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Does belief in God have a significant genetic component?

With the scientific method, it is an empirical question as to whether a person's belief in God has a genetic component. From a religious point of view, the idea that a person's fate is predetermined from material causes may undermine the concepts of free will and spirituality.

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Implications to Other Questions

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Does belief in God have a significant genetic component?

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Experts In Genetics

Dean Hamer Geneticist

Agree

Buddha, Muhammad and Jesus all shared a series of mystical experiences or alterations in consciousness and thus probably carried the gene. This means that the tendency to be spiritual is part of genetic makeup. This is not a thing that is strictly handed down from parents to children. It could skip a generation. It's like intelligence.

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14 Nov 2004 Source

Jordan Grafman Neuroscientist

Agree

Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions.

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09 Mar 2009 Source

Disagree

Experts In Science

John Polkinghorne Physics Professor and Reverend

Disagree

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.

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15 Nov 2004 Source

Neutral

Experts In Genetics

Richard Dawkins Evolutionary Biologist, Writer, Atheism Activist

Neutral

...it's not necessary to assume religion aids human survival, though it might. ...do religious people survive better than non-religious people because they are freed up from stress, and so they don't get stress-related diseases and that kind of thing? I find that less interesting and less persuasive than the idea that religious ideas are just simply good [i.e. successfully replicating memes] for the religious ideas themselves.

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18 Oct 2004 Source

Experts In Science

Steven Pinker Psychology Professor

Neutral

To sum up. The universal propensity toward religious beliefs a genuine scientific puzzle. But many adaptationist explanations for religion, such as the one featured in Time last week, don't, I think, meet the criteria for adaptations. There is an alternative explanation, namely that religious psychology is a by-product of many parts of the mind that evolved for other purposes.

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29 Oct 2004 Source

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0 Points Abelard 04 Apr 2010 Stance on Question: Agree

Oh for heavens sakes (if you'll excuse the expression)! Of course religion and belief in God has a genetic component. Natural selection is very careful about what it keeps and what it throws away. The prime directive: Survival of the Species! Homo Sapiens has been on this planet for roughly 160,000 years. How many generations is that? A lot. Paleolithic man found it an extraordinary struggle to survive literally on a day to day basis. Famine, disease, drought, predation. How many thousands of times did a group of ancient men and women find themselves in dire circumstances where survival was unlikely. All the time! The realists among them realized that survival was highly unlikely so they did the perfectly rational thing, they laid down,accepted their fate and died. The religious time and again believed "God" (insert name of your own particular mythology here) would save them. If I may paraphrase Marx: "heart in a heartless world, hope in a hopeless situation, the opium of the people." Ridiculously the religious never gave up hope. Absurdly they held on. If anyone was to survive it would be them. If at the eleventh hour salvation (sorry) arrived who was left? Not the realists! The crazies! The religious! And by the way it's not one gene. It's several. Varying degrees of penetration and manifestations. But that's another story.....

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1 Point JGWeissman 04 Apr 2010 General Comment

"The prime directive: Survival of the Species!"

Not quite. The prime directive of natural selection is Best Possible Reproductive Fitness of the Individual.

See http://lesswrong.com/lw/kw/the_tragedy_of_group_selectionism/

"The realists among them realized that survival was highly unlikely so they did the perfectly rational thing, they laid down,accepted their fate and died."

What? The perfectly rational thing in this case is whatever gives the best chance of survival, and any rationalist can see that holding out until the 11th hour has a better chance of survival than just giving up. Accepting your fate and dying is Losing Reasonably. Rationalists don't Lose Reasonably. Rationalists figure out how to win.

See http://lesswrong.com/lw/nc/newcombs_problem_and_regret_of_rationality/

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0 Points Abelard 05 Apr 2010 Stance on Question: Agree

JG, I'm sorry, I thing you missed my point. (By the way, do you realize you said "Losing Reasonably" and not Losing Reason-ability". Interesting.) Let me paint a scenario: A Paleolithic tribe, twenty of them. They are in a cave. It's freezing cold outside. It's an early Ice Age and they have been caught by a sudden huge blizzard. Three feet of snow. They were unprepared (no accu-weather forecast!) They don't have enough food. It's been a week. Still snowing. A couple of small parties went out to try to find food and haven't returned. Things are looking really bad. If they don't get food soon they are going to probably starve. The realists know this, it's pretty obvious. You look outside and all you see is white snow up to your hips and howling wind. A rational, reasoning realistic person knows that they're all gonna probably die. Shit happens. For paleolithic man shit happened all the time. Life, living!, was extremely hard. Average life expectancy was maybe 30. Some delirious girl in the back of the cave, whose father was one of the ones who heroically went out looking for food, not to return, is mumbling something ridiculous like "Oh Father, Oh Father....."! The realistic ones know it';s one in a thousand. They lay down. They are weak, things look, and probably are, hopeless. You're right JG, the don't give up reason-ability, the give up reasonably. Rationally. A few people have gathered around the crazy girl, "Our Father, Our Father........" They irrationally don't give up hope. When there reasonably is no hope! Ritual calms the mind. (Distracts?) Miraculously, literally, help arrives. It's only the crazies, the "religious" who have survived. Religion may be irrational, but it is a great coping mechanism. Remember, "There are no atheists in a foxhole." Natural selection doesn't care if it rational or not, delusional or not,if it helps people survive then it's "good".

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1 Point Benja 05 Apr 2010 General Comment

There's a separate question you've brought up here that's really interesting, along the lines of:

"Do people need religion when faced with death?"

The principle, that there are no atheists in a foxhole, is contentious. I recall watching the excellent documentary, "Touching the Void", where a mountaineer, who is trapped in a crevasse with a broken leg, does NOT give up, despite horrible odds of survival. Furthermore, he NEVER turned to God. I'll dig for some more examples.

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0 Points Abelard 06 Apr 2010 Stance on Question: Agree

Good point Benja! However it's not so much a question of people NEEDING to turn to God, but rather the original question of DO they and is it at least in part genetic. To me it clearly is. As a general rule human beings both individually and collectively are I self-centered and tend to be ego-maniacal. What I mean to say is that they have a much higher regard for themselves than is deserved and like to think they're in more control of their lives than they truly are. People hate to think they are "controlled" by their genetics. The truth be told however is that everything we are individually and collectively as a species is influenced by our genetics. Get over it. It is what it is. The first human civilization began around 4000 BCE. Before that Neolithic man and Paleolithic man struggled to survive for 150.000 years. Famine, drought, disease, tribal wars, climate changes. predators and on and on. To survive was extremely difficult. Anything that helped the species to survive was just fine with Natural Selection. Natural Selection is a process, it doesn't have an opinion. It doesn't matter that superstition, belief in the supernatural, or belief in an all-knowing omnipresent and all-powerful super-being is irrational. If it helps,it helps. Again and again and again, generation after generation, people who believed in the supernatural found strength in their religious beliefs. Have you ever prayed? I mean really prayed? Try it. Try it now. "Our Father, who art in heaven...." When you pray it has an incredible calming effect. At the very least it's extremely relaxing. For people who are religious it gives them serenity, peace of mind, a wonderfully spiritual connection.What it really does is that it gets them out of themselves, they forget their problems and worries. It helps them survive. The big things and the little things. The problem is is that it's delusional. It's a little crazy. Actually more than a little. On top of it the religious have the craziest myths!

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0 Points Abelard 06 Apr 2010 Stance on Question: Agree

Oh yeh, one other little thing, actually two. Please forgive me I can't help it. The principle is not contentious, I think you meant to say contended, i.e. controversial. Also your "Touching the Void" story, that would be anecdotal. One guy, two guys, whatever. The big picture------if individuals do or do not turn to God in times of stress isn't the issue, it's what the other 6 billion plus on this God-forsaken planet (sorry, couldn't help it) tend to do is. More than a billion people on this planet claim to be Christians, similar numbers for both Hindus and Muslims. Buddhists, Jews, and a gizillion tribal religions. Taoists, Shinto, Zens, Confucianists, Hare Khrisnas, and my personal favorite, the Rastafarians! For Christ's sake (oops, there I go again!) how can anyone possibly say that religion isn't at least in part genetic! Even the rational can be foolish!

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