Book Review: Original Sin – The genetics of wrongdoing, the problem of blame and the future of forgiveness

Original Sin: The Genetics of Wrongdoing, the Problem of Blame and the Future of Forgiveness
By Professor Kathryn Paige Harden
Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson
ISBN-10: 1399604333, ISBN-13: 978-1399604338
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In this absorbing book, Original Sin: The Genetics of Wrongdoing, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness, behavioural geneticist Professor Kathryn Paige Harden draws on case studies, scientific theory, history and religion to consider how we as individuals and societies deal with some of the most pressing issues we face, including anti-social behaviour, crime, addiction, choice, blame, punishment and forgiveness.

She also reflects, in some detail, on key moments in her own life, both professional and personal (at times very personal – sex, drugs, conflict with her mother, the birth of her children and more). This is a memoir as much as anything else.

Professor Harden was raised an evangelical Protestant and retained the faith until her mid-twenties. While she no longer believes in God, 'being raised Evangelical', she says, 'is like getting chicken pox as a child: you might recover, but you are never free. The virus will live in your nerves until you die.'

One way it lives on is in Professor Harden's research interests. The behaviours she studies professionally have scientific names and characterisations; at the same time, many can be grouped together in a different way – as 'sinful'. Reflecting on the difficulty a reviewer of one article had in finding a common thread to the cases considered, Professor Harden writes: 'The reviewer couldn't see: We were studying the genetics of sin. Or, rather, we were studying the genetics of behaviour that Christianity calls sinful… every single analysis in our paper could be mapped to The Inferno'.

More than sinful behaviour, Professor Harden focuses, as the title of the book indicates, on original sin, responsibility, and free will: 'One of the great theological debates in Christian history', she writes, 'was between Pelagius, a monk who was eventually condemned as a heretic, and Augustine, a bishop who was eventually canonised as a saint. Pelagius argued that there was no such thing as hereditary sin. Sin was not a tragic inevitability, but something that was freely chosen… [Pelagius] endorsed an optimistic, if demanding, view of life: You have the freedom to choose. You will not be punished without the opportunity to make better choices.'

Augustine disagreed. He put forward what became the dominant view that we are all fallen, that we have inherited sin from Adam and Eve, 'which, in his view, justified punishment in spite of its inescapability… A good god would not allow the innocent to suffer; ergo, Augustine reasoned, even infants must not be innocent. And if infants aren't innocent, then guilt must begin in the womb. It must be something physically inherited.'

Professor Harden judges that most psychiatric geneticists are Pelagians, while the public is often inclined to Augustinian reasoning. She notes that if genetic predisposition is put forward as an explanation of criminal behaviour, the popular tendency is to want to punish more: 'If someone's behaviour is "genetic", then it is seen as reflecting who they "really" are, their truest and deepest self, right down to the nucleotides of their DNA. And what they are is a born Devil. This is another modern retelling of an ancient Christian story, except now "genes" are not the flesh against which the soul is struggling. Rather, "genes" are an essence placeholder like the "soul", the epitome of someone's true self.'

Professor Harden herself is, in some ways, inclined to the Augustinian view of sin, but certainly not entirely so. Insofar as she is, she wants us to consider forgiveness as well as, or instead of, punishment: 'I have come to believe, though, that all of our choices are structured by much we didn't choose – and that we can be guilty anyway. But, crucially, guilt does not mean damnation, and the hooks of moral responsibility can be a tool for weaving, and reweaving, us together'.

The final chapter is titled Puzzle, which she heads as 'A coda, in which I endeavour to respond to the profound and irresolvable question put to me by a man imprisoned for violence.' Irresolvable, we discover, because Professor Harden is of course fully aware that there is a huge problem in attempting to use the tools of behavioural genetics to explain an individual's actions: 'In a world of probabilities, the leap from the average to the individual, from science to biography, is always difficult and often impossible'.

And yet, it is hard not to read this statement as being at odds, or at least apparently at odds, with much that has preceded it in the book. Throughout, Professor Harden makes many statements that it is easy to read as at least partial explanations of individual actions: 'I personally have published scientific papers on the genetic causes of all these behaviours'; 'studying how our genes cause us to behave in ways that are praised or punished'; 'I no longer believe in Jesus, but I do believe in inherited predispositions toward sin'; and many more.

Professor Harden criticises neuroscientist Dr Kevin Mitchell (writing in his book Free Agents) for not thinking that this kind of science has implications for the legal process, and indeed, strikingly, she suggests that her young son has a better grasp of the relationship between biology and moral responsibility.

What Dr Mitchell in fact argues, which seems quite consistent with her point in the final chapter quoted above, is that science might have relevance in rare cases, such as when highly penetrant genes play an important role, but beyond this it almost certainly does not: 'There is an important difference between rare genetic mutations that cause clear pathology by themselves and the much more common genetic variants that contribute statistically, along with thousands of others, to variation in psychological traits across the typical range. The former may have important relevance to individual [legal] cases; the relevance of the latter is far more questionable.'

A memoir and graphic discussion of specific cases do, of course, require a focus on individuals; and in any case, whether or not I am over-interpreting, the critical points above should not put readers off enjoying and learning from what is a fascinating, very well-written and in many ways brave book.

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Buy Original Sin: The Genetics of Wrongdoing, the Problem of Blame and the Future of Forgiveness from Amazon UK.