Environment, Heredity & The Concept of Heaven.

Why are we the way we are?  How did we each get to be the people we are?

Science has long accepted that each of us is the product of our environment and our heredity.  One can argue whether environment or heredity plays the greater role in our development, but few if anyone would argue that one is exclusive over the other.  Most agree that we interact with our environment based on our heredity.

If we are smart enough, we can change or manipulate our environment to be successful in our endeavors and grow and thrive as individuals.  Consider a seven foot male who learns to play basketball, or a gifted female mathematician who becomes a brilliant physicist or successful computer programmer.  But what would a seven foot male do in a culture without basketball?  Or what would the mathematician do if she were born in the Middle Ages?  One can only imagine the frustration such an individual would feel by being born in the wrong place or in the wrong time.  As a case in point, what would Mozart have become if he were born into a world without a piano or even music?  What would he have been if he was born into a middle eastern culture where music was banned?

But did you pick your initial environment into which you were born?  Did you pick your parents?  Did you pick your socioeconomic class or the fact that you were male or female, and the country or time into which you were born?  The answer must be no.   

It has occurred to me that we control none of those things.  We didn't select our parents.  We didn't select our genes (our heredity), and we didn't select our environment, our place or year in which we were born.

So, I ask an unsettling question.  How is it that we can be held accountable for who and what we are?   In short, we can't help but be the person who we are.  Each of us is predestined to succeed or fail or die trying to do that which we feel we must as we interact with our environment.   We each do the best we can with who and what we are, and what resources and opportunities we have at our disposal.

This idea turns the concept of sin on its head, and in doing so eliminates the reward or punishment for having lived a good or bad life respectively.   Yes, society must protect itself from bad people who would murder, rape, rob, steal or do other terrible things, but the predestination argument kills most of the established world religions which would have us believe we will be rewarded in heaven or damned in hell for being the people we could not help but become.

What does this tell you about organized religions?  What are their motives?


What do YOU think?   Leave a comment!!!


R. Allan Worrell
Author:  Father John's Gift
Contact:  alw314@yahoo.com