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.

consistent philosophy

An awesome article by an atheist pro-choice philosopher.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-sartwell2-2008sep02,0,4543933.story

He's logical and consistent. That's the first step in dialogue!

Richard Dawkins Reads His E-mail

For those of you who don't know, Richard Dawkins is known as one of the "Four Horsemen of Atheism" (along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris). He's a smart dude and is most recently well known for his book, "The God Delusion," though it was panned for its poor philosophical basis in books such as "The Dawkins Delusion" and "Answering the New Atheism."

Anyhow, I came across this clip of Dawkins reading some hate mail he gets from creationists (which apparently implicitly means all Christians). Obviously, anyone who sends hate mail is most likely going to be on the extreme side and for the clip, I'm sure he chose specific ones. Please be forewarned that there is foul language in the video (some bleeped out, but little left to the imagination) and so if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, you may want to pass on it.



The issue that I'm more interested in is how we, as Christians, should be responding to people like Dawkins or other non-believers who at times can be quite forward in their attack on Christianity. This video is essentially a backhanded smirk to show just how "loving" Christians can be and can be easily used to affirm those who have the mindset of, "See?! Those Christians are all hypocrites. Why on earth would I want to be one of them??" What does it mean for us to love others even when our buttons are being pushed and we're flustered and frustrated?


But church van? I was a little amused.... =P