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Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness
As one of the world's leading scientists examining how our DNA shapes differences in temperament, temptation and behaviour, Harden has seen first-hand how we - in public and in our most private relationships - continue to struggle with the ancient tensions between nature and nurture, freedom and constraint, the desire to punish and the longing to forgive.
In Original Sin, she weaves together insights from her own experience as a daughter, mother, wife and scientist with cutting-edge research in genetics and psychology to grapple with some of the most important questions in modern How do we take responsibility for the people we become, knowing how we are shaped by both biology and experience? How should we respond when people hurt each other - or themselves? And has science made guilt obsolete?
Navigating the psychological and biological terrain of addiction, antisocial behaviour and violence, Harden confronts the discomforting ways science unsettles our understanding of wrongdoing and choice. In doing so she asks us not to absolve, but to reckon differently with notions of fairness and blame. A revelatory inquiry into the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology, Original Sin challenges us to imagine a more humane vision of accountability - for ourselves and for one another.
In Original Sin, she weaves together insights from her own experience as a daughter, mother, wife and scientist with cutting-edge research in genetics and psychology to grapple with some of the most important questions in modern How do we take responsibility for the people we become, knowing how we are shaped by both biology and experience? How should we respond when people hurt each other - or themselves? And has science made guilt obsolete?
Navigating the psychological and biological terrain of addiction, antisocial behaviour and violence, Harden confronts the discomforting ways science unsettles our understanding of wrongdoing and choice. In doing so she asks us not to absolve, but to reckon differently with notions of fairness and blame. A revelatory inquiry into the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology, Original Sin challenges us to imagine a more humane vision of accountability - for ourselves and for one another.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2026
About the author
Kathryn Paige Harden
7 books119 followersKathryn Paige Harden is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Texas Austin, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School before moving to Austin in 2009. She has published over 100 scientific articles on genetic influences on complex human behavior, including child cognitive development, academic achievement, risk-taking, mental health, sexual activity, and childbearing. Her research has been featured in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post.
In 2017, she was honored with a prestigious national award from the American Psychological Association for her distinguished scientific contributions to the study of genetics and human individual differences. In addition to research, Dr. Harden teaches Introduction to Psychology in a synchronous massive online class format.
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March 3, 2026
Original Sin integrates personal memoir with scientific research, philosophical inquiry, and broader cultural critique. It is a discursive follow-up to Harden's 2021 book, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, asking why people do harm to themselves and others and what should be done about it. Harden's commitments to egalitarianism remains but her stridency about the sociopolitical import of her behavioral genetics research has subsided some.
The book is more of an essay collection than a coherent whole, but it's a compelling collection that will engage readers of all backgrounds on deep human questions concerning our natures, fairness, and forgiveness. Harden is remarkably candid about her personal life, which will probably be of most interest to those who pick up the book, but I really appreciated when Harden discussed her research and other genetic inputs on behavior. For instance, the details on Brunner syndrome were deeply appreciated, especially because it is an example that many left-of-center geneticists have played down or overlooked. The book can be construed as a very strong re-assertion of the first law of behavioral genetics, the idea that all human traits vary in populations because of variation in genomes. She extends this acceptance of genetic effects to how these shape and interact with environments. They aren't independent of each other.
Harden's research program is most interested in risk-taking phenotypes and related behavioral patterns like addiction, antisocial conduct, and violence. These are sensitive subjects to many, but Harden maintains her candidness on these subjects as well despite staking out a clear normative position to left of most people. She then traces how our normative processes for regulating these behaviors are perhaps founded on ideas that aren't true and even when they are, things may still be unfair and unjust, but it is unclear how we can remedy these issues or even if these questions can or should be resolved. She's is comfortable with this dissonance and committed to continual reflection and revision. Personally, I'm for pragmatic, empirical solutions to these questions as it is clear people respond to incentives and sometime understanding material causes clearly enables effective remediation.
All in all, Original Sin is a provocative, interdisciplinary exploration of human behavior that pushes readers to reconsider their reflexive ideas about blame and moral responsibility by integrating genetics, psychology, and lived experience. It invites a more nuanced and compassionate framework for understanding why people behave as they do and how we might respond more justly.
I have a longer review of Original Sin at Substack
*I'd like to than Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.
The book is more of an essay collection than a coherent whole, but it's a compelling collection that will engage readers of all backgrounds on deep human questions concerning our natures, fairness, and forgiveness. Harden is remarkably candid about her personal life, which will probably be of most interest to those who pick up the book, but I really appreciated when Harden discussed her research and other genetic inputs on behavior. For instance, the details on Brunner syndrome were deeply appreciated, especially because it is an example that many left-of-center geneticists have played down or overlooked. The book can be construed as a very strong re-assertion of the first law of behavioral genetics, the idea that all human traits vary in populations because of variation in genomes. She extends this acceptance of genetic effects to how these shape and interact with environments. They aren't independent of each other.
Harden's research program is most interested in risk-taking phenotypes and related behavioral patterns like addiction, antisocial conduct, and violence. These are sensitive subjects to many, but Harden maintains her candidness on these subjects as well despite staking out a clear normative position to left of most people. She then traces how our normative processes for regulating these behaviors are perhaps founded on ideas that aren't true and even when they are, things may still be unfair and unjust, but it is unclear how we can remedy these issues or even if these questions can or should be resolved. She's is comfortable with this dissonance and committed to continual reflection and revision. Personally, I'm for pragmatic, empirical solutions to these questions as it is clear people respond to incentives and sometime understanding material causes clearly enables effective remediation.
All in all, Original Sin is a provocative, interdisciplinary exploration of human behavior that pushes readers to reconsider their reflexive ideas about blame and moral responsibility by integrating genetics, psychology, and lived experience. It invites a more nuanced and compassionate framework for understanding why people behave as they do and how we might respond more justly.
I have a longer review of Original Sin at Substack
*I'd like to than Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in return for an honest review.
June 8, 2026
I have two principal objections to this book.
First, it often reads less like a work of scholarship and more like a diary. As with any diary, the narrative oscillates between moments of cool insight and lengthy passages of limited relevance to anyone outside the author’s immediate experience. The scientific content is surprisingly sparse, while the theological discussions are too frequent and, in my view, very limited to her upbringing as a Protestant. Paige appears deeply invested in recounting the minutiae of her personal life, a feature that I found neither illuminating nor particularly germane to why I bought this book.
Second, I came away with the impression that Paige is fundamentally a psychologist and geneticist in interesting ways. The book often exhibits the confidence and certitude associated with the natural sciences, yet applies that same intellectual posture to some of the most complex problems in the world using the tools of psychology - free will. It’s like showing up to the crusades with plastic spoons. Silly
There is little in the book that I liked. However, the chapter on incarceration deserves special mention, if only because it fits into the long tradition of well-intentioned but profoundly detached and thoughtless social theorizing. It is an exercise in abstract moral reflection that is insulated from the realities of crime.
For centuries, academics have proposed pretty solutions to social problems from positions of comfort and distance, often shielded from the consequences of their own prescriptions. This chapter, regrettably, felt like another contribution to that tradition. It speaks with a kind of confidence disproportionate to the evidentiary foundations available in psychology or human genetics.
First, it often reads less like a work of scholarship and more like a diary. As with any diary, the narrative oscillates between moments of cool insight and lengthy passages of limited relevance to anyone outside the author’s immediate experience. The scientific content is surprisingly sparse, while the theological discussions are too frequent and, in my view, very limited to her upbringing as a Protestant. Paige appears deeply invested in recounting the minutiae of her personal life, a feature that I found neither illuminating nor particularly germane to why I bought this book.
Second, I came away with the impression that Paige is fundamentally a psychologist and geneticist in interesting ways. The book often exhibits the confidence and certitude associated with the natural sciences, yet applies that same intellectual posture to some of the most complex problems in the world using the tools of psychology - free will. It’s like showing up to the crusades with plastic spoons. Silly
There is little in the book that I liked. However, the chapter on incarceration deserves special mention, if only because it fits into the long tradition of well-intentioned but profoundly detached and thoughtless social theorizing. It is an exercise in abstract moral reflection that is insulated from the realities of crime.
For centuries, academics have proposed pretty solutions to social problems from positions of comfort and distance, often shielded from the consequences of their own prescriptions. This chapter, regrettably, felt like another contribution to that tradition. It speaks with a kind of confidence disproportionate to the evidentiary foundations available in psychology or human genetics.
October 28, 2026
Kathryn Paige Harden is an American psychologist and behavior geneticist who conducts genome wide association studies. This book is part scientific, philosophical essay and part autobiography. The title “Original Sin” is a word play. On the surface, it refers to the concept of sin in Christianity that humans as the children of Eve who ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge were born with. This is especially interesting for Harden because she was raised in a religious Christian family but later became an atheist. The true meaning of the title refers to our biological inheritance, a.k.a. DNA, its links to questionable behavior and whether your genes diminishes your blameworthiness, should you do something bad.
This philosophical question has been asked for thousands of years. Two main thoughts:
1. Pelagianism reasoning: biology is the antidote to blame; blame depends on minimizing biology. An extreme version of this thought is that because one does not have free will and everything one does is predetermined, one can not be blamed for anything.
2. Similar to the Christian original sin, one’s “bad” breed or, in today’s term, DNA, is more likely to increase one’s blameworthiness than diminish it
Antisocial behavior and conduct disorders have hereditary elements. Harden presented several studies about the polygenic scores of antisocial behaviors and conduct disorders. There is a large section discussing nurture vs nature. I find this book to be more philosophical than scientific. I think Hayden’s view is somewhere in the middle: nature and nurture are always intertwined in shaping one’s personality and behavior; even if you have “bad” genes, you still have a choice.
Legal cases discussed in the book include Jeffrey Landrigan, Anders Behring Breivik, and Andrea Yates.
My two cents:
1. “DNA can’t definitely say you will commit a crime. We can say whether based on your DNA, you are in a high risk group whose probability of being arrested is twice as high than people in a low risk group.” Without a base rate, such a statement can be easily misinterpreted and misunderstood.
2. “If your child committed a heinous crime, would it be worse for you if you learned that he was hardwired to be violent regardless of his environment circumstances or if you learned his behavior could have been prevented by something you didn’t do? ” As a mother, I find such a question terrifying!
3. I did not know the legal case of abortion ban in the US weaponized anti-eugenics arguments. What a cunning use of a moral argument.
4. The mention of how to integrate African child soldiers back into society is too short. I want to know more. She mentioned that because the westerners treated them as victims only, the results were poor. On the contrary, the traditional Mozambique method was superior. In a traditional Mozambique society, child soldiers were treated as any other adult wrong-doers at first. After a time period of confession and certain ceremonies, they were accepted back into society and their crimes were not mentioned anymore.
This philosophical question has been asked for thousands of years. Two main thoughts:
1. Pelagianism reasoning: biology is the antidote to blame; blame depends on minimizing biology. An extreme version of this thought is that because one does not have free will and everything one does is predetermined, one can not be blamed for anything.
2. Similar to the Christian original sin, one’s “bad” breed or, in today’s term, DNA, is more likely to increase one’s blameworthiness than diminish it
Antisocial behavior and conduct disorders have hereditary elements. Harden presented several studies about the polygenic scores of antisocial behaviors and conduct disorders. There is a large section discussing nurture vs nature. I find this book to be more philosophical than scientific. I think Hayden’s view is somewhere in the middle: nature and nurture are always intertwined in shaping one’s personality and behavior; even if you have “bad” genes, you still have a choice.
Legal cases discussed in the book include Jeffrey Landrigan, Anders Behring Breivik, and Andrea Yates.
My two cents:
1. “DNA can’t definitely say you will commit a crime. We can say whether based on your DNA, you are in a high risk group whose probability of being arrested is twice as high than people in a low risk group.” Without a base rate, such a statement can be easily misinterpreted and misunderstood.
2. “If your child committed a heinous crime, would it be worse for you if you learned that he was hardwired to be violent regardless of his environment circumstances or if you learned his behavior could have been prevented by something you didn’t do? ” As a mother, I find such a question terrifying!
3. I did not know the legal case of abortion ban in the US weaponized anti-eugenics arguments. What a cunning use of a moral argument.
4. The mention of how to integrate African child soldiers back into society is too short. I want to know more. She mentioned that because the westerners treated them as victims only, the results were poor. On the contrary, the traditional Mozambique method was superior. In a traditional Mozambique society, child soldiers were treated as any other adult wrong-doers at first. After a time period of confession and certain ceremonies, they were accepted back into society and their crimes were not mentioned anymore.
March 18, 2026
This book slotted beautifully into one of my personal obsessions: Why do people do the terrible things they do, why do some people do so many very terrible things, and what do we (individually and collectively) do about it?
Harden is a psychologist and academic genetics scientist, and she writes Original Sin from the perspective of a former evangelical Christian trying to make sense of the genetic basis of anti-social behaviour and what this means for blame, accountability, punishment, and rehabilitation. It's fascinating (I suppose, if you share any part of my personal obsession).
Harden proposes that the impulse to blame and punishment, no matter how ineffective they may be, is as human as sex and misbehaviour, an argument I appreciated for its originality (at least to me). So we will continue to blame and punish because that's what we do. I'm not sure all of her evidence supports this, however; for instance, she discusses a wasp species where the queen's sisters will bite her if she gets too greedy, and the queen backs down and changes her behaviour. Clearly punishment is doing something. It's not ineffective. It's possible that the forms of punishment we use in our culture aren't effective or that the effects don't show up in our studies, but it's hard for me to believe that something so common throughout the animal kingdom is uniquely ineffective just for humans.
Getting to that point is genuinely pleasurable and fascinating. There are indeed genetic conditions that result in terrible behaviour. The most striking is Brunner syndrome, the result of a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to impulse problems and violence. It is almost all men, who end up assaulting, killing, and raping people.
Other combinations of genes increase the risk for antisocial behaviour but less impressively. Harden argues that these can be mediated by positive parenting and good social supports; direct citations were not available in the audiobook version, so I had to do some digging.
One study she cites is by Luke Hyde et al in 2016, looking at the children of highly antisocial birth mothers raised by pro-social adoptive mothers using positive reinforcement and rewards rather than harsh or punitive reactions, which concludes that positive parenting "buffers" against the influence of the inherited genes of an antisocial biological mother. It's an accurate summation but perhaps overstated in the book. Here's a diagram showing the results of the study:
Brief summary: child callous/unemotional behaviour is on the vertical axis, biological mother antisocial behaviour on the horizontal, with intersections marked with a solid dot for adoptive mothers using harsh/punitive tactics and an x for positive reinforcement instead. The solid line shows the heredity of antisocial behaviour when harsh or punitive responses are used, and the dashed line for when positive parenting is used.
OK, so: yes, positive parenting "buffers" against the effects of the antisocial genes, in that there is less antisocial behaviour noted among the children raised in positive environments. But it does not appear to be dramatic. There are plenty of x's above the dashed and even solid lines, demonstrating that these children continued to behave with callous and unemotional behaviours (a predictor of conduct disorder and ASPD) even in the positive environments, and you really need those lines to even see the differences because the observations are just a big cloud of dots and x's.
You can read the whole study for free here if you want to: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
Basically, yes, a more positive early environment helps, but does not solve, antisocial behaviour. And Harden argues that maybe we don't even really want to get rid of it, since her own work links antisocial behaviour with pleasure-seeking and, as she says, do we want to get rid of pleasure seeking? Probably not.
If you're interested in reading about why people do terrible things, why some people do a lot of terrible things and won't stop, and what can be done about it, this is an interesting and enjoyable exploration of just how monumentally complicated and perhaps insoluble the question is.
Harden is a psychologist and academic genetics scientist, and she writes Original Sin from the perspective of a former evangelical Christian trying to make sense of the genetic basis of anti-social behaviour and what this means for blame, accountability, punishment, and rehabilitation. It's fascinating (I suppose, if you share any part of my personal obsession).
Harden proposes that the impulse to blame and punishment, no matter how ineffective they may be, is as human as sex and misbehaviour, an argument I appreciated for its originality (at least to me). So we will continue to blame and punish because that's what we do. I'm not sure all of her evidence supports this, however; for instance, she discusses a wasp species where the queen's sisters will bite her if she gets too greedy, and the queen backs down and changes her behaviour. Clearly punishment is doing something. It's not ineffective. It's possible that the forms of punishment we use in our culture aren't effective or that the effects don't show up in our studies, but it's hard for me to believe that something so common throughout the animal kingdom is uniquely ineffective just for humans.
Getting to that point is genuinely pleasurable and fascinating. There are indeed genetic conditions that result in terrible behaviour. The most striking is Brunner syndrome, the result of a mutation on the X chromosome that leads to impulse problems and violence. It is almost all men, who end up assaulting, killing, and raping people.
Other combinations of genes increase the risk for antisocial behaviour but less impressively. Harden argues that these can be mediated by positive parenting and good social supports; direct citations were not available in the audiobook version, so I had to do some digging.
One study she cites is by Luke Hyde et al in 2016, looking at the children of highly antisocial birth mothers raised by pro-social adoptive mothers using positive reinforcement and rewards rather than harsh or punitive reactions, which concludes that positive parenting "buffers" against the influence of the inherited genes of an antisocial biological mother. It's an accurate summation but perhaps overstated in the book. Here's a diagram showing the results of the study:
Brief summary: child callous/unemotional behaviour is on the vertical axis, biological mother antisocial behaviour on the horizontal, with intersections marked with a solid dot for adoptive mothers using harsh/punitive tactics and an x for positive reinforcement instead. The solid line shows the heredity of antisocial behaviour when harsh or punitive responses are used, and the dashed line for when positive parenting is used.
OK, so: yes, positive parenting "buffers" against the effects of the antisocial genes, in that there is less antisocial behaviour noted among the children raised in positive environments. But it does not appear to be dramatic. There are plenty of x's above the dashed and even solid lines, demonstrating that these children continued to behave with callous and unemotional behaviours (a predictor of conduct disorder and ASPD) even in the positive environments, and you really need those lines to even see the differences because the observations are just a big cloud of dots and x's.
You can read the whole study for free here if you want to: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles...
Basically, yes, a more positive early environment helps, but does not solve, antisocial behaviour. And Harden argues that maybe we don't even really want to get rid of it, since her own work links antisocial behaviour with pleasure-seeking and, as she says, do we want to get rid of pleasure seeking? Probably not.
If you're interested in reading about why people do terrible things, why some people do a lot of terrible things and won't stop, and what can be done about it, this is an interesting and enjoyable exploration of just how monumentally complicated and perhaps insoluble the question is.
November 10, 2026
Interesting coverage of the old question about nature versus nurture, along with the concepts of redemption, forgiveness, empathy, what makes people tick. I'm always fascinated with this perpetual question. It was interesting to hear about how things operate in different countries compared with this country. The author compares religious thinking to more secular, which was also interesting.
September 15, 2026
i have to say that this was right up my alley personally im nosy so i enjoyed the integration of personal memoir and the way it was written like a diary. honestly it was really impressive that she managed to combine all the different ways of viewing this topic (biological, religious, historical, etc) into a cohesive argument. obviously her perspective was very specific and could potentially have limited her insight, for example her very protestant upbringing, but i don't think it made her argument less valuable
June 4, 2026
A lot to wrap my head around. But it’s a complicated explanation of the “nature (&) nurture” theory, and how genetically there are recognizable parts of DNA linked to an inclination towards violence, guilt, ambivalence, etc. and how that paired with a harmful environment can manifest a likely prophesied outcome. However, it’s not a cut and dry rule. But we find that humans and animals experience blame, correction/punishment and guilt in similar ways to strive for a communal form of cooperation which is of course paired with survival. But the existence of both must be present for a continual evolution politically, genetically, etc. it’s quite an amorphous and ambiguous topic but I feel like I am understanding the roots of upsetting behaviors through a more scientific lens.
April 7, 2026
This is a hard book to rate. It really consists of two different books layered together: First, Information about the latest science on how dna affects anti-social behaviors and how most people view those with such genetic tendencies; and, Second, an memoir about Harden's relationship with religion.
I liked the science - not the memoir. Harden was raised in a religious tradition and in a family that were hostile toward religion and social liberalism, so I guess she's giving it back. Her title comes from the idea that genetic tendencies toward violence, etc. are similar to the idea of "Original Sin". She does not like this because she doesn't want anything she was told as a child by religious people to be true. People who don't see dna as an excuse for judicial leniency are the same people who can't wait to see sinners burning in the afterlife, apparently. Harden lumps Christians together ("Christians believe..."), although there are countless variations in what Christians believe about blame, punishment, and everything else.
I did learn some things, but just couldn't get past the tone of most of the book, which I found to be offputting. I'm sure some people will like this, but it wasn't for me.
I liked the science - not the memoir. Harden was raised in a religious tradition and in a family that were hostile toward religion and social liberalism, so I guess she's giving it back. Her title comes from the idea that genetic tendencies toward violence, etc. are similar to the idea of "Original Sin". She does not like this because she doesn't want anything she was told as a child by religious people to be true. People who don't see dna as an excuse for judicial leniency are the same people who can't wait to see sinners burning in the afterlife, apparently. Harden lumps Christians together ("Christians believe..."), although there are countless variations in what Christians believe about blame, punishment, and everything else.
I did learn some things, but just couldn't get past the tone of most of the book, which I found to be offputting. I'm sure some people will like this, but it wasn't for me.
July 30, 2026
3.25!! - thank you so much for the proof!!!
This is such a difficult book to rate. There were parts I really enjoyed and got so into and then others I found my attention wavering.
Regardless, a very interesting read and one I actually would recommend to people to see not only the talks about how our genetics/dna and also our own life/religion/upbringing can make an impact or be blamed for our actions/morals
This is such a difficult book to rate. There were parts I really enjoyed and got so into and then others I found my attention wavering.
Regardless, a very interesting read and one I actually would recommend to people to see not only the talks about how our genetics/dna and also our own life/religion/upbringing can make an impact or be blamed for our actions/morals
March 9, 2026
Essential reading
June 15, 2026
Harden is a respected psychologist and behavioral geneticist, and has clearly been putting in a lot of thinking about philosophy and Christianity as well. (She grew up in a strict Christian household, she is an atheist now, but has clearly thought a lot about the meaning of church teachings over the centuries.) The mixture of all those things, with a strong dose of personal memoir, makes for a persuasive and moving book. I definitely had some quibbles here and there, my main one is that she seems to consider that incarceration is purely equivalent to punishment. That’s obviously a huge (and ugly) part of it, but not the total. Simply keeping antisocial people away from society is part of it as well. But all in all, there was a ton to think about, and I liked her treatment of various debates, like nature/nurture and determinism/free will. And the personal parts made it all more immediate.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated very nicely by someone named Kristen DiMercurio.
I listened to the audiobook, narrated very nicely by someone named Kristen DiMercurio.
August 1, 2026
Listened on Audible with an excellent narrator.
A well written, thoughtful, and provocative look at the confluence of nature, nurture, and the legacy of Christianity told as both a personal and cultural story.
For those, like myself, raised in the Christian, and more specifically Evangelical, world you’ll find plenty to contemplate as the author walks through the deconstruction of her own Evangelical faith and family issues.
The interweaving of scientific research, some of it by the author in her own lab on the development of polygenic scores and twin studies, how it plays out in society and how that interpretation is influenced through the lens of Christianity is fascinating.
Would recommend.
A well written, thoughtful, and provocative look at the confluence of nature, nurture, and the legacy of Christianity told as both a personal and cultural story.
For those, like myself, raised in the Christian, and more specifically Evangelical, world you’ll find plenty to contemplate as the author walks through the deconstruction of her own Evangelical faith and family issues.
The interweaving of scientific research, some of it by the author in her own lab on the development of polygenic scores and twin studies, how it plays out in society and how that interpretation is influenced through the lens of Christianity is fascinating.
Would recommend.
April 7, 2026
This compelling nonfiction work explores the complex role genetics may play in shaping criminal behavior. The author examines how our DNA influences tendencies toward violence while also grappling with enduring questions of blame, accountability, and free will. By weaving together scientific insight, personal stories, and philosophical inquiry, the book challenges readers to reconsider the foundations of our punitive justice system and invites thoughtful reflection on how responsibility should be understood.
May 31, 2026
4.5 this was really fantastic! the interwoven memoir in the prose added so much story to the research and made it very accessible. the comparisons and analysis between christian theology and writings, and case studies that underpin the book were a very unique and interesting quality to it. overall GREAT!
June 22, 2026
The author looks at genetics, psychology and nature/nurture and explores what impact, if any, this has on a person's inclination to wrongdoing. Some of the science went over my head but it's a thought-provoking read.
April 12, 2026
This is an unusually thought-provoking book. It focuses on how genetics can contribute to behavioral expression, & explores what genetic explanations mean for moral judgment and personal responsibility.
She does a good job asking what kind of accountability we can pursue when causes are layered and not fully legible.
She does a good job asking what kind of accountability we can pursue when causes are layered and not fully legible.
May 12, 2026
Realllllllly thought provoking read. Super interesting! Sometimes hard to read. (or listen to)
Did Not Finish
August 7, 2026DNF
Just not my cup of tea.
Just not my cup of tea.
May 30, 2026
This book raises a lot of questions that seem unanswerable but they’re fascinating nonetheless. What does responsibility and guilt mean when our genetics and the environment we’re born into (things out of our control) can seemingly be associated with or even cause antisocial and harmful behavior.
May 16, 2026
The ancient question of whether our biological inheritance diminishes our human blameworthiness and struggle to find certainty
July 18, 2026
I read this in one long sitting on a Friday evening and really enjoyed it. It is essentially an essay by a geneticist, mother and ex-Evangelical Christian.
“Sin is not a word you can use in Nature Neuroscience. We said we were studying the genetics of "traits related to self-regulation and addiction."…Research like mine links inherited DNA differences between people with their tendency to behave in ways that invite punishment. Such science disturbs, provokes, unsettles.”
In this personal exploration, what feels like a glimpse into her mind and thought process, we read along as she grapples with ideas of blame, punishment and inheritance when it comes to sinful and morally reprehensible behaviour. She looks at how genes are a stand in for God when it comes to the “reason” people do things and how both nature and nurture ultimately shape people.
The book contains some well explained very interesting science such as:
“The MAOA gene, for instance, codes for an enzyme called monoamine oxidase type-A, which "eats" molecules that the cell doesn't need anymore. Ordinarily, the MAO-A enzyme breaks down the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another, messengers like serotonin or norepineph-rine. Most psychiatric drugs, like Prozac or Ritalin, work by changing levels of these chemical messengers. But in the Brun-ner syndrome family, a single DNA letter in the MAOA gene had been changed to a T instead of a C. This changed the codon from CAG, coding for the amino acid glutamine, to the codon TAG, which is the code for STOP. Stop adding new amino acids; stop making the protein. Stop regulating one's rage; stop developing the joint excellence of reason and character.
The resulting MAO-A enzyme is a stunted, deformed thing that cannot function normally. MAO-A enzyme deficiency, in turn, leads to a buildup in the neurotransmitters that neurons use to communicate with each other, a suppression of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and a tendency toward explosive outbursts of anger, especially in response to fear or frustration. To inherit this mutated gene was to be prone to engage in arson, rape, assault, or even homicide. There is, at present, no cure.”
“The indelible marks left by parental maltreatment can be inscribed on the child's genome. "Methylation" is an epigenetic mark, a sort of chemical tag on the genome. A molecule, called a methyl group, binds to the genome, affecting how genes are
"read" by the cell without changing the DNA sequence directly. In animal studies, rat pups who were neglected by their rat mothers showed altered patterns of DNA methylation compared with rat pups who had been generously licked and groomed by their mothers. Specifically, within the first week after birth, they had elevated DNA methylation within the promotor region for the Nr3cl gene, which codes for the glucocorticoid receptor gene. This elevation in Nr3c1 DNA methylation, in turn, heightened the rats' responses to stress, making them more anxious and more aggressive in social groups. Later work in humans also found evidence for NR3C1 gene hyper-methylation in children who were victims of abuse or ne-glect.”
Some philosophy and ethics:
“The shift in perspec-tive, from subjective to objective, from "He stabbed someone with a pitchfork" to "A genetic mutation caused aggressive out-bursts," does momentarily baffle my moral judgments, but the bafflement is unstable. Faced with serious acts of violence, my feelings of moral judgment are surprisingly durable. Emie might have been genetically engineered to be violent, but he still did it.”
Some philosophical theology:
“As Elaine Pagels summarized in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, "For Augustine, natural and moral evils collapse into one another." This collapse was necessary be-cause, according to Augustine's reasoning, if there were no inherited sin, then infants would be innocent. And if infants who are innocent suffer as they do, then how could God be good? If one abandoned the doctrine of original sin, one might be forced to abandon faith in a just God. Augustine could not countenance the possibility. Like a child of abusive parents, he rationalized that it was better for humanity to be guilty than godless, better to be a sinner in a universe ruled by God than an innocent in a universe ruled by the demiurge, better for our suffering to be deserved than meaningless. He thought people who disagreed with him about original sin would find their faith "shipwrecked upon the misery of infants."”
Some personal insights that feel like they belong in a diary but also reveal something true, so I am glad she shared:
“Now my first-year college students tell me they envy the Y2K adolescent experience, and I, too, am slightly envious of my past self. I think we are envious of the type of freedom that comes only from dis-connection, for time that is entirely one's own. Except for my boyfriend's letters and a few obligatory calls to my parents, 1 am peaceably cut off from anyone and anything outside the gated confines of my college campus. Such oblivion would be possible only in the deep wilderness now. But in 2000, having finished the first year of my undergraduate degree in psychology, I could retreat from the world merely by staying on campus after finals
were over.”
Some beautiful descriptive writing that is also clever:
“Even the blue dye is reminiscent of menstrual pad advertise-ments. Women have always known how to cope matter-of-factly with the messiness of bodies, and lab work, it turns out, is no exception.”
And some of her own brilliant musings:
“The undeniable effectiveness of Ozempic, the development of which was nearly abandoned because pharmaceutical executives considered weight a matter of willpower, raises the same question that working in a neuroscience lab did: What behavior is within the reach of biological intervention?”
And ultimately she marries her religious past with her scientific present:
“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.”
And combines Nietzsche and Strawson with psychology to explain the need for vengence:
“Just as people experience sexual pleasure in all sorts of situations in which no babies will be made, people experience punitive pleasure even when no cooperative norms will be maintained by the retributive act. Punishment might not deter future defections or prevent future harms; it might even
- make them more likely. And we want it anyway.”
“The answer, according to Nietzsche, is that cruelty is a cur-rency. The wrongdoer injured you in some way; he detracted something from your life. He is now in your debt and must give you something valuable in return. What he is repaying you with is the pleasure you derive from watching him hurt. When an offender "pays his debt to society," society is being repaid with the indulgence of an ancient, evolved desire to hurt.”
“In his essay "Freedom and Resentment," the philosopher Peter Strawson answers those who think that knowledge about the determinants of our behavior renders our moral practices moot…Moral responsibility is a social condition, not a supernatural one.”
Through all of this she writes her personal experiences, her research, references to scientific papers, non fiction books she has read, TV shows she has watched, films she has seen and Bible quotes all on the same footing in her search to understand blame and the role of genes in making us angels, monsters, humans. I really enjoyed this.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the journey she took us on and her conclusion:
“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.”
Highly recommend this if you want to read a great personal essay exploring guilt, sin and the nature or nurture debate with personal anecdotes, Christian stories and science scattered throughout.
-
My favourite quote from the book:
“Except we keep identifying more and more genes that have these tiny effects. FOXP2 is associated with hurting people physically, and CADM2 with impulsivity, and GABRA2 with drinking too much, and GPR139 with getting in arguments, and REV3L and WDPCP and FURIN and ZKSCAN and SMG6 and NEGRI and SCAl and SNTG1 and NCAMI ASCC3 BPTF SPGT ZIC4 CUL3 RANBP17 MAPT NRAP MCHR2 ERAP2 PACSIN3
ICK CCDC88B XKR6 ALMSI HS6ST3 TMEM110 TMEM163 STK32C IGSF11 SDKI UTRN AFF3 ZNF75A...
In this way, modern genomic studies deliver results that defy circa-2000 predictions, which anticipated finding a few genes with relatively large effects. Instead, the results echo the ancient Greek paradox of the heap. A single grain of sand does not make a heap of sand. Add a second grain: still no heap. Add a third.
Add a fourth.... Add the nine-hundred thousandth. Add the millionth. Each grain makes an infinitesimally small contribu-tion. Each grain of sand seems like it couldn't possibly make a difference. But as Clov says in Samuel Beckett's play Endgame:
"Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap." Variant upon variant, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's an impossible heap of genetic difference.”
“Sin is not a word you can use in Nature Neuroscience. We said we were studying the genetics of "traits related to self-regulation and addiction."…Research like mine links inherited DNA differences between people with their tendency to behave in ways that invite punishment. Such science disturbs, provokes, unsettles.”
In this personal exploration, what feels like a glimpse into her mind and thought process, we read along as she grapples with ideas of blame, punishment and inheritance when it comes to sinful and morally reprehensible behaviour. She looks at how genes are a stand in for God when it comes to the “reason” people do things and how both nature and nurture ultimately shape people.
The book contains some well explained very interesting science such as:
“The MAOA gene, for instance, codes for an enzyme called monoamine oxidase type-A, which "eats" molecules that the cell doesn't need anymore. Ordinarily, the MAO-A enzyme breaks down the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another, messengers like serotonin or norepineph-rine. Most psychiatric drugs, like Prozac or Ritalin, work by changing levels of these chemical messengers. But in the Brun-ner syndrome family, a single DNA letter in the MAOA gene had been changed to a T instead of a C. This changed the codon from CAG, coding for the amino acid glutamine, to the codon TAG, which is the code for STOP. Stop adding new amino acids; stop making the protein. Stop regulating one's rage; stop developing the joint excellence of reason and character.
The resulting MAO-A enzyme is a stunted, deformed thing that cannot function normally. MAO-A enzyme deficiency, in turn, leads to a buildup in the neurotransmitters that neurons use to communicate with each other, a suppression of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and a tendency toward explosive outbursts of anger, especially in response to fear or frustration. To inherit this mutated gene was to be prone to engage in arson, rape, assault, or even homicide. There is, at present, no cure.”
“The indelible marks left by parental maltreatment can be inscribed on the child's genome. "Methylation" is an epigenetic mark, a sort of chemical tag on the genome. A molecule, called a methyl group, binds to the genome, affecting how genes are
"read" by the cell without changing the DNA sequence directly. In animal studies, rat pups who were neglected by their rat mothers showed altered patterns of DNA methylation compared with rat pups who had been generously licked and groomed by their mothers. Specifically, within the first week after birth, they had elevated DNA methylation within the promotor region for the Nr3cl gene, which codes for the glucocorticoid receptor gene. This elevation in Nr3c1 DNA methylation, in turn, heightened the rats' responses to stress, making them more anxious and more aggressive in social groups. Later work in humans also found evidence for NR3C1 gene hyper-methylation in children who were victims of abuse or ne-glect.”
Some philosophy and ethics:
“The shift in perspec-tive, from subjective to objective, from "He stabbed someone with a pitchfork" to "A genetic mutation caused aggressive out-bursts," does momentarily baffle my moral judgments, but the bafflement is unstable. Faced with serious acts of violence, my feelings of moral judgment are surprisingly durable. Emie might have been genetically engineered to be violent, but he still did it.”
Some philosophical theology:
“As Elaine Pagels summarized in Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, "For Augustine, natural and moral evils collapse into one another." This collapse was necessary be-cause, according to Augustine's reasoning, if there were no inherited sin, then infants would be innocent. And if infants who are innocent suffer as they do, then how could God be good? If one abandoned the doctrine of original sin, one might be forced to abandon faith in a just God. Augustine could not countenance the possibility. Like a child of abusive parents, he rationalized that it was better for humanity to be guilty than godless, better to be a sinner in a universe ruled by God than an innocent in a universe ruled by the demiurge, better for our suffering to be deserved than meaningless. He thought people who disagreed with him about original sin would find their faith "shipwrecked upon the misery of infants."”
Some personal insights that feel like they belong in a diary but also reveal something true, so I am glad she shared:
“Now my first-year college students tell me they envy the Y2K adolescent experience, and I, too, am slightly envious of my past self. I think we are envious of the type of freedom that comes only from dis-connection, for time that is entirely one's own. Except for my boyfriend's letters and a few obligatory calls to my parents, 1 am peaceably cut off from anyone and anything outside the gated confines of my college campus. Such oblivion would be possible only in the deep wilderness now. But in 2000, having finished the first year of my undergraduate degree in psychology, I could retreat from the world merely by staying on campus after finals
were over.”
Some beautiful descriptive writing that is also clever:
“Even the blue dye is reminiscent of menstrual pad advertise-ments. Women have always known how to cope matter-of-factly with the messiness of bodies, and lab work, it turns out, is no exception.”
And some of her own brilliant musings:
“The undeniable effectiveness of Ozempic, the development of which was nearly abandoned because pharmaceutical executives considered weight a matter of willpower, raises the same question that working in a neuroscience lab did: What behavior is within the reach of biological intervention?”
And ultimately she marries her religious past with her scientific present:
“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.”
And combines Nietzsche and Strawson with psychology to explain the need for vengence:
“Just as people experience sexual pleasure in all sorts of situations in which no babies will be made, people experience punitive pleasure even when no cooperative norms will be maintained by the retributive act. Punishment might not deter future defections or prevent future harms; it might even
- make them more likely. And we want it anyway.”
“The answer, according to Nietzsche, is that cruelty is a cur-rency. The wrongdoer injured you in some way; he detracted something from your life. He is now in your debt and must give you something valuable in return. What he is repaying you with is the pleasure you derive from watching him hurt. When an offender "pays his debt to society," society is being repaid with the indulgence of an ancient, evolved desire to hurt.”
“In his essay "Freedom and Resentment," the philosopher Peter Strawson answers those who think that knowledge about the determinants of our behavior renders our moral practices moot…Moral responsibility is a social condition, not a supernatural one.”
Through all of this she writes her personal experiences, her research, references to scientific papers, non fiction books she has read, TV shows she has watched, films she has seen and Bible quotes all on the same footing in her search to understand blame and the role of genes in making us angels, monsters, humans. I really enjoyed this.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the journey she took us on and her conclusion:
“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.”
Highly recommend this if you want to read a great personal essay exploring guilt, sin and the nature or nurture debate with personal anecdotes, Christian stories and science scattered throughout.
-
My favourite quote from the book:
“Except we keep identifying more and more genes that have these tiny effects. FOXP2 is associated with hurting people physically, and CADM2 with impulsivity, and GABRA2 with drinking too much, and GPR139 with getting in arguments, and REV3L and WDPCP and FURIN and ZKSCAN and SMG6 and NEGRI and SCAl and SNTG1 and NCAMI ASCC3 BPTF SPGT ZIC4 CUL3 RANBP17 MAPT NRAP MCHR2 ERAP2 PACSIN3
ICK CCDC88B XKR6 ALMSI HS6ST3 TMEM110 TMEM163 STK32C IGSF11 SDKI UTRN AFF3 ZNF75A...
In this way, modern genomic studies deliver results that defy circa-2000 predictions, which anticipated finding a few genes with relatively large effects. Instead, the results echo the ancient Greek paradox of the heap. A single grain of sand does not make a heap of sand. Add a second grain: still no heap. Add a third.
Add a fourth.... Add the nine-hundred thousandth. Add the millionth. Each grain makes an infinitesimally small contribu-tion. Each grain of sand seems like it couldn't possibly make a difference. But as Clov says in Samuel Beckett's play Endgame:
"Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap." Variant upon variant, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's an impossible heap of genetic difference.”
August 8, 2026
A lot of pop psychology, but a really thoughtful blend of memoir and hard-hitting topic re how to apportion blame when we are all victim of our genes and circumstances.
February 7, 2026
“I have spent much of my adult life studying how our genes cause us to behave in ways that are praised or punished, and I am still trying to make sense of what this work means for how we should treat each other.
In this book, I think through that question. As you will see, I offer few definitive answers. I will not neatly resolve enduring mysteries about the human condition in a single book.”
Dr. Harden gets extra credit for her honesty in those four sentences. Authors with THE answers? extra demerits. I received a digital Advance Reader’s Copy of an uncorrected ebook of this from the publisher, Penguin Random House, through NetGalley. In it, Dr. Harden talks about her research, as well as from other scientists, without being overly academic on a complicated scientific subject. She tempers it with personal stories. “Watching him [her then boyfriend, now second husband] earn their [her children from her first marriage] trust, I realize how close you can get to a wild animal simply by being very still.
But stillness is taxing. Our lives have become a hot and dreary cycle of Sisyphean sameness. We want to escape, not just our routines but ourselves.
We want life to be different, and life cannot be different. Trump is still president; the virus still spreads.“
That was during the pandemic, and now he's back. And I like her writing. She also weaves in quotes and observations from literature, poetry, philosophy, other sciences, and in case the title didn’t give it away, religion. While the originally Catholic passed down to its offshoots assertion of “original sin” is dogma [and as with all of the dogma, keyed on control - my words, not hers], we learn that there is strong evidence of genetic influence on violent and/o antisocial behaviors, pulling the nature vs nurture debate back into discussion. (It can be both - and often, both exacerbate the behaviors.) There is still free will, but despite knowing something shouldn’t be done, some still do it. And that is something she studies. And you will learn about here. Lots to think about. Highly recommended.
I was a little disappointed that Dr. Harden used unkeyed endnotes. I dislike stumbling across them after I’ve finished*, with only a label connection to what I read. I do not always want to go back after I’m done., but I often do want to follow a note, find the cited work, mark for further reading (or I have been know to go read that book/paper and then come back to the original book.) I understand the purpose of not interrupting a flow (but really, do callouts actually interrupt?), but I feel it does a disservice to anyone actually thinking about what the author is writing. *TBF Because I don’t like finding out afterwards, I turn to the notes first to see if I’ll be frustrated or not.
A few curated notes:
[This brought back a memory:]
“In this book, I invite you to circumnavigate with me. I want to show you how if you travel east far enough you end up west.”
{In 1979, my physics advisor/professor was Dr. V. V. Raman. In response to something I said along the lines of physics being an exact science and not fuzzy like biology, and had actual use unlike philosophy. He gently gave the naive 18 year old me something to think about, drawing a line and making on it the traditional views of hard sciences on one end (physics, then chemistry), moving to less exact (biology, psychology) to broader , less specific studies (sociology, philosophy). That young me agreed enthusiastically until he wrapped the philosophy end around to the physics and said it’s not a line, but a circle. Obviously, that made enough of an impression on me to stick with me all these decades.}
[On religion, this reflection/insight caught my attention:]
“At least, I don't think I believe in God anymore. I'm a scientist. But being raised Evangelical 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.”
[on unconscious brains dictating actions before conscious brains think they are making them happen]
“One of the reasons the famous finger-moving study is contested is because the ‘decision’ that participants were asked to make was so trifling. They were asked to do an inconsequential act for no reason at all. A later study used a similar experimental setup, but people's decision to move was, on some trials, more consequential, determining which charity of two would get a one thousand dollar donation. In consequential decisions, brain activity in the motor planning area was no longer apparent prior to people's conscious awareness of the intention to act. This newer result can be interpreted as a reassurance: For big decisions, at least, we need not worry that we are ‘being done,’ rather than doing. This study suggests that, for important decisions, the imperious ‘I’ is still firmly in charge.”
{I have seen/read enough in serious studies and cringey pop science teasers on the deep reptile brain causing actions before the prefrontal cortex decides to do said actions. This was refreshing.}
[parenting wisdom]
“More recently, my colleague Danielle Dick, also a behavior geneticist, wrote a parenting book encouraging parents to avoid blaming themselves and to avoid blaming their children by pointing at the role genetics plays in child development. ‘Just because your child is throwing huge fits doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong,’ she writes. ‘It just means your child inherited a temperament toward big feelings, feelings they are still learning to manage.’"
{This is something that should be mandatory reading in the parenting manuals…that don’t come with the children}
[on sympathy and empathy]
“What if I had had your childhood?" is a question that invites my sympathy for your behavior. But "What if I had had your genome?" is a question that makes sympathy difficult, maybe impossible, because the self who would be doing the sympathizing is threatened with dissolution.
Instead of sympathy, answering such a question requires empathy-feeling as another, instead of feeling with another.”
{I admit that I sometimes need something intuitively obvious to the most casual observer as that explained in terms that make sense to me.}
[of interest only to me, another memory triggered]
“My office at the University of Virginia was a janitorial closet. Gilmer Hall had none of the Rotunda's elegance, symmetry, or proportion. It was a dim warren of windowless rooms and narrow corridors, clad in concrete. I don't know which grad student first thought to cram a small desk into a corner closet containing buckets and mops, but I'm sure they were drawn to its tiny, improbable window, a rarity in a department that seemed to consider natural light unnecessary for mood and productivity.”
{I was in the Navy and one time, two Captains (Colonels, for reference to other services) told me a story about how one of them had a tiny office in the Pentagon that had a six inch by eighteen inch window that he hated every day because it looked out at a brick wall. One day, the other came in excitedly talking about something, paused, and blurted out, “Oh my god! You have a window!” The first told me that changed his perspective and he stopped hating “that damned window.”}
[on the adverse sociological effects of everyone thinking the same]
“A crimeless society, in [Émile] Durkheim's view, would happen only if everyone were exactly alike in what they value as good and bad and in how they live out their values. Such uniformity was impossible, in Durkheim's view, given that people differed in their social and physical environments and their ‘hereditary antecedents.’ Deviation from any norm is inevitable.
But even if such uniformity were possible, Durkheim argued that it would be undesirable, because without diversity, without difference, systems of morality could never progress. A social system that succeeded in stamping out all variety in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior would petrify. A monoculture without the possibility of mutation is an evolutionary dead end; deviation is the grist for evolution.”
In this book, I think through that question. As you will see, I offer few definitive answers. I will not neatly resolve enduring mysteries about the human condition in a single book.”
Dr. Harden gets extra credit for her honesty in those four sentences. Authors with THE answers? extra demerits. I received a digital Advance Reader’s Copy of an uncorrected ebook of this from the publisher, Penguin Random House, through NetGalley. In it, Dr. Harden talks about her research, as well as from other scientists, without being overly academic on a complicated scientific subject. She tempers it with personal stories. “Watching him [her then boyfriend, now second husband] earn their [her children from her first marriage] trust, I realize how close you can get to a wild animal simply by being very still.
But stillness is taxing. Our lives have become a hot and dreary cycle of Sisyphean sameness. We want to escape, not just our routines but ourselves.
We want life to be different, and life cannot be different. Trump is still president; the virus still spreads.“
That was during the pandemic, and now he's back. And I like her writing. She also weaves in quotes and observations from literature, poetry, philosophy, other sciences, and in case the title didn’t give it away, religion. While the originally Catholic passed down to its offshoots assertion of “original sin” is dogma [and as with all of the dogma, keyed on control - my words, not hers], we learn that there is strong evidence of genetic influence on violent and/o antisocial behaviors, pulling the nature vs nurture debate back into discussion. (It can be both - and often, both exacerbate the behaviors.) There is still free will, but despite knowing something shouldn’t be done, some still do it. And that is something she studies. And you will learn about here. Lots to think about. Highly recommended.
I was a little disappointed that Dr. Harden used unkeyed endnotes. I dislike stumbling across them after I’ve finished*, with only a label connection to what I read. I do not always want to go back after I’m done., but I often do want to follow a note, find the cited work, mark for further reading (or I have been know to go read that book/paper and then come back to the original book.) I understand the purpose of not interrupting a flow (but really, do callouts actually interrupt?), but I feel it does a disservice to anyone actually thinking about what the author is writing. *TBF Because I don’t like finding out afterwards, I turn to the notes first to see if I’ll be frustrated or not.
A few curated notes:
[This brought back a memory:]
“In this book, I invite you to circumnavigate with me. I want to show you how if you travel east far enough you end up west.”
{In 1979, my physics advisor/professor was Dr. V. V. Raman. In response to something I said along the lines of physics being an exact science and not fuzzy like biology, and had actual use unlike philosophy. He gently gave the naive 18 year old me something to think about, drawing a line and making on it the traditional views of hard sciences on one end (physics, then chemistry), moving to less exact (biology, psychology) to broader , less specific studies (sociology, philosophy). That young me agreed enthusiastically until he wrapped the philosophy end around to the physics and said it’s not a line, but a circle. Obviously, that made enough of an impression on me to stick with me all these decades.}
[On religion, this reflection/insight caught my attention:]
“At least, I don't think I believe in God anymore. I'm a scientist. But being raised Evangelical 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.”
[on unconscious brains dictating actions before conscious brains think they are making them happen]
“One of the reasons the famous finger-moving study is contested is because the ‘decision’ that participants were asked to make was so trifling. They were asked to do an inconsequential act for no reason at all. A later study used a similar experimental setup, but people's decision to move was, on some trials, more consequential, determining which charity of two would get a one thousand dollar donation. In consequential decisions, brain activity in the motor planning area was no longer apparent prior to people's conscious awareness of the intention to act. This newer result can be interpreted as a reassurance: For big decisions, at least, we need not worry that we are ‘being done,’ rather than doing. This study suggests that, for important decisions, the imperious ‘I’ is still firmly in charge.”
{I have seen/read enough in serious studies and cringey pop science teasers on the deep reptile brain causing actions before the prefrontal cortex decides to do said actions. This was refreshing.}
[parenting wisdom]
“More recently, my colleague Danielle Dick, also a behavior geneticist, wrote a parenting book encouraging parents to avoid blaming themselves and to avoid blaming their children by pointing at the role genetics plays in child development. ‘Just because your child is throwing huge fits doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong,’ she writes. ‘It just means your child inherited a temperament toward big feelings, feelings they are still learning to manage.’"
{This is something that should be mandatory reading in the parenting manuals…that don’t come with the children}
[on sympathy and empathy]
“What if I had had your childhood?" is a question that invites my sympathy for your behavior. But "What if I had had your genome?" is a question that makes sympathy difficult, maybe impossible, because the self who would be doing the sympathizing is threatened with dissolution.
Instead of sympathy, answering such a question requires empathy-feeling as another, instead of feeling with another.”
{I admit that I sometimes need something intuitively obvious to the most casual observer as that explained in terms that make sense to me.}
[of interest only to me, another memory triggered]
“My office at the University of Virginia was a janitorial closet. Gilmer Hall had none of the Rotunda's elegance, symmetry, or proportion. It was a dim warren of windowless rooms and narrow corridors, clad in concrete. I don't know which grad student first thought to cram a small desk into a corner closet containing buckets and mops, but I'm sure they were drawn to its tiny, improbable window, a rarity in a department that seemed to consider natural light unnecessary for mood and productivity.”
{I was in the Navy and one time, two Captains (Colonels, for reference to other services) told me a story about how one of them had a tiny office in the Pentagon that had a six inch by eighteen inch window that he hated every day because it looked out at a brick wall. One day, the other came in excitedly talking about something, paused, and blurted out, “Oh my god! You have a window!” The first told me that changed his perspective and he stopped hating “that damned window.”}
[on the adverse sociological effects of everyone thinking the same]
“A crimeless society, in [Émile] Durkheim's view, would happen only if everyone were exactly alike in what they value as good and bad and in how they live out their values. Such uniformity was impossible, in Durkheim's view, given that people differed in their social and physical environments and their ‘hereditary antecedents.’ Deviation from any norm is inevitable.
But even if such uniformity were possible, Durkheim argued that it would be undesirable, because without diversity, without difference, systems of morality could never progress. A social system that succeeded in stamping out all variety in ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior would petrify. A monoculture without the possibility of mutation is an evolutionary dead end; deviation is the grist for evolution.”
June 21, 2026
Loooved this read “No one is either lamb or goat, wheat or tare, saved or damned. The complexity of any human life cannot be flattened to a single trait or attribute—“
March 29, 2026
A lot of mixed feelings on this book. I first learned about this book from Harden’s guest appearance on a Huberman Lab podcast episode and I found the topic thrillingly intriguing. And Harden does bounce around the concept of original sin’s closely related concept of Nature vs Nurture.
Billed as science and data-based, Original Sin is as much philosophy and theory as it is conclusion based upon the application of any form of the Scientific Method. It opens up many more questions than it answers, and ultimately poses questions that cannot be resolved with science, namely questions that are ethical in nature. This is most notable when she herself calls out how close some of our currently available gene editing technology borders on eugenics. This section reminded me of the 1997 movie Gattaca (the letters of the movies name being composed of the four nucleotide bases that form DNA) that raises questions about the ethical limits of reproduction through genetic design or chance (i.e. the “old fashioned way”). Any reader of this book should watch that movie, despite it being a box office flop.
Nevertheless, Harden frustrates me with her repetitive references to her acid trips (and other examples of her breaking some former rule she held), which read more as a “look at me, I’m no longer bound by the rules of the church” message than they offer anything significantly meaning to the thesis of the book. However, I also understand her personal extrication from her theological bonds are now an important part of her life experience as she weaves that into the book.
Overall, I’m happy I read the book, but it was less enlightening than I had hoped. Possibly the golden nuggets were all captured by the podcast leaving only the lesser quality items as novel to me in reading the book itself.
Three stars.
Billed as science and data-based, Original Sin is as much philosophy and theory as it is conclusion based upon the application of any form of the Scientific Method. It opens up many more questions than it answers, and ultimately poses questions that cannot be resolved with science, namely questions that are ethical in nature. This is most notable when she herself calls out how close some of our currently available gene editing technology borders on eugenics. This section reminded me of the 1997 movie Gattaca (the letters of the movies name being composed of the four nucleotide bases that form DNA) that raises questions about the ethical limits of reproduction through genetic design or chance (i.e. the “old fashioned way”). Any reader of this book should watch that movie, despite it being a box office flop.
Nevertheless, Harden frustrates me with her repetitive references to her acid trips (and other examples of her breaking some former rule she held), which read more as a “look at me, I’m no longer bound by the rules of the church” message than they offer anything significantly meaning to the thesis of the book. However, I also understand her personal extrication from her theological bonds are now an important part of her life experience as she weaves that into the book.
Overall, I’m happy I read the book, but it was less enlightening than I had hoped. Possibly the golden nuggets were all captured by the podcast leaving only the lesser quality items as novel to me in reading the book itself.
Three stars.
May 21, 2026
Meh. As one reviewer said, this book is littered with interesting scientific facts. Littered indeed. It's a mash-up of memoir, escape from repressive religious tradition, public policy (in particular, but not exclusively, as to incarceration), genetics, psychology, philosophy, and religion or the lack of it. Add all of it up and what do you get? The book itself says it: "As you will see, I offer few definitive answers." I'll save you some time with a précis: Humans are complicated. Our genetic makeup is a significant part of who we are, but how we were parented and the environment we inhabit are also significant. We should punish people who do bad stuff, but should not punish them too harshly, and we should do so in a way that affirms their humanity and advances the interests of society at large. Finally, atheism really works for some people, especially because religious beliefs have led a lot of people to do a lot of bad things. There you go. Now you have time to read another book.
November 5, 2026
Full disclosure: I was fully prepared to dislike this recent book by University of Texas psychology prof Kathryn Paige Harden (hereafter KPH). I thought her previous book, The Genetic Lottery, was awful enough to generate two blog posts, the first (shared at Goodreads) dissing the book in general, the second concentrating on her misrepresentation of Charles Murray. And when I became aware of this book, via a review at Quillette (at least the unpaywalled part), I requested the book from the Interlibrary Loan service at the University Near Here.
Guess what. I kind of liked the book. Or, at least, didn't hate it as much as I thought I would. Chapter One, Paragraph One:
It was a sweltering, tedious summer, the first summer of the pandemic, when Travis and I decided to go to the West Texas desert to drop acid. Our itinerary did, of course, include things other than taking drugs. We plan a day hiking in Big Bend. We book a Donald Judd-esque gray concrete casita with a view of the Chisos Mountains. We look forward to drinking Modelo and doing crossword puzzles and having morning sex. But lovely as all of that will be, our main purpose is to take LSD.
I hear you out there shouting "oversharing!" and "TMI!" You're not wrong. But at least it's better than the strident political slant she took in that previous book. She waits until Paragraph Two for that, signalling to the reader that she's still on the side of the righteous, mentioning her worries that her LSD tabs wouldn't arrive in time, thanks to slow mail delivery, which was "the latest outrage from the first Trump administration".
The political stuff is muted this time around. But still present: for an example, skip ahead to page 209 for an anti-gun rant. The oversharing is more prevalent, with many tales of family, church, and work, sometimes lurid. (That LSD sends husband Travis on a nightmarish bad trip, meticulously described.)
With that out of the way: what's the book about? It's an examination of the problem posed by people performing evil deeds. Is it fair if (to some extent) their genetic code contains "bad" genes that have been shown to result in poor judgment, addiction, impulsive behavior, and (in many cases) unpredictable violence? For that matter, is it fair when their early childhood was bent by Mom and/or Dad whupping them? KPH is convincingly scornful of the "nature/nurture" debate; both are important, and it's hard to blame resulting misbehavior on the child who had no choice in the matter.
Although KPH reassures the reader (over and over) that she's currently non-religious, she does an excellent job of describing the theological debates that swirled in the early church. If (for example) we are invariably all sinners, thanks to Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, how can we be damned for that? Is that fair?
In perhaps the most eloquent part of KPH's discussion, she notes that there's a good argument for holding people responsible for their misbehavior despite all the nature/nurture quibbles or their bad-luck genes. To do otherwise is to treat them as somehow less than human. (She does, however, bemoan what "being held responsible" for criminal behavior means in the USA, with lengthy sentences in nasty environments, and capital punishment now and then; she considers Norway to be a better example. (For which Anders Brevik may or may not be grateful.)
A more substantive criticism: Although KPH notes the correlation of bad genes with subsequent bad behavior, I don't think she ever gets into the actual statistics. What's the probability? What fraction of homicides are performed by the genetically unlucky? I think the answers might matter to her argument.
June 19, 2026
oh my god. okay. okay. sorry for the ensuing lack of capitalisation and the lengthy, verbose sentences - i am a very tired law student fresh out of my last exam and have been vibrating with thoughts about this read that even my current exhaustion can't contain.
big month for narrative/memoir type non-fiction for me, a by and large non-fiction hater (because so much of it is just far too dry and academic for my fiction-loving sensibilities). i came to this book still feeling very emotionally raw off the back of 'one day, everyone will have always been against this' by omar el-akkad, which doesn't have much relevance to what i'm about to say other than the fact that reading these two back-to-back has thoroughly rewired my brain in ways it'll take me far more literature and many more years of life experience to fully synthesize (on top of two or three more rereads of this particular book).
my gut reaction, while and immediately after reading it: i loved it! i think many people would find this very interesting.
my more considered thoughts two days after finishing it starts with this: i think i can empathise with opinions desirous of a more evidence-based, academic style of scientific prose, especially from a book that fancies itself in the science category.
this book is a far cry from a tightly structured factual account of
the way harden has structured this book feels deeply intentional to me. i tried, many times throughout the read, to try and set out in the simplest possible terms the kind of ground i found harden to actually be treading in this book. the back of the book describes it as "the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology", and while that description isn't wrong per se, it's more the case that i don't think any combination of however many, however specific words can touch the essence of what she's looking into.
viewing this through the lens of a philosophy graduate, my mind often settled on the mind-body problem as i read. the metaphysical and ontological question of whether consciousness exists independently or in indistinguishable conjunction with the body predates the advent of what we now recognise as discrete science of psychology by several millennia. from the cartesian account of the mind as a substance; a thing-in-itself distinct from the physical matter of the body to the famous contemporary account of david chalmers (won't someone please think of the philosophical zombie!!), it is evident that the advent of psychology and psychiatry has not subverted questions on the philosophy of mind.
neuroscience has no answer for /why/ the sweet, delicious apple i peeled, cored and sliced to share with my ostensibly equally apple-loving friend tastes different between the two of us. likewise, (and noting that the following thought experiment is deeply flawed because i thought it up in about three minutes,) neither genetic science nor psychology are capable of producing a definitive answer for the question of whether two (hypothetical) separately raised persons who are identical in every way including their genetic predispositions to violence and dysfunctional upbringings are likely to criminally offend in the same, or even similar, manner.
what gets left out can then only be subjective experience. a deeply unsatisfying notion to be forced to sit with in a book advertised in the science category, i know! harden acknowledges this very tension in the third-to-last paragraph of the final chapter. but as the book's subtitle suggests, the hard science really is just the beginning. the big picture questions relating to blame and especially so for forgiveness beg at the end because harden alone cannot answer it. the question is mine and yours; it is everyone's question forever.
big month for narrative/memoir type non-fiction for me, a by and large non-fiction hater (because so much of it is just far too dry and academic for my fiction-loving sensibilities). i came to this book still feeling very emotionally raw off the back of 'one day, everyone will have always been against this' by omar el-akkad, which doesn't have much relevance to what i'm about to say other than the fact that reading these two back-to-back has thoroughly rewired my brain in ways it'll take me far more literature and many more years of life experience to fully synthesize (on top of two or three more rereads of this particular book).
my gut reaction, while and immediately after reading it: i loved it! i think many people would find this very interesting.
my more considered thoughts two days after finishing it starts with this: i think i can empathise with opinions desirous of a more evidence-based, academic style of scientific prose, especially from a book that fancies itself in the science category.
this book is a far cry from a tightly structured factual account of
the way harden has structured this book feels deeply intentional to me. i tried, many times throughout the read, to try and set out in the simplest possible terms the kind of ground i found harden to actually be treading in this book. the back of the book describes it as "the uneasy space where human behaviour meets inherited biology", and while that description isn't wrong per se, it's more the case that i don't think any combination of however many, however specific words can touch the essence of what she's looking into.
viewing this through the lens of a philosophy graduate, my mind often settled on the mind-body problem as i read. the metaphysical and ontological question of whether consciousness exists independently or in indistinguishable conjunction with the body predates the advent of what we now recognise as discrete science of psychology by several millennia. from the cartesian account of the mind as a substance; a thing-in-itself distinct from the physical matter of the body to the famous contemporary account of david chalmers (won't someone please think of the philosophical zombie!!), it is evident that the advent of psychology and psychiatry has not subverted questions on the philosophy of mind.
neuroscience has no answer for /why/ the sweet, delicious apple i peeled, cored and sliced to share with my ostensibly equally apple-loving friend tastes different between the two of us. likewise, (and noting that the following thought experiment is deeply flawed because i thought it up in about three minutes,) neither genetic science nor psychology are capable of producing a definitive answer for the question of whether two (hypothetical) separately raised persons who are identical in every way including their genetic predispositions to violence and dysfunctional upbringings are likely to criminally offend in the same, or even similar, manner.
what gets left out can then only be subjective experience. a deeply unsatisfying notion to be forced to sit with in a book advertised in the science category, i know! harden acknowledges this very tension in the third-to-last paragraph of the final chapter. but as the book's subtitle suggests, the hard science really is just the beginning. the big picture questions relating to blame and especially so for forgiveness beg at the end because harden alone cannot answer it. the question is mine and yours; it is everyone's question forever.
May 2, 2026
very compelling non-fiction re , well what the title says. DNA markers or aberrant behavior; environmental impact causing physical changes in DNA, wrongdoing, punishment, etc
los of interesting info and insights.
"Asking whether an individual’s behavior is due to his genes or his environment is as meaningless as asking if the area of a rectangle is more due to its length or its width."
and here is the epigraph followed by a few other passages:
Let the reader, where we are equally confident, stride with me. Where we are equally puzzled, investigate with me. Where he finds himself in error, come to my side. Where he finds me in error, call me to his side.
St Augustine
The best creative acts feel transcendent. Awareness of space and time recedes, and with them, your sense of boundedness. Self-consciousness abates, as does distraction, and you find yourself instinctively doing without much thinking.
Children are not our copies. There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby they engage in an act of production. Reproduction is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads. As a result of the combinatory explosion there are trillions upon trillions of possible genetic combinations that can be produced. If they were a stack of dollar bills it would reach to the moon and back 12 times.
Be sure of this. You are being done at every moment. Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive. Infants often seem surprise by their actions, as if they are being done instead of doing. As we grow, the observing I, the self aware ego, increasingly sees itself as intending to act before the action happens.
Augustine considered his imperfect command over his own behavior one of the chief miseries of being human.
CHildren genetically predisposed to faster development in toddlerhood elicit more cognitive stimulation from their parents which in turn predicts faster language development.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin helped solve the Church’s theodicy problem. If there were no inherited sin then infants would be innocent and if infants who are innocent suffer as they do then how could God be good.
Zeus law is first in all the world. No wisdom without pain.
79 studies showed stat sig outcomes between spanking and child outcomes. 78 were negative. Worse relationships with their parent , worse anxiety and depression in childhood, greater aggression and antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood.
Retribution in this account appropriately aims to affirm the equality of the wrong wrongdoer and the victim. Not to use the deservingness of the wrongdoer as an excuse to rob them of human dignity.
I entertained doubt that my perceptual experience of rationally choosing what to do, as always telling me something true about the wellspring of my behavior.
Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.
los of interesting info and insights.
"Asking whether an individual’s behavior is due to his genes or his environment is as meaningless as asking if the area of a rectangle is more due to its length or its width."
and here is the epigraph followed by a few other passages:
Let the reader, where we are equally confident, stride with me. Where we are equally puzzled, investigate with me. Where he finds himself in error, come to my side. Where he finds me in error, call me to his side.
St Augustine
The best creative acts feel transcendent. Awareness of space and time recedes, and with them, your sense of boundedness. Self-consciousness abates, as does distraction, and you find yourself instinctively doing without much thinking.
Children are not our copies. There is no such thing as reproduction. When two people decide to have a baby they engage in an act of production. Reproduction is at best a euphemism to comfort prospective parents before they get in over their heads. As a result of the combinatory explosion there are trillions upon trillions of possible genetic combinations that can be produced. If they were a stack of dollar bills it would reach to the moon and back 12 times.
Be sure of this. You are being done at every moment. Mankind has at all times mistaken the active for the passive. Infants often seem surprise by their actions, as if they are being done instead of doing. As we grow, the observing I, the self aware ego, increasingly sees itself as intending to act before the action happens.
Augustine considered his imperfect command over his own behavior one of the chief miseries of being human.
CHildren genetically predisposed to faster development in toddlerhood elicit more cognitive stimulation from their parents which in turn predicts faster language development.
Augustine’s doctrine of original sin helped solve the Church’s theodicy problem. If there were no inherited sin then infants would be innocent and if infants who are innocent suffer as they do then how could God be good.
Zeus law is first in all the world. No wisdom without pain.
79 studies showed stat sig outcomes between spanking and child outcomes. 78 were negative. Worse relationships with their parent , worse anxiety and depression in childhood, greater aggression and antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood.
Retribution in this account appropriately aims to affirm the equality of the wrong wrongdoer and the victim. Not to use the deservingness of the wrongdoer as an excuse to rob them of human dignity.
I entertained doubt that my perceptual experience of rationally choosing what to do, as always telling me something true about the wellspring of my behavior.
Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Growing up in a family of scientists, I have often thought about the interplay of nature versus nurture - is our character and life path set at birth? How much of an impact does our environment and upbringing have? And, perhaps most important of all, how much direction do we each have in the type of person we ultimately become and the choices we make? In "Original Sin", behavioral geneticist and University of Texas at Austin professor Kathryn Paige Harden tackles these weighty questions (and many more!) in an truly unique work that combines her own personal experiences, her academic research, scientific studies and conclusions, and individual case studies.
While I struggled with the structure of this work at the beginning, "Original Sin" is loosely organized by different broad topics; in "Luck", she questions the randomness of each individual's life, including the family, time period, and locations that we're born into; in "Animal", she examines the underlying biological drives and urges that are instilled into us from birth; in "Retribution", she explores topics of justice, punishment, and remorse and how they factor into blame and guilt. Each section merges her own experiences as a child and mother with a number of secondary and tertiary sources; some, like case studies on twins, groups, and individuals were expected, but I was also surprised to see her draw on television and current media, poetry (Louise Gluck happens to be one of my favorite poets), Greek mythology, and the Bible - a deceptively broad and encompassing examination that I didn't expect in this type of work.
Perhaps what's most frustrating (yet also reassuring) is that there are no definitive answers in here - just as there are billions of people in the world, there are billions of potential factors and different ways of examining the how's and why's of what drives people to act and behave as they do. What she did underpin, however, was the growing evidence of how much genetics and biology explain so much of our character and our lives - not just in physical attributes like height, weight, and physical fitness, but also attributes like depression, mood, anger/irritability; work ethic and dutifulness; extroversion; and risk for alcohol and drug addiction. Especially when that propensity is tied to the type of households children are born into and the upbringing they are likely to have, makes it even more difficult to parse out what has an effect and to what extent. However, what everyone can take away from this is more understanding of how weighty of a decision it is to give birth to and raise a child, and just how difficult (miraculous?) it is for a child to escape the heredity and environment that they are born into.
Very much a recommended read when "Original Sin" is published in March 2026!
While I struggled with the structure of this work at the beginning, "Original Sin" is loosely organized by different broad topics; in "Luck", she questions the randomness of each individual's life, including the family, time period, and locations that we're born into; in "Animal", she examines the underlying biological drives and urges that are instilled into us from birth; in "Retribution", she explores topics of justice, punishment, and remorse and how they factor into blame and guilt. Each section merges her own experiences as a child and mother with a number of secondary and tertiary sources; some, like case studies on twins, groups, and individuals were expected, but I was also surprised to see her draw on television and current media, poetry (Louise Gluck happens to be one of my favorite poets), Greek mythology, and the Bible - a deceptively broad and encompassing examination that I didn't expect in this type of work.
Perhaps what's most frustrating (yet also reassuring) is that there are no definitive answers in here - just as there are billions of people in the world, there are billions of potential factors and different ways of examining the how's and why's of what drives people to act and behave as they do. What she did underpin, however, was the growing evidence of how much genetics and biology explain so much of our character and our lives - not just in physical attributes like height, weight, and physical fitness, but also attributes like depression, mood, anger/irritability; work ethic and dutifulness; extroversion; and risk for alcohol and drug addiction. Especially when that propensity is tied to the type of households children are born into and the upbringing they are likely to have, makes it even more difficult to parse out what has an effect and to what extent. However, what everyone can take away from this is more understanding of how weighty of a decision it is to give birth to and raise a child, and just how difficult (miraculous?) it is for a child to escape the heredity and environment that they are born into.
Very much a recommended read when "Original Sin" is published in March 2026!
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