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TechnoratiThere’s more to life than discovering DNA
Remarks by Nobel laureate James Watson have proved that there are worse crimes than being boring. Like being a eugenicist, for instance.
With their buzz, gossip, and glamour,
Nobel Prizes are a lot like the Oscars. And if ever there were a Nobel for entertainment, James Watson would surely win it. He shared a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick in 1962 for discovering the structure of DNA, and since then he has seldom been far from the headlines. To mix metaphors, he is both a sharp tongue and a loose cannon.
At the age of 79, Watson has written a book, Avoid Boring People: And Other Lessons from a Life in Science, and embarked upon a publicity tour in Britain. This began with unequivocal proof that he is not a boring person. He had a long lunch with a contributor to the London Sunday Times, who winkled out of him some astonishingly crude racist remarks.
Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe's profile of Watson included this unnerving paragraph:
He says that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really", and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true". He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level". He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so".
There was an immediate uproar. The Science Museum in London cancelled a sell-out appearance by Watson, claiming that he had gone "beyond the point of acceptable debate". A chastened Watson apologised (at a book launch, suggesting that loose lips cannot sink promotional trips): "To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."
Watson is no stranger to controversy and, apart from the apology, the latest brouhaha has unfolded according to a very tattered script. He is notorious for supporting selective abortions; denigrating a deceased female colleague whose work helped him to win his Nobel, Rosalind Franklin; sexist remarks; contempt for "stupid people"; support for human reproductive cloning; scorn for fat people; and on and on.
For years, his penchant for offense and denigration has made him a kind of scientific Mister Bean whose audiences squirmed between giggling and shrieking. In 2000, he told students at Berkeley that there was a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and libido. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient." Funny, perhaps, but insensitive. Boorish even. Perhaps he won his Nobel too young -- he was only 34 -- before he had learned tact and humility.
Now that he has been accused of outright racism, his colleagues are diving for cover. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where Watson is Chancellor, issued a press release saying that the staff "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments".
They should have been bewildered and saddened long ago, because Watson's remarks are a direct consequence of a lifelong commitment to genetic determinism. Reducing the essence of what it means to be human to something quantifiable means that we can be distinguished from other life forms only by our DNA. Since we share about 99.4 per cent with chimpanzees (the figures vary), there are a lot of people who believe that we are only 0.6% superior to them. By the same token, humans are distinguished from other humans mainly by their IQs. No doubt what he really meant to say was that no matter what colour they are, people with low IQs are genetically inferior.
Any thorough-going materialist will find it difficult to resist the temptation to classify people into inferior and superior types. One of Watson's bon mots is "People say we are playing God. My answer is: If we don't play God, who will?" He once told a British documentary, for instance, "If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease... so I'd like to get rid of that". He also has plans for the fair sex: "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it'd be great."
This is one reason why racism persists -- not despite the progress of modern science but because of it. Like polio, its eradication is announced regularly, only to flare up in the most unexpected places. And as long as human beings are regarded as mere bundles of chemical reactions, it will happen over and over again. Only if we acknowledge that human beings have a transcendental dimension, which is the unquantifiable source of their dignity, is there a firm foundation for fundamental equality and universal brotherhood.
Watson is not a old-fashioned racist and he is probably genuinely sorry for having offended people by his clumsy remarks. However, he is something more dangerous than a racist: a eugenicist. His work with Francis Crick (and Rosalind Franklin) has opened up vast new territories for science and medicine, and for this all of us are in his debt. But his dream of a super-race of "transhumans", people who are genetically engineered to be as smart as he is and faster, leaner and more beautiful than the rest of us is repellent.
It is commonly thought that eugenics died out with the Nazis. It didn't. It's alive and well amongst scientists who believe that human beings are just machines for transmitting DNA. It is this side of Watson's thinking which should have bewildered and saddened his colleagues years ago. The scary thing is that they have only repudiated it now.
Michael Cook is editor of MercatorNet.
David Page I have been bemused by your style of making statements that imply questions for which you presume the answer such as:
With respect to Fr. Gearharts comments regarding homosexuality and your response:
Friday, 26 October 2007 at 10:57 am
“You hold them to a standard that Catholic priests seem singularly unable to live up to.
You argue for the right to demean gay children in front of their classmates.
You help to maintain a climate where gay children think that suicide is a viable option.
You help to create an environment where violence against gay people is common.
I can’t find Jesus in any of that. Can You?”
To each of these statements/questions I think most Catholics would rightfully and definitively answer No. Yet I fear you presume or imply that the answer from Catholics would be yes. Do you really find this style to be helpful in dialogue?
Sunday, 28 October 2007 at 1:16 pm you wrote:
“I think the Catholic Church recognizes the endless contradictions in the Bible.”
I’m curious as to how one would one go about substantiating this claim from “Catholic Church” sources?
“Wasn’t it to prevent this stuff from getting out to the public that they burned Jan Hus at the stake? Wasn’t he the first to translate the Bible into a language that could be generally understood? “
The answer to both of these questions is .. No. If Hus was trying to get anything out to the public it was likely with regard to interpretation(s) of the New Testament not interpretation(s) of passages regarding homosexuality in the Old Testament. Jan Hus also didn’t translate the scriptures or the Bible.
I find it is difficult to know where to respond in this befuddlement. Somehow I get the idea that you already “know” the answers you want?
David, as you said, you don’t put much stock in the bible. Nevertheless, it sounds to me like you do realize there is something more than material reality, and that some aspect of this transcendent reality is needed to explain free will. Here’s a question for you. Why should human beings have this higher nature and animals not? Here’s another question. Given that knowledge of this higher reality requires some sort of revelation, whether public or private, how do you decide what to trust, and what not to trust?
Not being an expert on Jan Hus, I checked the Wikipedia article to try to understand his story a little better. The article is sadly ambiguous on which of three popes of the time (one pope and two anti-popes) were officially in charge of his case. It does, however, suggest that his immediate captor, under whom he was burned at the stake, was the Archbishop of Constance, and that his death penalty was imposed by a majority of the voting prelates at the Council of Constance, a council whose authority is under serious question by the Catholic Church. There’s no mention in the article about Hus’ critique of the bible. In fact, the article says he insisted at his trial that he would recant if his claims could be refuted by the bible. It also says Pope John Paul II specifically and deeply regretted the “the cruel death inflicted” on Hus. I find the whole case intriguing. Do you have any suggestions where I might learn more, especially about his critique of the bible?
Fr. Gearhart, free will is a difficult subject. You’ve got to define what you mean by it. You used the term ‘autonomous moral agency’. I prefer autonomous consciousness. If you believe in demons, which I don’t, you would accept, I assume, that a demon is an autonomous consciousness with no moral component. Caprice has no moral component.
Fr. Gearhart said: “Do your realize that free will (in the sense of autonomous moral agency) is not an emergent property of matter, as Existentialists tend to believe?”
Could you tell me which Existentialists believe that? Anyway, I don’t label myself as an Existentialist, although I tend to agree with a lot of what some of them say. As far as Stochastic Theory is concerned, I never said that I thought mathematics was the discipline suitable for the study of free will.
You can examine and measure the engine that gives rise to consciousness, the brain, but you can’t measure consciousness itself. Sartre would say that consciousness aware of itself was not in the world, but separated from it by nothingness. It is an interesting idea for many reasons. We see beauty in nature. Animals don’t see beauty in nature in nature, they are nature. We are not. By we I mean our consciousness aware of itself. We are not of the world but we can, through our will, command things in it. Our bodies are in the world. We sense that separateness. We know we are both mortal and alone. We long for connection. Hermann Hesse said that all religious longing is homesickness. I think he has a point. The only thing that allows us to cross that barrier is love. Nothing else counts for much.
Nothing I’ve said either proves or disproves the existence of God. It’s not a question I need to, or can, answer.
Fr. Gearhart said: “David, are you equally dismissive of the New Testament? If so, you’re in fine company. Isaac Asimov, as you probably know, wrote an extensive critique on this subject.”
I’m dismissive of most of the new testament. I met Isaac Asimov in London some years ago. I didn’t like him. He hasn’t influenced me in any way. There is little to be specific about. An extraordinary man lived in Israel 2,000 years ago. Ever since then people have been conspiring to misunderstand him. I don’t believe all the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament were actually spoken by him. Lots of Biblical scholars agree with me. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Jesus Project. By the way, I try to answer your questions directly and honestly. You seem to attack small bits of what I say like a guerrilla warrior. You leave other questions completely alone. That’s what the Existentialists call bad faith. I’m tired now. I’ll answer the free will question tomorrow.
I’m sure that LDTS will answer you as well as I can, or better, but I will put in my two cents. I think the Catholic Church recognizes the endless contradictions in the Bible. Wasn’t it to prevent this stuff from getting out to the public that they burned Jan Hus at the stake? Wasn’t he the first to translate the Bible into a language that could be generally understood? If you accept the Bible as the unfiltered Word then Leviticus 20 does contradict the Churches teachings on the death penalty. I suppose you could reasonably say that Leviticus 20 only applies to the Israelites. It starts with with the phrase ‘Tell the Israelites’. In that case what’s your beef with homosexuality?
I’m not quite sure what the beef about Leviticus 20:13 is. Is it the fact that it’s in the Old Testament, a “mishmash of archaic nonsense” or is the claim translations are “messed up?” Or is it the idea that it somehow contradicts the Church’s stance on the death penalty?
O.k., so I clicked on your name, LDTS, but the page wouldn’t load for some reason. Maybe you think the King James Version is an unfair translation. O.k., so name a version that’s fair. (Note: that was basically my original question, “How, for example, does your translation treat Leviticus 20:13?") I’m sorry you experience Church teaching on homosexual activity as “slanderous misconceptions.” Since the Church is only trying to interpret the Judeo Christian tradition on this topic as best it can, perhaps you would explain first whether you disagree with the tradition or with the interpretation. Then, perhaps we can discuss it.
David, are you equally dismissive of the New Testament? If so, you’re in fine company. Isaac Asimov, as you probably know, wrote an extensive critique on this subject. As a biblical scholar, he was a truly innovative science fiction writer. Now, if you would like to be more specific, perhaps our discussion can be more productive.
Incidentally, David, your comment on free will is intriguing. Do your realize that free will (in the sense of autonomous moral agency) is not an emergent property of matter, as Existentialists tend to believe? Having gotten a doctorate in mathematics, and having studied the subject of stochastic partial differential equations in some depth, I can state that unequivocally, and you can take that to any expert in mathematical physics for verification.
That does not demonstrate, however, that free will is an illusion, only that purely material assumptions about the makeup of reality demand that it be such. My own background convinces me that reality is not merely material, but also spiritual.
TB said: “Mr. Page, is there some other view of evolution that is not mechanical? Every time I pick up a magazine, some evolutionist is pronouncing that free will is an illusion.”
First I have to say that no theory can eliminate the possibility of spiritual involvement in the evolutionary process. To believe so would be to underestimate the mind of the God you revere.
My personal preference in evolutionary theory is the inheritance of acquired characteristics. I know Darwinists will jump down my throat for saying so, but it has logic and eloquence and it’s a theory that Darwin himself was intrigued with. I would recommend reading ‘The Case of the Midwife Toad’ for quick reference.
The question of free will is Philosophical and, to some, Spiritual. For an Existentialist it’s a prerequisite for consciousness aware of itself and separate from the world.
For the religious person it’s a gift from God. Either way, it’s an enormous responsibility.
Jim^^
Thank you for pointing that out… It does look confusing when I look at it, now^^;;
See, I got mad at the word ‘master’ because, as defined by Father Gearhart, it has different implications for heterosexuals and homosexuals. I now see how it might have been odd to use it in the way I did, then.
(And when -I- say ‘temptation’, I don’t mean ‘hey, let’s be promiscuous’. I mean that it’s okay to have sex with the gender you desire.)
No, I’m not an expert on the bible. Everything I know about the bible comes form two sources: Wikipedia and Religioustolerance.org^^;; I never have read the bible directly: I’m not christian.
But I do know a thing or two. Which is why...^^
Father Gearhart^^
I’m so glad you mentioned Leviticus 20:13^-^ Because that’s exactly the sort of messed-up translation I’m talking about. I’d advise you to click my name to direct you to a page on Leviticus 20:13.
Here’s the one that most people refer to: the King James Version.
“"If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them."”
Hmm^^ If a man lies with a man. That covers… half of homosexuality^^ Very conveniently, the half of which I am not part of ~_^ (And what happened to your anti-death-penalty stance? ‘cause this sort of outright advocates it.)
“I was not picking on homosexuals, particularly, just the whole gamut of sexual irresponsibility.”
Yeah. But you still threw me in there, and I’m still ticked off.
Anyway, it appears that you’re trying to argue red is better, when I’m advocating purple as a solution. We’re just not going to see eye-to-eye, ever. You take the Bible as truth; I take it as a story.
In closing… I’m not going to mince words.
The truth can hurt.
But the slanderous misconceptions of the Church hurt even more.
And with that… Have a nice day, everybody^^
Artificial contraception also plays a part in this debate; when heterosexuals said, in effect, ‘We can have a sexual relationship that deliberately prevents the possibility of children’ it made any condemnation of homosexual practice entirely hypocritical. At the Lambeth Conference of 1930 the Anglican Church allowed contraception for married couples in certain situations - and the pass was sold.
That is why the Catholic Church has always maintained that heterosexual married love must be open to new life.
Everyone has focused on the obvious Watson is a racist meme but few have appreciated that Watson is being faithful to the intellectual slope of scientific materialism. If you are a materialist, you have to accept that we are not equal. Evolution is based on inequalities. Biologically, no animal, including man, can be presumed equal to another. MC points out this tension between egalitarianism and scientific materialism which is uncritically accepted by many liberals.
Mr. Page, is there some other view of evolution that is not mechanical? Every time I pick up a magazine, some evolutionist is pronoucing that free will is an illusion.
TLDTS
I’ve mostly stayed away from this discussion, but am moved by what appear to me to be inconsistencies…
You wrote: “I’m no expert on the Bible, but ... “ and then in the next paragraph you wrote:
“(In every translation of the Bible, I might add. We all know that some bigots in ancient times translated certain words according to their personal preferences.)”
I’m confused first you are not an expert on the Bible and then it appears that your are. Is there a reason that you play both sides?
You also wrote: “That said, how’d you feel if I said that if you believed in free will, you could master your heterosexual temptation?
Yeah, probably not too happy.”
I fear that you have made Fr. Gearhart’s point for him in that this is the point of free will. That one can choose to master their sexual (hetero or homo) temptation and indeed be “happy” for it. Why would one assume “Yeah, probably not too happy” if one has in fact mastered their sexual temptation(s)?
Actually, I think it’s not at all unreasonable to expect a heterosexual to master their sexual temptation, any more than to demand the same of a homosexual. Both should live by the same standard of chastity. That implies, in both instances, subordinating sexual desire to the natural function of pro-creation in the context of a family. Anything outside of that is irresponsible use of the gift of sexuality.
I have no quibble with your claim that Adam and Even were irresponsible. Part of the reason we have genetic disorders today is the fall of Adam and Eve from the state of original grace. And, of course, it’s not difficult to point to heterosexuals today who are irresponsible. That’s why, in my original comment, which you highlighted, I was not picking on homosexuals, particularly, just the whole gamut of sexual irresponsibility.
Generally, when the bible points to sexual sin, it doesn’t point to homosexual sin as the only sin. Nevertheless, it also doesn’t ignore homosexual sin. How, for example, does your translation treat Leviticus 20:13?
What do you consider to be a “hurtful thing?” Have you ever heard that even the truth can hurt?
Fr. Gearhart said: “As for homosexuality not being a choice, that question is ultimately irrelevant to the sin of homosexual expression. Unless, of course, you really don’t believe in free will.”
That’s not logical. One must first accept that ‘homosexual expression’ is a sin. The Old Testament, where that idea comes from, is a mishmash of archaic nonsense. I won’t bore you with the contradictions and absurdities (Unless you ask). You fight to prevent gay marriage and then say they’re immoral because they are not married. You deny them the ability to love one another openly. What has value in this world besides love? You hold them to a standard that Catholic priests seem singularly unable to live up to.
You argue for the right to demean gay children in front of their classmates. You help to maintain a climate where gay children think that suicide is a viable option. You help to create an environment where violence against gay people is common. I can’t find Jesus in any of that. Can You?
Joe^^
Yeah, it probably -does- seem like my viewpoint isn’t consistent… But not to worry, it is^^;;
I’d explain all the subtle nuances of what I believe in and how it happens and all that, but… I have less than 2000 characters available to me, and at the period at the end of this sentence, I will have used up 336 of them already.
So I guess I’m asking you to take my word for it in this instance^^;;
Now… Father Gearhart^^
Y’know, I find it nice that you mention free will; and yes, I believe in it.
But, uh… according to biblical history, free will is what got us into every mess we’ve ever been in^^;; I’m no expert on the Bible, but… isn’t it the Word of God that the first two heterosexuals, Adam and Eve, disobeyed his commands not to eat a certain fruit, and then were banished from Eden forever? Sounds like free will to me.
So… seems kinda like in biblical terms, the heterosexuals were the irresponsible ones^^ Weird, huh?
On the subject of ‘the sin of homosexual expression’… I challenge you to cite a single passage where God condemns a monogamous, loving homosexual union^^ (In every translation of the Bible, I might add. We all know that some bigots in ancient times translated certain words according to their personal preferences.)
Anyways. Excuse me for paraphrasing, but what you’re getting at is… it’s the homosexual’s choice to have sex with a member of their own gender. And you’re right there; that is our choice, who we sleep with. Yours, too, actually^^ It’s a heterosexual’s choice to sleep with someone of the opposite gender.
That said, how’d you feel if I said that if you believed in free will, you could master your heterosexual temptation?
Yeah, probably not too happy.
Well, summing things up, you’re a Father. A church man. So… this opinion of yours is pretty well ground in, and I’ve got no realistic chance of changing it.
But please, stop saying hurtful things.
Have a nice day, everybody^^
Actually, no. There are a million ways to be irresponsible in our sexual expression, homosexuality is only one category among many. Whatever your genetic predisposition, you can master the temptation, even homosexual temptation, especially if you really do believe in free will.
As for homosexuality being a disease, that depends on what you mean by disease. It’s obviously not caused by a virus or other pathogen. If it is genetic, it may be regarded as a genetic disorder, and, in that limited sense, it may be regarded as a disease. Some people regard alcoholism as a disease, which it can be, but this ignores the role of free will.
As for homosexuality not being a choice, that question is ultimately irrelevant to the sin of homosexual expression. Unless, of course, you really don’t believe in free will.
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