The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes - Hardcover

Hamer, Dean H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385500580 ISBN 13: 9780385500586

Publisher: Doubleday, 2004

Synopsis

LEADING GENETICIST DEAN HAMER CRACKS THE “CODE” BEHIND WHY WE ARE PREDISPOSED TO BELIEVE IN GOD. IN A BOOK THAT BRIDGES THE GAP BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE, HAMER BRILLIANTLY ILLUMINATES HOW OUR INCLINATION TOWARD FAITH IS INFLUENCED BY OUR GENES.

The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God, expressing a conviction that has existed since the beginning of recorded time and is shared by billions around the world. In The God Gene, Dr. Dean Hamer reveals that this inclination toward religious faith is no accident; it is in good measure due to our genes. In fact, he argues, spiritual belief may offer an evolutionary advantage by providing humans with a sense of purpose and the courage and will to overcome hardship and loss. And, as a growing body of evidence suggests, belief also increases our chances of reproductive survival by helping to reduce stress, prevent disease, and extend life.
Hamer shows that new discoveries in behavioral genetics and neurobiology indicate that humans inherit a set of predispositions that make their brains ready and eager to embrace a higher power. By analyzing the genetic makeup of over a thousand people of different ages and backgrounds, and comparing their DNA samples against a scale that measures spirituality, Hamer actually identified a specific “God gene” that appears to influence spirituality.
Popular science at its best, The God Gene is an in-depth, fully accessible inquiry into the cutting-edge research that is changing the way we think about ourselves, our world, and our culture. Written with balance and integrity, without seeking to confirm or deny the existence of God, The God Gene brilliantly illuminates the mechanism by which belief itself is biologically fostered. It’s a book that bridges the gap between science and religion, and one that will appeal to the readers of Genesis and Genome alike.

About this title

About the Author

DR. DEAN HAMER is a preeminent geneticist and author of The Science of Desire, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Living with Our Genes. Together with his scientific collaborators at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, he has authored more than one hundred articles for popular and academic science journals. His television appearances include Good Morning America, Dateline, Oprah, the national news shows, and documentaries for HBO, PBS, and the Discovery Channel. Dr. Hamer received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Ariens Kappers Award for Neurobiology.

From the Back Cover

PRAISE FOR LIVING WITH OUR GENES
"A pioneer in the field of molecular psychology, Hamer is exploring the role genes play in governing the very core of our individuality. Accessible . . . provocative."
--Time

"An exceptionally interesting and useful book. In clear, simple language, it scans the cutting edge of much of the important research in genetics, molecular biology, and psychology relating to fundamentals of human behavior. Hamer speaks with authority as one of the leading laboratory researchers in the subject."
--E. O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

"One of the world's leading behavioral geneticists provides a lucid, thought-provoking account of the case for 'nature' as a determinant of personality."
--Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?

PRAISE FOR THE SCIENCE OF DESIRE

"A surprising delight to read."
--Natalie Angier, New York Times

"A meticulous, engrossing book that, in plain language, explains how a gay gene was discovered and what it may mean for the future . . . informative and thought-provoking."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

LEADING GENETICIST DEAN HAMER CRACKS THE "CODE" BEHIND WHY WE ARE PREDISPOSED TO BELIEVE IN GOD. IN A BOOK THAT BRIDGES THE GAP BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE, HAMER BRILLIANTLY ILLUMINATES HOW OUR INCLINATION TOWARD FAITH IS INFLUENCED BY OUR GENES.

The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God, expressing a conviction that has existed since the beginning of recorded time and is shared by billions around the world. In The God Gene, Dr. Dean Hamer reveals that this inclination toward religious faith is no accident; it is in good measure due to our genes. In fact, he argues, spiritual belief may offer an evolutionary advantage by providing humans with a sense of purpose and the courage and will to overcome hardship and loss. And, as a growing body of evidence suggests, belief also increases our chances of reproductive survival by helping to reduce stress, prevent disease, and extend life.
Hamer shows that new discoveries in behavioral genetics and neurobiology indicate that humans inherit a set of predispositions that make their brains ready and eager to embrace a higher power. By analyzing the genetic makeup of over a thousand people of different ages and backgrounds, and comparing their DNA samples against a scale that measures spirituality, Hamer actually identified a specific "God gene" that appears to influence spirituality.
Popular science at its best, The God Gene is an in-depth, fully accessible inquiry into the cutting-edge research that is changing the way we think about ourselves, our world, and our culture. Written with balance and integrity, without seeking to confirm or deny the existence of God, The God Gene brilliantly illuminates the mechanism by which belief itself is biologically fostered. It's a book that bridges the gap between science and religion, and one that will appeal to the readers of Genesis and Genome alike.

Reviews

By page 77 of The God Gene, Dean H. Hamer has already disowned the title of his own book. He recalls describing to a colleague his discovery of a link between spirituality and a specific gene he calls "the God gene." His colleague raised her eyebrows. "Do you mean there's just one?" she asked. "I deserved her skepticism," Hamer writes. "What I meant to say, of course, was 'a' God gene, not 'the' God gene." Of course. Why, the reader wonders, didn't Hamer call his book A God Gene? That might not have been as catchy, but at least it wouldn't have left him contradicting himself. Whatever you want to call it, this is a frustrating book. The role that genes play in religion is a fascinating question that's ripe for the asking. Psychologists, neurologists and even evolutionary biologists have offered insights about how spiritual behaviors and beliefs emerge from the brain. It is reasonable to ask, as Hamer does, whether certain genes play a significant role in faith. But he is a long way from providing an answer. Hamer, a geneticist at the National Cancer Institute, wound up on his quest for the God gene by a roundabout route. Initially he and his colleagues set out to find genes that may make people prone to cigarette addiction. They studied hundreds of pairs of siblings, comparing how strongly their shared heredity influenced different aspects of their personality. In addition to having their subjects fill out psychological questionnaires, the researchers also took samples of DNA from some of them. Hamer then realized that this database might let him investigate the genetics of spirituality. He embarked on this new search by looking at the results of certain survey questions that measured a personality trait known as self-transcendence, originally identified by Washington University psychiatrist Robert Cloninger. Cloninger found that spiritual people tend to share a set of characteristics, such as feeling connected to the world and a willingness to accept things that cannot be objectively demonstrated. Analyzing the cigarette study, Hamer confirmed what earlier studies had found: heredity is partly responsible for whether a person is self-transcendent or not. He then looked at the DNA samples of some of his subjects, hoping to find variants of genes that tended to turn up in self-transcendent people. His search led him to a gene known as VMAT2. Two different versions of this gene exist, differing only at a single position. People with one version of the gene tend to score a little higher on self-transcendence tests. Although the influence is small, it is, Hamer claims, consistent. About half the people in the study had at least one copy of the self-transcendence-boosting version of VMAT2, which Hamer dubs the God gene. Is the God gene real? The only evidence we have to go on at the moment is what Hamer presents in his book. He and his colleagues are still preparing to submit their results to a scientific journal. It would be nice to know whether these results can withstand the rigors of peer review. It would be nicer still to know whether any other scientists can replicate them. The field of behavioral genetics is littered with failed links between particular genes and personality traits. These alleged associations at first seemed very strong. But as other researchers tried to replicate them, they faded away into statistical noise. In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer. To be fair, it should be pointed out that Hamer offers a lot of details about his study in The God Gene, along with many caveats about how hard it is to establish an association between genes and behavior. But given the fate of Hamer's so-called gay gene, it is strange to see him so impatient to trumpet the discovery of his God gene. He is even eager to present an intricate hypothesis about how the God gene produces self-transcendence. The gene, it is well known, makes membrane-covered containers that neurons use to deliver neurotransmitters to one another. Hamer proposes that the God gene changes the level of these neurotransmitters so as to alter a person's mood, consciousness and, ultimately, self-transcendence. He goes so far as to say that the God gene is, along with other faith-boosting genes, a product of natural selection. Self-transcendence makes people more optimistic, which makes them healthier and likely to have more kids. These speculations take up the bulk of The God Gene, but in support Hamer only offers up bits and pieces of research done by other scientists, along with little sketches of spiritual people he has met. It appears that he has not bothered to think of a way to test these ideas himself. He did not, for example, try to rule out the possibility that natural selection has not favored self-transcendence, but some other function of VMAT2. (Among other things, the gene protects the brain from neurotoxins.) Nor does Hamer rule out the possibility that the God gene offers no evolutionary benefit at all. Sometimes genes that seem to be common thanks to natural selection turn out to have been spread merely by random genetic drift. Rather than address these important questions, Hamer simply declares that any hypothesis about the evolution of human behavior must be purely speculative. But this is simply not true. If Hamer wanted, he could have measured the strength of natural selection that has acted on VMAT2 in the past. And if he did find signs of selection, he could have estimated how long ago it took place. Other scientists have been measuring natural selection this way for several years now and publishing their results in major journals. The God Gene might have been a fascinating, enlightening book if Hamer had written it 10 years from now--after his link between VMAT2 and self-transcendence had been confirmed by others and after he had seriously tested its importance to our species. Instead the book we have today would be better titled: A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.

Carl Zimmer's books include Soul Made Flesh and Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea.

Like his and Peter Copeland's Living with Our Genes (1998), geneticist Hamer's provocative new book begins with the caveat that a single gene rarely accounts for a complex behavior, such as homosexuality, which was instanced in Living, or spirituality, the focus here. Still, Hamer has done sufficient research to argue that a single gene is implicated in spirituality, and his highly accessible exposition of how he arrived at that point is pretty impressive, if occasionally a bit Mr. Rogers-like in tone. Later, he adopts antireligious geneticist Richard Dawkins' concept of the meme, or transmissible unit of cultural information, to expand upon how culture and genetics interact to prompt expressing spirituality through religion and thereby to sustain faith traditions, such as in the demonstration case here, Judaism. (Hamer thinks Dawkins' attitudes toward religion less than rational, by the way, and poses those of sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson as a healthy alternative.) He ends with another caveat: distinguish between beliefs and the act of believing--and the war between science and religion just might be resolved. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

One
Spiritual Instinct

Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
–William James


The first thing I noticed about Tenkai was his smile. It was serene, content, knowing but not smug. It was the smile of a person at peace with himself and the world around him. The smile of someone who had seen much but could still be surprised. It was a spiritual smile.

The second thing I noticed was that even though Tenkai spoke fluent Japanese, wore traditional Japanese garb, and was living in a Japanese monastery, he was clearly not Asian. His blue eyes and light brown hair were the giveaway. He, in fact, was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, as Michael Hoffman.

I met Tenkai at the Hosenji Zen Center, which is located in a small Japanese village about an hour’s train ride west of Kyoto. The Center provides a venue for people from different countries and religious traditions to learn about Zen Buddhism and practice its system of meditation, known as zazen, in which one sits in the lotus position with half-closed eyes and focuses on breathing. The idea is to empty the mind of all thoughts.

I participated in the Center’s daily activities: waking to a gong at 6 a.m., an hour of zazen sitting in a traditional tatami mat room overlooking a waterfall, eating a breakfast of rice gruel and pickled vegetables in silence, several hours of weeding the vegetable garden or sweeping the stone paths, sutra chanting, supper of more rice and vegetables, and a final two hours of meditation in a log cabin overlooking a temple. It was a peaceful life. But I was not at the Center to ripen my intuitive faculties or to experiment with monastic existence. I was there attempting to understand whether or not there is a biological basis of spirituality.

Until the age of twenty-four, Tenkai led an ordinary life as a high school teacher. Following a breakup with his girlfriend, however, he began to ask himself the life questions at the heart of our need to believe in something larger than ourselves. Why was he here? What is the purpose of life? Why is there so much suffering? Soon thereafter he quit his job, got on his bicycle, and started pedaling east. He didn’t stop until he reached the shores of the East China Sea.

Along the way, Tenkai experimented with every spiritual system and mystical tradition he encountered. In Austria, he studied the principles of anthroposophy, which claims to be “a path of knowledge which leads the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe.” In an Indian ashram, he practiced a type of meditation in which bouts of exuberant dancing and singing were alternated with periods of complete motionlessness. He prayed for twelve hours a day at a monastery in Nepal, and in China he practiced the graceful motions of Tai Chi.

At times he fasted and abstained from sex, while at other times he mixed alcohol, drugs, and women with abandon. There were times when he sat quietly for hours; at other times he jumped about and grunted like a gorilla. But no matter what he tried, no matter which spiritual leader he followed, Tenkai felt that something was missing. It wasn’t until he abandoned his bicycle and flew to Japan that he found what he was looking for: Zen Buddhism.

Zen is based on the premise that every human being is capable of enlightenment. All that is needed is to see through to one’s true nature through meditation. The emphasis is on living in the present with no regret for the past or fear of the future. The motto on the Hosenji Zen Center’s brochure, for example, is “Your future is here now.”

Zen is unique among religions in that it is virtually devoid of theology, scripture, or ritual. There are no gods or devils, there is no heaven or hell. Although Zen does have priests, they do not have any special claim to holiness.

When I met Tenkai, he had just completed his apprenticeship at the traditional monastery of Empuku-ji and started residency at the Hosenji Center. The monastic life seemed to suit him well. Slowly, he told me, things began to change for him. It wasn’t so much that the monastic life changed the way he felt–he still
had emotional ups and downs–or the way he thought. Zen isn’t about cognition, he explained. Instead it changed the way he perceived things. He felt he was more integrated with the universe, his sense of reality more focused. What changed, he says, was his sense of the way things are–his consciousness.

Sometimes this new sensibility came upon him when he was practicing zazen. Other times it occurred when he was performing hard physical labor. Asked what it felt like, he told me, “I can’t explain it in words, but once you have the feeling you’ll understand. It’s like your mind just isn’t there.”

When I admitted to Tenkai that I spent much of my meditation time fretting about routine matters, he gave me a spiritual smile. “It’s a strange and mystical thing, this feeling. But don’t worry,” he said. “Everybody gets it at one time or another.”



A Human Universal

Although Tenkai may be unusual compared to the average person in the strength and tenacity of his metaphysical yearnings, he is by no means unique. Most people, psychologists and theologians would argue, have some capacity for spirituality. It is among the most ubiquitous and powerful forces in human life. It has been evident throughout recorded history in every civilization and culture, in every nook and cranny of the globe. For many people, it is the main focus of their lives.

Homo sapiens have had spiritual beliefs since the dawn of our species. More than 30,000 years ago, our ancestors in what today is Europe painted the walls of their caves with images of strange chimeras with human bodies and animal heads, representing, anthropologists feel, sorcerers or priests. These early humans buried their dead with elaborate preparations for the afterlife. Sometimes they equipped them with food and supplies for their journey; other times they cut off their hands and heads, perhaps to prevent the return of enemies. These are the actions of believers.

Our spiritual convictions remain just as strong today. 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.

Our faith is not unique. Even in China and the former Soviet Union–where powerful governments used every possible form of persuasion to replace God with Communism–more than half of the people retained their spiritual beliefs. Meanwhile, the forces of fundamentalism–whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim–are sweeping across the globe from South America to the Middle East to Africa.

Our spiritual beliefs are not necessarily reflected in terms of church attendance, however. In fact, church attendance has been declining in the United States ever since the 1950s. More and more people feel that churches place too much emphasis on organization and not enough on spirituality. As noted in one Gallup poll, “believing is becoming increasingly divorced from belonging.”

Church attendance in Europe has declined even more dramatically. In England and Holland, only 5 percent of the population attends religious services on a regular basis. Even in Italy, often considered a bastion of traditional Catholic values, the majority of people disagree with the Pope on religious issues such as divorce and abortion.

The discrepancy between flagging attendance in formal religious settings and the high percentage of people who believe in God can be explained in large measure by the fact that spirituality is distinct from the precepts of any particular religion. More than three-quarters of people surveyed feel that God can reveal himself through many different paths. There is a growing sentiment that it doesn’t matter what church you go to because “one is as good as the other.”

Despite formal religious adherence or attendance, a survey taken in the 1990s found that 53 percent of Americans have had a “moment of sudden religious awakening or insight.” In our own research at the National Institutes of Health, more than one-third of the essentially random collection of people we surveyed reported personal experiences in which they felt in contact with “a divine and wonderful spiritual power.” A similar percentage of people said that they have, at least once or twice, felt “very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself.” Although such experiences were once regarded as signs of incipient psychopathology, recent research shows that they actually are associated with better adjustment and psychological health in most people.

While someone like Tenkai may be at the high end of the human continuum in terms of his interest in spirituality, he is by no means unique. He stands out in the degree of his spirituality rather than in the fact that he believes in something larger than himself. He just has more than the usual degree of what in fact is a common human trait.


The God Gene Theory

Why is spirituality such a powerful and universal force? Why do so many people believe in things they cannot see, smell, taste, hear, or touch? Why do people from all walks of life, around the globe, regardless of their religious backgrounds or the particular god they worship, value spirituality as much as, or more than, pleasure, power, or wealth?

I argue that the answer is, at least in part, hardwired into our genes. Spirituality is one of our basic human inheritances. It is, in fact, an instinct.

At first, “instinct” may seem to be a peculiar word to pair with spirituality. We usually think of instincts as automatic, unconscious reactions or behaviors that are performed without though...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385500580
• ISBN 13: 9780385500586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 241