It's genetically determined that some of us are "fattist" also. I for instance can't contain my desire to point out faults in others.

Of course, if it's all in their genes, doesn't that absolve McDonald's and all the other fast food restautants from the pending onslaught of trial lawyers and do-gooders trying to put them out of business for making the world fat?

The idea that weight is entirely in your genes is absurd.

Certainly genetics are a factor, but the idea that people don't have any choice in how fit they are is liberalism at its deterministic worst.

I come from 4 generations of fat people that I know of. Any of my blood relatives who is thin is that way only because of a iron discipline that would shame a Green Beret. However, most of my family also eat copious amounts of all the 'wrong' foods so who knows?

Are we fat because of genetics or because we eat too much?

The idea that people are but flotsam, helplessly tossed hither and yon by the seas of fate and storms of history, has been the motivating philosophy of much of mankind for as long as we have existed.

That science is now pitching in just confirms conservative wisdom.

I for one am completely convinced that genes play a huge role in one's weight. But prenatal exposure to a hormone called leptin, which comes from the fat cells of both the mom and the fetus, can influence the circuitry of brain regions that control appetite (see Bouret, S, et al. Science 2003). So if the mom is very fat during pregnancy, her fetus will be exposed to high levels of leptin which in turn affects his circuitry-- possibly influencing the child's own weight control.

Also, I read recently that obesity may have a causative role in reducing IQ, possibly through high levels of hormones such as leptin.

As for the question of choice, I ask OJ this: Is he a dualist? Does he believe that there is a soul that directs our actions and makes our choices? If not, what are we then?

I would reply "no" to the first question and say that we ARE our brains.

David:

But surely you can see that virtue comes more easily for some than others, and they are due no credit for it.

I'll take me for an example that is the flip side of this article's coin.

31 years after graduating High School, I haven't gained an ounce. I could eat like singularly motivated pig and still not gain an ounce. And, for whatever reason, I don't find food or eating particularly interesting, so don't do so even though I could with impunity.

In other words, genetically I was born on third. It would be sheer hubris to confuse that with hitting a triple.

If genetic endowment is sufficient to at least partially vitiate my virtue, why not the same with those for whom temptation exacts a hefty toll?

Bradley,

Reducing IQ? My family is liberally sprinkled with 250-300lb. tubbos of both sexes who are also Mensans. My paternal grandmother's family produces them like McDonalds produces hamburgers.

Jeff,

I don't know. Most times when I've met people who say they eat a lot but don't gain weight, they turn out not to be big eaters.

My problem isn't genetic, but is classically environmental, a learned behavior. I'm not a binge eater, but if there were an eating contest which revolved around how much food you ate in a 24 hour period, I don't think there are too many people on the planet who could beat me. In the past year, I've lost about 55-60 lbs by reducing intake, limiting myself to two meals, albeit nice meals, per day and cutting back on beer, starches and legumes. Another family joke, I only ate one meal yesterday. It started at 7am and ended around midnight.

Jeff:

But it isn't an either/or. Only a fool would argue there is no such thing as genetic disposition. No one needed modern science to learn that. They used to call it "bad seed".

Much of religion is about fighting or overcoming one's nature rather than setting out to live in synch with it by surrendering to desires and impulses in the name of the 'real me". That is the source of sin, fasting, chastity, religious disciplines, objective morality, the Commandments and a whole host of other features, including many that you evolutionists so charmingly and clumsily try to force into the notion of "survival". It is also why the doctrines of free will is so important, and also the Christian doctrine that man is inherently sinful.

We can argue academically all day about how far genetic predisposition takes us and the dangers of resisting it too much, but the real issue we face is a public policy one. Because science continues its unchallenged course of "discovering" more and more determined causes of behaviour, and because we live in an age we we are enthralled by "experts" and "research", social and political decisions are made more and more in the belief that people have limited control over their behaviour. To hold them accountable for it is cruel, unnatural and unscientific. That's what genetics, much natural history and all the caring professions are about.

The best and most dramatic modern example is AIDS. It must be a first in the history of epidemiology for public authorities to fight a plague while expressly declining to try and stop people from acting in the very ways known to cause the disease. We tell ourselves that such would be futile, but what we really think is that it would be unspeakably burdensome and cruel, and "unnatural". It's just to darned hard to fight off those genes and hormones. So we hold a lot of hand-wringing meetings, throw money at it and watch it spread.

So you can eat all you want and not gain weight. Bully for you. What exactly does or should that mean to those who can't?

Jeff: At least in this instance, virtue, such as it is, is its own reward, and vice its own penalty. Thursday afternoon I did consider a one word, self-referential post:

GROAN.

Much of religion is about fighting or overcoming one's nature rather than setting out to live in synch with it by surrendering to desires and impulses in the name of the 'real me".

i.e. "Transcending the Animal".

Peter:

This is the tag line: "... the constant message has been that somebody or something else is to be blamed for all we are and do."

Only a fool would argue that we can each, through equivalent exercises of free will, achieve equal outcomes. That is another way of saying free will is subject to far more serious constraints than most acknowledge. The doctrine of free will is often oversold.

With this particular example, "something else" is at least as likely to be blame worthy as any amount of personal virtue. For some people, nothing other than a life of continuous deprivation will make them svelte. And for what? Vanity?

For others, the flip side of the coin, no amount of crapulous behavior will lead to corpulence. Do they deserve a virtuosity award?

Viewing the latter as possessing some reserve of self-restraint available to, but shunned by, the former risks missing the true state of affairs entirely.

What is cruel is holding people accountable for things over which they have no control, whether a pronounced tendency to gain weight, or Down's Syndrome, or innate homosexuality.

Your point about AIDS is well taken. However, it is probably worth noting that this is likely the first plague (ignoring maternal mortality before modern medicine) that people could choose to avoid.

"What is cruel is holding people accountable for things over which they have no control, whether a pronounced tendency to gain weight, or Down's Syndrome, or innate homosexuality."

The most desperate and irrational analogies in history.

Or Pedophilia?

David:

Do we hold a schizophrenic guilty of murder responsible to the same degree as a murderer who isn't?

My point isn't that we shouldn't, or can't, hold people responsible for their actions, but rather that the blanket condemnation of findings indicating people have far from complete control over certain outcomes in their lives is, at best, misplaced.

And, at worst, vile. For instance, OJ would hold responsible, and, presumably, given the severity of the crime, punish severely the parents of homosexuals for the obviously criminal parenting that led to that outcome.

Peter:

Thanks for that very thoughtful reply to what I hoped would be a serious discussion on the limits of free will.

If you want a serious discussion on free will, you don't start by analogizing gays to Down's sufferers.

I assume you are troubled about the issue of compassion in recognizing that certain people will have greater difficulty in restraining behaviours than others will because of heredity or environment. That's fine. There are and always have been lots of ways to do that.(You point out one--reduced sentences in criminal law, but there are lots in non-legal realtions too). But where do you stop? It seems to me that someone who argues repeatedly as you do that it is blindingly obvious gayness is innate, that it would be barbaric and discriminatory to make any distinction, whether in law or social mores, between gays and heteros and that any decent constitution will treat them equally in all aspects of public life and punish those who don't is not exactly someone searching for a balance. Before I address the limits of free will, how about you start on the limits of determinism.

Peter:

My analogizing gays to Down's sufferers is an example of irony. Absolutely no one feels Down's Syndrome has any free-will component. One could just as easily say the same of schizophrenics.

The irony lies in the likelihood that at least some gays have no more choice over their syndrome than do Down's sufferers. Yet, in complete contrast to them, gays are pilloried in some quarters as being immoral, a meaningless concept without choice.

Similarly, with regard to the obese. Ignoring the hand people are dealt doesn't seem to make much sense.

And I'm not talking just about differences in behavior, but am also including different outcomes to the same behavior. If two people eat and exercise the same amount, but one gets fat while the other stays skinny, then in which direction do you turn except genetics?

Remember the initial tagline belittling the notion that genetics controls outcomes.

You also have caricatured my argument--I have only asserted that it isn't possible to rule out that homosexuality is innate, and if that is the case, should that change one's outlook?

But that is rather peripheral to what I hoped to raise, which is that free will exists within often time significant constraints that have nothing whatsoever to do with virtue.

David, pithy as usual, says a lot in one word: Pedophilia. What if we determine that, too, is innate behavior? I would suggest that the presence of a victim is the test for deciding whether putting perpetrators--or sufferers--in a box. I admit that is both somewhat facile and obvious, but how else to square the circle?

We are likely all genetically disposed to get fat, since getting fat is a good survival mechanism for living in an environment where the availability of food is sporadic. From that standpoint, Jeff is more likely the victim of bad genes. We are not genetically disposed to live in an envornment where food is easily available and physical exertion is not required for survival.

I agree with Peter that we are still accountable for our actions, regardless of our predispositions. I think that the issue of obesity is over-moralized, as is smoking. Being obese brings its own punishments, I don't see a need to add social ostracism to the mix.

Jeff: Let's look at delusions. Take three different circumstances: A deluded man thinks that his wife is a pillow and fluffs her to death; a deluded man believes that a demon has appeared before him and commanded him to kill his wife; and a deluded man believes that his wife is about to kill him, and he kills her first.

In the first case, there is no moral dimension. The man is sick and should be cared for. The other two men understood the consequences of their act: they intended to cause the death of their wives. There is a moral dimension to their act and they should be treated appropriately. For the second man, does it even matter that he was delusional? The general rule is that a murder committed under duress is still murder and should be punished. If the belief in duress is sincere, does it matter that it's not true?

The third man is the interesting case. He understood that he was killing his wife. If his fear of her had been based on fact, he would not have been guilty of murder. Where, in the second case, the truth of the delusion makes no difference, here the fact that his motivation was delusional makes all the difference. Because he did not have a guilty intent, he is not guilty of murder for the (in fact) unprovoked killing of his wife.

What does this have to do with Down's Syndrome, obesity, pedaphilia and homosexuality. Down's Syndrome is, as you note, a red herring. It is not a sin to have Down's Syndrome, because there was no moral choice to be made. Nor is being a pedaphile or homosexual a sin and let's assume, for now, that neither the pedaphile nor the homosexual has made a conscious choice for perversion. Still, acting on one's pedaphilia or homosexuality is a sin, because a moral choice is being made. Obesity is still different. It is nonsense to suggest that any particular bite taken or exercise avoided is a moral choice and yet, taken all together these amoral choices result in a particular status.

Now, you want to argue, as I understand it, that in fact the moral choice to act on one's homosexuality cannot be a sin because there was no moral choice to be made in being a homosexual. This, in and of itself, is impossible to square with any attempt to continue to condemn a pedophile who acts on his pedophilia, so if there is a difference (which there is) it must lie elsewhere.

In other words, the mere fact that someone is acting consistently with an inherent trait he did not choose does not, in and of itself, remove his choices from the ambit of moral choice. His "delusion" is not one that changes the nature of his act, or even one in which it makes a difference whether the delusion is true or not. A person who feels compelled to act on his pedophilia -- regardless of whether he chose to be a pedophile -- is like the delusional man who believes that he is killing his wife under duress. It doesn't matter if he's right.

Now, is the homosexual who feels compelled to act on his unchosen orientation like the delusional man who thinks his wife is about to kill him? Maybe. It certainly makes difference (as you point out) whether the compulsion actually exists, just as it makes a difference whether the fear is true. Thus, we can agree, for now, that homosexual acts, which might result from an unchosen compulsion, should not be punished as crimes. But, just as we don't change society to accept the delusional man's right to kill his wife, we need not change society to allow the homosexual to marry.

David:

"Still, acting on one's pedaphilia or homosexuality is a sin, because a moral choice is being made."

I believe you made a category mistake there. The former is a sin, because by definition (inability to provide consent) there is a victim. The latter, presuming consenting adults, has no such victim

This is no different from distinguishing between statutory rape and consensual heterosexual sex. We are easily able to make that distinction, are we not?

This absence of a victim also rather vitiates your comparing a homosexual to a delusional murderer. I don't think I have ever seen you resort to a strawman argument, but this seems perilously close.

In other words, you need to make the case that an act of consensual homosexual sex is a sin in some way that a situationally identical act of consensual heterosexual sex is not.

I don't wish this discussion to stray to far. Even if I should be so exalted as to have read God's mind correctly, in that God made gays on purpose in order to teach us not to pointlessly punish people, it just doesn't matter. At least 70% of people don't agree, and so be it.

The argument I was trying to make is that free will is often overrated. You didn't choose your physique, or your intelligence, or your sexual orientation, or gender, or a thousand other things. Yet each of them imposes considerable constraints upon what choices you are able to make.

Contrary to OJ's tagline, the hand you are dealt does very much make a difference, sometimes to the extent of rendering invisible the distinction between virtue and vice.

Jeff:

I think you mean Peter, as OJ hasn't commented here. As he doesn't read the blog, he rarely sees what we get up to.

I don't think that I'm setting up a strawman. I think you're being circular. You keep bopping back and forth between arguing that it can't be a sin (or wrong) because it's inherent, on the one hand, but then focus on the lack of a victim when other inherent tendancies, of which you are dissapproving, are pointed out.

I don't think that homosexuality is either delusional, or like murdering your wife; just as I assume that you don't think it's like pedophilia or Down's Syndrome. It is its own thing. However, for picking out just one aspect of an issue to allow us to refine our understanding, these sort of analogies are useful.

Using the word "sin" probably isn't helpful but, to answer your question, yes, heterosexual sex is a sin in the same way that a "situationally identical act" of homosexual sex is: sex outside of marriage is sinful. Like all of us, I have sinned in many ways, large and small. You may be assuming that more follows from the label than I do.

The example of the three delusions is, for me, helpful in exploring the nature of free will. In short, the only free will we have is to choose whether to act correctly when we realize that we are facing a decision with a moral dimension. The sufferer from Down's Syndrome never faces that choice. For the obese, the choice is attenuated. For the delusional men, one does not know he is facing a choice, one knows and chooses wrongly, and the last thinks he is acting morally, but is wrong on the facts.

Up above, you object to the idea that the Jews are a Chosen people. This is the nature of G-d's choice. The Jews know that, for them, deciding whether to eat ham, or drive on Saturday or commit adultery are moral choices, but we are free to choose immorally. Some of the commandments make sense and some seem arbitrary; some we obsess about to such an extent that we risk being more godly than G-d. In the end, though, sin is about the choices we make, knowingly.

David:

I was referring to OJ's tagline in the original post: "... the constant message has been that somebody or something else is to be blamed for all we are and do."

Unfortunately, that oftentimes is precisely the message nature is delivering: if homosexuality is innate, then for those innate homosexuals, something very much outside their volitional existence is to be blamed for what they are.

Then it is just a matter of deciding what to do with that blame.

In more primitive parts of India, the Hindus firmly believe those suffering cleft palate are in service to the devil, and cruelly ostracize them. Perchance, given your knowledge that there is nothing volitional about cleft palate, nor the existence of any victims other than the sufferer, you might find that barbaric.

Just so for homosexuality--if it is not volitional, then how can it be an abomination in the eyes of God?

I used the term "situationally identical" deliberately. If the situation is the test for moral acceptability, then heterosexual sex per se has no moral component. Similarly for homosexuality. If conducted within the confines of a committed, monogamous relationship, in what respect is the act immoral?

Unfortunately, I let this get too far afield from the outset. My larger point is that, contrary to OJ, things immune to our volition very much are to be blamed for who we are. And where we discover that the "blame" has no moral component, then perhaps we need to take that into consideration.

Like the Hindus of Southern India.

But, Jeff, the Hindus are wrong.

(And, by the way, the original post is Peter's, not OJ's.)

Nevertheless, I am completely missing your point.

You write Just so for homosexuality--if it is not volitional, then how can it be an abomination in the eyes of God?

First of all, unlike Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and OJ, I don't speak for G-d. I don't know why the world is designed the way it is, or what G-d intended to accomplish. This particular conundrum, which is a subset of "Why do bad things happen to good people", is one of the reasons that I like the metaphor of G-d as author. My guess is that Anna Karenina wouldn't have been all that thrilled with Tolstoy.

But you do seem to resist the actual issue here. No one worth worrying about, including the Bible, condemns homoeroticism. Acting on an urge -- even a powerful urge -- is different than feeling the urge, and that choice of whether to act is where the moral dimension comes into play.

And, leaving G-d out of it, as humans we can't know people's innermost being. To return to pedophilia, should we really differentiate the true pedophile from someone with "normal" urges who, in the absence of adult women, turns to girls? How could we know? What sense would it make to treat one more harshly than the other?

David:

Ooops. I try hard not to attribute to the wrong person. Apologies to both Peter & OJ.

"First of all, unlike Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and OJ, I don't speak for G-d."

So far as I know, the authors of Leveticus were neither, yet many hold them to be doing just that.

Which leads directly to the question of treating acting upon innate homosexuality as inherently immoral, absent any qualifying context. Do those words in Leveticus truly convey God's intent? If they do, and if homosexuality is innate, how is it possible to view God as morally concious?

To return to pedophilia, the existence of a victim renders irrelevant any innateness, since there is no possible context within which the conduct cannot be immoral. Similarly for statutory rape, BTW.

Which is probably hundreds of times more common than pedophilia.

Jeff: My list of prophets was both underinclusive and overinclusive.

As the very existence of the crime of statutory rape demonstrates, many underage "victims" of sexual crimes do, in fact, consent (and all girl victims do, or the crime would be plain old rape). We just ignore their consent under the legal fiction of the "age of consent." The age of consent is subject to change by the political branches of the state, has varied dramatically in various times and places and is as low as 12 in some places today.

David:

You brought up pedohilia. Why? In what respect is it different, other than the gender of the participants, from statutory rape?

I rather suspect that the vast majority of abuse cases afflicting the Church involved consenting boys.

BTW, above I was careful, (I think) to qualify the existence of a victim in either case as being de jure.

But this still leaves my questions unanswered:

Which leads directly to the question of treating acting upon innate homosexuality as inherently immoral, absent any qualifying context. Do those words in Leveticus truly convey God's intent? If they do, and if homosexuality is innate, how is it possible to view God as morally concious?

I know I sound fixated on this, but as an outsider, there are a couple areas in which I find Judeo-Christian "morality" positively vile.

This is one.