Genes Explain Everything

John Cleese is an awesome comedic actor and here he parodies those who over-emphasize the role of genes and how they explain human behavior. Funny stuff =).



Personally, I believe genes definitely play a key role, but boiling who we are down to strictly nature or nurture is overly simplistic and denies the dignity of who we are as humans and how God created us. Dr. Francis S. Collins (a key leader in the Human Genome Project), in the context of a study of the link between sexual orientation and identical twins, suggests that, "whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations." Aside from the scientific nature of the study, from a purely experiential level, I feel like that strikes a nice balance between nature vs nurture. We all have God's goodness stamped in the very fabric of our bodies, but at the same time, we all have a tendency toward intrinsic moral evils like lust, anger, malice, etc (read: original sin). Ultimately, as we live out our Catholic faith, it requires collaboration of the individual and God's grace to fully become the person God created us to be.