Heritability of attitudes: Twin research in religious p...( model ask How do I get from a zygote ...)

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 Darwins 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 hum
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Contact: Brent Waters
srns@science-spirit.org
412-585-0842
Science and Religion Information Service
17-Jun-2001

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