James C. Peterson, Ph.D.

The Challenge of Genetics for Individual Freedom, Moral Virtue, and Limited Government
Speech to The Philadelphia Society
April 28, 2007

Professor of Theology and Ethics
McMaster Divinity College, Ontario

Thank you to President George Nash and Secretary Bill Campbell for the opportunity to address this august society on the challenges of biotechnology.  The invitation letter described the society as committed to individual freedom, moral virtue, and limited government. I will approach the biotechnology challenge for each of these from specifically human genetics, a leading edge of current biotechnology. With just twenty minutes, I will only briefly highlight certain ideas as a welcome to further conversation. 

Genetics and Individual Freedom

Have you ever thought about the complexity of the human eye?  Do you think given time that you could make one? You would need the chemical formula for the tough but transparent lens, the right depth across the lens to focus light on the array of rods and cones that form the retina, to assemble an ocular nerve and brain tissue organized to interpret the resulting signals… Could you do it? Looking around the room, most of you are selling yourselves short. It appears from here that most of you have made a human eye, in fact twice.  So how did you do that?  All of the necessary design and assembly information is in your genes. In fact the necessary information is in every nucleated cell of your body.  You have about three billion copies of a complete set of instructions to make a human eye, bone and spinal cord, heart and lung, insulin and adrenalin.   

It is an amazing system formative for your physical body, but not absolutely determinative. Identical twins have the same genes, but have different fingerprints. If one identical twin develops type 1 diabetes, the chances that the other will do so is about fifty percent. That is a much greater chance than for the general population because of bearing the same genes, but not one hundred percent.  Genes deeply shape our physical bodies, but they do not completely determine them.

Genes also shape our behavior, but they do not completely determine what we do. How does a cockroach know to flee the light?  That is a behavior built into its genetics.  Without it, the bug would not live long enough to pass on its genes. Animals at the insect level follow their behavior coding by rote.  A worker ant will do what a worker ant does whether placed on an iceberg or at the family picnic. It does one set of genetically encoded behaviors and one set only.

As genetic beings become more complex, their responses and choices gain flexibility. Present a Dachshund puppy with a puddle of water and it may lap at the edge, if it shows any interest at all. Present a Labrador Retriever puppy with a puddle of water and it will joyously splash in. That love of water play is embedded in a retriever’s genes. But the retriever can be trained to jump in only upon the owner’s command or even to avoid water.  A dog has sufficient intelligence to channel or even refuse its genetic tendencies.

People have genetically endowed behavioral tendencies as well. When you open the refrigerator door late at night, which looks more intriguing, the Hagen Daz or the celery?  For most people, it is the premium ice cream.  That is substantially genetic. Most human beings have a built in propensity to prefer the taste of fat.  The juicy steak looks more mouth watering than the dried out one. When calories are scarce the best survival strategy is to seek out high fat foods since they are calorie rich. When calories are abundant, the healthiest choice may be the celery.  We have sufficient mental capacity to recognize our situation and chose whether to act out a particular genetic propensity. We do not have to obey blindly our genes. 

Mouse mothers have a gene called Fos B that is essential to their pups.  The gene gives a biological reward to the mouse mother for lying still while the pups nurse.  If the gene is knocked out, the mouse mother will not hold still for the pups to nurse, even allowing them to starve to death in a cage with her. Most human parents carry the Fos B gene as well. There is a biological reward for feeding one’s young.  It feels good, right.  Can a parent feed a child if the parent lacks the Fos B gene?  Of course. Human beings are influenced by genes, but not determined by them. Clearly the strongest genetic marker for criminal violence is a Y chromosome (carried by all males).  That does not mean that everyone who bears the Y chromosome will be, nor should be, criminally violent.

As human beings we are influenced by our genetic heritage, but we have sufficient emergent complexity that we can choose to encourage, channel, or resist a genetic tendency. What our genes give us is terrain, inclinations toward what has been successful before, not a determined path. Such inclinations are helpful advice, but are not to be followed necessarily. 

Further, our genetic tendencies often conflict.  How do we adjudicate between natural tendencies toward pair bonding and polygamy, parental care and infanticide? Also such tendencies are often unaware of context. A desire for sexual intercourse may be appropriate to act out in one situation but not another. We are sufficiently conscious to choose which genetic tendencies or conflicting motivations to carry out, when, or not at all.  We can even choose goals not encoded in our genes.  There is no gene or set of genes that specifically drives one to compose a violin concerto. We are shaped by our genes, but are sufficiently conscious of the tendencies they produce, to choose whether to follow them, redirect them, or resist them.

Our genes do not determine all our physical form and our physical form does not determine all of who we are.  One identical twin can become a carpenter and the other a writer, one a Buddhist and the other a Christian. Genes play an important part, but we still have substantial individual freedom. Because one has inherited a genetic propensity for alcoholism, does not mean that one should go forth and be the best alcoholic one can be. We have the individual freedom to choose what we do with our genetic tendencies.

Genetics and Moral Virtues

My rightfully esteemed colleague on this platform, Professor Larry Arnhart, has forcefully argued that our Darwinian origins offer virtuous guides for our individual freedom. Dr. Arnhart proposes that genetic tendencies endowed by random mutation and selection for their reproductive success, should lead our choices. These feelings offer a kind of natural law rooted in our physical heritage.[1]

I agree that taking seriously what has worked before is prudent. We are each at the end of a long chain of choices that worked (if not, we would not exist for this conversation), but inherited structure does not necessarily dictate best future use if it is merely selected by reproductive success. Structure developed for one end can be turned to another. This is essential for evolution. The multiplicity of life forms and survival strategies that we see now, depends on novel use and development of received structures.  Structures furthering one purpose were turned to others. Fins became legs for life on land, and then over time the legs of some mammals adapted back to fins for life again in the sea. Every new capability was the alteration or extension of an old one. This is central to the evolutionary paradigm.

The Intelligent Design (ID) perspective, represented ably by John West in this session, highlights instances of “irreducible complexity” in biological life. Michael Behe cites bacterial flagellum at length as an example in Darwin’s Black Box.[2]  Behe and William Dembski, prominent founders of the ID movement, acknowledge common descent over aeons of time,[3] but they see crucial moments when random mutation and environmental selection would not be sufficient to produce such irreducible complexity.

The usual response of those who advocate Darwinism is that some structures are developed by incremental steps, each step rewarded, and then by feasible minor mutation turned to a new use. Picture a developing ladder that is more effective each time it adds one rung.  Eventually it is quite tall.  Now a single random mutation undermines one leg so that the ladder falls over, surprisingly in just the right place to offer a helpful bridge. Because it is helpful in that new position it is also replicated from then on as a bridge. One could not rightfully picture the bridge building one rung at a time over the chasm, because there would be no reward to reinforce any of the many sequential additions until it was complete, but built for another task and then falling into just the right place whole, could account for it.  The odds against such are astronomical, but that of course is the point of the Darwinian emphasis on the vast number of attempts at any given moment, multiplied over vast periods of time. If there are possible rewarded incremental steps, over so many attempts over such time, the chance of them occurring becomes more conceivable.

Now my point here is not to argue for or against ID. What I want to note is that essential to the idea of Darwinism is the idea that structures developed for one purpose can end up serving another. Darwinism depends on past structures not dictating future uses. By this system, whatever human beings have inherited, does not dictate what they should do with that inheritance now. Darwinism may insightfully describe the past, hence part of the current structure we have received, but it cannot prescribe the present as normative.  That would contradict its most basic mechanism. A closed Darwinian system of random mutation and selection does not support stasis, either physical or moral. Historic selection can develop capabilities for survival that we can turn to other uses. Human beings can choose to follow past strategies, or not.

Genetics and Limited Government

There are multiple candidates for guiding our current choices, besides our genetic heritage. Kant appealed to rational consistency, Hinduism to the law of Karma, Buddhism to an experience of enlightenment, Islam to the will of our Creator… Considering all the proffered alternatives, it is interesting that we have as much global consensus on basic moral commitments as we do. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights exits. One can circle the globe and consistently find people pair bonding and raising children. That could in part be attributed to our common physical challenges such as child rearing or even in part to what genetic behavioral strategies have been successful to date.

However, there is also enough variation in our moral understanding and application that we might best hope for what Robert Nozick called a “utopia of utopias”.[4] Where we have sufficient agreement, we can require or provide as a society. Where we differ, we do well to allow varied approaches.  A contemporary example is how we require education for our youth, but support a multiplicity of approaches to achieve it such as public, private, charter, or home schools. While we are not doomed to replicate at the social level the apparently vast trial and error of our genetic heritage, it may be helpful to follow a parallel but more thoughtful experimental approach that is willing to allow different attempts at the good life. Such would require limiting government.[5]

In Summary

The genetic and archaeological evidence for common descent is compelling. Descriptions of that process can offer insightful context for understanding human nature and politics. It can be helpful to observe and expect that certain moral feelings seem to be widely embedded in our genetic heritage because of their aid to reproductive success. But human beings are at a level of complexity that our genetics are formative, not definitive. We can do better, or worse, than our genetic momentum. We can choose and need to, since our genetic tendencies are not univocal, aware of context, nor ultimately authoritative. How we sort and apply our genetic tendencies requires more than just listening to our genes, whether for individual freedom, moral virtue, or limited government.