Although the following is somewhat outdated, much of it still remains contemporary to the debates of today. So, I can't help but wonder, what is your opinion on the matter... To what extent can mainstream (and I emphasize mainstream) science contribute to a Christian worldview, or is it simply foolish to think that it may? Should Christians ignore or more commonly, attempt to deride the validity of current research that seems to contradict traditional views, or can it be used to create a more thoughtful view of what it means to be human?
The Lowest Common DenominatorReading current headlines one would think that religion and science are locked in the midst of a clash of wills, and that one will inevitably fall. Though the two traditionally focus on very different aspects of the human experience, and should be viewed as separate schools of thought, each have begun encroaching upon the other’s territory. It is increasingly common in the academic community that one cannot be a scientist and a theologian without becoming lost within the dissonance of ideals. There is widespread acceptance that the two cannot be reconciled, with genetics and evolutionary psychology meeting traditional Christian anthropology at the forefront of the divide. Science, its nature being rational and objective, demands that evidence come with measurable validity and a sure degree of falsification. Religion on the other hand, is considered subjective and personal, allegedly emphasizing blind faith to accept its precepts. Those who seek intellectual and spiritual truth that may coalesce are left unsatisfied; truth cannot contradict truth.
While much of this conflict seems to have originated with the ideas of Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection, the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 raised increased speculation regarding the future of scientific study into humanity. With our entire genetic endowment as a species open for interpretation and study, incredible advances in genetics and medicine loom just over the horizon. Geneticists are carefully mulling over DNA sequences to systematically find the heritable
basis for some of humanity’s most debilitating diseases, from breast cancer to Alzheimer’s. Slowly,
systematically, the genome is surrendering its secrets of human biology at the hands of scientific inquiry.
However, the excitement of these discoveries is hampered by a darker and more controversial pursuit of truth. Though once not highly respected, sociologists and psychologists are beginning to integrate genetic and evolutionary theories into their research, and effectively distance themselves from the intellectual stigma of being the “soft sciences”. With the help of the Human Genome Project it is possible, even quite likely that “psychiatry and psychology will be revolutionized” (Wade, 2001). On nearly a daily basis, new announcements are made regarding the genetics of behavior. Thus far, there are recorded findings of genes for proclivities to violence, spirituality, and adultery. A study completed in 1993 seemed to establish a correlation between a specific gene marker and a predisposition to violence within a single extended family (Peters, 2003). Twin studies comparing
monozygotic and
dizygotic twins, also suggest that genes are the proximal cause behind much of our behavior. Meanwhile, a culture war rages over the nature of human sexuality, as the homosexual community hopes a positive correlation to genetics would foster acceptance of their lifestyle.
The rapid rise of sociobiology has shifted focus towards the adaptive value of many of our behaviors, specifically those once considered exclusive of the human soul. By asking questions deeply framed within evolutionary thought, scientists are developing a largely deterministic view of human nature. According to Richard
Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene earned him a reputation as “Darwin’s Rottweiler”, living organisms are merely temporary vectors, or “survival machines” for the replication of immortal DNA, our purpose being nothing more than to ensure its transmission and survival. Echoing many of his ideas, a recent Time article proudly defends the hypothesis that our social institutions of marriage and family are products of our genetic heritage, bequeathed us by ancestors who successfully manipulated their mates. Women manipulate men for resources and men manipulate women for sex. In short, the most selfish propagate a greater genetic investment in the future.
Even more problematic, is the scientific scrutiny that has recently befallen human convictions regarding the existence of God. Some have suggested the existence of a “spirituality gene” may be entirely responsible for our sense of transcendence. The faithful interpret this universal calling of God on the human soul as indisputable proof of His existence. The evolutionary psychologist would identify the same as evidence of the adaptive qualities of such a belief. “Anticipation of our own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe. In many ways [a God experience] is a brilliant adaptation. It’s a built in pacifier” . The theory is reminiscent to the ideas of Fredric Nietzsche, for whom God was nothing more than the “opiate of the masses”. All thought regarding the meaning of life before the onset of Darwinism is considered futile pursuits of fancy. Theistic beliefs remain attractive and atheism so repugnant allegedly because we evolved to believe in gods, not science, a trait defining us as an infantile species.
Even as neuroscience probes into the enigma of the mind, it threatens to expose us as machines of genetically and environmentally determined behavior. There is a recent trend towards the belief that our personalities and even our daily moral choices may be the result of genetic
preprogramming. Although there is still weight given to the contribution of environmental influences to our behavior, it is only under the illusion that environment is somehow less determining than genes. It could be seen that our individual humanity is nothing more than a complex dance between the genome and the environment in which it is expressed. Additionally, few higher order behaviors have not been parsed into their
neurocognitve correlates. The belief that humans are beings whose minds can be exhaustively determined by the expression of DNA and abide by the laws of chemistry and biology abounds within these fields. The brain is being identified as the organ of the mind, and its products: behavior, thought, and the emotions of the soul, however complex, exist with the supreme purpose of passing genes onto the next generation.
These assumptions erode at the traditional model of human nature. Cartesian Dualism, the belief that man is a corporal body imbued with an immaterial soul came under increased attack in the late twentieth century. Indeed, any move towards a reductionist model of humanity seems to revoke from us our very souls. Some fields of science might lead one to believe that our free will and our status as decisive, autonomous entities, is simply an illusion. According to Francis Crick, co-discover of the helical structure of DNA, “your joys and sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of identify and freewill, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”. We are given only one comforting thought: that as long mysteries of the mind exist that have not yet surrendered themselves to science; we can continue to believe in our own free will. Otherwise, we would become trapped in a web of fatalism, our minds doomed to decay. However, when seen in the light of recent progress, what is currently unknown to science is unlikely to remain so for long.
How should Christian anthropology respond to these intellectual developments? The painful progression of science into the ontological and ethical realms of religion has produced what has come to be known as “the God of the gaps”, a hardly omnipotent being left to explain what science has not yet conquered. Are we to allow ourselves to be intellectually reduced to the lowest common denominator of all species, the genome, and our common biology? Or must we retreat into a doctrinal corner, impugning science with the proverbial slap on the wrist when it seems to go too far. Neither of these should be our natural response, instead, our goal should be to reconcile the disciplines towards a unified whole.
Should we lose our souls to science, we lose our irreducible worth as humans. It is only in the human soul that we may be separated from the rest of creation. Only into man did God breathe the breath of life. It is through our souls that we may relate to God as spiritual beings created in His image, and this is what lives on after physical death. Should our existence be limited to our physical composition, the implications to society could be severe. It is not the place of scientists to make claims regarding the existence of a human soul; yet, this is what so many have done. One cannot test for a soul or spirit any more than one can test for the very existence of God. These things are well beyond the scope of science, and when an individual, however impressive his credentials insists otherwise, he steps beyonds the bounds of his discipline. In the words of Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Project, “the human genome will not help us to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is, or what love is”. Science may say that the brain is the organ of the mind, but we are aware that our consciousness and our physical existence are separate things. This may be because the brain did not evolve to understand itself, only to survive, or it may be that something is within us that we understand as an immaterial soul.
The Bible is clear in its understanding of the dualistic nature of mankind. For example, when Jesus was on the cross, he told the thief being crucified next to him that he would be with Him immediately after his death and before the final resurrection of his body (Luke 23:43). Jesus described the body and soul as being separate entities when he said, “Do no be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28). The Apostle Paul said that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 2:6).
Closely connected with the soul is the concept of free will. Free will, understood as the human ability to make choices that are unconstrained by external influences or other determining agent, is under threat. The sinister danger imposed by reductionism is the idea that human identity may become defined by the genome and individuals may surrender to natural tendencies to sin, conveniently assuming that what is natural is good. Determinism taken to its extreme could see morality break down as people are reduced to the sum of their parts, responsible to no one except their own selfish instinctual desires. This acceptance of the explanation for deviant behavior could pose incredible strain on the judiciary system, as thousands of guilty parties plead the claim that “my genes made me do it.” It could also lead to acceptance of a new breed of eugenics, which would rationalize an individual’s future contribution to society based upon their genetic profile. At the heart of the issue, is a challenge to our relationship to God as creatures made in His image, capable of morale and reason. A worldview where our behavior is hardwired into our genes cannot be compatible with individual accountability and our very understanding of good and evil.
Empirically, many of the gene-behavior causation claims are out of proportion to their scientific validity. The media, in its need to find sensational material that sells, often advocates outlandish claims before they have been conferred any credibility by the scientific community. Similarly, Journals and scientists often publish studies before they have been systematically validated in order to draw attention to the work. The result is an abundance of studies that lack consistency and replication. For many of the identified behavior genes, the correlation is so
minuscule as to render the findings dubious at best.
However, it is still true that each of us bears a natural inclination to sin; the moral life is not something that seems to come naturally. This is true even for the greatest men of faith, including a great purveyor of Christianity to the ancient world, the Apostle Paul, who shared in this struggle nearly two thousand years ago. In his letter to the Romans, Paul mourns his evil human nature. From the
NIV, Romans 7:15,18-24
"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do….I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
“So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
In this passage, Paul is describing an innate propensity to sin, one he describes as being part of his nature. He is referring to what is known by Christians as original sin, a spiritual condition of disobedience towards God consigned to humanity since the fall of Adam in the Garden of Eden. What is experienced is a dichotomy between the mind, or the will, and the body or our physical nature.
Could it be possible that basis for the inner struggle Paul is experiencing is what geneticists are discovering in our genetic blueprints? It falls neatly in line with a biblical understanding of the fallen nature of man, and so is it any different than the traditional assumption that we are born into sin. Thus, acceptance of a genetic foundation for the human will to sin need not constitute advocating determinism. An individual with a particular disposition to sin may be more vulnerable to a temptation, but these weaknesses do not remove our responsibility to make proper moral judgments. It simply exposes the source of our orientation towards evil and why we are so easily tempted. Rather than promote a sense of determinism, this knowledge should empower us, as we now have a clearer understanding of the battle that lies between what is perceived as the soul and the sinful inheritance of our bodies.
Rather than being machines, we retain our identities, as moral creatures made in the image of God, who holds us accountable for our actions; our burden of proof is heavy with the consequences of our sin. Like the Apostle Paul, we lament our own
insufficiency, over which we have so little control. However, in the same passage of Romans, Paul reminds us that “through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set [us] free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). There is no need to be slaves to our sinful nature. Through the grace of God and the sacrifice of His Son, we have been empowered to overcome our nature. Though we may continue to sin, “if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through the Spirit, who lives in you” (Romans 8:10-11). When we accept this truth for
ourselves we are no longer slaves to biological determinism; the chains have been broken.
These arguments touch only the surface of the complex relationship between science and Christian theology. For the Christian scientist, this antagonist relationship creates tension that becomes part of daily life. It seems impossible to take the opinion of science and weigh it on the same scale as that of faith. The temptation is to resign them to being incompatible, and accept science and religion as separate studies of vastly foreign ideas. However, what must we do when the ideas seem to overlap? When it comes to the study of human life and behavior, one cannot accept the views of either discipline without somehow rendering the other void. Yet is does not seem proper to disregard the
virtues of reason for the sake of adhering to outmoded doctrine that is not central to a saving knowledge of Christ.
As Christians, it is wise to assess the pragmatism of science, and yet remain aware of its restrictions. Though many men may attempt to explain every aspect of reality using the scientific method, it inevitably fails. Science is not equipped to isolate and quantify the realms of God and soul. Science can only study the measurable and observable, it cannot study the unseen. When used wisely, however, it may lead us to paths that deepen our understanding of our relationship to God and creation. Through the critical review of science and theology as seen in this article, it is possible for both schools of thought to edify each other, rather than destroy.
Reconciling science and religion in their views of human life is far more difficult than this article would suggest. From this point forward in our society, there will always be individuals on the radical extreme of each perspective who will elicit conflict, which has characterized this relationship for centuries. It is common for scientists to disassociate themselves from the issues their research and ideas are creating, and chose to leave such things for the humanities to consider. Yet, it is dangerous to allow oneself to become so lost in the fundamentals; doing so causes one to lose part of the human experience. It is the responsibility of both the scientist and the theologian to ensure that the truth is what is being conveyed to society, however elusive it may be. In areas such as those questioning the essence of human nature, it is improbable, if not impossible, for two opposing views to exist in complete harmony. Responsible science should learn to appreciate the point where measuring and quantifying evidence is not longer effective. Likewise, responsible theology should appreciate science as an integral part of exploring the mysteries of God’s creation. The religious should accept the discoveries of science and weigh their validity, critically and empirically, remaining aware of the limits of its methods. Only if these things are done will we ever approach an image of reality that is holistic and true.
