Biological Predestination--A New Form of an Old Doctrine©

Introduction:  This week just by happenstance (or was it?), I encountered two pretty profound quotations on the same subject, one from a Latter-day Saint and one from a non-member who was President of Boston University for many years. The subject is a modern version of the doctrine of predestination. In the Christian world John Calvin taught that mankind was either elected to salvation or they weren’t. Men were predestined to be saved or damned. It is a harsh, and from my perspective, a damnable doctrine, especially because it denies any act of free will on the part of man in accepting or rejecting the Savior’s invitation to “come unto me” and be saved. The doctrine of predestination is a continuation of Satan’s efforts to destroy the agency of man, which was one of his primary objectives in the pre-mortal war in heaven. 

From the two quotations which follow it appears that Satan has not given up on that objective, nor the usefulness of the theology of predestination. I have been aware for a long time that science and social sciences have increasingly postulated genetic predispositions and argued for genetic causation of human behavior, but it was not until I read Harper’s paper and the statement quoted here that I realized the theological implications of these ideas. So, those who say, “I’m the way I am because God made me this way and there is nothing I can do about it", have unwittingly taken up the old Calvanistic doctrine of predestination wrapped in the new garb of what Silber would call “scientism” rather than science. It was a profound and powerful insight for me. How about you?

Here are the quotations:

Steven Harper:

So postmodern relativism, which includes the idea that no absolute laws exist, undermines agency.  It is not empowering doctrine.  Moreover, much like Calvinism, genetic predisposition has become a doctrine of biological predestination, convincing many that they are not agents empowered to act for themselves but simply matter to be acted upon by unaccountable chemicals.  This subtle doctrine is embraced by people who have long since rejected John Calvin’s cruel dogma that one has no control over his or her destiny.(1)

John Silber:

The scientific assault on the place and dignity of humankind has continued and accelerated. While Copernicus and Darwin announced their findings with reluctance and trepidation, their followers announced further denigrations of the human species with the enthusiasm of tub-thumping evangelists. Freud, in claiming to have discovered the unconscious, proclaimed that individuals were no longer masters in their own houses; thoughts and behavior were determined instead by irrational and largely unconscious motivations. Edward O. Wilson in his Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene further extended Darwinism by reducing humans to the levels of animals whose behavior, like that of ants, is genetically determined. B. F. Skinner easily matched their extreme reductionism with his denial of the relevance of conscious thought in human action. ... What are we to make of our own experience if the mind–thought, ideas, and consciousness for which there is no scientific understanding–is held to play no role in the behavior of individuals?  According to these reductionists, all mental phenomena are at most epiphenomena, associated in totally inscrutable ways with brain functions responding to genetic mandates.  In the final analysis, what an individual human being thinks or does cannot be an expression of will or consciousness but, to use the current metaphor, of the way that person is wired.  Criminal behavior, for example, is simply an expression of the genes. The self, understood “scientifically,” disappears as a causal responsible being. Praise and blame, guilt, pride, and shame are equally misplaced and illusory ideas.(2)

Let’s think together again, soon.

PS: If you have quotations of a similar nature please share them with me.

Notes:

1.  Steven C. Harper, “Endowed with Power,” The Religious Educator 5, no. 2 (2004): 90-91.

2.  John R. Silber, Seeking the North Star: Selected Speeches, Boston: David R. Godine, 2014, 273-74.  The next sentence of this paragraph reads: "Scientism, this reductionistic unscientific extension of science, has furthered the climate of anti-humanist secularism and practical atheism in universities and intellectual circles."