Shall we blame it all on genes?

"Children are born deceitful. All human acts – even saving a stranger from drowning or donating a million dollars to the poor – may be ultimately selfish."

    The words are not from a sermon or from a misanthrope, prepared to believe the worst about mankind. They are from a report on sociobiology, defined in TIME (recently), as "a new and highly controversial scientific discipline that seeks to establish that social behavior – human as well as animal – has a biological basis."

    What does sociobiology teach? TIME says that the discipline's "most striking tenet" is its claim that "human behavior is genetically based, the result of millions of years of evolution." Sociobiologists boast that their doctrine is "the completion of the Darwinian revolution."

    Sociobiologists accept Darwin's notions about natural selection, and argue that the behavior that enables animals and people to survive is passed on by their genes. Thus the offspring of, say, an aggressive person whose aggressiveness helped him cope in trying circumstances, is born with genes that program him to be as aggressive as his progenitor.

    Advocates of sociobiology evidently find a genetic explanation for every human quality. Anger, deceit, friendship, even love – these and other human qualities are believed to have evolved and to be carried in the genes. In the competition for survival, only the fit survive, they argue. And who are the fit? The answer, reached by obviously circular reasoning, is those who survive.

    What about the notion that aggressive, cruel traits are genetically carried? First, no one knows how human nature is transmitted, whether genetically or in some other way. Most Bible students hold either of two theories: that God creates the soul of each developing fetus at some point between conception and birth, or that the stuff of the human soul is passed along with the materials needed to get the fetus started.

    Second, body and soul are divisible. The Bible distinguishes between body and the immaterial parts-soul and spirit. It is impossible to overrate the importance of this truth. If the distinction is not valid, then man is in fact a beast, and he dies like a beast. But if the distinction is valid, as the Bible assures us it is, the notion that human behavior is genetic cannot be true and men are subject to the law of God.

    God knows the difference between body, soul, and spirit, and He holds every person accountable for what he does. In the judgment day no one will be able to plead his genetic makeup as an excuse for his conduct in life.

    At such a time as this, Time says, "the emergence of doctrine preaching that man is caught in history, able to exercise free will only within the limits set by his genes, may do very well indeed." If so, the world is in for' rough weather.

    A bad idea inevitably incites much mischief. During the half century following Darwin's Origin of the Species, the basic theses of survival of the fittest were projected in other areas as well, including international relations and business. As a result, both nations and individuals justified survival of the "strong" at the expense and ruin of the weak.

    Whether the doctrines of sociobiology will indeed complete the Darwinian revolution as its proponents hope, remains to be seen. From the Christian point of view it sounds like one more doctrine of demons, calculated to shift attention from the spiritual to the physical.

    That, of course, would fit with Satan's strategy. He would much rather have men think about their genes than about their souls.

C. DONALD COLE, PASTOR, MOODY RADIO NETWORK

Moody/ October 1977