Is there a God Gene?

by Bill Creasy

The AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion Public Lecture Series sponsored a lecture by Dr. Dean Hamer and Dr. Lindon J. Eaves on May 26, called "The God Gene?: Genes, Memes, Spirituality, and Religion." Hamer spoke about research that showed that certain personality traits related to spirituality, particularly ones called "self-trancendent," have a genetic component. Hamer's most recent popular book, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, proposes that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but also that he has located one of the genes responsible.

His definition of "self-trancendent" is from a grouping of survey questions that were strongly correlated. The questions included, for example, "Do you get so involved in a problem that you loose track of time?" The questions were grouped empirically, rather than being chosen on an ideological basis. As a result, there are questions that include non-rational, New Age aspects. For example, a psychic component is "transpersonal identification," a feeling of "oneness" with everything in the universe. The third aspect is mysticism or spiritual acceptance, for example belief that there might be ESP.

The genetic contribution from self transcendence was found from comparisons of identical and fraternal twins. The results indicate about 30% contribution from genetics. This percentage is a similar amount to the genetic contributions that have been found for other personality traits.

Hamer conceded that spirituality has many definitions and components. He made it clear that self-trascendence may not be synonymous with spirituality. It is also not correlated to religious affiliation or church attendance.

To show that this method doesn't indicate that everything is genetic, Eaves talked about some factors that are found to be entirely cultural and not genetic. These includes attitudes toward sex, the military, and church membership.

Hamer studied particular genes that were correlated to self transendance. He found a gene that showed about a 5% correlation, a small but statistically significant correlation in a distribution of people. The gene, called VMAT2 (vesicular monoamine transporter), correlates with higher scores on psychological tests for self-transcendence.

Why would a gene be related to a spiritual personality? Hamer said the gene was related to the operation of neurotransmitters. He could not give a exact mechanism. He speculated that the gene affects how parts of the brain interact with each other. Self-trancendence may reflect a particular way of thinking about types of problems that are removed from the individual in space or time, or are not of immediate concern. An individual can think of them in terms that trancend immediate concerns or needs by suppressing the activity in the parts of the brain associated with processing sensory input, body movements, and instant gratification.

Hamer considered himself an atheist, and he was clearly trying to explain beliefs in religion and the supernatural in naturalistic terms. However, his result have to be taken with some caution. He previously reported evidence for a genetic contribution to homosexuality, but the evidence has apparently not been reproduced.

Another aspect of the meeting that was striking was that, in the discussion period, several people made a point of saying they were both Christian and scientists. Two women in the audience insisted that they became better scientists after they became Christians. Eaves, Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Psychiatry and Director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, was also a priest-in-residence at St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. He noted as a priest, wearing a collar, that he thought science was more interesting than theology. He also admitted that God was only a hypothesis.

Hamer made an analogy between self-transcendant thinking and reading. He said that those people who are good at reading enjoy doing it, and as a result get better at it. Similarly, those who have a genetic predisposition toward thinking about self-transcendent problems tend to do it more, and get better at it.

WASH members tend to be interested in self-transcendent problems. Perhaps the thing that WASH members have in common with Christians who are scientists is the tendency toward self-transcendant thinking. We agree on the kind of issues that we are interested in, even if we disagree on the hypotheses to use to address them. WASH members may have less in common with dogmatic Religious Right people who are less interested in considering the issues than in obtaining political power to make others agree with them.

All in all, this area of study deserves more attention. One of the purposes of WASH is to give our members the opportunity to consider and debate self-trancendant ideas. But perhaps we should also consider that most people may not particularly enjoy or have an aptitude for considering these issues. If secular humanism is going to influence the general culture, we may have to do more than just debate issues among ourselves. We can consider whether to develop consensus conclusions and positions about how to address some of the current issues, in order to convince those people who aren't inclined to think about the issues for themselves.

Dean Hamer received his B.A. from Trinity College, Connecticut and his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School . He has worked at the National Institutes of Health for 24 years, where he is currently the Chief of the Section on Gene Structure and Regulation in the Laboratory of Biochemistry of the National Cancer Institute. His research has led to contributions in a variety of areas including recombinant DNA, drug and vaccine production, and gene regulation. He was a co-inventor of animal cell gene transfer, and recently has begun a program on molecular therapeutics for HIV/AIDS. For the past nine years, Dr. Hamer has studied the role of inheritance in human behavior, personality traits, and cancer risk-related behaviors such as cigarette smoking. His discovery of genetic links to sexual orientation and the temperamental traits of sensation seeking and anxiety have changed the way we think about human behavior and raise a host of important scientific, social and ethical issues. In his most recent popular book, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes, he proposes that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but also that he has located one of the genes responsible.

Lindon J. Eaves is a Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Human Genetics and Psychiatry and Director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. He received a B.S. in Genetics and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Genetics from the University of Birmingham, England. Dr. Eaves also serves as priest-in-residence at St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia. He has served as president of both the Behavior Genetics Association and the International Society for Twin Studies.

This article was originally published in the July 2005 issue of WASHline, the newsletter of the Washington Area Secular Humanists.