Bull puckey. I suppose the brand of cat food I pick out at the store is genetically determined, as well.
Posted on 11/16/2004 12:32:59 PM PST by TBP
Religious belief is determined by a person's genetic make-up according to a study by a leading scientist.
After comparing more than 2,000 DNA samples, an American molecular geneticist has concluded that a person's capacity to believe in God is linked to brain chemicals.
His findings were criticised last night by leading clerics, who challenge the existence of a "god gene" and say that the research undermines a fundamental tenet of faith - that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through divine transformation rather than the brain's electrical impulses.
Dr Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute in America, asked volunteers 226 questions in order to determine how spiritually connected they felt to the universe. The higher their score, the greater a person's ability to believe in a greater spiritual force and, Dr Hamer found, the more likely they were to share the gene, VMAT2.
Studies on twins showed that those with this gene, a vesicular monoamine transporter that regulates the flow of mood-altering chemicals in the brain, were more likely to develop a spiritual belief.
Growing up in a religious environment was said to have little effect on belief. Dr Hamer, who in 1993 claimed to have identified a DNA sequence linked to male homosexuality, said the existence of the "god gene" explained why some people had more aptitude for spirituality than others.
"Buddha, Mohammed and Jesus all shared a series of mystical experiences or alterations in consciousness and thus probably carried the gene," he said. "This means that the tendency to be spiritual is part of genetic make-up. This is not a thing that is strictly handed down from parents to children. It could skip a generation - it's like intelligence."
His findings, published in a book, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes, were greeted sceptically by many in the religious establishment.
The Rev Dr John Polkinghorne, a fellow of the Royal Society and a Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, said: "The idea of a god gene goes against all my personal theological convictions. You can't cut faith down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking."
The Rev Dr Walter Houston, the chaplain of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a fellow in theology, said: "Religious belief is not just related to a person's constitution; it's related to society, tradition, character - everything's involved. Having a gene that could do all that seems pretty unlikely to me."
Dr Hamer insisted, however, that his research was not antithetical to a belief in God. He pointed out: "Religious believers can point to the existence of god genes as one more sign of the creator's ingenuity - a clever way to help humans acknowledge and embrace a divine presence."
What does this do for the concept of free will?
Bull puckey. I suppose the brand of cat food I pick out at the store is genetically determined, as well.
No, but I'm sure they'll soon find that whether your cat eats it is.
Some people laugh at religion when relatively young. Then they experience a spiritual awakening and find their faith. Do their genes change?
Correlation does not equal causation. This gene that seems to correlate with spirituality, does not have anything to do with spirituality.
We only believe we have free-will.
it's a joke
If freewill means the ability to save myself to heaven then I will go for the God gene. My destination is heaven as determined by my maker before the world began and then God sent his Son to seal the deal on the cross of Calvary.....It is done. It is finished.
"So are we wired to believe in God?"
Sure, its all in the hair for men. Most men who believe in God have short hair, ergo short hair causes belief in God.
For women its in the shoes. Most women who believe in God wear sensible shoes, ergo sensible shoes cause belief in God.
This is all thoroughly researched scientific fact! Its true, believe me, REALLY!!!!!
Now can I have my Nobel prize, please?
I've often wondered that myself. :)
But as one of my former ministers used to say, talk to any atheist and he cna give you a very detailed description of the God he doesn't believe in.
I would say that this "study" has absolutely NOTHING to do with the God of the Bible, Christianity, or Christian faith. The "spirituality" Hamer measured is the spirituality of the new age/theosophy/gnostic/eastern mysticism type:
A big part of your research involved a "self-transcendence scale" to rate people's spirituality. What is this scale?
As you can imagine, it’s not trivial to separate spirituality from more formal aspects of religion, but some psychologists like Robert Cloninger have tried to do that. They use a scale called "self-transcendence."
Overall, it tries to measure a sense of "at-oneness" with the universe independent of formal religious beliefs. More specifically, it actually looks at three different subscales. One of them is called self-forgetfulness: a measure of people’s propensity to completely lose themselves in what they’re doing, whether it’s weeding the garden or meditating or whatever. People who are self-transcendent put less focus on themselves and more on everything outside of them. They see the connections to things.
A psychic component is called "transpersonal identification," a feeling of a sense of unity with everything else in the universe. Then there’s a third scale called mysticism or spiritual acceptance which is more like, do you think mystical experiences have changed your life? Do you believe that science can’t explain everything? Do you believe that there might be ESP, for example? Believing that there is more going on than meets the eye.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/154/story_15451_1.html
I haven't bothered to check, but I expect that this gene is concerned, in some way, with "anandamide," known as endogenous marijuana.
Anandamide (N-arachidonoylethanolamine) is a brain chemical that activates the same cell membrane receptors that are targeted by tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana and hashish.
http://www.nsi.edu/research/e008.html Again, nothing to do with Christianity. DG
INTREP
Working in my home office in Yokohama, using ordinary kitchen implements, I have discovered a gene that compels carriers to "discover genes" whenever the existence of such a gene would be convenient to their ideological agenda.
Even if there was something valid in this, it would change nothing. The Bible tells us that even the devil believes in God.
It is not belief in God, but accepting Christ's sacrifice on the cross that brings salvation. Free will is still intact.
So is the God gene at war with the Gay gene?
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