The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes

The message: some get or got The God Gene more readily than others. This may sound like favoritism on the part of the God Gene distributing agency, but in most cases the soon to be identified gene is distributed very evenly, with little regard for age, ethnicity or socio-economic class. There is one exception: women seem more favored in this department. So perhaps upstairs management is run by self-interested women or by masculine forces with a soft spot for women! Perhaps, such disparity is no more than that affecting male-female birth rates or the incidence of blondes and brunettes. Vive la difference!

Hamer stresses a distinction between religion and spirituality. He considers the former more likely manifest in 'belief in a particular god … or other orthodox religious doctrines or practices,' whereas the latter more likely manifests in tendencies towards, mysticism, self-forgetfulness, or transpersonal identification with nature and the universal all. He frequently quotes William James and regards the "spiritual instinct" is an inherent part of the human behavioral repertoire, that is ultimately amenable to scientific study – if not absolute definition. He follows researchers like psychiatrist Robert Cloninger who developed Temperament Character Inventory (TCI) measures which include a self-transcendence scale. Hamer used such research conventions to devise his own 'spiritual yardstick' measures to ascertain whether various groups have predispositions to these qualities. The trick was to test whether these qualities correlated statistically with a range of generic 'nature' factors such as mono- and di-zygosity in twins, and relatedness in siblings, and then to compare the results with those attributed to various environmental 'nurture' factors. He discusses the so-called Minnesota Experiment, in which spiritual tendencies were compared in identical and fraternal twins, showing strong evidence that a significant component of spirituality is inherited - or to use that much-worn phrase 'hardwired.' So the next step was to find the genetic correlates-the God Gene. As he sought this still elusive God Gene, one of Hamer's incredulous colleagues asked, "Do you mean there is just one?" The answer of course is not so simple. It seems that a gene labeled VMAT2 plays a pivotal role in packaging monomanines (such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine) which are intricately linked to such ostensibly spiritual attributes as 'self-transcendence' and mystical experience. Hamer links this evidence with Walter Pahnke's famous, 1962, Good Friday Experiment designed to compare 'the differences and similarities between drug-induced and spontaneous mystical experience.' 10 subjects were given psiloybin – a chemical mimic of serotonin- while 10 control subjects received a placebo. The psilocybin subjects experienced profound, spiritual alterations of consciousness manifesting little 'specifically religious imagery.' Likewise, other drugs including Ecstasy and Prozac increase serotonin levels and feelings of well-being and connectedness, whereas cocaine and methamphetamines stimulate dopamine release in the so-called pleasure center (nucleus acumbens) producing much stronger feelings of elation. So asks Hamer, how do all these 'monoamines work normally in the brain to produce that great hat trick of biology: consciousness?' Does a mere shift in monoamine activity, drug-induced or 'natural,' make a critical difference. In the second half of the book Hamer ranges widely. He reviews the work of Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili on the effects of meditation on the Afferent Association Area (see Newtork 76) and theories that the apostle Paul, Muhammad, Joan of Arc and Dostoyesvsky all suffered temporal lobe epilepsy which encourages hyper-religiosity. He also discusses work by Michael Persinger and V. S Ramachandran on stimulation of the 'God Spot' in the temporoparietal region which creates a 'sense of presence ' and concludes, like William James, that 'feelings of spirituality are a matter of emotions rather than intellect.' Hamer reviews the positive correlation between religious practice and good health, the potential power of prayer in healing, and the evidence that faith in placebos actually stimulates production of real dopamine, which proves effective in the treatment of Parkinson's patients. On the controversial subject of Dawkins 'memes' Hamer is equivocal. He appears to buy the meme concept which he equates with 'culture' and learned experience but resent Dawkins extremism. Brits and ornithologists will chuckle at his mistake of attributing the learned behavior of milk bottle opening to swallows- not blue tits! Is this how urban legends start- and do birds have God Genes? This shows how very generalised his discussion becomes. Genes and memes respectively become synonyms for nature and nurture, the former equated with spirituality and universality, the latter with religion and culture. He confesses that numbers derived from tests purported to differentiate these intrinsic and extrinsic influences have little importance, beyond the tendency for people to marry within their faiths thereby perpetuating particular religious cultures. This is obvious from history, but particularly striking in the case of the Lemba people who emigrated to southern Africa millennia ago, but still carry many 'jewish' Y chromosome markers especially among their priests. Beyond this so many factors influence our spiritual and religious traits that all one can say is that both nature and nurture play a role. In the final chapter Hamer acknowledges the 'battle between science and religion' crediting the Templeton Foundation with 'renewed interest and academic inquiry.' This is not a cynical reference to the lure of financial prizes, it does however suggest that Hamer's treatment is rather superficial. Throughout most of human history humankind's spiritual dimensions have been recognised if not cherished. It would be misleading to suggest that identification of the VMAT2 gene has scientifically substantiated a previously vague notion. Connecting dopamine with religious experience or indeed with any other ritual or behavior such as psilocybin ingestion or mediation tells us nothing startlingly new about potential shifts in consciousness. I don't think that Hamer's intention is to imply that genetics and biochemistry must confirm spirituality to prove it real, though this undertone surfaces in his confessed fear of negative reactions from professional colleagues. This is perhaps the most important point: Hamer is part of a paradigm shift that inclines to separate spirituality from institutionalised religion – by no means a new distinction. The God Gene concept just provides a comforting rationale for further questing in the name of scientific reason. It is what, not how, we believe that manifests in our behavior and culture.