Genes, Determinism and God

Every few months a headline announces another gene 'for' some behaviour, and behavioural genetics now reports the heritability of traits as unexpected as religiosity and political affiliation. Denis Alexander takes on this familiar territory and traces how the nature and nurture debate has swung back and forth for centuries, often driven by ideology. He shows how developmental biology, genomics, epigenetics and our growing understanding of neuronal plasticity have undermined the idea that the two can be cleanly separated.

From there he considers what is at stake: human freedom, moral responsibility, the workings of the legal system and religious belief. His conclusion is a considered one. Genuine free will, often shaped by genetic variation, emerges from an integrated picture of the human person drawn from contemporary biology. It suits anyone who suspects that we are more than our DNA and wants the science to back that up.