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Genes, Original Sin and the Human Proclivity to Evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Stephen J. Duffy
Stephen J. Duffy
Affiliation:
Loyola University, New Orleans
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Abstract

Theologians have long recognized that the Augustinian formulation of the doctrine of original sin, based on a historicized reading of Genesis 3, is at odds with biblical scholarship and with what science has established concerning our evolutionary origins. Setting aside Augustine's anti-Gnostic Adamic myth, some attempt to recast the doctrine within an evolutionary worldview by developing an anthropology within the framework of genetics and sociobiology, now evolutionary psychology. This essay argues that a wholly biological explanation of the human tendency to evil is inadequate, even reductionist, and it attempts a constructive reformulation of the doctrine that, while incorporating insights of evolutionary psychology, appeals also to ontological, psychological, and social dimensions of humanity that must also be considered if we are to retrieve the central, still valid point of the doctrine, that deep within human being there inheres a proclivity to evil.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Fall 2005 , pp. 210 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2005

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References

1 DS 1515.

2 On the doctrine's central point, see Ricoeur, Paul, “Original Sin: A Study in Meaning,” trans. McCormick, Peter, in Ihde, Don, ed., The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 269–86.Google Scholar See also Gilkey, Langdon, “Evolution, Culture and Sin: Responding to Philip Hefner's Proposal,” Zygon 30 (1995): 299–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Donne, John, “Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse”, in The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. Coffin, Charles M. (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 182–83.Google Scholar

4 Rahner, Karl, “Utopia and Reality,” Theology Digest 32 (1985): 143.Google Scholar On the loss of a sense of sin and evil and of the symbols that articulate experience of them, see Delbanco, Andrew, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995).Google Scholar Many dismiss the symbol of original sin because they mistakenly identify its central point with the precritical framework in which Augustine and the tradition cast it, an historical state of perfection at creation's dawn, an historical first couple and their sin, followed by universal transmission of a fallen nature changed to a flawed condition. A better course is to remove the central point from this framework and articulate it in terms of the analyses of human experience provided by philosophy, psychology, the social sciences and evolutionary biology, the course we will pursue.

5 Edward O. Wilson defined sociobiology in rather imperialistic terms as “the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behavior. One of the functions of sociobiology is to reformulate the foundations of the social sciences in a way that draws these subjects into the Modern Synthesis” (Sociobiology: The New Synthesis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975], 4). A decade earlier, Nobel laureate Francis Crick went beyond biological reductionism: “…the ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry” (Of Molecules and Man [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966], 10). For a discerning rebuttal of such reductionism see Haught, John, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (New York: Paulist, 1995), ch. 4.Google Scholar

6 See the sociobiological critique of the blank slate view by Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002).Google Scholar

7 Obviously, the above spectrum of anthropologies presents a range of ideal types that concretely appear in weaker and stronger versions put forward by various thinkers.

8 See, e.g., the diversity of approaches in Domning, Daryl, “Evolution, Evil and Original Sin,” America 186 (2001): 14–21Google Scholar; Korsmeyer, Jerry D., Evolution and Eden: Balancing Original Sin and Contemporary Science (New York: Paulist, 1998)Google Scholar; Williams, Patricia A., Doing Without Adam and Eve: Sociobiology and Original Sin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001)Google Scholar; Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt, The Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology (New York: Continuum, 1994).Google Scholar

9 I have drawn on Domning's “Evolution, Evil and Original Sin” as exemplifying a strong tendency to a biological reductionism that is less than adequate for reformulating the intent of the doctrine of original sin. His article illustrates the pitfalls that accompany attempts at reformulation wholly in terms of genetics. Citations in this paragraph, unless otherwise noted, are from Domning. Williams (note 8) tends in the same direction: “The theory of evolution applied to human nature through sociobiology can answer each of these questions (Are we free? Whence sin? Can we fulfill the law of love? Is suffering a punishment for sin?), offering scientific replacements for dubious theology” (142). Dubious some theology certainly is, but some “scientific replacements” appear even more dubious.

10 Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), ix–x, 2–3, 36–42.Google Scholar See philosopher Midgley, Mary's critique of Dawkins in her Evolution as a Religion: Strange Hopes and Stranger Fears, rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), ch. 15.Google Scholar To speak of genes as selfish is to employ the language of conscious motive and, therefore, to resort to metaphor. Whatever use such a metaphor may have, it limps very badly. Worse yet, metaphorical attribution of conscious motive to genes is the only thing that permits Dawkins to move from saying genes are selfish to saying people are selfish. See Midgley, 's “Gene Juggling,” Philosophy 54 (1979): 439–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Dawkins' point is that natural selection acts at the level of competing genes not organisms. The properties we see in organisms maximize gene survival, not the welfare of organisms. Gould, Stephen J., The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2002)Google Scholar championed the idea that natural selection operates at every level in the biological hierarchy, genes, species, whole ecosystems. Debate long ensued and in time Dawkins, as will be noted below, would modify his selfish gene view, although it remains for him a powerful if not necessarily privileged viewpoint and an orthodox view in evolutionary biology.

11 Crick, Francis, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Scribners, 1994), 3.Google Scholar

12 Domning, , “Evolution, Evil and Original Sin,” 21.Google Scholar

13 Ibid.

14 Midgley, Mary, “Rival Fatalisms: the Hollowness of the Sociobiology Debate,” in Montagu, Ashley, ed., Sociobiology Examined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 35.Google Scholar We are immersed in a scientific culture that fosters the assumption that questions about all organisms can or will find answers from big science delving into small molecules. But there is no reason to think all questions about biology, much less human nature, meet answers in molecular mechanisms. See biologist Orr, H. Allen, “What's Not in Your Genes,” New York Review of Books 50 (14 August 2003): 38–40.Google Scholar

15 Pope, Stephen, “The Order of Love and Recent Catholic Ethics: A Constructive Proposal,” Theological Studies 52 (1991): 273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Midgley, Mary, Beast and Man: the Roots of Human Nature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 123.Google Scholar

16 Midgley repudiates in her writings the idea that our biology hardwires moral values into the brain but stresses that it does inform us of premoral needs and tendencies that moral reflection must attend to (see Beast and Man). See also Singer, Peter, The Expanding Social Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981)Google Scholar; Pugh, George, The Biological Origins of Human Values (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

17 Niebuhr, Reinhold, The Nature and Destiny of Man, vol. 1 (New York: Scribners, 1941), ch. 2.Google Scholar On the human person as a spirit in transcendence see, e.g., Rahner, Karl, “Experience of Self and Experience of God,” Theological Investigations 13, trans. Bourke, David (New York: Seabury, 1975): 122–32.Google Scholar

18 Again, Midgley, “Gene Juggling,” correctly cautions that nuance is called for in predicating of non-human animals selfishness, cruelty, competition, etc. and motives that seem needed and operative in beings capable of understanding, calculation and will. This is all the more true for personification of scraps of animal cell tissue and for metaphorical talk about the physical action of genes in terms of conscious motive. The sole real unit of selfishness is a self and in DNA there are no selves.

19 Midgley, Mary, The Ethical Primate (London: Routledge, 1994), ch. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, shows that Darwin noted this undertow of instincts, which Herbert Spencer's “social Darwinism slighted in its stress on “survival of the fittest.”

20 See Pope, Stephen, “Sociobiology and Human Nature: A Perspective from Catholic Theology,” Zygon 33 (1998): 281–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Talk of a “conspiracy of doves” leads Richard Dawkins into some inconsistency when he asserts the human possibility of transcending selfish genes: “We alone on earth can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators” (The Selfish Gene, 215). In his recent work, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science and Love (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), Dawkins fires at his usual targets, pseudo-science and religion (a virus like smallpox, but harder to eradicate), defends his selfish gene view in modified form as he did in The Extended Phenotype (San Francisco: Freeman, 1982), and presents a polemic against genetic determinism and social Darwinism. Dawkins is known not only for his selfish gene view of evolution but also for his selfish meme view of cultural evolution.

22 A danger lurking here is that the sociobiologists' position may be taken to imply that in view of the iron law of natural selection, the moral norms to be favored are those fostering the best genetic gains, since that is what led to the evolution of moral norms in the first place. This kind of thinking could be invoked to justify eugenics, racism and ethnic cleansing, which most, including sociobiologists, find reprehensible.

23 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (hereafter, ST) I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2; q. 60, a. 1, v ad 2. The argument advanced here is indebted to biologist H. Allen Orr, who develops it more fully in “Darwinian Storytelling,” New York Review of Books 50 (27 February 2003): 17–20.

24 On the whole issue of the evolution of morals, see, e.g., Pope, Stephen, “The Evolutionary Roots of Morality in Theological Perspective,” Zygon 33 (1998): 545–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ayala, Francisco J., “The Difference in Being Human; Ethical Behavior as an Evolutionary Byproduct,” in Rolston, Holmes III, ed., Biology, Ethics and the Origin of Life, 3d ed. (London: Jones and Bartlett, 1995), 113–35.Google Scholar

25 Pope, Stephen, The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering of Love (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994)Google Scholar shows that insights into the biological roots of kin, reciprocal and group altruism help to refine the traditional Catholic ordo amoris (ST II–II, q. 26, a. 1) and reveal God's moral governance. Again, grace presupposes nature. From another angle, Peter Singer, The Expanding Social Circle, sees ethics emerging when reason assumes a life of its own and can run against the dictates of calculating reciprocity to extend the affections of parents and children to those outside the family circle.

26 Pope, , “Evolutionary Roots of Morality,” 553.Google Scholar

27 On Sigmund Freud's structural theory of personality, see his The Ego and the Id, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1961).Google Scholar For an attempt to use Freudian theory in reformulating the doctrine of original sin, see MacIsaac, Sharon, Freud and Original Sin (New York: Paulist, 1974).Google Scholar See also Rahner's, Karl seminal essay “The Theological Concept of Concupiscence,” Theological Investigations 1, trans. Ernst, Cornelius E. (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961): 347–82Google Scholar, which retrieves a fuller understanding of concupiscence, moving beyond merely associating it with sin. On the intertwining of the voluntary and the involuntary, see Ricoeur, Paul, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Kohak, Erazim V. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966).Google Scholar

28 Aquinas, following Aristotle, e.g., Nich. Eth. I, 2, 5 and 6, distinguishes three kinds of good, the bonum honestum, an intrinsic good sought for its own sake, such as justice, truth, health; the bonum utile, a means to an intrinsic good, such as surgery; and the bonum delectabile, a pleasurable good, such as savoring vintage wine. Though distinct, the three are not necessarily to be separated, but should be integrated in one's life. Better, e.g., to do justice with pleasure than reluctantly (ST I, q. 5, a. 6; II–II, q. 145, a. 3).

29 Niebuhr, , Nature and Destiny of Man, 1:122.Google Scholar

30 Martin Heidegger speaks of Sorge (care) and its double connotation, our restless concern in our freedom to become what we can become, to realize our possibilities, and our anxious concern about our contingency in being at the mercy of our vulnerability and mortality. (Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward [New York: Harper and Row, 1962], 241–44Google Scholar).

31 Kierkegaard, Søren, The Concept of Dread, trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946), 55, 83.Google Scholar On the disproportion in human being and angst, see also Heidegger, , Being and Time, 228–35Google Scholar; Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, trans. O'Connell, Matthew J. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985), 96–107.Google Scholar Above all, see Ricoeur, Paul, Fallible Man, trans. Kelbley, Charles (Chicago: Regnery, 1965).Google Scholar

32 Plaskow, Judith, Sex, Sin and Grace: Women's Experience and the Theologies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982)Google Scholar, brings this out in contrast to the traditional emphasis of male theologians, who have focused on the radicality of sinful pride and self assertion. Saiving, Valerie, “The Human Situation: A Woman's Perspective,” Journal of Religion 40 (1960): 100–12Google Scholar, made the same point earlier. This in no way implies that a dividing line can be drawn clearly, men identified with hubris and women with acedia. Dostoevsky's “Grand Inquisitor” in The Brothers Karamazov (pt. 2, bk. 5, ch. 5) dramatically portrays the disturbing surrender of freedom for bread.

33 On the ambiguity of our humanity, see Gilkey, “Evolution, Culture and Sin.” Freud's, SigmundCivilization and its Discontents, trans. and ed. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1961)Google Scholar is most insightful, if not wholly acceptable, concerning the tensions between the individual and culture.

34 In this connection, see Niebuhr, Reinhold, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribner's, 1932).Google Scholar

35 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar suggests that society's “life goods” (e.g., autonomy, equality, universal beneficence, etc.) can be sustained over the long haul only if grounded in “constitutive goods” transcending self and society (e.g., theism, Christian agape).

36 Ricoeur, , Conflict of Interpretations, 282.Google Scholar

37 Confessions, 13, 9.

38 En. Ps. 81.6; Ep. Jo. 2.14.

39 Along with Karl Rahner's dark essay “Utopia and Reality,” see his “Christian Pessimism” in Theological Investigations 22, trans. Donceel, Joseph (New York: Crossroad, 1991): 155–62.Google Scholar See also the possibly bleak future that Atwood, Margaret foresees in her recent novel, Oryx and Crake (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2003)Google Scholar, which is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984.

40 Wiley, Tatha, Original Sin: Origins, Developments, Contemporary Meanings (New York: Paulist, 2002)Google Scholar, drawing on Bernard Lonergan, identifies original sin with sustained inauthenticity and explains this in terms of Lonergan's appeal to interiority and the exigencies of the dynamics of conscious intentionality in experience, understanding, judgment and decision, whose transcendental imperatives, if faithfully observed, lead to self-transcendence and authentic humanity. But egoistic individual and group bias impede fidelity and lead to inattentiveness, obtuseness, irrationality and irresponsibility, hence personal disintegration and social disorder. This is certainly most helpful but needs to go a step further to an analysis of the often unconscious genetic, psychological and social factors that render intellectual, moral and religious conversion difficult and “basic sin,” contraction of consciousness, common, even inevitable, then to metastasize throughout the social body. Perhaps to Lonergan's three conversions we should add a need for psychic conversion (see, e.g., Doran, Robert, Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations: Toward a Reorientation of the Human Sciences [Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1989]).Google Scholar

41 On our hearts escaping us, see De Dono Persev. 13; C. Jul. 3.57; De Nat. et Grat. 40.47; on the two loves, see De Civ. Dei, XIV. On the ambiguity of our actions, Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. Dych, William (New York: Crossroad, 1978), 109.Google Scholar

42 See, e.g., Luther's, MartinDisputation Concerning Justification, LW 34Google Scholar, 152, and Against Latomus, LW 32, 232, and ST I–II, q. 113, a. 9.

43 Auden, W. H., The Age of Anxiety (New York: Random House, 1947), 134.Google Scholar

44 Rahner, , Foundations of Christian Faith, 403.Google Scholar

45 Niebuhr, , Nature and Destiny of Man, 1:121.Google Scholar

46 Midgley, , “Gene Juggling,” 127.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 128–29.