杏吧原创

鈥淭HE CHURCH should not condemn affairs as sinful and wrong,鈥� the Bishop of Edinburgh said last week, sparking off a furore.

Normally, New 杏吧原创 would not think that the Church鈥檚 views on morals, however radical, fell within its remit. But the Bishop made a big mistake by invoking science. He said: 鈥淚t [the Church] must accept that adultery is caused by our genetics鈥�, adding that be blamed God for giving us 鈥渙ur promiscuous genes鈥�.

In search of an ally, the Bishop appears to have added adultery to the long list of weaknesses that people now feel entitled to blame on their genes. Unfortunately, those arguments rely on a popular form of false reductionism.

Those who use this type of argument try to reduce phenotype (which emerges as our genes interact with our environment) to genotype (our genetic make-up). The aim is to give an argument scientific authority.

Unfortunately, human behaviour is so complex and its roots so poorly understood that nothing can currently be gained by resorting to such reductionist tactics.

All the Bishop should have said was that 鈥減eople are often observed to be promiscuous鈥�. The Christian church has been wrestling with this fact for almost 2000 years. Rephrasing this commonplace in terms of 鈥減romiscuous genes鈥� is just a cheap shot.

The Bishop is not alone in being seduced this way. Several eminent scientists, who should know better, have argued that because only a tiny percentage of the DNA is different between the races, there can be no justification for racism. Although the conclusion is laudable, the argument is spurious. What matters in dealing with other people is phenotype, not genotype. We know from our daily experience that humans of all races are virtually identical and that there can be no rational justification for racism. Reducing this argument to the level of genotype adds only a little scientific jargon. And that can be easily misused.