. Searching for the "God Gene"

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By Allan Dobras

Has Evolution Embedded in the Brain the Concept of God?

A group of five research scientists, puzzled by the broad spectrum of
religiosity found in human beings, are looking to see if the human brain
has been "wired" by evolution to accept the notion that a "god" is at work
in the creative processes of the universe.

In the December 2006 issue of Discover magazine, writer John Horgan
explores the work of a handful of scientists who are trying to find some
physiological, genetic, or biological origin for religious experiences.
"Modern researchers," said Horgan, "are applying brain scans, genetic
probes, and other potent instruments as they attempt to locate the
physiological causes of religious experience, characterize its effects,
perhaps replicate it, and perhaps even begin to explain its abiding
influence."

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger claimed that he could induce religious
experiences in people by "stimulating specific regions of their brains
with electromagnetic pulses." He even coaxed biologist Richard
Dawkins-perhaps the world's most famous and articulate atheist and
strident critic of religion-to take his test.

Dawkins accepted the challenge with bravado. "I've always been curious to
know what it would be like to have a mystical experience," he said before
the experiment. Unfortunately, Dawkins came away disappointed, noting that
he did not experience any spiritual sensation or "communion with the
universe." What he did experience was a slight dizziness and a twitching
in the leg.

Undaunted, Persinger has continued with his experiments claiming that in a
test involving 600 participants, 80 percent "sense a presence" during the
magnetic stimulation process. Swedish researchers at Upp=ADsala University
attempted the same experiment, but have been unable to duplicate
Persinger's results, explaining that since patients are aware that there
is an expectation of some sort of "presence," many will succumb to the
power of suggestion. Patients that were unaware of any such expectations
experienced no unusual psychological effects. Persinger countered that the
"Swedes didn't use the machine properly."

Fordham University anthropologist Stewart Guthrie believes that God is an
illusion and that religion "may best understood as systematic
anthropomorphism," i.e., an evolutionary adaptive trait that evolved to a
point where humans came to believe "the entire world of our experience is
merely a show staged by some master dramatist." In other words, a notion
of God and religion was implanted in our brains in much the same way that
fundamental life forms supposedly evolved into more complex creatures.

Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, opines
that people from different religious traditions have similar mystical
experiences, or visions, which "typically involve sensations of
self-transcendence and 'oneness.'" Newberg hypothesizes that the visions
stem from the same neural processes, and he devised a technique called
"single-=ADphoton-emission- computed tomography (SPECT)" to test his theo=

To put his hypothesis to the test, Newberg enlisted the aid of more than
twenty spiritual practitioners from a number of religious faiths,
including a Franciscan nun and Tibetan Buddhist monks. When a nun in deep
prayer or a monk in meditation feels that he or she is in communion with
the object of their contemplation, a radioactive fluid is injected into
the body that reaches the brain and the SPECT chamber then is able to
identify the region of the brain that was stimulated by the spiritual
experience.

Citing some research that suggests religious contemplation and sexual
pleasure have some commonality in neural activity, Newberg concludes that
an "evolutionary perspective suggests that the neurobiology of mystical
experience arose, at least in part, from the mechanism of the sexual
response."

THE GOD "GENE" Of all the research, perhaps the most bizarre study is
being carried on by Dean Hamer, head of gene structure and regulation at
the National Cancer Institute, who is attempting to link religion to a
specific gene. He has based his study on an earlier research project that
he did on the genetics of nicotine addiction.

Hamer then brought together 1000 volunteer participants, whom he asked to
fill out a detailed questionnaire that included a section that asked them
to rate their feelings of "absentmindedness, connectedness with nature,
belief in extrasensory perception, and other traits."

Hamer concluded that the answers "provide a measure of the subjects'
affinity for spirituality." Hamer linked these responses to variant of a
gene called VMAT, that he said corresponded to higher scores for what he
had defined as spirituality. Hamer, an agnostic, dubbed the variant "the
God gene." However, the gene accounts for only 1 percent of the variance
in the test scores of his subjects, prompting Francis Collins, head of the
human Genome Project, to characterize Hamer's thesis as "wildly
overstated."

How to know a babblical cretinist (or generic morontheist) is lying?

Its lips are moving (or on the web, it's the hands at the keyboard).

Get lost morontheist. We don't care for your forgeries, quote mines and
other stinking crap. Get an education and get some balls (the latter for
admitting when you have nothing to support your claims).

On Jun 26, 11:19 am, "Gabriel" <gabriel_bapt...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi skyeyes,

[I replied to this post yesterday, but I don't see it appearing on
Google groups, so I'm going to reply again to Gabriel. Apologies if
the original posts shows up for some folks. Damn Google, anyway. (I
have no choice but to use Google groups; I'm at work, and am not allow
to install software other than what the IT group puts on our
computers, and that doesn't include a proper newsreader. Again, my
apologies.)]

Science on many counts can be good. But when it comes specifically to
evolution and the big bang theory, they show themselves to become far
less
than objective, and downright dishonest.

Then when you get sick or injured, Gabriel, don't go to a doctor.
Modern medicine is based in evolution; it's inextricably imbedded in
it.

If you think evolution is a lie, then don't endorse the science
by using modern medicine. Your doctor, after all, is first and
foremost a scientist. That makes him a liar, in your view.

Having said that, I'll reiterate what I've told you before: you need
to get your butt into a real science class and find out how science
actually *works*,

because you don't seem to have a clue.
If a
scientist fudges his results, it's going to be found out, because the
first thing that happens when a scientist publishes is that other
scientists investigate the published data and attempt to replicate the
first scientist's results. The only data and conclusions that endure
are ones that stand up to rigorous scrutiny.

Your insistence that scientists are all in a dishonest conspiracy
concerning evolution and physics just reveals you to be the
brainwashed moron you really are.

There are no conspiracies to
supplant your god in science: there's only the data that supports
evolution and the occurrence of the big bang. (Why you have such a
problem with the big bang is beyond me; I know a lot of fundie theists
who delightedly point to it as "evidence" of the creation of the
universe.) I'm sorry you don't like where the evidence points, but
calling everyone "liars" doesn't help your case one little bit. The
only people who believe that are other nuts like you, not rational
people who know how science actually works. Grow up, will you?

The fact that you've avoided looking into this yourself is something you
need to seriously consider why that's so.

I've *been* looking into it since about 1963. The evidence supports
evolution, not special creation. Why don't *you* take some actual
science courses, instead of just regurgitating what your fundie
handlers have brainwashed you into believing?

Why are you so willing to just
take it on faith what these atheist scientists tell you?

The lovely thing about science is that you don't have to take
*anything* "on faith."

Scientists describe their methodologies when
they publish. Anybody who wants to can repeat their studies and
compare results.

Since I'm not an actual scientist - I am but an
humble technical writer - I seldom do that.

I *do*, however, follow
the debates in the scientific community, where data and the
conclusions extrapolated from it are discussed in depth by people who
*actually* *are* scientists. Conclusions and data arising from fudged
or simply from poorly-designed studies get flushed, right quick, when
others can't reproduce the same results, or get results that support a
different conclusion. That's the lovely thing about science. It's
not dogma. It's self-correcting, self-healing investigation.

Now if you want to talk about liars, lets talk about creationists, who
have been telling the same lies *at* *least* since I was in junior
high, shall we? I can make a list of the lies they tell about
scientists, Darwin, and evolutionary theory (that it violates the 2nd
Law of Thermodynamics is my fav), if you'd like me to. Those lies
have been refuted

and corrected innumerable times over the ensuing 40+
years that I've been involved in the debate, yet the creationists
continue to spout the same lies, hoping, apparently, that nobody will
notice. Would you like me to make a list of those lies? I'll be
happy to, just say the word. The first lie on the list will be the
lie that says that all scientists are liars when it comes to evolution
(and in your case, the big bang).

Looks like we're
both taking something different on faith. The difference is what you're
taking on faith has been shown for a fact to be lies.

What I know to be factual is supported by actual evidence. *You* are
the one who's clinging to Bronze Age myths and insisting on their
literal truth. I can support my arguments with data, and have done
so. You can only whine that scientists - people who are for the most
part your moral superiors, and most certainly your intellectual
betters - are liars. Poor Gabriel. You've got *nothing*.

I'll ask you again to support your arguments:

1. Why can consciousness not have arisen out of purely natural
processes? Why must it be supernatural in origin? Provide evidence
to support your argument.

2. Why can conscience not have arisen out of purely natural
processes? Why must it be supernatural in origin? Provide evidence
to support your argument.

3. Why can reproduction not have arisen out of purely natural
processes? Why must it be supernatural in origin? Provide evidence
to support your argument.

4. How do you explain ancient primate retrovirii being present in
both human and chimp DNA, if not from a common ancestor? Provide
evidence to support your argument.

5. How do you explain away the fact that multi-disciplinary evidence
from such diverse fields of study as morphology, genetics, geology
supports evolution? How do you explain the fact that all life fits
into nested hierarchies?

6. Given the vast time scales available and the uncounted billions of
planets and moons that exist in the universe, why do you find it
remarkable that at least one of those places developed our kind of
carbon-based life? Please do the math supporting your argument.