Are Scientists Hardwired to Assume that All Unconscious Beliefs are Hardwired?

Just because something is unconscious doesn’t meant it’s “hardwired” (i.e, genetic). Fifty years ago, an average southern white would have called his black neighbor “boy” without a second thought and (very often) without any intention of malice. It was just an unconscious prejudice. Fifty years and a whole lot of consciousness-raising later, people rightly recognize that this belittlement of human dignity is wicked. Unconsciously held notions have exerted tremendous influence on people all through history without being “hardwired” in the slightest. The notion that there is some necessary conflict between God and science is precisely one of these prejudices which have nothing to do with genetics and everything to do with a dominant cultural narrative that is relatively recent in Western history. For St. Thomas, such a conflict would have been unintelligible nonsense.