Genes plus Conditioning

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In W. Somerset Maugham's iconic bestseller The Razor's Edge, the enigmatic protagonist, Larry Darrell, makes this observation:

"I'd known bad men in Paris, and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose. I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation... After all He created men: if He so created them that it was possible for them to sin, it was because He willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into my backyard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so."

In Srimad Bhagavatam, we come across the story of Lord Krishna and Kaliya Naag:

Shri Krishna overpowers Kaliya, the dreaded multi-hooded venomous snake in the Yamuna River, who had killed several cattle and other animals with its poison. He then begins to dance on Kaliya's various hoods while playing his flute.

The vanquished Kaliya has a question for Krishna: "O Lord! You are the creator. You are the one who created a venomous snake like me. As the creator you determined my swabhāv (inherent programming). What is my fault in this? I am poisonous because Nature has made me so."

As per the account in Srimad Bhagavatam, Lord Krishna falls silent upon hearing this.

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