When I was 13, I decided that I wanted to become religious. My childhood had been a smorgasbord of a religious upbringing, with an Episcopalian mother and a Jewish father. But the idea of God was appealing -- a higher power to have a faith in, someone to pray to when need be. I decided I would have a Bat Mitzvah.
I loved debating Torah interpretation and learning Hebrew -- a language that seemed to drip with history and culture. But when the ceremony was done, I realized I hadn't truly progressed in my belief system. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't bring myself to believe in God. I began to wonder why. After all, I knew plenty of people who seemed to have no trouble with it. Was it my upbringing? Had I started too late?
Recently though, I've been reading some very interesting studies about religion in correlation with genetics -- specifically geneticist Dean Hamer's The God Gene. As I understand it, his hypothesis states that there may be a gene (specifically the VMAT2 gene sequence) that could predispose one towards spirituality. Now of course, this does not mean that one is either genetically hardwired to be a member of the Catholic Church or not. It simply means that one may have a genetic predisposition to certain qualities that enable one to be more spiritual. There are three qualities that have been specifically identified as possible pre-dispositions in correlation with this gene. These are "self-forgetfulness" (the ability to become completely absorbed in something), "transpersonal identification" (the ability to feel connected to something larger than yourself), and "mysticism" (the ability to believe in things that may not be completely provable).
Now you may inherit one of these qualities or all three, but according to this study, the more you have the more, likely you are to be spiritual. While it seems Hamer believes pretty firmly in the genetic basis, I think nurture plays a role as well -- if you've been told your whole life there is a God, you are probably more likely to believe in one. It will certainly be interesting in years to come to see how the argument of nature vs. nurture progresses.
Overall, this hypothesis makes a lot of sense to me, as someone who has just never been able to grasp the concept of a higher being. However, it also raises some questions. There is plenty of controversy, both religious and scientific, and the validity of this study may be something only time, additional testing, and expanding knowledge will tell.
For me, though, it brings about another question. Why would a gene like this have developed in the first place? Well, we do know that religious/spiritual people tend to live longer on average. They display less signs of depression and anxiety, have lower blood pressure, and just generally display better health than non-believers. To me, this says that believing in something larger than yourself is better for mental health, and more and more we are learning about the beneficial effects of positive mental health on physical health. I also wonder if this spirituality had an evolutionary advantage in the sense of building community -- a belief in a higher power unites people, brings them together. Community is important for providing protection, as well as for mental health purposes.
But perhaps the most important question of all is, would the confirmation of the "God Gene" discredit religion? I may not be a believer, and I can be skeptical of organized religion and the corruption that sometimes follows it, but I do think that it can be good for people to have that capacity of spirituality. I love science, but I don't think there always needs to be such a divide between it and religion. If being spiritual can make people healthier and bring them together, then it wouldn't matter if God was in our genes or up in the sky, it would be the act of believing at all that was important.
Aaron Freeman: The Comic Torah: Parshat Vayechi
If you want to play the evolution card, please play all of it, not just a tiny peace that might give you some shred of hope that "religion makes sense".
And even if you make these assumptions, the psychological reality does not back them up. PSD is real and most people do not get well from it on their own, religious or not. Rape victims do not recover without support just because there is some mechanism built into the human brain that keeps us going just long enough so we don't desert our kids and chose to jump right away.
The display of anxiety is generally not a good indicator for what is happening within a person. Ask the people who knew suicide victims. What do you hear? "We didn't know!"
The repression of feelings and the group dynamics that expects it go hand in hand and are probably indeed useful survival tools FOR THE GROUP, which, ultimately, is what drives human evolution, since none of us can survive on our own. It may make THE GROUP more cohesive, AT THE COST of the individual.
This perspective is shared by many others including the likes of Deepak Chopra and many scientists. Some prominent quantum physicists began to see a connection behind the bizarre phenomena of the quantum world and the insights of the mystics. That "transpersonal identification" (the ability to feel connected to something larger than yourself) would be a good example. And the reason is that each being is nothing less than an individualized expression of the Universal Consciousness. Why such a range of transpersonal identification amongst humans? Consider the concept of evolution of consciousness.
All of this has a lot to do with spirituality, but nothing to do with religion, because there is no worship of a "deity" involved. You may find many of these ideas referred to in archives of this Huffpost page http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/religion-science
"Consider the concept of evolution of consciousnÂess".
this is the stuff of life that science has yet to research to any great degree. too busy with appearances meaning phenomena.
then we have awareness. the evolution of consciousness process leads one to a greater awareness of reality.
so does this mean awareness is primary and consciousness is a manifestation of infinite awareness? infinite awareness meaning infinite intelligence meaning infinite creativity must create out of necessity. we are an aspect of that necessity to create.
why not create expressions with perfect awareness? then no suffering, no pain, just pure bliss; but no creation. creation demands unawareness. expression demands a journey towards greater awareness; hence the evolution of consciousness process.
the process is perfectly imperfect as one of my favorite authors states. :o)
It is thought that Infinite Consciousness seeks to experience itself, and it does this by way of becoming "other" because experience of self can only be accomplished in relationship to other than itself. So it expresses in the myriad forms of the physical world. Focusing our discussion of evolution of consciousness upon the expression of humanity, we can think of those living in the consciousness of violence, dogmatic certainty, intolerance, and lacking compassion as being less consciously evolved than individuals focused in love, compassion, tolerance and open mindedness. To the Infinite, it's just all variations of itself. To us, we judge some as good; others as bad.
In a sense I suppose one could say that Infinite Consciousness is evolving through the infinite experiences of its countless forms.
Note: this comment has been censored 5 times so far. I don't see how it violates the community guidelines in any way, so I will continue to repost until it gets through.
Believing that you have a reason to live and act as a community is one thing. Believing that there is a being that passes down moral edicts that all must follow, including your peers who believe differently, is quite another.
hope you keep throeau's quote in mind. there is more religion in men's science than science in their religion. it is a profound and accurate statement. ie materialism defined.
I still find myself wallowing in the never-never-land between rationalism and faith. But I have learned one thing. My life is much more centered and vibrant when I accept that it's what I want that counts and there are no discernible reasons for it. Call it simply standing for my irrational choices. Having to have reasons used to put me on the sidelines. If there is a benefit to God, I think it is in that vein; acceptance of the irrationality of our lives and the power beyond the ever-thinking self in the mind.
To put it succinctly, I enjoyed her mature and thoughtful analysis of the question, and at the tender age of 17 she's already earned more respect from me than most of the authors who appear in HuffPo's Religion section.
But the point here is not about religion, but rather about faith and spirituality having positive benefits for the individual. There isn't much point in dragging the tired old anti-religious canards into this particular discussion.
Let me emphasize "was". I'll accept for this discussion that being religious may have made our ancestors more successful than their non-religious competitors. But this was a hundred thousand years ago, and today's world is a very different environment.
Today we don't need religion to unite people; we can accomplish that with secular governments. Indeed, religion increasingly seems to be an *obstacle* to unity, as we see in American politics or Iraqi terrorism.
And if your goal is for people to be healthier, you should stake your bet on science, not religion. It's science that has led to the fantastic increase in human health and lifespan in the past century or two, vastly improved our supply of food and water, and let us understand and treat mental illness as something more than "demonic possession". If in fact "religious genes" do promote good health, it's going to be genetic engineers, not priests, who discover how to maximize the benefit of those strands of DNA for all of humanity.
Almost certainly. To describe it more bluntly, any trait that lets a group of people be controlled amplifies what they can achieve as a group and allows all of them to be as effective as their leader (in theory, their "best person"). You can see this at play in animals like wolves, or in the ancient Greek system of appointing a Dictator for the duration of a war.
Religion can accomplish this same effect, with an interesting twist: the leader need not be the strongest or bravest, he could instead be the most clever or the most charismatic. A genetic predisposition to be hoodwinked by someone smarter than you could be beneficial.
But here we must separate evolutionary success from morality. Evolution doesn't care about human happiness or rights, it only cares about which genes are able to reproduce. If theocracies thrive by exterminating their neighbors, evolutionary pronounces theocrats "the winners". But you or I wouldn't judge that as the best way for humans to live.
That still won't give you Jedi powers.