Letters to the Editor
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Conscience?
>Then why does the child instinctively hide the
>cookie he just took out of the cookie jar long
>before he's of an age to have been trained?
To keep anyone else from stealing it? I mean, why not - that's as good an assumption as any other. Whoops - so much for 'conscience'.
Anyhow, where's the study that describes such behavior? And what do you mean by "trained"? As I recall, even infants have been shown to possess some ability to read the emotional state of those around them. Clearly children can pick up signs of displeasure in others, provided they're paying attention.
Beyond that, who's to say such behavior isn't hardwired. Mammalian mothers are generally hardwired to care for their young, to some degree anyhow. Clearly other behaviors have a biological component as well, empathy being one obvious example. Why drag god in to explain a behavior that can pretty clearly be explained by biology? What's next? The fall of every sparrow is attributable to the hand of Zeus?
The sound of your axe grinding is drowning out any point you could have possibly hoped to make.