Replies

Your judgments are dramatic and bombastic and that's just about it.

Thanks for the compliment. That's probably as far as can be managed toward admitting thorough going FACT BASED (sometimes scientific research fact based) refutation line by line. But, hey, we all prefer to sleep at nights and rationalization is a great defense.

A "normal" baby will react predictably. How many times has it happened that by mistake a mother was handed a wrong baby, even walked out of the hospital with it, without being able to tell it's her baby?

Nice to see that the kennel of hollow straw dogs is still in pathetic shape. The above assertion has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the least shred of evidence that personality is not greatly set at conception. The most that it says is that some mothers have a very hard time tuning in sufficiently or having had enough time with their baby to KNOW their own baby in a fool proof way. Very sad, that but has nothing to offer to the issue of personality. Lots of mothers are utterly clueless these days.

And in your vast experience, can you tell if a baby is going to be an antisocial personality,

Very rarely can I make a good guess on that score with a few months old infant. At least, I don't recall such with any great frequency. I have had a very few cases (I'd guess 2-4) where such seemed above average in likelihood and given all the givens, came to be true--at least well within the ball park of the term. With 2 year olds, it's not been that difficult.

a criminal,

Ditto above. Though with 2 year olds, it's been much easier to be amazingly accurate--particularly about the glaring examples--those say in the 3rd standard deviation of critical behavioral, attitudinal evidence. Now, I confess, I don't know how much of such assessments is experience, training, super intense observation--and how much of it is spiritual assisted insight and discernment via Holy Spirit.

a doctor, a psychologist;

Too many variable, evidently. Those are beyond my skills to assess in babies. I might be able to detect psychologist sorts of leanings and probabilities in a 2 year old. Much easier in 8 year olds. An MD--easy to see in SOME 8 year olds.

if he or she will be selfish,

That's probably detectable on average the first 6-18 months. Certainly by the 2nd year. But that's a pretty generic human trait bound up in the heart of man short of rare exceptions and Godly discipine. Most children will be inherently selfish--especially initially.

religious?

That's also bound up in human nature. All humans have to worship something. For some it's TV, cars, sex, whatever. Can I tell if an infant's religiosity will be toward God and whether it will be intrinsic or extrinsic? No. Unless Holy Spirit tells me. A 10-12 year old is far easier.

I don't think so.

I think I'm aware of a lot of things that you think quite differently on than I do. A surprising many quite shockingly so. I am confident, however, that you would also characterize the sun as rising in the East. I think. LOL.

By the way, there is a such disagreement among psychologists when it comnes to personality issues as there are Protestant sects.

I would REALLY STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU before pontificating on the subject of psychology to get FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR BETTER TEXTS AND/OR ADVISORS to consult with. I'd think it could save you a LOT of embarrassment.

Your statement is GROSSLY MISLEADING TO WHOLESALE UNTRUE, yet again. The disagreements between psychologists about personality HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH WHETHER THE BASIC PERSONALITY STRUCTURE IS SET AT CONCEPTION ON THE DIMENSIONS I POSTED ON EARLIER. THAT ISSUE IS WELL SETTLED BY EXTENSIVE AMOUNTS OF SOLID RESEARCH. Any psychologist worthy the label has accepted the facts on that score. No biggy any more.

The issues about personality that are still haggled over are whether personality is best described along 16 dimensions as in the 16PF or some other schema. But most psychologists recognize that any such schema has it's strengths and weaknesses. They realize that some have preferences for one over another for logical personal taste or similar reasons and that's it. NO big deal. I'd have thought a college education would have made that abundantly clear.

The fact is that if you take a child, put him in the back yard, feed him and give him water and never interact with him, he will be an animal lacking in language and social graces.

Another hollow straw dog from the evidently huge straw dog kennel. That being true HAS NOTHING TO CONTRIBUTE, NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT PERSONALITY BEING LARGELY SET AT CONCEPTION. IT MERELY says something about the environmental components that make up 50-60% of personality. Certainly such horrid conditioning can wholesale OBSCURE the genetic components. But the substrate is still there. If some things are not corrected early--especially before puberty--such as language deficits--they can never be corrected. But the substrate was very much there at birth and along the way. Obscuring is not the same as removing all trace of.

I'd be blessed to help improve dramatically the understanding in this department but I haven't a clue as to how to go about that sizeable task.

Everything we are, which makes us human, is learned.

Sometimes, it seems like untruths are deliberately and brazenly posted. That's wholsale inaccurate, untrue, wrong, unfactual as I've demonstrated. I certainly cannot force acceptance of facts but I can counter utter falsehood with a presentation of facts. The following case studies are from the David G Meyers text EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY 6th Ed. pp 76-77.

On a chilly Ohio Saturday morning in February 1979, sometime after divorcing his first wife, Linda, Jim Lewis awoke in his modest, middle-class home next to his second wife, Betty. Jim--a romantic, affectionate type--was determined thatt this marriage would work and made a habit of leaving love notes to Betty around the house. As Jim lay in bed he thought about others he had loved, including his son, James Alan, and his faithful dog, Toy.
Having outfitted a workshop in a corner of his basement, Jim looked forward to spending some of the day's free time on his woodworking hobby. He had derived many hours of satisfaction from building furniture, picture frames, and an assortment of other items, including a circular white bench around a tree in his front yard. Jim also liked to spend free time driving his Chevy, watching stock-car racing, and drinking Miller Lite beer.
Jim was basically healthy. Having undergone a vasectomy, he was done having children. His blood pressure was a little high, perhaps related to his chain-smoking habit. He chewed his fingernails to the nub. And he suffered occasional half-day migraine headaches--"like somebody's hitting you with a two-by-four in the back of the neck." He had become overweight a while back but had shed some of the pounds.
What was extraordinary about Jim Lewis, however, was that at that same moment (I am not making this up) there existed another man--also named Jim--for whom all these things (right down to the dog's name) were also true (except that Jim Lewis named his son James Alan and Jim Sp[ringer named his James Allan). This other Jim--Jim Springer--just happened, 38 years earlier, to have been his womb mate. Thirty-seven days after their birth, these two genetically identical twins were separated, adopted by blue-collar families, and reared with no contact or knowledge of the other's whereabouts until one February dxy when Jim Lewis' phone rang. The caller was his genetic clone (who, having been told he had a twin, set out to find him).
One month after that fateful encounter, the brothers became the first twin pair tested by University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard and his colleagues, thus beginning a study of separated twins that extends to the present (Holden, 1980a,b;Wright, 1998). When given tests measuring their intelligence, PERSONALITY heart rate, and brain waves, the Jim twins--despite 38 years of separation--were virtually as alike as the same person tested twice. Their voice intonations and inflections were so similar that, hearing a playback of an earlier interview, Jim Springer guessed "That's me." Wrong--it was his brother.

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Identical twins Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe presented equally striking similarities. One was raised by his grandmother in Germany as a Catholic and a Nazi, while the other was raised by his father in the Caribbean as a Jew. Nevertheless, they share traits and habits galore. They like spicy foods and sweet liqueurs, have a habit of falling asleep in front of the television, flush the toilet before using it, store rubber bands on their wrists, and dip buttered toast in their coffee. Stohr is domineering toward women and yells at his wife, as did Yufe before he and his wife separated.

It really IS POSSIBLE TO SAY . . . "hmmmm . . . I was wrong." And, it comes easier with practice.

Brain damage due to various factors (infections, alcohol, drugs) can pretty much erase those spurious 50% of personality traits you claim at conception and make them as good as if they never were there.

1. Brain damage erases a lot of things. Jumping from discussing normal people and their personalities can be a cute sort of yet another straw dog from the huge straw dog kennel but it's kind of a a pathetically ineffective transparent ploy offering nothing useful to the discussion.

2. The personality traits set at conception are NOT SPURIOUS. It's better when Christians are honest and accurate about such things. Those facts are solidly established facts. They are no longer contested.

3. Yes, erasing someone's brain causes a LOT of human traits to disappear including some of the inherent genetic ones--or at least their expression. This offers nothing to the discussion about normal people. It merely says that brain damaged people have a lot of damage to their humanness! DOH!

The only thing we know is that human life begins at human conception by the union of two living cells carrying certain amount of genetic material (usually haploid) that fuse. What that human will be like is anyone's guess and cannot be determined by any science or superstitious belief with any certainty.

More untrue statements. The genetically determined personality traits tell us a lot. Even a DNA sample can now describe such traits with increasing accuracy. I encourage you to read up on more current literature before making brash wholesale false statements about the science of psychology and human nature. It MIGHT help you look A LOT less uninformed.