Question: Is there an 'evil' gene?? If not, can we completely blame the parents/upbringing???

Darren Logan answered on 13 Mar 2012:

No, there is no gene for “evil”.

Some people have claimed that there are evil genes because they are more likely to be found in people who are in jail for horrible crimes. But that doesn’t make it an evil gene, because we know that people with mental illness are more likely to be in jail too. Maybe they are just genes that cause mental illness. This is an important concept in science: just because something is associated with something else, does not mean it is a cause.

Genes do much more basic, simple things than “good” or “evil”. And sometimes those basic things can make it a little more likely someone does something good or bad. For example: you can have a gene that makes you have more of some type of hormone. Hormones are involved in influencing behaviour, so its possible you could be a little more aggressive if you have this gene. So you could be a little more likely to lose your temper and get into fights than someone who has less hormone. If you get into fights more often, it increases your chances that one of those fights could end up with someone getting hurt or even dying. Killing someone in a fight is pretty evil. So while it is true that the gene has a tiny influence on you committing that evil act, there is lots of other factors that have an influence too (including parenting and upbringing – for example being taught that fighting is not a good way of dealing with anger). It would be wrong to say that is a gene for “evil” – its just a gene that makes a little bit more hormone.

Now imagine about 20,000 different genes all having these tiny little effects all together, some good and some bad, along with all the influences from our environment and all our previous experiences. This is how our genes and our environment together result in our likelihood of us doing good or bad things.