C:\NB4\WORK\SOCIOBIO\EP23.DOC 16th
April 1998
HUMAN
BEHAVIORAL GENETICS AND THEOLOGY
Kevin Sharpe, The College of Graduate
Studies, The Union Institute; The Ian Ramsey Centre, Faculty of Theology,
Oxford University; Science & Spirit Resources, Inc. Mailing address: 16
Rivercourt, 1 Trinity Street, Oxford OX1 1TQ, U.K. Email ksharpe@science-spirit.com.
Genes and circumstances contribute
equally to human happiness in the short term, but genes and neurotransmitters
cause 80% of the range of happiness people feel in the long term, according to
recent research in behavioral genetics and neurochemistry. Happiness arises
from living virtuously in this life, and we obtain ultimate happiness in the life
to come, according to theology. A clash looms. What can genes and
neurotransmitters tell us about the afterlife? Do the genes of believers
predispose them to greater happiness? In this paper we examine common
theological responses to the scientific challenge, arguing that they prove
inadequate for the task at hand. We suggest instead that, in the light of the
recent scientific research, the theological notion of happiness requires
radical reconstruction. This in turn entails a reconstruction of traditional
notions of the Divine. Without this kind of reconstruction, religion pales
beside science, and religious thinkers are caught unthinking.
Genes; Happiness; Dopamine; Serotonin;
God; Science and Religion; God-World Relation; Neurochemistry and Emotion.
Kevin Sharpe is professor in the
Those who find salvation become some of
the happiest people around, research suggests.
Oh happy days, Oh happy days,
When Jesus washed all our sins
away.
Many spiritual traditions would agree.
Yet most of us feel
happy and satisfied with life, whether Jesus saves us or not. From surveys of
1.1 million people from all over the globe, David Myers and Ed Diener conclude
that we mostly describe ourselves as “pretty happy.” Ninety-three percent feel
happy (which includes very happy, pretty happy, and moderately happy) as
opposed to sad or neutral. Happiness appears not to rely significantly on
external factors: our age, gender, education, race or economic class. Neither
does it depend on how the researchers gather their data.
What does
happiness depend on?
For each of us,
our happiness fluctuates within a small range that our genes largely determine.
So concludes Dean Hamer in his review of studies on the role of genes in
happiness or misery.
Identical twins
(those with the same genetic makeup) attain the same level of happiness 44
percent of the time. In comparison, fraternal twins, those who share genes as
do ordinary siblings, reach the same level only eight percent of the time.
Hamer adds: “These data show that the broad heritability of well-being is 40 to
50%” (Hamer 1996, 125). Studies by David Lykken and Auke Tellegen assess the
happiness of twins over five to ten years, and show the slight impact of sex,
age, race, and marital status, and the short-term influence of job loss or
lottery winning.
A recent report by
psychologists Christopher Lewis and Stephen Joseph suggests that the
Depression-Happiness Scale (which psychologists use to calculate happiness) measures happiness as a trait
rather than a state, with subjects’ scores on the scale remaining relatively
stable over a two-year period. Other studies show that a person's level of
happiness remains stable over many years. Inherited genes account for the
majority of this level.
‘‘How you feel
right now is about equally genetic and circumstantial,” says Hamer. “But how
you will feel on average over the next ten years is fully 80% because of your
genes” (Hamer 1996, 125).
A clash looms
between those who adhere to biology and explain things genetically, and those
who explain things spiritually—Jesus washes our sins away and God’s grace
showers us with happiness.
Biology places the
responsibility for our states of happiness or misery on our genes. It helps
explain more about well-being than this, too. Hamer directs our attention to
two of the more than 300 known neurotransmitters, dopamine (the brain's
chemical for pleasure) and serotonin, the neurochemical for misery.
Neurotransmitters pass information from the synapse or junction between a nerve
cell and another nerve cell or a muscle. The nerve cell’s bulbous end releases
them from storage when an electrical impulse moving along the nerve reaches it.
Then they cross the junction to dock at the other nerve cell’s receptor, and
either prompt or inhibit the impulses along the second cell. The first nerve
cell reabsorbs excess neurotransmitters, but not necessarily all of them. Those
that remain free-floating help create our happy or miserable states of being.
Genes carry the
instructions for the construction of neurotransmitters, their receptor and
reabsorption portals. They also impart information on such things as their
storage and release rates. Hence, genes can influence the prevalence, scarcity,
and activity of serotonin and dopamine, and, in turn, whatever behaviors and
feelings these neurotransmitters induce.
Further evidence
for a physical/biochemical basis of happiness comes from neuroanatomy.
Religions and
their philosophies also discuss happiness. For instance:
Popular spiritual leader Robert Schuller writes about The Be Happy Attitudes: Eight Positive
Attitudes that Can Transform Your Life. Along with charismatic and
pentecostal tendencies in contemporary western religion, such books and
movements assume that religion intends for happiness.
Believers might say their happiness arises from God who wants them
to feel this way. Reformation protestants focussed on justification by grace
through faith. They believed that through this grace we could share what God
offers, a positive loving action. The Bible presents a picture, to their eyes,
of a gracious and loving deity who desires everyone’s happiness.
Highly religious
people declare themselves very happy at twice the rate of those with the lowest
spiritual commitment, according to a
Other religious
traditions and churches emphasize more the promise of happiness to come.
In Christian orthodoxy, happiness lies elsewhere, somewhere of
original bliss and innocence (the Garden of Eden) or of future bliss (Heaven,
our eternal and happy home where we will see God face-to-face, or the Promised
Land where we will find happiness and complete satisfaction). A friend with a
staunch Roman Catholic upbringing talks of her constant sinning because she
fails to say grace before every meal and pray every night and attend church as
often as possible. She must overcome this tendency through acts of penance to
achieve happiness in the afterlife.
Buddhist and Hindu scriptures alike advocate withdrawal from the
world of pleasure. Spiritually mature people abandon desires, lose their
appetite for joys, and withdraw from their senses. The Buddha preached life as
suffering. If we accept the intrinsic sorrow of life and observe his teachings,
we will find happiness.
Whether achieved
in this life or in an afterlife, religions usually ascribe happiness to divine
action. Do sciences like behavioral genetics mean the genes of those whom Jesus
saves predispose them toward greater happiness? Perhaps spiritual commitment
and experience draw people with these genes, maybe especially when something
blocks their happiness. Further, how do genes and neurotransmitters relate to
an afterlife? We might more pointedly ask what these sciences could say about
the truth claims of religious experience and involvement, including the
activity of God in people’s lives. Divine deeds and biological biases seem
incompatible as explanations.
Religious
believers may well try, then, to ignore or rebut claims for the genetic basis
of happiness. Several paths open to them. Divine grace and will or human will,
they might claim, figure more in happiness than does biology. They set up a
dualism: on one side lies the mind with its feelings, and on the other lies the
brain with its neurotransmitters. The spirit in the machine. Perhaps they might
exact a special spiritual status for happiness, which they thereby divorce from
the biological stuff of genes and brains.
Religious
believers might also try to undermine the genetic research. Several claims for
the genetic basis of various behaviors run into trouble because follow-up
studies fail to replicate the original research. Sharon Begley refers to four
such claims, and the other two she mentions (Hamer’s one on happiness and a
yet-to-be published one on neuroticism) await their follow-ups. The reader
might conclude from her reporting that genetic-basis research carries a poor
track record and merits skepticism. Yet Begley fails to mention other
gene-behavior studies, most of which have not meet their
Begley also refers
to an often-raised suspicion of twin studies. Identical twins frequently dress
alike and create a private world for just the two of them. People treat them
alike too. Fraternal twins, on the other hand, typically behave no more alike
than other siblings. Identicals thus share more influences from their
environment, according to Marcus Feldman, which in turn means their happiness
levels would show a greater similarity. But this criticism overlooks a
technique employed in twin studies, including the one on happiness. Researchers
not only look at identical twins reared together, but also at those separated
at birth and reared apart. The environments of the subjects in these split-twin
studies would differ. But the results of such investigations, at least in those
concerning well-being, reinforce those conducted with non-split identical
twins.
Lawrence Wright
throws further doubt on twin studies in his recent book, Twins: Genes, Environment, and the Mystery of Human Identity, in
which he recounts the puzzling case of a pair of identical twins: one healthy,
the other with a fatal version of the genetic disorder muscular dystrophy. John
Burn, the doctor examining the case, concluded, “even though they [the twins]
share the same genes, a genetic trait doesn’t have to be shared” (Wright 1997,
95). We must exercise caution with twin studies. In the case of happiness,
however, we have evidence from studies of individuals as well as twins to
support the existence of a genetic set point. Also, muscular dystrophy is a
disease involving unequal distribution of faulty genes, whereas happiness is a
normal trait of healthy human beings – it is not obvious that we can draw a
useful parallel.
Scientists used to
assume that identical twins were born in the same gestational sac and
non-identicals in different sacs. Wright points out that DNA testing has proved
this reasoning faulty – roughly one third of identical twins are born from
separate placentas and occasionally placentas belonging to fraternals merge. He
concludes: “Many same-sex twins who believe that they are fraternal may
actually be identical, and vice versa” (Wright 1997, 90). This observation by
Wright does not sound against the twin studies on happiness. The bulk of the
confusion concerns identicals who are really fraternals. Those fraternals
mistakenly placed in the identical pool will decrease the degree to which
identicals apparently attain the same level of happiness. Statistics for
identicals attaining the same happiness levels are already high (44 per cent as
opposed to 8 per cent for fraternals) – if some of these identicals are really
fraternal, the statistics should rise above the 44 per cent. We need ideally to
compare the old results with new results employing the new criteria for
distinguishing types of twinhood, but at the moment it looks as if even more
support for the heritability of happiness springs from the confusion.
Other critics say
that behavioral geneticists like Hamer try to reduce the wholistic human
experience of happiness to nothing but the actions of genes and electrical
activity and chemicals. The critics thereby push anti-reductionism and claim
that geneticists and their popularizers ignore the real subjective realm. Behavioral
genetics oversimplifies the reality. Yet Hamer’s and his colleagues’ work
suggests genes provide only a percentage of input into a behavior. “Though
genes may determine our average [level] of happiness, they don’t specify where
we are within our individual range at any particular point in time” (Hamer
1996, 126). We and our circumstances can affect how we feel here and now. But,
whatever else may influence well-being, genes still play a part, probably a
significant part. To observe this does not mean adopting a determinist approach
to the research; all human traits involve environment and individual
willfulness, as well as genes.
Neither ought
spiritual thinkers play a wait-and-see game: we will only approach these studies
seriously when someone else adequately answers all possible criticisms. While
later research may modify the results of the gene studies, the bulk and tone of
the work will probably remain. We suspect more and more evidence will mount to
show a genetic basis (along with an environmental basis) for such traits as
happiness. Given the rate of progress with the human genome project, before too
long research may unravel the complex of genes that produce happiness. It will
catch spiritual thinkers unthinking.
The problem is
more serious than this sounds, an academic exercise. The human genome project
will (and does) connect behaviors such as happiness, as well as diseases and
physical traits, with particular clusters of genes. How will society and
entrepreneurs use this knowledge? What constitutes misuse of this information?
Current genetic engineering of plants and animals presents a challenge only in
its infancy.
Apart from an occasional glance through its
ethics spectacles, religion ignores this work. Theologians, religionists,
ethicists, and philosophers could constructively engage the scientific findings
and their implications for spiritual beliefs. They should. When the conclusions
of the human genome project pour upon us with their ethical, philosophical, and
spiritual implications, theologians should find themselves well prepared and
knee-deep in the discussion.
This seldom
happens. Spiritual thinkers continue to deny the potential usefulness of
behavioral genetics with more science bashing, continued ignoring of science,
and segregation of subjective qualities like happiness from the physical world
of genes. Such dualism allows for the further irrelevance of religion for daily
life.
We either enjoy
happiness or we do not. We can control some of the circumstantial factors of
our current state of happiness, but 20 percent over the long run leaves little
for God or us to change. Theologians will hopefully refrain from a
God-can-change-the-genes response. If God works toward our happiness, rule out
interventions as the way God employs. And hopefully theologians will resist the
temptation to wipe happiness off God’s agenda; of all things, well-being lures
as the most common goal toward which we strive.
God may want us to
feel happy, but we should cease thinking of well-being as a moral quality we
should aspire to. What does that leave for the theologian to ruminate about
over God and happiness? Perhaps we could look at the nature of God and God’s
relationship with the universe and with humans as part of creation. If we take
all this stuff about genes and behavior seriously, we need to revisit the human
images we project onto God. The genetic and neurotransmitter basis of happiness
suggests God feels neither happiness nor sadness. This means a reconstruction of
our idea of God.
Similarly, the
gene studies indicate we cannot hope for happiness in an afterlife; happiness
is a mental state brought about by neurotransmitters and these things
disintegrate with our bodies. A nonphysical form of happiness generates as
little sense as a nonphysical digestive tract. Metaphorical reinterpretations
of happiness lose touch with reality as well-being depends so much on biology.
But then we empty
meaning out of life if we give up all hope of images and opt for the extreme of
saying nothing about God or the afterlife. We need to think more deeply about
the nature of God and the afterlife.
One approach to
this need for theological reconstruction starts by thinking of God as the
totality of all that exists, the universe-as-a-whole. This whole resembles
other wholes we experience. The Democratic Party possesses a spirit, a system
of belief, and a life which includes but transcends the spirit of President
Clinton and his system of beliefs and his life, and those of all other of its
members. How does happiness then relate to God as the universe-as-a-whole?
President Clinton
is a member of the Democratic Party, and, in a similar way, happiness is a
property of God. As we are part of the universe-as-a-whole, of God, our
happiness is also a property of God—but happiness thought of differently from
ours. The party influences the President and the President the party. Our
happiness influences God and God influences our happiness. The party enfolds
the political attitudes of
The task then
becomes one of describing transcended happiness. To do this, look at the wholes
we experience. In particular, look at the way the properties of the parts of a
whole become, when it transcends them, properties of it. Do this for various
wholes. Then extend this knowledge to create models for the way the
universe-as-a-whole, God, relates to its parts. Lastly, evaluate the various
models for the God-universe relationship that the different types of
whole-parts associations produce.
This will help us
rebuild theology to make more sense of happiness and other human
characteristics as attributes of God. It will also help us reconceive afterlife
since it too involves the wholeness inherent in the universe-as-a-whole.
The
genes-happiness-God debate provokes more than the nature-of-God question and
solution. Suppose we believe in the example and teachings of Jesus Christ and
the witness of the Hebraic tradition. Then we think God produced the universe
and us (the method for which we describe with science, including that of
behavioral genetics) and that God wants us to strive to maximize the happiness
of other people. This will mean trying to remove the barriers to justice and
equality that some people experience. Such conditions depress a person's level
of happiness. It may even mean trying to change the behaviors of people whose
source of happiness (excessive TV or rich food, for instance) leads to less
happiness and can destroy their lives and those of many around them. We could
turn our attention to the greater destroyers such as addiction to tobacco, hard
drugs, or alcohol.
We need to take
seriously and decline to shelve or rebuff such claims as the genetic basis of
subjective traits like happiness. While the details of the science may change,
the challenge to theology and ethics will remain. The demand digs deeply into
theological thought. We may need to reconstruct our understanding of God and
God’s relationship with the universe.
REFERENCES
Begley,
Burne,
J.
Hamer,
D.H. 1996. “The Heritability of Happiness”, Nature
Genetics 14(6), 125-126.
Lane,
R.D., Reiman, E.M., Ahern, G.L., Schwartz, G.E., and Davidson, R.J. 1997. “Neuroanatomical
Correlates of Happiness, Sadness and Disgust”, American Journal of Psychiatry 154(7), 926-933.
Myers,
D.G., and Diener, E. 1996. “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Scientific American 274(5), 54-56.
Wright,
L. 1997. Twins: Genes, Environment, and
the Mystery of Human Identity.