Is Faith in Our Genes?

S

Sufi

Registered Senior Member
Science says, yes.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AD4E7-6290-1150-902F83414B7F4945&chanID=sa006&colID=12

Hamer offers a lot of details about his study in his book "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.
 
Here is what Sufi author Ahmed Hulusi said in his book: Religious Misunderstandings in 1998, 6 years earlier than physical sciences.

"Having or not having faith (iman) is the result of an openness or closeness of a certain neural pathway in brain. I believe that there is a gene responsible for faith. A brain’s conclusions through interpreting circumstances under the light (nuur) of faith, is different from the conclusions driven by a brain that interprets circumstances without the light of faith!

We can never know from outside if people are carrying that gene or not!. However, their conduct of behavior may be a partial indicator for that given moment…"

His complete book is available online for free reading at http://www.ahmedbaki.com
 
Is this supposedly restricted to faith in "God" and the hereafter, or faith in general?
For example, are people with the "faith gene" believed to have more faith in people, society, governments...
Are they supposed to be more openly trusting?


I haven't read it yet, but I have to say that my first inclination is to say there is no "faith gene", but perhaps that's simply because I lack it. :D
 
one_raven said:
Is this supposedly restricted to faith in "God" and the hereafter, or faith in general?
For example, are people with the "faith gene" believed to have more faith in people, society, governments...
Are they supposed to be more openly trusting?


I haven't read it yet, but I have to say that my first inclination is to say there is no "faith gene", but perhaps that's simply because I lack it. :D
Click to expand...

Dr. Hamer says, "the God gene produces self-transcendence."

So, it is not a faith in a separate god out there along with a concrete self down here.. :)

Self transcendence requires the admittance of a nonexistence for a separatetely owned self. In another way of saying, it requires the faith in the limitless and whole oneness of all that is, so that you may have self transcendence.

The more you have faith in the wholeness of the ONE ALONE that is UNSEPARATED, UNDIVIDED, UNFRAGMENTED, the more you may experience self transcendence.

I think and hope that this discovery will help us to understand better what is referrred to as Allah as different from any versions of god.
 
So, is he saying that if you have this gene you will be more likely to experience what people commonly refer to as "Out of Body" experiences (not discussing whether they are valid or not)?
If not, please be more specific in describing what you (or he) defines as "self transcendence".
If so, do you think the fact that you can experience OBE's will lead you to believe that there is "something more out there" and start looking for it, or do you think there is another connection? Something more validly "spiritual" happening other then the OBE's caused by this gene that makes you more aware of the true relaity (the "you" being someone with this "fait gene")?
Does how I worded that that make sense?
 
one_raven said:
So, is he saying that if you have this gene you will be more likely to experience what people commonly refer to as "Out of Body" experiences (not discussing whether they are valid or not)?
If not, please be more specific in describing what you (or he) defines as "self transcendence".
Click to expand...

Try to feel that you do not exist as a separate being, you own nothing, all that you have were given to you at any moment of your life. Put aside all your conditionings you have acted upon throughout your lifetime and the beliefs you have believed to be "sacred!" Then, with a free mind consider the fact that every atom in your existence has the entire energy force of the whole universe.

Then, instead of perceiving yourself as one tiny human being in the vastness of the world, only try to understand the meaning denoted by the name "ALLAH" and accept the nothingness of your individuality considering the limitlessness of "Allah" —the essential oneness within all!

Transcend your selfness and witness only the presence of Allah within and in whichever side you turn; knowing Hu is the Apparent and who is the Hidden. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Only send love to anyone. Give away without the concern of outcome. Serve. Feel the Oneness with all that is.

I am sorry, I have no choice other than offering to read http://www.ahmedbaki.com for further explanations. :)

If so, do you think the fact that you can experience OBE's will lead you to believe that there is "something more out there" and start looking for it, or do you think there is another connection? Something more validly "spiritual" happening other then the OBE's caused by this gene that makes you more aware of the true relaity (the "you" being someone with this "fait gene")?
Does how I worded that that make sense?
Click to expand...

OB Experiences may be faith boosting and may lead you to believe that there is something more than what we can perceive through our physical instruments. They are usually experienced asn a result of the release (temporary detachment) of the person's spiritual body, which will be our vehicle in the afterlife realm.
 
Take the name "Allah" out of that, and it sounds an awful lot to me like experiencing the "Absolute" in Vedanta teachings through meditation.
 
I have not made up my mind about what to believe yet...
However, I can fully accept the notion of The Absolute (I even lean towards that as the core of my belief system), but not the concept of a cognizant creator God figure.
I think the two are completely different and seperate.
 
Sufi said:
Dr. Hamer says, "the God gene produces self-transcendence."

So, it is not a faith in a separate god out there along with a concrete self down here..

Self transcendence requires the admittance of a nonexistence for a separatetely owned self. In another way of saying, it requires the faith in the limitless and whole oneness of all that is, so that you may have self transcendence.

The more you have faith in the wholeness of the ONE ALONE that is UNSEPARATED, UNDIVIDED, UNFRAGMENTED, the more you may experience self transcendence.

I think and hope that this discovery will help us to understand better what is referrred to as Allah as different from any versions of god.
Click to expand...

There is a rather simple cognitive explanation for faith:

A living cognitive system has to allow for some contemporary inconsistency in order to be able to learn. In order to learn something new (no matter what), we have to suspend strict logic and consistency for a while, so that we can "upload" and analyze the new data. During the time of this suspension, it is faith that keeps us going.

This "while" can take various amounts of time; one thing is to work yourself through a chapter of a book, something else is to learn skiing, for example. The longer it takes to learn something, the more faith we must bring up in order to successfully learn it.
 
RosaMagika said:
There is a rather simple cognitive explanation for faith:

A living cognitive system has to allow for some contemporary inconsistency in order to be able to learn. In order to learn something new (no matter what), we have to suspend strict logic and consistency for a while, so that we can "upload" and analyze the new data. During the time of this suspension, it is faith that keeps us going.

This "while" can take various amounts of time; one thing is to work yourself through a chapter of a book, something else is to learn skiing, for example. The longer it takes to learn something, the more faith we must bring up in order to successfully learn it.
Click to expand...
Good points.
I just wonder how a newly born child, , not knowing what is consistent and what is not - like a clean slate ofcourse, starts to sort out things ?

With nothing to check for and against how that child starts learning ?

(i) 'faith' & (ii) 'accepting things as it is for later analysis' are same at initial stages of such just started cognitive system ?

If yes, faith is an essential, enabling factor , if not building blocks/base , for learning.
 
Self-transcendence has nothing to do with blind faith. What a mixed up pile of mumbo jumbo.

A newly born child learns by doing. Everyone has 'faith' in the sense that you have to rely on assumptions and evidence without 'proof'. But this is not the same 'faith' as a typical faith in god. That faith is blind and wholly irrelevant.
 
Science says, yes.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't, which can clearly be seen by actually reading the article itself. Some quotes:

"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."

"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 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."

And so on..

You then try and support the claim by using ahmedbaki.com garbage, and then spend some time waffling your usual oneness and allah crap without even realising the lack of worth the links you've posted really are.
 
Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but he also says he has located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our most profound feelings of spirituality, according to a literal reading of Hamer's work, may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA. "I'm a believer that every thought we think and every feeling we feel is the result of activity in the brain," Hamer says.

"I think we follow the basic law of nature, which is that we're a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag."

...

Hamer began looking in 1998, when he was conducting a survey on smoking and addiction for the National Cancer Institute. As part of his study, he recruited more than 1,000 men and women, who agreed to take a standardized, 240-question personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Among the traits the TCI measures is one known as self-transcendence, which consists of three other traits: self-forgetfulness, or the ability to get entirely lost in an experience; transpersonal identification, or a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe; and mysticism, or an openness to things not literally provable. Put them all together, and you come as close as science can to measuring what it feels like to be spiritual.

"This allows us to have the kind of experience described as religious ecstasy," says Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and the designer of the self-transcendence portion of the TCI.

Hamer decided to use the data he gathered in the smoking survey to conduct a little spirituality study on the side. First he ranked the participants along Cloninger's self-transcendence scale, placing them on a continuum from least to most spiritually inclined. Then he went poking around in their genes to see if he could find the DNA responsible for the differences. Spelunking in the human genome is not easy, what with 35,000 genes consisting of 3.2 billion chemical bases. To narrow the field, Hamer confined his work to nine specific genes known to play major roles in the production of monoamines—brain chemicals, including serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, that regulate such fundamental functions as mood and motor control. It's monoamines that are carefully manipulated by Prozac and other antidepressants. It's also monoamines that are not so carefully scrambled by ecstasy, LSD, peyote and other mind-altering drugs—some of which have long been used in religious rituals.

Studying the nine candidate genes in DNA samples provided by his subjects, Hamer quickly hit the genetic jackpot. A variation in a gene known as vmat2—for vesicular monoamine transporter—seemed to be directly related to how the volunteers scored on the self-transcendence test. Those with the nucleic acid cytosine in one particular spot on the gene ranked high. Those with the nucleic acid adenine in the same spot ranked lower. "A single change in a single base in the middle of the gene seemed directly related to the ability to feel self-transcendence," Hamer says. Merely having that feeling did not mean those people would take the next step and translate their transcendence into a belief in—or even a quest for—God. But they seemed likelier to do so than those who never got the feeling at all.

Hamer also stresses that while he may have located a genetic root for spirituality, that is not the same as a genetic root for religion.

Spirituality is a feeling or a state of mind; religion is the way that state gets codified into law. Our genes don't get directly involved in writing legislation. As Hamer puts it, perhaps understating a bit the emotional connection many have to their religions, "Spirituality is intensely personal; religion is institutional."

(Time Magazine)
 
Yes faith is in your genes. Some of you have it. Others dont. The ones who dont will die. Unlucky!
 
The ones who dont will die.
Click to expand...

I can guarantee you the ones who do will also die.

And Sufi: The guy has clearly been debunked and has not actually provided anything of sustenance. Why you still quoting articles about him, especially given the fact that you're just omitting all the bad parts?
 
Heko Snakelord,

I think there is somehow a relation after I read the complete article. There is an evidence maybe not institutionally but spritiually people seems different. But it seems that we need more evidence to make a concrete result. On the other hand I did not get what you mean by saying "bad parts"
 
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