Politicians on the right embrace the religious theory explicitly, and no mainstream politician would dare contradict it in public. According to recent polls, 76 percent of Americans believe in the biblical account of creation, 79 percent believe that the miracles in the Bible actually took place, 76 percent believe in angels, the devil, and other immaterial souls, 67 percent believe they will exist in some form after their death, and only 15 percent believe that Darwin's theory of evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on Earth. The Judeo-Christian conception is still the most popular theory of human nature in the United States. Mental health comes from recognizing God's purpose, choosing good and repenting sin, and loving God and one's fellow humans for God's sake. Our cognitive and perceptual faculties work accurately because God implanted ideals in them that correspond to reality and because he coordinates their functioning with the outside world. Although the decision faculty is not bound by the laws of cause and effect, it has an innate tendency to choose sin. The mind is made up of several components, including a moral sense, an ability to love, a capacity for reason that recognizes whether an act conforms to ideals of goodness, and a decision faculty that chooses how to behave. The mind is an immaterial substance: it has powers possessed by no purely physical structure, and can continue to exist when the body dies. Women are derivative of men and destined to be ruled by them. Humans are made in the image of God and are unrelated to animals. The Judeo-Christian tradition, for example, offers explanations for much of the subject matter now studied by biology and psychology. Rival theories of human nature are entwined in different ways of life and different political systems, and have been a source of much conflict over the course of history.įor millennia, the major theories of human nature have come from religion. And because it delineates what people can achieve easily, what they can achieve only with sacrifice or pain, and what they cannot achieve at all, it affects our values: what we believe we can reasonably strive for as individuals and as a society. Its assumptions about learning drive our educational policy its assumptions about motivation drive our policies on economics, law, and crime. It advises us on how to nurture our marriages, bring up our children, and control our own behavior. We consult it when we want to persuade or threaten, inform or deceive. Our theory of human nature is the wellspring of much in our lives. We absorb still other ideas from our intellectual climate: from the expertise of authorities and the conventional wisdom of the day. We fill out this theory by introspecting on our own minds and assuming that our fellows are like ourselves, and by watching people's behavior and filing away generalizations. A tacit theory of human nature-that behavior is caused by thoughts and feelings-is embedded in the very way we think about people. Everyone has to anticipate the behavior of others, and that means we all need theories about what makes people tick.
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