"A head for trouble"

Before I get into this blog post properly, can I just ask: does anyone like my new and updated myspace profile ?!! (I know the guys may not be a huge fan of the colour but it kinda matches my blog now, which is what I wanted.) Also, it now has a proper URl, to make finding it slightly easier.

Anyway...the real reason for this post, is to ask whether anyone else read the above titled article in last week's Sunday Times Magazine ? I read it, and was a bit confused by it, and if anyone else has read it I would appreciate comments/thoughts/opinions etc. It's one of those articles which when you read you know that there is probably some truth in but there also feels to be something not quite right either but you can't put your finger on it...or at least that's how I felt.

Do have a read (I hope the link works). Basically it's saying are we really responsible for our actions or is what we do already predetermined by the wiring of our brains ? To further expand, I have chosen a few select quotes from the article:

"The laws of most societies assume moral decisions are made in the conscious, rational mind. But an influential number of brain researchers disagree. They point to cases like that of Mr C to argue that it is not people, or minds, that commit bad acts, but their brains."

"Arguably, liars, thieves, murderers and paedophiles and Good Samaritans, are not bad or good - just 'different', their brains having disposed them to behaviour outside the moral norm."

The religious doctrines of original sin - meaning that we are prone to prefer wrong by nature - conscience and free will have been eroded by rationalism, science and secularism over the past two centuries, yet a powerful belief in responsibility for our actions remains".

"Philosophers, too, have long suggested that personal responsibility is an illusion"

"'Some of the seven deadly sins' claims Tancredi, 'have already been shown to be affected by biological factors in varying degrees, and in some cases, the individual may have little power or free will to prevent them from happening.'"

"'Your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.'"

Now, I have no doubt in my mind that God can and does use the natural laws He created, and that it is possible (tho this may be a contreversial thing to say) that this brain wiring thing is correct, and that when we come to God and become "new creations" he changes something in our internal wiring? Maybe spiritual blindness is not merely a picture but also has a basis in physiology ? Perhaps this is merely the debate about science vs religeon in a new form, which people are only just beginning to think about, and that it is again an issue of their being no real conflict, but that this new neuroscience and what the Bible says are just saying respectively how and why. (These are only my current thoughts on the subject btw). But however, this is coming at this issue from the side of already believing in God. If, like many scientists, they are coming from the other side...I just think something's back to front here. Help me out here: What does anyone else think ?