{"id":208,"date":"2009-08-24T17:04:58","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T17:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-enigma-of-adoption.html"},"modified":"2009-08-24T17:04:58","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T17:04:58","slug":"the-enigma-of-adoption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-enigma-of-adoption.html","title":{"rendered":"The Enigma of Adoption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I may amplify my previous post on <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-magical-thinking-behind-evolutionary-psychology.html\">evolutionary psychology<\/a>, we&#8217;re supposed to be believe that DNA, while directing only the production of proteins and other cell components, is ultimately in charge of everything else about us too &#8212; as David Berlinski puts it, &#8220;altruism, date rape, aggression, eating disorders, and a taste for&nbsp;<i>Mansfield Park<\/i>,&#8221; and much else. An infinity of &#8220;much else.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I was adopted and did not meet my birth mother until I was in my mid 20s. She and my adoptive parents have very little in common &#8212; not religion, not background, not country of origin, not tastes. Almost nothing. (You can read more about the story in my first book, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/074324267X\/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&amp;pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&amp;pf_rd_t=201&amp;pf_rd_i=0684823411&amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;pf_rd_r=0PW0KTM0NQMZ5R2XRJ5J\">The Lord Will Gather Me In<\/a><\/i>.) I inherited from my adoptive parents many culturally rooted preferences. Of course I did. But I inherited from my birth mother other things, as I&#8217;ve come to realize over the years since we developed a relationship. Hair color and complexion. Yeah sure, big deal. But also attitudes, habits, tastes &#8212; not for <i>Mansfield Park<\/i>&nbsp;but Graham Greene, whom she was reading when pregnant with me, for one example. Just a lot of things that if you&#8217;re Robert Wright, you&#8217;d have to assume were granted through the coded language of DNA, a language that codes for cell components <i>and nothing else<\/i>.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>This is what I mean by magical thinking.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If I may amplify my previous post on evolutionary psychology, we&#8217;re supposed to be believe that DNA, while directing only the production of proteins and other cell components, is ultimately in charge of everything else about us too &#8212; as David Berlinski puts it, &#8220;altruism, date rape, aggression, eating disorders, and a taste for&nbsp;Mansfield Park,&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifes-origins-evolution"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Enigma of Adoption - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-enigma-of-adoption.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Enigma of Adoption - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If I may amplify my previous post on evolutionary psychology, we&#8217;re supposed to be believe that DNA, while directing only the production of proteins and other cell components, is ultimately in charge of everything else about us too &#8212; as David Berlinski puts it, &#8220;altruism, date rape, aggression, eating disorders, and a taste for&nbsp;Mansfield Park,&#8221;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-enigma-of-adoption.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-24T17:04:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Enigma of Adoption - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/the-enigma-of-adoption.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Enigma of Adoption - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"If I may amplify my previous post on evolutionary psychology, we&#8217;re supposed to be believe that DNA, while directing only the production of proteins and other cell components, is ultimately in charge of everything else about us too &#8212; 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His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}