Stauros said-
Adamah, do you think with your heart or your mind? Thinking ability begins with the mind, however emotion can overrule your thinking ability. Emotion stems from the heart of course.
You're speaking Bible gibberish, since even Jesus spoke of the evil in men's hearts, or committing sin with a woman in one's heart (imagination stems from the mind, which is an emergent property of the BRAIN, AKA consciousness).
All emotions are KNOWN to result from specific regions of the brain, and NOT the heart, which is simply a PUMP for the circulation system, and is controlled BY the brain via the vagus nerve. You really don't know that?
Read the link to the article called "Aristotle on the brain" to learn why he, along with most everyone else at the time (besides Alcmaeon and those from the Hippocratic school), were wrong for believing the heart was the center of cognition (and blame the Egyptians, if you want; that's the root of the far-older ancient belief that the Hebrews relied on).
http://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/Neuroscientist_95-1.pdf
Fact remains, though, the Yahwist (who wrote Genesis 8) was perpetuating an ancient misbelief, even putting the words into Jehovah's mouth (!), that modern men now know is completely and utterly BS. Jesus, by 30 CE, had no excuse, other than living and dying in a backwaters region of Palestine where ignorance was the rule of the day.
Oh, on this-
Which is better to have, great thinking ability, or control over your emotions?
You're going to have to be clearer.
Are you prepetuating the long-disproven concept of the heart as the center of thinking, or the romantic model of the Middle Ages where the heart came to be seen as the center of emotions (which is what the OT claims the kidneys were, the seat of emotions, also long debunked)?