EMBARGOED--Not for release until Sunday, June 17, 2001 -- 6:00 PM EDT
Contact: Brent Waters[email protected]412 585-0842Science and Religion News Service
HERITABILITY OF ATTITUDES: TWIN RESEARCH IN RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE
The publication of "The Heritability of Attitudes: A Study of Twins" (JM Olson, PA Vernon, JA Harris, and KL Jang, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology June 2001, embargoed until 17 June 2001 1800EDT), raises profound religious and philosophical questions about human freedom and moral responsibility. Commenting on this research are the Rev. Dr. Lindon Eaves, whose own twin research is cited by Olson, and Dr. Ted Peters, author of Playing God: Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom.
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1. The Reverend Lindon J. Eaves, M.A. (Oxon), Ph.D., D.Sc., Distinguished Professor of Human Genetics and Psychiatry, Director, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine,Richmond, Virginia 23298-0003. Phone: 804) 828 8800. Email: [email protected]
"Olson et al.'s paper is one of many studies to address the contributions of genetic and social factors to individual differences in social attitudes. Their samples are relatively small. Details of the data and analysis are sketchy. However, the authors replicate earlier claims that part of the variance in indices of social attitudes is due to genetic factors. The study does not replicate previous estimates of the contribution of the shared family environment and assortative mating ("like marrying like") or developmental change in the role of genetic and social factors.
"What do these findings "mean" religiously and morally? There is no obvious answer. Muddled thinkers have confused genetic influences with "determinism" and environmental influences with "free will". Both views are "determinist". Ask rather what would you rather be determined by -- your environment which is "outside" you or your genes which are "inside" you? If you choose not to accept either model, ask "How do I get from a zygote with a given set of genes and a differentiated cytoplasm to an organism that displays all the characteristics that we call "human" including whatever we mean by "freedom"? The current research does not take us nearer that goal. From what is currently known about genetic influences on complex traits, it may be some time before we reach such sophistication in our understanding of human attitudes and values.
"It is tempting to idolize current provisional insights as justifying more permanent sweeping political or philosophical claims. "I" am going to continue to resist all the efforts I, and others like me, make to define and confine my "I." Such resistance may be one of the greatest gifts I have been given by natural selection. Gerd Theissen, in Biblical Faith: An Evolutionary Approach, wrote that one role of faith is to resist the oppressive force of the facts.
"We can choose to ask whether we will allow the fumbling insights of our current science to define and confine our understanding of humanity, or whether we will allow our understanding of humanity to challenge and expand our current scientific ability to describe and analyze human behavior.
"What have these findings got to do with the idea of God? The current research does not add much to the heuristic developed more than a century ago by the great biologists of the nineteenth century. Richard Lewontin noted that part of the impact of Darwin's work was to establish a materialist metaphysic at the heart of our understanding of the human. The current data reinforce the fundamental question: "Who needs God anyway?"
"No "one-liner" will solve a puzzle that has engaged humanity for millennia. A critical facet of the problem is the relationship between scientific and religious models of reality. Some believe that neither should be allowed to contaminate the other. Such a view is not adequate to our experience that scientific data and our deepest human values engage and criticize one another at critical moments in cultural history. Perhaps this is one such moment." --Lindon Eaves
2. Ted Peters, Ph.D., Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union, 2380 Ellsworth Street, Berkeley CA 94704. Tel: 510 665 8141; Fax. 510 665 1589. Email: t[email protected]
"Careful scientific study that cautiously puts forth tentative hypotheses for judicious consideration is always welcome. Olson et al. report their research and then hypothesize that a genetic predisposition toward success in athletic competition, mediated by experiences of success in sports, leads toward a positive social attitude toward athletics. This claim for genetic determinism is modest yet still courageous when presented before an audience of social scientists with investments in environmental determinism.
"Theologians watch the ping pong match between genetic determinists and environmental determinists with yawning interest; because theologians have a stake in free will, something reductionists on both sides of the determinism debate exclude from their studies. Free will, something each of us experiences every day and even every hour of every day, is exercised by the human self or person, also something missing from such scientific study.
"One of the startling and puzzling results of the now ending Human Genome Project is the surprising low number of genes in the human DNA, only 30,000 when the original estimate had been 100,000. This raises the question: what in the cell's activity leads to particular physical traits? Maybe it's not genes alone; maybe it's multiple protein configurations in gene expression. The jury of molecular biologists is still out on this one. What this could mean is that studies such as that of Olson et al. tell us almost nothing about genetic determinism, even if interesting things about heritability come out of it.
"When we wake up to find ourselves living out of wholesome and life-giving attitudes, we're ready to thank the influence of our loving parents, caring teachers, benevolent faith communities, or even our genes." --Ted Peters
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