Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History [Paperback]

Holmes Rolston III (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 052164674X | ISBN-13: 978-0521646741 | Publication Date: February 13, 1999 | Edition: 1

Can the phenomena of religion and ethics be reduced to the phenomena of biology? Holmes Rolston says no, and in this sweeping account of the subject, written with considerable verve and clarity, he challenges the sociobiological orthodoxy that would naturalize science, ethics, and religion. The book is thoroughly up to date on current biological thought and is written by one of the most well-respected figures in the philosophy of biology and religion. It is likely to provoke considerable controversy among a wide range of readers in such fields as philosophy, religious studies, and biology, as well as being suitable for courses on science and religion.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're going to draw together genetics, science in general, ethics, and religion, by definition it probably won't be a simple read. However,Genes, Genesis and God is so well written that the intelligent lay person can grasp the author's arguments.

Holmes Rolston III is a professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. This book is based on his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1997. What role, he asks, do genes play in the evolution of mankind? For Rolston, man is not seen just as a superior animal but as both a creator and creature of culture; this is what distinguishes us from the beasts.

He carefully examines recent evolutionary theories, including Richard Dawkins's "selfish gene" concept, which he finds not only misnamed but misleading.

The first couple of chapters of the book look at genes, what they are and how they work, and what they do and don't do. From this topic he moves on to the genesis of human culture, to the "evolution" of scientific ideas, to ethics, and finally to religion. Religion, he concludes in his final, deeply thoughtful, and clearly argued chapter, which will annoy atheist evolution advocates and fundamentalist creationists alike, does have a survival value for humankind and is not in any way incompatible with genetics or evolutionary theory.

This book is a valuable contribution to the philosophy of science. A single criticism would be that there is no reference to the recent work of Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, who pursue a very similar path of inquiry into the "evolution of the curious mind" in their Figments of Reality. --David V Barrett, Amazon.co.uk

Review

"This is a scholarly work by one of the foremost philosophers of biology and religion today....Rolston knows his genetics, and is masterful in presenting complex biological concepts in a highly readable and non-threatening way. It is certain to provoke vigorous discussions between philosophers, theologians and scientists. It's something we need more of." The Presbyterian Outlook

"...to read the lectures is to travel along important paths of enquiry in the company of a mind that is humane and perceptive, careful for truth, and valiant for value." John Polkinghorne--Queens' College, Cambridge

"...to read the lectures is to travel along important paths of enquiry in the company of a mind that is humane and, careful for the truth, and valient for value." John Polkinghorne, Queens College, Cambridge

"Genes, Genesis, and God may be of some value to those who are looking fora collection of perspectives dealing with the origin of complexity and morality...this book could provide something along the lines of a feeling of wonder to those who do not question in any way the evolution paradigm." Seminary Studies 38

"[Holmes Rolston, III] has written a careful but bold challenge to the claims of sociobiologists that human values can be deduced only from nature. Rolston's challenging and provocative, but modest, way of interpreting the story of evolution will stimulate other philosophers to carefully examine recent scientific discoveries about nature and carry further dialogue he has begun." Social Theory and Practice

"I recommend that you read Genes, Genesis, and God and make the judgment of its overall worth for yourself. Whatever your conclusion, you will not think your time has been wasted. For myself, when next I meet Holmes Rolston, I will buy the first round of beer!" Reports

"Rolston's lectures are a magnificent tour de force to solve one of the most important problems in environmental ethics for the twenty-first century: How can we convince the inhabitants of the house that we all live in and on that it ought to be respected, protected, and preserved?" Ethics

"In his published lectures, titled Genes, Genesis, and God and organized under six chapters, Rolston skillfully reworks his stated positions on natural history, objective natural value, the nature-culture distinction, human nature, and the divine-world relationship. He aims to provide an 'integrated account' of science, ethics, end religion, based on is conviction that a 'comprehensive worldview' shapes an environmental ethic." Environmental Ethics

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 420 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (February 13, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052164674X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521646741
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,288,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rolston challenges the sociobiological orthodoxy., April 25, 1999

By 

Billy Grassie <[e-mail]> (Unionville, Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History (Paperback)

Rolston's 1997 Gifford Lectures and now book challenge the sociobiological orthodoxy. He interprets genetics and evolutionary biology to present the possibility of transcendent values operating in nature and culture. Unlike many other works of science, philosophy, and theology, Rolston's book is also well-crafted with powerful prose and provocative turn of phrases reminiscent of Loren Eisley. Whatever you think you know about the troubling interface between religion and evolutionary biology, prepare to be challenged. This book is a must read.

You can listen to Rolston discuss his book on the Internet as a RealAudio broadcast at http://www.pc4rs.org . Rolston is also "appearing" on the Meta List on Science and Religion to discuss the book in May of 1999 http://www.meta-list.org . On the Meta List in the archives, you will also find a lengthy review written by Michael Ruse (see Meta 073:1999).

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Morality Emerging, August 31, 2004

By 

Thomas J. Oord (Nampa, ID United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History (Paperback)

This text is the product of Rolston's Gifford Lectures of 1997. His basic task is to relate cultural genesis to natural genesis and understand how value in culture has its links to value in nature. While Rolston argues for a continuity of culture and biological nature, he also contends that culture exceeds and emerges out of biology, so that genuine novelty occurs. In fact, Rolston believes that science, ethics and religion are emergent phenomenon in culture. He uses these three domains "for the generating, conserving, and distributing of values as test cases, demanding their incorporation into the larger picture of what is taking place on our planet" (xiii).

Much of the first third of the book addresses genetic theory, and Rolston surveys a wide variety of literature in this field. Perhaps one of the strengths of this book is the author's command of the wide literature pertaining to the subjects he addresses.

The final third of the book addresses issues related to ethics, love and religion. Although Rolston affirms value in nature, he does not believe that there is any ethics in nature. He examines and critiques various biological theories related to egoism and altruism. In the model he promotes, "one needs value naturalized as well as ethics humanized; then ethics will require appropriate respect for value, whether human or non-human" (280).

Rolston argues that ethics arise out of evolutionary natural history. It is a history in which values have already been arising. "Such genesis of ethics, distinctive to the human genius, testifies both to human uniqueness, emergent from natural history, and to the creative power evidenced in the spontaneous genetics, the primal source now transcended with the appearance of genuine and universal caring and altruism" (280).

From ethics emerges religion, and the capacity to be religious evolved within or emerged out of natural systems where there was no such capacity in non-humans. Rolston advocates a naturalizing of religion, by which he does not mean that religion can be explained away naturalistically. Rather the naturalizing of religion means that religion is generated by the human confrontation with the forces of nature. This means that religion comes as a response to prolific Earth.

While religion involves more than altruism, Rolston argues that altruism plays an important part in a variety of religious traditions. Religion functions to generate innovative ethical behavior, which in turn makes possible the human spirit. This spirit cannot exist outside a social covenant, however. Religion, then, is an emergent property from complex biodiversity through evolutionary history. In this emergence, God plays a role.

Thomas Jay Oord

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How can something arise out of nothing?, June 5, 2004

By 

"stephenlill" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History (Paperback)

Holmes Rolston (Templeton prize 2003) is a Philospher who uses a Dawinist perspective to analyse its implications for the nature of Humans whom he indicates are far above other creatures in key mental capacities. In particular he is interested in the origins of science (which evaluates the "is" of life), ethics and religion (which evaluate the "oughts" of life).

The driving force behind evolution is survival. If Darwinism struggles to find an explanation for human scientific rationality it goes into shear fits when it tries to explain ethical behaviour. Rolston devotes a chapter to each of these. In Darwinistic terms ethics and religion must be present or have persisted for some survival advantage. If the modern mankind now concludes that neither is strictly necessary does this mean that their genetic line is doomed for evolutionary extinction?

One of Rolston's key conclusions is that just as the qualities of oxygen and carbon don't give us any hint at what life forms might be like, in turn simple life does not predict the genius of the human mind including intentionality -we know there are other minds. The transitions from atom to life to mind reveal marked transitions each associated with a huge addition of information, genetic at the first level and cultural/historical at the next level. Such information requires a source.

Here are some quotable quotes:
"Why not recognise that there is a human genius, exemplified by science, that does transcend biology?"(p197)
"No theory can look at a protozoan and deduce an eye or a brain. There is no argument why this has happened, nor that it ought to have happened. There are no equations into which one can introduce amino acids, or microbes, or trilobites as initial conditions to specify variables and then solve them to produce dinosaurs, or mastodons, or persons." (p210)
"But the same science that demands a conscience has difficulty explaining and authorising conscience, for we struggle to understand how amoral nature evolved the moral animal,.."(p 215)
"Ethics is as undeniably present, ideal and real, as are genes, and just as much among the wonders of creation"(p283)
"..we still need to ask whether the animal in which such faith emerges, Homo Sapiens, is coping now because it is detecting the truth:there is a divine will for life to continue."(p296)
"It is implausible that life should have evolved a bad computational logic that is a good adaptive fit."(337)
"The idea of God has been among the most fertile in shaping history. That is the fertility that ultimately needs to be explained"(p348)
"For in fact, on Earth, there really isn't anything in rocks that suggests the possibility of Homo sapiens, much less the American Civil War, or the World Wide Web, and to say that all these possibilities are lurking there, even though nothing we know about rocks, or carbon atoms, or electrons and protons suggests this is simply to let possibilities float in from nowhere"(p352)
"Looking at a pool of amino acids and seeing dinosaurs or homo sapiens in them is something like looking at a pile of alphabetical letters and seeing Hamlet. In fact Hamlet is not lurking around a pile of A_Z's; such a play is not within their possibility space - not until Shakespeare comes around,.."(p355)
"For the lack of better explanations, the usual turn here is simply to conclude that nature is self-organising (autopoiesis), though, since no 'self' is present, this is better termed spontaneously organising. An autopoietic process can be just a name, like 'soporific' tendencies, used to label the mysterious genesis of more out of less, a seemingly scientific name that is really a sort of mystic chant over a miraculously fertile universe."(p359)