Choosing a faith

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Dawkins wrote that “from the point of view of the selfish genes themselves there is no paradox. The true 'purpose' of DNA is to survive, no more and no less. The simplest way to explain the surplus DNA is to suppose that it is a parasite.”

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In most Christian traditions our understanding of God is based on the three legged stool metaphor. The three legs are of course scripture, tradition and reason. The subject of the Idea of original sin has been dealt with before and most recently in the Bible Study Forum.

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I’d like to suggest that we should look at original sin from the point of view of understanding the Biblical or scriptural view through human reasoning.

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To start with I understand the Biblical creation story as inspired metaphor and most definitely not to be understood as anything more than that. Essentially it boils down to the fact that all things are created by God and that humans have been instilled with the ability to understand right and wrong. In addition humans are intended to choose what is right and use the correct choices to be good stewards of what has been created. (Not really doing all that well — are we? )

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As a Christian, I believe that God has given us minds that reason and that He intends us to use that reason to form our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. It is my contention that science falls firmly into the category of reason and as I have said in other threads I view science as natural theology. Ultimately then, theology and science are going to be congruent. As there is a great deal we don’t understand about in either field the congruency is not always obvious to us.

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I want to attempt to explain where I see congruency through reason and scripture on the subject of original sin.

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I think that we can safely assume that Richard Dawkins’ views are going to be based on reason and not scripture. He wrote a book The Selfish Gene and I think that he is on to something. Here is a brief quote from wiki on the subject of The Selfish Gene.

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In describing genes as being "selfish", the author does not intend (as he states unequivocally in the work) to imply that they are driven by any motives or willmerely that their effects can be accurately described as if they were. The contention is that the genes that get passed on are the ones whose consequences serve their own implicit interests (to continue being replicated), not necessarily those of the organism, much less any larger level.

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Dawkins wrote that genes behave as if they are selfish but in his book The Selfish Gene he writes:

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we must not think of genes as conscious, purposeful agents. Blind natural selection, however, makes them behave rather is if they were purposeful, and it has been convenient as a shorthand, to refer to genes in the language of purpose.

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Dawkins also claims that we as humans can overcome this natural selfishness that is inherent in our genes. He also writes this:

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We have the power to deny the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism — something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

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What Dawkins has done, based on reason, is to come up with a concept of original sin. He says from the quote above that we have the natural selfishness in our genes. He then goes on to say that we are cultured by what he has termed memes. He tells us that because of memes we can rebel against the tyranny of our selfish replicators.

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If we get away from the view held by some Christians that the Bible is to be read like a science text or newspaper then we can see many parallels with Dawkins’ ideas. The Bible tells us that we have knowledge of good and evil and the ability to choose between them. The term original sin is not a Biblical term but comes from the Christian understanding that we are born with a basic nature of selfishness, which is consistent with Dawkins view that we are born with selfish genes.

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I don’t think that anyone would disagree that as humans our tendencies towards selfishness or unselfishness evolve over time both as individuals and as societies. Dawkins’ view is that this is a result of memetics. The definition of a meme varies but this is the best I could find.

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A meme is an information pattern which is capable of being copied to another individual’s memory, mostly by means of imitation (though other techniques are possible as well) and which is subject to a selection process.

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The quote was from this site on memtics. As we can see from this, memes are not physical but are non-physical thoughts and ideas that can be passed from one person to another resulting in the change of thoughts and ideas of individuals and societies. Dawkins believes, as I understand him, that we are infected, either positively or negatively by these memes or social replicators.

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The Christian view using the scriptures, and the reasoning of Dawkins together, form a consistent message. As humans we have the freedom to make choices and we understand the difference between good and evil or selfishness and unselfishness. We understand that we should choose unselfishness or goodness, but that there is something basic within us that we have to overcome in order to commit acts for the benefit of someone else at our own expense.

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The point I’m trying to make is this:

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Original sin has always been a difficult doctrine to understand. My contention is that if we combine scripture and reason it is no longer difficult. Dawkins came to his understanding of selfish genes that we are born with through reason, and if we overlay the Genesis story with his reasoning we gain, what is in my view, a clear concept of original sin, along with the realization that we should move beyond that in our lives.

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Out of that point I also want to say that Christians should apply both reason and scripture to our understanding of God and that science is born out of reason and could just as easily be called natural theology.

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Of course Dawkins would consider his memes as having a strictly natural origin whereas I would see memes as God working in us. However, IMHO we have come to agreement on the basic nature of the human condition, and from my perspective a clearer understanding of our existence and the nature of God.

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