c. 2004 Religion News Service
(Editors: Dean Hamer, a molecular biologist, is author of the forthcoming book `The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes.’)
(UNDATED) Since the dawn of our species, spirituality has been deeply woven into the human experience.
More than 30,000 years ago, our ancestors in what today is Europe painted the walls of their caves with images of strange chimeras representing sorcerers or priests. Across millenniums, religion has produced innumerable acts of charity and unspeakable acts of violence. Today, the forces of fundamentalism _ whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim _ are sweeping the globe, from the Middle East and Africa to South America and Asia.
Why is spirituality such a universal force? Why do people from all walks of life, regardless of their religious backgrounds, value spirituality as much as, or more than, pleasure, power and wealth?
The answer is, at least in part, hard-wired into our genes. Spirituality is one of our basic human inheritances. It is, in short, an instinct _ rooted in a “God gene” folded deep in the intricate strands of our DNA.
This may sound like a controversial assertion, but it reflects the startling advances of modern biology, which are bringing us closer to answering some fundamental questions about human nature. The question of “Is there a God?” may be beyond science, but a deeper understanding of why we believe in God may be within our grasp.
The implications of this are manifold, and will no doubt prove unsettling to many people. Nonbelievers will argue that finding a God gene proves there is no God _ that religion is nothing more than a genetic program for self-deception. Religious believers, on the other hand, 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.
But these arguments mix theology with neurobiology. The one thing we know for certain about spiritual beliefs and feelings is that they are products of the brain _ the firing of electrochemical currents through networks of nerve cells.
Understanding how such thoughts and emotions are formed and propagated is something science can tackle. Whether the beliefs are true or false is not. Spirituality ultimately is a matter of faith, not of genetics.
Proving a link between our genes and spirituality is not a simple task, and probably no single line of evidence will be completely convincing. It’s not like eye color, which is passed from one generation to the next in an obvious way. I have been exploring this subject for years, independent of my work as a geneticist at the National Institutes of Health, and I have concluded that proof, in a case like this, depends on the whole array of evidence.
The first challenge in my research was to work out a way to measure spiritual feelings and not just traditional religious activity. This is an important distinction, because people who are involved in their church, mosque or temple are not necessarily spiritual, and deeply spiritual people are sometimes skeptical of organized religion.
For this, I used a scale called “self-transcendence,” developed by the innovative psychologist Robert Cloninger, which provides a numerical measure of people’s capacity to reach out beyond themselves _ to see everything in the world as part of one great totality.
If I were asked to describe self-transcendence in a single word, it might be “at-one-ness.” Based on Cloninger’s criteria, Mohandas Gandhi and Albert Einstein would score highly; Genghis Khan would not. This might seem a little bit flaky to some people, but it passes the test for a solid psychological trait.
The second step was to determine if spirituality is inherited, and if so to what extent. This was tackled by comparing identical twins, who have the exact same genes, to fraternal twins, who are only as genetically similar as ordinary siblings.
Data collected by scientists in the United States and Australia show that spirituality, as measured by the self-transcendence scale, is indeed significantly heritable. The extent of genetic influence is similar to that for many personality traits, and even greater than it is for some physical characteristics.
In other words, there is a strong genetic link. By contrast, the shared cultural environment, such as Sunday school, sermons and parenting, had little effect on spirituality _ even though they were major factors in more traditional religious views such as belief in the Bible.
The third step was to search for specific genes involved in spirituality. By comparing self-transcendence scores with DNA patterns, one such “God gene” stood out. It’s called VMAT2, and it is linked to a protein that controls the amount of crucial brain-signaling chemicals. Interestingly, these same brain chemicals can be triggered by certain drugs that can bring about mystical-like experiences.
VMAT2 is by no means the entire story behind spirituality. It has only a small, if key, role; many other genes and environmental factors also are involved. Nevertheless, the gene is important because it points out the mechanism by which spirituality plays out in the brain.
Exploring this mechanism was the fourth step of my research. The chemicals controlled by the God gene _ known as monoamines _ have many functions in the brain. They appear to influence spirituality by altering consciousness, which can be broadly defined as our sense of reality _ our awareness of ourselves and the universe around us, including our thoughts, memories and perceptions.
The hallmark of mystical experiences, such as Saul experienced on the road to Damascus and Jesus underwent in the desert, are alterations in consciousness. According to a theory developed by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Gerald Edelman, the key role of monoamines with regard to consciousness is to link objects and experiences with emotions and values.
The final step was to account for the evolution of God genes. If Charles Darwin was right and natural selection favors some traits over others, what reasons can we find for the persistence of human spirituality?
This is a matter for educated guesses, rather than exact science. But one of the important roles that God genes may play in natural selection is to provide human beings with an innate sense of optimism. At the psychological level, optimism is the will to keep on living and procreating, despite the fact that death is ultimately inevitable.
At the physical level, studies show that optimism seems to promote better health and quicker recovery from disease, advantages that would help us to live long enough to have and raise children and pass on our genetic heritage.
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And consider this: Many religious founders were also healers. Jesus cured leprosy and blindness and even brought Lazarus back from the dead; the Hindu divinity Krishna cured leprosy, helped a lame woman to walk and also returned the dead to life; Buddha healed the deaf, blind and sick, including a man whose feet had been amputated by an unjust king.
Religion has been with us since recorded history, and, despite the growth of scientific inquiry in the past century, it shows no signs of weakening _ not even in today’s most affluent societies. Surveys show that more than 95 percent of Americans believe in God, while 90 percent meditate or pray, 82 percent say that God performs miracles and more than 70 percent believe in life after death.
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God is not dead, to answer the famous question posed by Time magazine. There is, however, a growing tendency to pit science and spirituality (or religion) against each other as if they were intrinsic enemies. They are not. As Einstein famously commented, “Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame.”
In an age in which religion remains so important, that is a sentiment worth remembering. We might also recall one of the basic lessons of genetics: We have no say over the exact constellation of genes that we inherit, but what we do with those genes is very much up to us.
MO/JL END
