind of long, so if you don't like that sort of thing, you can just skip my answer altogether :)

I had a friend that studied psychology a few years ago. I saw a rather comprehensive study which looked at genetic vs environmental factors in regards to crime. The study included data gathered from adopted children. So, you had adopted children with biological parents that had a criminal background, raised in law abiding families, and vice versa. This study at least showed a greater correlation with genetics.

Basically the children with criminal biological parents, living in "good" families, had a greater tendency to become criminals than children from "good" families raised by criminals. That was rather shocking to me.

I am sure they have carried out many more studies since, so I would encourage you to try to use google for more info. Its a fascinating subject.

Now, I am more into philosophy than psychology, so let me take a different angle:

Does anyone have free will?

Volumes have been written on this, but I just want to throw a very basic scenario at you.

At any given moment, who you are and what decisions you make (e.g. to eat, to argue, to hug, to murder, etc) is something that is entirely dependent on your past. In other words, the exact person you are right this second is a product of all the decisions you ever made, and all the environmental influences you have ever faced. These shaped you into the exact individual you are now (down to each molecule, hormonal secretion, wiring of the brain, etc.). So, in order to be responsible for your actions now, you had to be responsible for your actions at a previous time, which led to the person that you are today.

So, if you exist at a theoretical point X, and any decision you make now is dependent on what you decided, and who you were at point X-1 (one second ago, one minute ago, one year ago, it doesn't matter), then similarly your responsibility for actions taken at X-1 depended entirely on an earlier time as well. In other words, you could not possibly be responsible for decisions taken at X-1 unless you were also responsible for what happened X-2.

Tracing this chain of responsibility back (x-1 leading to x-2, to x-3, to x-4), you invariably arrive at your birth- the point where you made the very first decision of your life. At that moment only two things could possibly have been responsible for that decision 1. your genetics and 2. your environment (where you were, your parents, the room temperature, etc).

But you see neither of these things were in your control. So you could not possibly have been responsible, and be held accountable, for that decision. And if every single decision thereafter depends entirely on the chain spawned from that event and that moment, then free will is nothing more than an illusion.

I do hastily want to add that there are many schools of thought on free will. However, there are a few powerful arguments against the notion that anyone is truly responsible for anything. Its not something you normally hear about, so I figured I would just bring it up.

Anyway, hope I didnt bore you too much :)

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(Rating: 5) Thank you for the long answer and no you didn't bore me. :)

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