 My name is Garrett Paul. I am Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College and a member of this year's Nobel Committee and it is my great pleasure to introduce to you this afternoon Dr. Linda Neves. It is difficult to think of any scientific discoveries which touch us more deeply and intimately than those which we are discussing at this conference. To be known as one of the most intimate and profound experiences of lived life and here we are being known as life forms which are shaped and molded by genetic forces. We are coming to understand more than ever before. You can feel the excitement in the air at this conference as new discoveries are recounted. Yet these discoveries also touch on the age-old question, Who are we? Who am I? Who are we that God is mindful of us? It is easy to slough off these questions as irrelevant or alternately to make bland assertions with no grounding in the data. Happily Dr. Linda Neves doesn't either. He is a thoroughly grounded research scientist in genetics and human behavior, particularly in the area of twin research for which he has won the James Shields Award and the Paul Hoke Award from the American Psychopathological Association. He places so much value on the data that when I told him I had to introduce him, he said, do you have any data? And I said yes, I do. Educated at Birmingham and Oxford, he took time off from his doctoral work in human behavior genetics to study theology and to be ordained in the Church of England. And he is now one of that distinguished company of practicing scientists who are also Anglican priests. Among his 92 listed publication articles are titles such as Religious Affiliation in Twins and Their Parents, Genetic and Environmental Factors on Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms in a General Population Twin Sample, and Recovering Components of Variants from Differential Rating of Behavior and Environment in Pairs of Relatives. Dr. Eves is currently Distinguished Professor in the Department of Human Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, where his portfolio includes Behavior and Psychiatric Genetics, Advanced Quantitative Genetics, and Quantitative Sociobiology. He is recognized as a world leader in the development of genetic models and statistical methodology. Fifty years ago, Paul Tillich, one of the greatest theologians of this or any other century, described religion as the state of being ultimately concerned, what grabs us at the center of our being. At this conference, we are discussing biology that grabs us at the center of our being, and today, Dr. Eves will address us on the topic of the biology of ultimate concern. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Eves. Thank you very much for that gracious and grossly exaggerated introduction. We started out with real science. We went downhill a bit to messy science, and now we're in complete mess because you've got your token priest. I've become increasingly anxious since the day I got the letter from Richard and Colleen inviting me to contribute to this conference, because the portfolio, as it were, I was asked to bear was that of you are uniquely qualified to comment on the issues of meaning in relation to genetics. And I've realized, as I've got nearer and nearer to this awful moment, that I've done this kind of thing lots of times. But usually, I've been the geneticist watching the theologians make idiots of themselves. So I'm in the invidious position of being the geneticist who's not really allowed to talk about genetics, but I've got to talk about religion. And perhaps the best way to start is with a couple of stories. I guess about 10 or 12 years ago, I was invited to give a series of seminars at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, which is one of the great centers for scholarship in the area of theology and science. And after one of the sessions, a postdoctoral student who was a theologian came up to him as a German and said, Well, Dr. Yves, it is clear you know a lot about genetics, but when you talk about religion, it's clear you are only a priest. So I'm only a priest. And so if I make an idiot of myself, you can all forget about it, but I think I want to address some issues. Just as I was talking to a few minutes to go to before I came up here to one of your faculty in the theology department, I was expressing my anxiety and said, oh, don't worry, I've sat through lots of these. He said, usually the theologian just kind of schmoozes around, get in there and kick some butt. I was once at a conference in Hannover, near Hannover in Germany, where the theme I think was competition in biology. And it was an interdisciplinary conference between theologians, many of whom were Lutheran and German, and some scientists, many of whom were also Lutheran and German. And at one point there was an exchange which took place between Wolfhard Pannenberg, who is a very eminent German theologian, who has written fairly extensively on the issues of theology and science and anthropology. And an anthropologist called Professor Vogel, and the conversation went like this. Wolfhard Pannenberg to Vogel. Professor Vogel, what part does religion play in your anthropology? Professor Vogel to Professor Pannenberg, oh, none whatever, science is ideologically neutral. Well, if ever there was BS, for two reasons. Firstly, scientists would not get out of bed in the morning to do the things they do, if they were not first and foremost people of passion, people of belief, people who have an intense fascination with the mystery of the universe and life. They're not ideologically neutral, they are intensely and rightly committed to what they do. Secondly, how can you do anthropology without taking into account one of the most seriously and quintessentially, even if foolishly, human things we do, which is namely religion? So my task this afternoon is to step back as it were from my role as a geneticist, somewhat, and at least don the hat of the priest and say, what does it all mean? And that was really my task. Now of course that's a very easy and straightforward thing to do. The important thing is that what I want to do really is to try and get a conversation going. I believe that there is a need at this time in the history of science for theology and science to begin to take one another more seriously. That's going to require some fairly fundamental changes. It's going to require, firstly that theologians listen to science and secondly that the scientists at least try to suspend willingly their disbelief to the point that they think there is more to theology simply than creationism. I think we've suffered a lot in the ability for religion and science to talk to one another because most scientists' view of theology is what they see in the popular press or what they may have learnt in distorted versions in their Sunday school and so on. So let's try at least, this is not an exercise in trying to convince anybody of anything so much as trying to sort of engineer a few pointers and points of contact and to raise a few questions that I think the time is right for us to consider. One of the leading scholars in the area of theology and science is the American scholar Ian Barber, a Presbyterian, who summarises quite clearly four ways in which science and religion have in the past and today interacted. Conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. We're all familiar with the notion of conflict and we tend to see that as bad but I would like to think to underscore the need for creative conflict between the disciplines. It's been very clear to me that one of the gifts that science can bring to religion is the gift of criticism. One of the things I think that religion has failed to bring to science or at least has failed to be heard about are realistic criticisms of science. Conflict is an important part of our growth together as human beings. Independence, there are times when science and religion need to go their own ways. Theology has no business dabbling in the day-to-day working of the scientific community. The work we do should be done without interference of a kind that the history of science is, I think, embarrassing littered with. But if it ends there, society and humanity is going to be gravely impoverished. We need also to establish dialogue so that each knows what the other is talking about and each cares about what the other is talking about and perhaps one day we might indeed be able to develop some kind of integration. The form of that integration, of course, is very hard to say. It will depend on, at least in part, the data and it will depend at least in part on how we see ourselves. The title of my talk, Revisiting the Biology of Ultimate Concern, was really something I pulled out of my head. I think I was asked for a title. I couldn't think about it. Oh God, what am I going to talk about? So I pulled a title out of my head. As was pointed out earlier, one of the great theologians of the 20th century, Paul Tillich, introduced the construct of Ultimate Concern as one attempt to try and defuse some of the baggage that religious language carried. And interestingly enough, this notion was picked up in the mid-60s by one of the great American evolutionary biologists, Theodosius Dubzhensky. Dubzhensky wrote a book in 67 called The Biology of Ultimate Concern, which was an attempt by at least the lights of his day to try and connect what he thought evolutionary biology was about to what he thought the quintessential issues facing humanity were about. And I'm certainly not in Dubzhensky's class, and I don't now agree with everything he had to say, but it was a seminal attempt at least at integration. Recognizing, if you like, that science, biology needs to take, and anthropology too, needs to take humanity seriously, not just at the level of things it can measure, not just at the level of attitudes or extroversion or sexuality indeed, but at those factors which are quintessentially human and try to understand those if we're going to understand ourselves. Paul Tillich in his Theology of Culture addresses what he understands to be ultimate concern. The religious aspect points to that which is ultimate, infinite and unconditional in man's, I'm sorry about the man's, this was 30 years ago, spiritual life. Religion in the largest and most basic sense of the word is ultimate concern. Whatever matters most to us as human beings. And ultimate concern is manifest in all creative functions of the human spirit. This includes, as I believe we can show, science. We've heard a lot about Darwin and evolution by natural selection and the religious implications of that. What about genetics? Interestingly enough, Jürgen Moltmann in one of the great theologians of the latter part of our century in 67, when he was writing about Theology of Hope, I think it's a rather enigmatic and disarming and somewhat alarming statement. Darwinism he says in his day was bitterly contested by the Christian confessions, but modern genetics cannot disturb them, that is the Christians, because this is a science of such boundless complexity and cannot turn into a speculative component. That is genetics is so complicated that nobody will understand it and therefore who needs to worry about it? Well, certainly if we looked at Dr. Ventler's presentation this morning, we saw the intricacy and the beauty and the complexity of biology. But I want to suggest that that is not ideologically neutral, it has enormous cultural impact. Indeed, at least to geneticists and I think sooner or later to society as a whole, genetics by itself is very full of meaning. We see it and I think we saw a beautiful example of it this morning of what I would call the cultural power of genetics, that genetics is not merely a collection of facts, but it embodies some of those greatest things about our humanity. Our capacity to see and enjoy beauty, yes, our ability to have power and control over the world, but I think if we really sit down and think about it, that's not the agenda here. It's a spin-off and potentially a demonic spin-off, but it's not all we think of when we think of what we saw this morning. I'm sure what we're going to see over the next two days. We see surprise. I'm absolutely fascinated by the fact that as molecular biology, for example, takes another microorganism and reads the genome, the story gets bigger and bigger and more intricate and more fascinating and more challenging and more demanding. There's surprise in every corner. There's insight perhaps. I was intrigued by this morning by the redrawing, as it were, of the evolutionary tree as a neural net because of the transmission of information laterally between different branches of the evolutionary tree. We see fascination and we see whatever we mean by truth. Those are great human achievements and nobody should gain sight and have enormous power and I do not think that they are ideologically neutral. What about meaning then? What do we mean by meaning? Well, it's a tough concept, but I think it really implies the search for meaning is our search for the moral and cognitive intelligibility. I put those two together of the whole. Meaning may be implicit or explicit. Sometimes I think one of the problems has been that when religion has tended to take the lead in defining meaning, science has backed off and failed to articulate some of the implicit meaning in what it does. Meaning shapes values and shapes actions. It does not necessarily determine them fully, but nevertheless it has an impact. Meaning is embodied and it's sustained by myths, by narratives and by rituals. In other words, there is a tradition of meaning in culture. And as Alistair McIntyre has pointed out to us, to be outside all traditions is to be a stranger to inquiry. It is to be in a state of intellectual and moral destitution. The pursuit of genetics, the pursuit of biology, the pursuit of tucked science is part of a broader cultural tradition of inquiry. And it's dependent on that. And yet we see in some of our genetically minded colleagues statements like this, and I understand where this comes from, Francis Crick, the plain fact is that the myths of yesterday have collapsed. True. As was pointed out in the 60s, there is a sense at which, at least, one sense at least, in which God is dead. That's what Francis Crick is addressing. Which raises the question for us today, is there any significance in the God theory? Was it worth anything to us? What's its cash value? What is the significance of genetic theory, for God theory, and vice versa? What's God theory? I deliberately put it in those terms because I think one of the things that theology is becoming to appreciate in this time of the 20th century, which perhaps the scientists don't give it credit for, is a much more modest sense of what it means to make theological claims, to make claims about ultimate reality. God theory, I think we can think of, is a collection, more or less systematic, and that's itself debatable, of propositions, of metaphors, of narratives, that encapsulates our current understanding of the character of the universe and our relationship to it. In other words, it's at least part of our model for meaning. Theories. Theory gets a bad press. You know, we hear people say it's only a theory. There is no greater thing in science than theory. Theory is a human construction, yes, but it's a human construction which represents our best effort to account for the significant features of our experience, and it guides all our inquiry and our action. Theories are indeed exciting. To call evolution a theory is not to denigrate it, but to instill it very much at the centre of our human activity and our human excitement and our human inquiry. When the anti-evolution is to denigrate evolution as a theory, they are displaying their ignorance of what science is fundamentally about. There are those, of course, who will draw from biology certain conclusions, and they're entitled and may be right to do so, having given the history of religion. Richard Dawkins, whom someone described as Darwin's Rottweiler, expressed it very simply in these terms. Darwin makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. But the question is, where do we put that? I don't know about you. I mean, there are lots of things I'm not very good at, enough said. That's a cheap shot, but I think it needs to be out there, guys, in this context. Humans try. Their highest goal is to construct their most elegant, complete, hopefully simple, though God alone knows, looking at biology these days, it doesn't look very simple, theory about the way things are. And Stephen Hawking, I think, has put his finger on really the fundamental puzzle that we're all striving with here. The need for theory to be, in principle, understandable by everyone, so that we all can take part in that discussion of why it is that we in the universe exist. Interestingly enough, though I'm sure Stephen Hawking is not in any conventional sense religious, he uses the metaphor, mind of God, to articulate what he understands to be one of the ultimate goals of our human striving. What do we do with scientific models? I came across this, actually reading recently a book by a historian, a guy called Numbers, writing on the introduction of Darwinism into American culture, and he dug out this rather fascinating quotation from the then president of the AAAAS, which I found interesting for its hubris at some level, but nevertheless articulating a position that we do see very often coming from science when it's addressing religious type issues. Man, and I'm sorry about that, but I didn't write it, it was 100 years ago, now becomes the object of rigid scientific scrutiny, questions of labor, temperance, prison reform, distribution of charities, religious agitations, that's me, are questions immediately concerning the mammal man and are now to be seriously studied from a solid standpoint of observation and experiment and not from the emotional and often incongruous attitude of the church. Clearly there's an expectation here that the facts, as it were, the scientific facts are going to decide what we ought to do. And if you think that that's 100 years old, then look a little nearer home guys, one of our heroes in molecular genetics, a scientist is possessed of an almost boundless optimism concerning his, again his, ability to forge a wholly new set of beliefs solidly based on theory and experiment. I'd like to know one of my questions for the panel, I guess, for afterwards is how many of us actually believe that? Reality check family, the Swedish family, Abraham Joshua Heschel, one or two of our speakers have already addressed this, I think it was Dr. Hood who earlier on today spoke about the history of our humanity as not giving us unbounded confidence that science was always just going to do the best. And in fact, of course, who else but a Jew should remind us that history is where God is defied and where justice suffers defeats. That is the fundamental issue I think which gives us reason to doubt some of the more optimistic assertions that one sometimes hear from our scientists colleagues, I'm not blaming them wholly for this, but when they go beyond as it were their turf and start claiming to be able to decide the future of the human race, we are fallible and not only fallible, people endowed with a great capacity to do the wrong thing and to screw up. And in fact, one of the things that optimistic theology learned at the very early part of this century was that all our optimism very quickly came on glued around about the time of the First World War and it was a very salutary reality check. Humans then, what do we learn? Humans certainly are very complicated, whether it's 80,000 genes or 150,000 genes, it's a lot of genes. They took a long time to make. They are very smart indeed and they often, as we've admitted already, don't know as much as we think we do and finally we often screw up. All of those are features of what it is to be human and I think it's these kinds of features which demand from us a measure of yes, appreciation of our power and our gifts and our strengths, but also the recognition of the need for humility before the complexity and the uncertainties of the meaning of the data that we generate. Our colleague Phil Heathner, a theologian in Chicago who has written fairly extensively around the implications of biology for humanity has introduced into theological parlance the metaphor for the human's place in the universe. He describes us as the created co-creator. The individual who is endowed with enormous powers, enormous talents and yet is necessarily humble before the exploding reality that lies in front of him or her. Again, we saw this in Dr. Ventus talk this morning with the phenomenal explosion and it's not just that information is exploding, it's actually that each time you think you've got it, in fact a whole new vista of possibilities open up before you. That's something that the religious mystics of old understood very clearly and I think it's sort of the scientific parallel of the experience of the religious tradition when it invokes the commandment against idolatry. When you think you've got it nailed down guys, you ain't. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. It's a command against believing you've got it right. Your model of reality is not the last model of reality you're ever going to find because sooner or later the data is going to explode in your face and demand from you much more than you ever thought or could believe or imagine. So then let's look briefly at some of the points of contact which might form the basis for a more mature and informed dialogue between what we do as biologists and what the theologians do as theologians. And I want to identify three main areas and comment very briefly on each of them. The first of these is spirituality. We'll talk about what that is in a minute. The second is, I had to use this word because I love it. It's so intimidating, epistemology. I'm not sure what it means but it has something to do with being sure that you know what you think you know. And finally, content. And I single out for comment two areas of content. One is anthropology and by that I mean most broadly our understanding of what it is to be human. I don't just mean biological anthropology or social anthropology. I mean the totality of our understanding of being human. And secondly, cosmology. And I ain't no cosmologist. I mean, I ain't much of a geneticist either but I'm even less of a cosmologist. I mean, you know, the list of things are not. I'm being the one-to-one I am. But cosmology provides the context for biology. And I think we, if we're trying to understand questions of meaning, at least we have to recognize that all our theology and all our biology is, all our talking about humanity is also embedded in cosmology which is the sort of the ultimate and highest layer of our attempts to understand humanity. Let's talk a bit about spirituality. And the reason I want to do this is really a call to my scientific colleagues to be a bit more upfront and not let it all hang out, God forbid. But at least to name and identify the excitement that they feel about what they do. Because I think one of the areas where science has become detached from society is because on the whole we cannot identify with the scientific activity. It all seems so detached and so unhuman that the ordinary layperson doesn't connect with it or other human beings don't connect with it. Spirituality really, although it has religious overtones it's really about the fact that humans interact with their world. And I think that when we talk about meaning we recognize that meaning requires, indeed it does not exist without the interaction between the human being as an entity to be reckoned with and the data with which we in science deal. In a nutshell I think without spirit that characteristic of humans which interacts with their world without spirit data do have no meaning. But of course the warning that science brings to those of us who want to go wandering off on our own trips is that if we don't have data then spirit is just wandering around in vain. So the essence of the scientific activity and I think the essence of all intellectual activity in the end is the interaction between the human, the human spirit and data, the world. And that is the essence of being a human inquiring in the universe. We see that enormously in a number of crucial points in the history of science. James Watson in the double helix for example clearly is not dispassionate about the double helix but he describes his excitement at seeing the bits fit together and he describes the excitement in two very sort of high order terms as it were which don't come from the data but come from within the spirit that is engaging the data. The truth once found would be simple as well as pretty. Simplicity and beauty being spiritual characteristics if you like which form part of the fabric with which we interpret our reality. The human spirit and the data are not always in perfect harmony however and we see a tension between the data and the human spirit which is crucial in order to maintain our humanity. We are not just data sponges but we are data critics. We bring our humanity to the data and so yes of course we reinterpret our reality in the light of the data but also as Gert Tyson pointed out in an interesting book there is a characteristic of the human spirit which we could call faith if you want which actually at times comes up from within us to actually challenge what some people think as the oppressive force of the facts. It is for example some version of faith and I'm not specifically necessarily talking about religious faith but the human quality of faith which leads people to shout and scream when faced with for example the bell curve. That is as much part of my humanity as my IQ or any of the other characteristics, my economic value which is declining rapidly as I get older and the science goes on much faster than I can keep up with. That is the sort of quality of humanity which challenges the data and its significance. This is a take on spirituality from a theologian. John Sabrina is a Jesuit who was kind of the theological backbone as it were for Oscar Amiro in South America who recognises the connection between the human spirit and reality as he calls it. Recognising that we are in conversation with the data that the human is corrected by the data but is not totally determined or dependent on the data for his or her humanity. Einstein was aware of the connection between spirituality and science. He alludes to the depth of commitment and passion and often the loneliness that it takes to address those fundamental scientific questions. Only the one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realisation of what has inspired them and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. Here we have one of the greatest scientists of our century acknowledging the primacy of the spirit in the engagement that goes on between the scientific mind and reality. That is something that is there to be discovered, it is there to be celebrated and puts things back in context. I'm no philosopher but I do want to say that philosophy has moved on a bit since science got started and particularly we see that two of the features of what we think of as modern thought are really currently under question and probably rightly so. Firstly modern thought really means the modes of thinking that got help get science off the ground and also not historian of science were governed by relatively simple concepts of truth and reality that there was reality out there and science's job was to find it and when you found it you were sure it was true. That's a sort of a fairly, you know, think of as a sort of foundational concept for the way we do science you might think. And the second issue which I think I'm interested to see is now evaporating at the grassroots again I think of Dr. Ventus talk this morning we've suffered for a long time from the notion that the world really and I saw really in that kind of term because it's argument weak shout you know the world really is the sum of its bits this is what might be called a formerly ontological reductionism that somehow you dissolve the human into its parts I noticed that two of our distinguished speakers today explicitly, well at least implicitly repudiated a simple minded reductionism Dr. Hood I think it was when he spoke about use the metaphor of language and higher levels of language to denote processes that were still to be put together above the DNA level I think also one of our speakers alluded to the rules that govern the behaviour of whole chromosomes for example the simple minded reductionism that has dominated a lot of science and biology for good reason because it's taken us a hell of a long way nevertheless perhaps is now under re-examination as I said the notions of reality and truth are also somewhat under examination these days the reason being that I think we become much more aware that the criteria of scientific progress are inherently historical and that to some extent they are judged by a much richer variety of criteria than simply what we might have thought of once upon a time as a simple minded value a notion of truth there are issues of coherence images of our models of reality as indeed just that as webs of knowledge of interconnected fabrics which are more or less under tension and at some level it's very hard to decide what is really true in any ultimate sense data I couldn't resist it I had to talk about some data but I'm going to do it very, very superficially because in a sense Dean Hamer has already introduced most of the issues but I just wanted to sort of really use some data to make a point and let's talk about the data first then we'll make the point it's twin data Dean already explained that really the twins come in two types identical twins and non-identical twins and that identical twins have identical genes they share the same genes and if they're rid in the same family they also have at least some shared environment I call that G here and then have their own also each twin in a family has its own unique environmental experiences the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as that British playwright once said non-identical twins on the other hand have different genes roughly they share one half of their alleles in common but they also read in the same family so share the same environments but also have their own unique environmental experiences now there are many nuances of this story many complications and many criticisms and I'm aware of those but at least if you take this model it leads us to some simple quantitative predictions about what we might see for the relative degrees of resemblance between MZ identical and non-identical twins under several scenarios consider three scenarios the heights of the bars represent the degrees of correlation to be expected between identical MZ and non-identical DZ twins under three scenarios the simple case in the left hand I'm about to shoot myself with this instrument the left hand's case represents what we would expect the absence of any genetic effects whatever on a complex outcome identical twins and non-identical twins correlate equally the middle case corresponds to what we would expect if there are relatively speaking a large number of genes each of them adding up their plus and minus effects on a complex outcome to create individual differences and the crucial point here and we can talk about the exact assumptions under which this would be the case if you want in question time in this model we expect the monozygotic twin correlation within sampling variation at least to be exactly twice that of dizygotic twins and finally the third case we have the mixed scenario under which we deal with individuals sharing both their genes and both their environment in common where the height of the bar for dizygotic twins is increased relative to monozygotic twins here we note as is the case as Dean pointed out with every trait I think we measure in humans the correlations are never one for identical twins there are always some slings and arrows of random environmental outrageous fortune meaning that twins are not perfectly correlated take a very simple case stature in the Virginia 30,000 the Virginia 30,000 is a study of 15,000 twins and also their relatives here I've just extracted the twin data this is based on about 15,000 individual twins and we see here what we would expect you see under that second scenario of a trait which is considerably genetically influenced I nearly fell into that trap didn't I but we know even in the case of stature that the correlations between identical twins are not unity there are some environmental effects but the crucial point really is here that the bars for the non-identical twins are well within what you'd expect if they were really half as high as the monosagolic twins the kind of thing that you would expect if you were dealing with a trait where there are a large number of genes whose effects are predominantly additive some data supplied by my Australian colleague Nick Martin where we look at something where everybody knows a priori as it were you're dealing with something that's cultural and what we see here is for religious affiliation the resemblance of twins is enormously still very strong as you might expect but now the correlations for dizygotic twins are virtually identical not significantly different from those from identical monosagotic twins this is what you'd expect if there are no genetic effects whatever so here we've now as it were got the poles of the argument the two extreme scenarios let's look at a personality trait which is often thought to be related to religion these are some data which our colleagues in Australia Cathy Kirk and Nick Martin recently but I'm sorry about the axes here I had a terrible time getting this slide right and when I got it right I couldn't get the color right but the two left hand bars the correlations for monosagolic twins which are round about 0.4 pretty much what Dean reported for extraversion and the correlations for non-identical twins here are roughly half that the kind of thing that you would you see for many human personality variables self-transcendence is a scale which was defined by Robert Cloninger one of the leading exponents of psychiatric genetics as an attempt to characterize one of the dimensions of human spirituality so here we have something at least a trait where individual differences are apparently a reflection of genetic differences probably a large number of genes operating and their effects individually adding up to produce the phenotype what about something that's more interestingly human perhaps than stature what about social attitudes well we haven't got time to go into the measurement of social attitudes but I think the point I really want to make here is that when you when you ask a large number of people about a variety of topics in the attitudinal arena you get of course enormous diversity of response that's what politics thrives on is the variability in social attitudes you find that attitudes are not a collection of independent items but that they are organized they're organized around principles people tend to have related attitudes around issues of military strength and power around sexuality around what you should do with money and taxation around politics and around indeed religion for example the impact that religion should have on society there is enormous diversity around these issues and these are the meat as it were of human discussion of our political life, our life together in society suffice to say that one can characterize attitudes in individuals and can characterize the differences among individuals and attitudes may not be the highest things we do with ourselves as humans but it's clearly things without law and sexuality and social structure and so on so there are at least things that I don't know that rats don't have attitudes but at least I know that humans do what we have here is a busy slide but it's a busy slide that summarizes twin relationships twin similarities for these different attitudinal dimensions and to cut a rather long story short the results are really rather interesting firstly as you might expect twins indeed do correlate secondly that broadly speaking for most of these attitudinal let's call them dimensions individual differences correlate more in MZ twins than DZ twins there's a lot of variability in that for example if you look at political attitudes on the whole the influences tend to be much more cultural and much less genetic in either case I think the important point is that we're clearly dealing with traits here where clearly the environment is playing a major role but interestingly enough when you look at what might argue are some of the highest things that we do with our humanity you cannot ignore the impact of genes this is very close to the kinds that Dean was talking about we can put these a bit together because in fact what you find is that these separate clusters of attitudes are not independent either that someone who tends to adopt attitudes in favor of the nuclear deterrent and in favor of conscription of the draft also tend to be conservative around issues of sexuality divorce, abortion and so on and so forth but human attitudes are to some degree organized around an overall distinction between relatively conservative and relatively liberal and if we put these together which is what I've done on this last well the last data slide we actually find something rather interesting because what I've done here is to take our data on attitudes in twins where we've given the same items to twins of a whole range of ages therefore puberty right through into late adult life and the red bars here represent the correlations for identical twins and the green bars the correlations for non-identical twins and what we find is really rather interesting and I think it points to an issue that Dean raised and anybody with sort of who's sensitive to data raises and that is the issues of development it's a mistake to think that in so far as genes affect complex outcomes that that means somehow it's all determined at day one because what we see here is really rather interesting firstly we see that really as you look through adolescence the degree of correlation increases for better or for worse people are starting to members of families are correlating for their attitudes here they're picking up information but the information is coming from the environment the correlations for identical twins and non-identical twins can be laid right on top of one another suggesting that the overwhelming influence here is purely social the influence of those environmental effects which are shared by members of a family parents and children teachers and so on siblings, peers and so on but what really happens then as we look at the older group is that there is rather rapid divergence as people leave home leave school and go as it were their own way into the separate worlds the monosagotic twins retain a high level of association round about 0.6 or 0.7 and the non-identical twins association drops suggesting perhaps that as we look at people in their later life when they're exploring their world they are not totally immune from what is going on at the very basic level of their DNA so I think there's a message it's a very weak message because it's not a value message the bottom line is you see here that there is enormous diversity such diversity is at least in part but by no means exclusively genetic but what does that tell us about value the problem is not a whole lot I mean you know in those social attitudes there are some genetic social right wing fascist pigs so you know you can't have it both ways as it were we can look at the data and we can look at genetic diversity and we can we then have to respond to that in terms of what we think it means but the genetic diversity itself does not necessarily validate any particular expression of this of the individual of the individual differences and this is a point which I think again Dean brought out at the end of his talk but there is a point here and it's a point which I think does have some theological importance and that is that even when we look at those characteristics of our humanity which we think of as being quintessentially human rightly or wrongly I don't think we're going to be able to ignore the fact that these are not immune from the genes Phil Hefner anticipated this 30 years ago when he realized that we had to dispense with the sort of traditional theological separation between matter on the one hand and spirit on the other or nature and spirit or body and soul the two are intimately connected the DNA reaches up and this is a metaphor maybe not a metaphor we want to use more into our humanity than perhaps many of us have given credit in the past in conclusion then I just want to suggest that things are moving that things are moving in science in ways which I think allow science to engage in a more mature conversation with those who reflect religiously on our humanity and what a final slide I want to show you is really just reflect some of the elements of what one might call a post modern anthropology firstly we are starting to question the simple minded reductionism which we saw so successfully actually and work so successfully in classical molecular genetics we are starting to ask the question about aggregations and higher levels of organization we are talking more holistically about nature dualism the separation of body and soul I think is out of the window not every theologian would agree with me but I think that is probably true I dare to say that I don't get a whole lot of excitement these days about supernaturalist explanations of reality I think the notion that we are influenced by our stuff at the very highest levels of who we are does raise questions about the traditional religious notions the meaning of immortality the meaning of the supernatural and so on but also I think as we reflect more upon what we do as scientists and as we reflect more upon who we are as humans we will realize that the humanities actually are on to something that biology really is exciting and that nobody should or can gain say that but perhaps we also need to have that same sense of excitement about the humanities because the humanities are dealing with anthropology where the rubber really hits the road with questions of freedom of faith of justice of love and sacrifice there I will stop ladies and gentlemen while we are gathering here on the DS may I remind you of the Nobel concert tonight at 7 o'clock in Christchapel there is a Chopin grand polonaise the Gustavus Orchestra and Dr. John Mackay pianist in the department of music also a beautiful quintet Schumann quintet a movement from a Vidor symphony the grand organ in that chapel and it's organist Dr. David Fienen and then the orchestra will play a Schubert overture beautiful program of about an hour of music we hope that you will that you will go to it and then one of the most unusual astonishing people in this the department art department of this college is Stan Shetka and he has a one man show going from 6.30 to 9 symbiosis over in the art building so take that in and then finally firing lines at 8.30 our participants will show up in the room and you can we'll let them sit down but you can stand up and fire away a chance to make a comment or to ask a question in a more intimate a situation these firing lines have really worked for many of you who wanted to get in a little closer thank you again like we have for the other two lectures we'll start by asking for questions or comments if anyone will take them on Dr. Hemer Dr. Eves suppose that it really is the case that humans have some sort of genetic predisposition to believe to have faith to believe to believe in God to have spirituality some people Dawkins for example might say well that proves that there is no God because we would believe in it anyway it's sort of the old we might say well this is the proof that there is a God because this is the mechanism that God has used to make sure that we glorify his presence and that we recognize that God has created us in his own image where would you stand on that particular issue and how might it ever be resolved either by theology or by science yeah that gets right to the point of course thank you Dean and I don't have to answer that but I hope I may have a coherent answer what's really interesting about Richard Dawkins book for example the selfish gene is that he introduces almost on the last page a massive but and the but is okay guys so we humans are you know built by evolution we are biological organisms but we have the capacity to transcend our biological heritage you know to sort of to go beyond Dawkins really I'm actually at this stage in my sort of development as a human being I think I'm less concerned about whether that but points us in the direction of God so much as that but is kept alive and I think what perhaps religion has done or can do is and it may well religion is going to be transformed in the process but when we talk about God I think part of what we talk about God is whatever process maintains that but in human culture so there's not I'm sorry that's a typical clergyman you never get a straight answer to a straight question you know but I think it's I'm more concerned about the question than I am about the answer and I think to some extent that's what Tillich was really trying to do with with the concept of ultimate concern was kind of directing us to the fundamental importance of keeping that question alive in culture because if we don't we somehow lose who we are as humans Dr. Fox killer this may be this is probably more of a comment than a question and it's directed both to you Dr. Ease and also to Dean Hamer and it's about the about a temptation to confuse I'm not suggesting you would but it's just to try to clarify distinction between correlation and causation particularly in studies of monozygotic and dizygotic twins and what it means when the correlation drops to half and suggesting that it has something to do with genes but things can have something to do with genes in quite different ways than any causal implication let me just give two examples one of my favorite examples is the correlation which most people I know seem to be except between shortness and Napoleonic complexes in men and males of the human species now clearly that's if such a correlation exists it doesn't have to do with the linkage genetic linkage between the genes for stature and genes for certain personality traits but rather to the to social and cultural responses to stature so similarly attitudes that my cluster might reflect has something to do with genetics but it might have to do with predisposition for community people wanting community and the clustering that may take place on the level of cultural it's a many body problem it's not an individual predisposition no I think that's absolutely right and I think Dean I think was honest enough to say up front I think you actually said the phrase which we think we both use the same phrase that the path from the DNA in behavior is astonishingly long and tortuous and part of that indeed is how you relate to the environment the milieu in which you place yourself and I think that one of the things that I actually think a theological awareness is introducing into our discussions of anthropology is the notion of top down causality for example where precisely I mean our failure as biologists in a sense is we always think in terms of the DNA upwards and of course you know natural selections that have been operating from the ecosystem downwards and culture operates from the sort of ecosystem downwards your point is well taken and I think if you've got the impression that I was being that naive I wasn't I think you agree with gracious enough to say that but I think it's a good point of clarification to make that I would just say to make that the way that genes affect behavior depends very much upon the environment but after all of behavior is a reaction to the environment so I think that's intrinsically part of behavior and a very very important part and perhaps people like us don't emphasize that enough when we're talking because we're geneticists so we emphasize the genes but the other point I should make is that a very frequent criticism of twin research in particular is that things could be indirect for example twins are more similar because they look similar instead of because there really are similar these are things that can be checked experimentally for example in the case of appearance and personality traits it has been looked at to see whether or not people's appearance affects their personality one might imagine that people that are good looking are always you know happy and successful and people that are ugly are always depressed all the time but it turns out not to be the case at all so that sort of thing but perhaps by measuring all the variables that you can and figuring out what's connected to what and I think that really should be the goal of behavioral scientists is to try to look both at the genes but also at the environment and figure it all out to the extent that's possible. I think if I can just comment on this I think it's a very important issue I mean my take on this is that it presents us with a fascinating series of questions I think it would be a grave mistake if we were to sort of begin to really it's really saying look guys here's a way of thinking about our humanity which perhaps we've really not taken that seriously and perhaps we need to start working out what this means and what this very complex pathway is about so I see it as an invitation to curiosity not as an invitation to close off the issue. First question from the audience what do you think of Steven Jake Gold's analysis that science and religion are really two different things that are actually addressed two different types of questions. Yeah I've seen that and of course that's a is without which to be patronizing is a well recognized version of the interaction between science and religion I mean you would see it I mean on the bus you know science answers the question how and religion answers the question why. I think that approach has some value I think we do need to recognize the intellectual autonomy of science and theology I think however if it's pursued to the bitter end what you have are the kinds of sort of the Francis you know I mean how do you bridge if that if there really is no gap no way of making the connection how do we actually have a conversation with Dr. Venter or Dr. Hoard or any of the other people around this table about the好 and human values. It's dangerous ground and there are times when making sure the turf is kept well clear and I don't want some god damn priest to run my lab but I mean I think there's a sort of the if you draw that line too harshly. I think it leads to the kinds of autonomy that can sometimes be damaging so you know its point is well taken it's I think it's too simple a distinction. Several questions would address Several questions have addressed the concept of a soul, and asking your view on this. If we are ultimately our genes and our environment, what is left over that could survive physical death? What's that about? If we are ultimately our genes and our environment, what is left over that could survive physical death? Some of you all ain't going to like this. I'm saying this in front of three and a half thousand people. I hope my bishop's not listening. But do I think that Lyndon Eves is going to be sitting there in 25 years time as a sort of centre of consciousness, looking out and looking at the 40th, or what is it, can't even add up? Can I have the 60th Nobel conference from a cloud? I have to say the answer is probably not. Do I believe that Lyndon Eves is infinitely valuable and is to be treasured? I would like to think that was yes. That's a very good answer, but I think somehow the issue of soul and immortality are around the issues of the value that we assign to what is most beautifully human about us. That's not going to get me elected Pope, that run of applause. Another question asked, how much further before we will become non-created co-creators? Non-created. I think I'd like to hear Dr. Venter answer that question. I don't want to put him on the spot, but the thing that I found really enthralling about your talk this morning was the... I don't want to put this in the sort of gee whiz, there must be a God after all, it's all very complicated. Just take simply what genetics is doing as just something that is beautiful in its own right. That's astonishingly creative. It's almost right now, to use Maltman's word, boundlessly complex. It's almost like right now, if you think of the standard logarithmic logistic curve, we're just starting to take off on the sort of that rapid growth phase. I'd like to get Dr. Venter's take, but everything he talked about this morning, almost every sort of what seemed like new genome raised a sort of multitude of really fascinating questions and possibilities. I'm not going to be around when the creation, when the role of the human race as a creative co-creator has been created. I think the creation is continuing and we're going a lot of going for a long time to come yet. You're going to respond? I think he answered it for me, but I think it's clear that I hate to stray too far from the data as a scientist. The information that we're uncovering, the data that we're uncovering, we're not inventing. We're discovering what's out there is far too vast to be created by the human mind. That leaves lots of other explanations open. As I said, I hate to get too far from the data because this is a ethereal discussion, but it's not clear where it takes us. I think, though I'm not a theologian, I would not even want to encourage you to adjure your passion for explanation. As a human being, I'm just simply excited by the complexity of what you are given. In a sense, for you to say that simply I am uncovering and it's vastly more fascinating and intricate than I could possibly have imagined, frankly, is enough already. That's not to talk about anything else. I think I'd like to add to that and to make sure people don't get a misperception of where we're at, is that where the genome project is doing for us is laying out all the pieces that make a complex four-dimensional puzzle, a complex organism that develops over time. And I think from my perspective where we're at is at the very beginning, and this has been a big step to help us take off, but it's going to be decades working out how all this takes place. It's not something that we'll find out in the next year or two. Yeah, the one thing I would add is I think it's always dangerous to use the argument of complexity to say we need the supernatural for what is true. If you look at complexity theory from incredibly simple equations, you can create unbelievably complex patterns of analysis. And when we look at evolution, I think the same will be true when all is said and finished. That is, we know that there are hierarchical levels of biological information and we know at each of these higher levels of information there is increasing complexity and potential for diversity and complexity. And this complexity itself doesn't require a supernatural explanation. I think we should admit to that. This is one of the major arguments creationists use, and I think it's totally... And I actually agree with you, and I'm fully sympathetic to your arguments. I mean, don't blame religion for that argument. Just blame a subset. Are you saying, Lee, that there will be a time when it's all been said and finished? When all has been what? Said and finished. No, I think actually what is terrific about biology, and it was hinted at earlier, it's like this enormous onion and we're just starting to peel the layers off. And we have a hell of a lot of layers we can peel off with straightforward kinds of techniques and so forth. We've got an enormous amount of knowledge that we can learn. Now at the core, are there things that will not be susceptible to semi-reductionistic approaches that we use in all? I think that's a question that's pretty hard to answer at this point in time. But I think nobody would want to discourage you from that which motivates you, which is clearly the sense that the puzzle has a solution. I mean, Einstein writes exactly about that. One of the things that is astonishing to many people is that the scientist really organizes his or her life around the principle that there is a simple answer to the puzzle. And again, you wouldn't be human if... Ah, Dr. Keller's quite right, of course it doesn't make it true. It's a metaphysical statement that you adhere to because it makes you function as a scientist. Well, the other point that we should stress is that evolution is a giant tinkerer and it doesn't do things in the simplest and most straightforward fashion. And we're imprisoned by our past. We have to move forward from what we are and that leads to all sorts of circumventions and complexity and so forth. So it is a fascinating puzzle and whether we can all unravel it and whether reductionism, as we view it, will allow us to connect all these different levels, hierarchical levels of information I think is a fascinating question. I think we'll quit this afternoon. We hope you have a good evening and we'll see you here tomorrow. We'll take all three of our speakers one more time.