Christian, atheist scientists tackle human nature

[rug]

Nov. 13, 2014
By Rose Linehan
Rose Linehan ’17 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.

The question of what makes us human has been a source of discussion and conflict for centuries. Although the question remains unanswered, a Christian geneticist and an atheist chemist found that their views on the topic were not so different in a Nov. 12 campus conversation – "Genes, Atoms or Something Else?" – attended by more than 500 undergraduates.

Praveen Sethupathy, a geneticist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is a Christian. Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, Cornell’s Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus, is an atheist.

The discussion began with what scientifically makes a human a human: DNA. Although he is a geneticist, Sethupathy was quick to point out the limitations of examining DNA in the search for human identity.

“Our identities are influenced, but not fully determined … by our genetics,” Sethupathy said, explaining that the chemical “packaging” that surrounds DNA can be altered “by any number of lifestyle choices” like smoking and diet. Furthermore, these changes to the DNA “packaging” are in some cases hereditary.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2014/11/christian-atheist-scientists-tackle-human-nature

75 minute video at link.

[Jim__]

1. I could only watch about 40 minutes of the video - some videos knock my computer down.

Interesting discussion as far as I saw - people can disagree about religion and yet find common ground. The discussion about epigenetics and the possibility of memory traces being passed from parents to children may be the most interesting thing that I heard. The fact that the count of human cells in our body is less than the number of non-human cells is food for thought.

Did they talk about brain structure at all in the last parts of the video? I've been reading Karen Armstrong's Fields of Blood and she talks briefly about that - that our brain consists of part reptilian brain, part the mammalian limbic system, and the quite large neocortex as perhaps the differentiator of the human brain. She sees these three different, somewhat conflicting, parts of the brain as having a significant effect on human nature.

[rug]

2. Not really. He makes a passing reference to genes but he answers a question

about where morals come from. His opinion is that it comes from ontology, i.e., following given morals such as religion; the "calculus of utility", doing the least harm to the least people, which is what he says is the basis of government policy; and humans modeling their behavior on others they admire. His conclusion is that ethics are the result of natural, societal and personal interactions. He didn't frame it in terms of neurology at all.

BTW, he mentioned Wilson and sociobiology in passing. He's not a fan.