The geneticist Dean Hamer’s book The God Gene examines the possibility that our predilection or lack thereof towards spirituality is “hard-wired into our genes.” To those of faith the very idea may seem preposterous or absurd, but Bahá’ís would welcome this, as embedded in the Teachings is the principle of the essential harmony of Science and Religion, setting aside the fallacious disputes between the two. Perhaps on the relative success in locating a “gay gene,” the question arose as to whether a similar detective search would yield information that will rock our world.
The studies that fed this report were a mix of biochemistry, neurology, and anatomy, citing new research such as brain imaging during meditation to the application of previous methods such as Temperament and Character Inventory and studies of identical twins. The former gave rise to the Newberg Scale, eerily parallel in scientific terms to The Seven Valleys, a mystical document from the Pen of Bahá’u’lláh. Various religious groups were studied: particularly interesting were the genetic congruity of the Jews, and to some extent the Hindus. Some of these investigations gave rise to curious and bizarre speculations on the part of some scientists, such as that the mystical visions of St. Paul, the Prophet Muhammad, Joan of Arc, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were all a result of temporal lobe epilepsy. Another curiosity is that spiritual ecstasy lights up the same spot in the brain that hallucinogens do, giving some credence to those who assert that their drug trips are transcendental.
One of Hamer’s basic premises is the separation of religion and spirituality. Spirituality he deems as the impulse to worship, of “self-transcendence,” the experience of the mystical and the personal apprehension of worlds beyond the physical, whereas religion he sees as learned – the teachings, doctrines, dogmas, and practices of a belief system. His research focuses chiefly upon the former.
Did he find the gene? In a word, no. However, he still has his hopes set on the gene VMAT2, looking for the fire in that cloud of smoke. I especially had to laugh at his explanation of the results of a twin study: “The remainder of the variation for each trait could be ascribed to that mix of events, serendipity, and measurement uncertainty called unique environment.” Serendipity is now a research factor? -- Cool! And early on in the book (pg. 16), he all but negates all his scientific inquiry by his own assertion: “Spirituality is ultimately a matter of faith, not of genetics.” And, like his colleague Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, he quotes Einstein, in a famous statement virtually identical to a well-known Bahá’í dictum: “Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame.”
I wrote to Dr. Hamer, offering him to research Bahá’í communities, which are small, but readily available, willing, and a much wider gene pool than any he quotes in his book. I hope he takes us up on it.
The studies that fed this report were a mix of biochemistry, neurology, and anatomy, citing new research such as brain imaging during meditation to the application of previous methods such as Temperament and Character Inventory and studies of identical twins. The former gave rise to the Newberg Scale, eerily parallel in scientific terms to The Seven Valleys, a mystical document from the Pen of Bahá’u’lláh. Various religious groups were studied: particularly interesting were the genetic congruity of the Jews, and to some extent the Hindus. Some of these investigations gave rise to curious and bizarre speculations on the part of some scientists, such as that the mystical visions of St. Paul, the Prophet Muhammad, Joan of Arc, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were all a result of temporal lobe epilepsy. Another curiosity is that spiritual ecstasy lights up the same spot in the brain that hallucinogens do, giving some credence to those who assert that their drug trips are transcendental.
One of Hamer’s basic premises is the separation of religion and spirituality. Spirituality he deems as the impulse to worship, of “self-transcendence,” the experience of the mystical and the personal apprehension of worlds beyond the physical, whereas religion he sees as learned – the teachings, doctrines, dogmas, and practices of a belief system. His research focuses chiefly upon the former.
Did he find the gene? In a word, no. However, he still has his hopes set on the gene VMAT2, looking for the fire in that cloud of smoke. I especially had to laugh at his explanation of the results of a twin study: “The remainder of the variation for each trait could be ascribed to that mix of events, serendipity, and measurement uncertainty called unique environment.” Serendipity is now a research factor? -- Cool! And early on in the book (pg. 16), he all but negates all his scientific inquiry by his own assertion: “Spirituality is ultimately a matter of faith, not of genetics.” And, like his colleague Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, he quotes Einstein, in a famous statement virtually identical to a well-known Bahá’í dictum: “Religion without science is blind; science without religion is lame.”
I wrote to Dr. Hamer, offering him to research Bahá’í communities, which are small, but readily available, willing, and a much wider gene pool than any he quotes in his book. I hope he takes us up on it.
