Are we determined by our genes or by our environments?
Yes.
But, it’s not so simple as that. Those genes are us and we are part of those environments which are hardly independent of human technology — culture in general — these days. But the complications are still more than that. We are what’s shaped but also the ones who help shape ourselves by way of response. We are what’s shaped but our environments, for this purpose, are determined by our perception of what lies outside of us and — to an extent — down in our toes. Our perceptions of those environments are more or less honest, more or less complete, rich or impoverished.
Even genes aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays they don’t seem to always operate in that good old-fashioned mechanical way. The more up-to-date genes have more complex operations so that they operate in different ways depending upon our early environments and also the environments of the previous few generations. (See Epigenetics for a background article.) In general, the soma (body or flesh) of the fertilized egg-cell which is a recently conceived human being is not some sort of slave to its own DNA nor is the DNA a simple and mechanical system.
This is not to say we can transcend our DNA, at least not in a direct way, nor is it to say that DNA and soma engage in a war of domination. It is to say our DNA is complex and allows a wide variety of possibilities in interaction with our current environment and it’s also to say that we should remember that DNA is some sort of collection of the biochemical responses to Earth’s environments over the past three billion years or so — to oversimplify greatly. And it’s to say along with modern embryologists: A complete set of genes isn’t sufficient to make a dinosaur; you need a mommy dinosaur. The qualification is that it is quite possible that a modern elephant could be the mother of a mammoth if one of her egg-cells is fertilized with DNA taken from one of those frozen mammoths in Siberia and then implanted in her womb. But the resulting creature would be part modern elephant in ways which might be unpredictable. In addition, our environments are ever-changing and always presenting new opportunities and problems to us and to voles and to grasshoppers.
Besides the complications of epigenetics and the dynamic nature of the earth, there are some interesting problems posed by the insertion of alien DNA and possibly manipulations of our soma during our lifetimes by viruses, bacteria, or multi-celled parasites. I’ll not discuss this in detail, but — for the benefit of those who have not heard of this sort of phenomena — I’ll mention that HIV inserts negative images of itself in the DNA of human beings it infects. A human being infected by HIV becomes from that time a potential factory of HIV. Other, more complicated phenomenon can occur, not often leading to a stable species of three-headed dogs nor to supermen who can fly. Cancers or miscarriages are more likely.
But, my current interest is in the responses we make to our environments. The world offers possibilities to us, but creative human beings also offer possibilities not fully determined by their genes or inherited soma. The world itself responds, perhaps to destroy us for inadequate responses or simply because of bad luck. But the world does offer and we decide how to respond to opportunities and problems. And we make a counteroffer in response — if we are properly energetic and courageous. The nonlinear interplay of two systems results in new possibilities even if those two systems were themselves not only independent and well-determined but also linear. This raises issues of emergence vs. creativity but I’ll pass over those for now. You can pursue just one small line of thought in this matter by reading Creation and Freedom, a short discussion of some of the ideas of Henri Bergson.
The main point is that we need to develop a different language to discuss our moral selves and our moral lives. We are not determined by supernatural forces nor by our genes. Nor are we creatures of some sort of free-will unanchored in flesh and blood, rocks and water. We are born as bundles of possible human beings, where those bundles were shaped over eons by the forces of evolutionary biology. We are shaped into particular human beings by our responses to the particular environments, social and ‘natural’, into which we are born. There are metaphysical and theological issues and I’ll say only that God knew all that would happen when He created contingent being and then shaped this world, but He left us with a limited but significant amount of freedom suitable for creatures such as us. While we are far from fully free, we aren’t constrained by God’s knowledge of what will happen. We share in the freedom which comes from the factual contingency of this world, this story being told by God.
We can participate along with God in the ongoing shaping of ourselves and our world, however subordinate our status and however weak our powers. To participate in this way, we must take the initiative and we must have faith that God has brought us into existence into a rational and morally well-ordered world. The faith and the corresponding courage to act can be faked until it becomes part of you.