Tangle writes:
To be clear, I gave you a prime mover only for the purpose of the argument. My personal position is that we do not know and may never know but I believe (proper use of the word) that there isn't/wasn't one.
I think that's what I said but if it wasn't clear that's what I meant.
Tangle writes:
But as a matter of pure fact, empathy is a physical emotion that we are born with just like all our others. To some degree it can and is changed in a positive or negative way by our upbringing, but if there is a defect, it can not be added - hence sociopaths and pyschopaths.
It seems to me that when a child is born it really doesn't have anything more than a survival instinct, primarily the need to be fed. I would think that the child's emotional development starts pretty much right away after birth and starts to receive love, or possibly an absence of love which starts off the emotional development.
I agree that there can be a defect that causes psychopathic behaviour but I also think that this can come about through abuse or other triggers.
Tangle writes:
When the scientists are doing things like this....
But there are also scientists that do believe that God touches our heart so it isn't all that cut and dried. We both gravitate towards the ones that agree with our own position.
I am not going to debate about something that I have no idea of how to even pronounce.
Tangle writes:
If so why is he doing it less in some more in others and not at all in a few? And to what end? And are we not then puppets in his strings?
We are not puppets as we can observe, (on the assumption that my position is correct), people do respond to a large extent or to virtually no extent at all. We are free to reject it completely.
He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8