Having a gene that could do all that seems pretty unlikely to me." Walter Houston, the chaplain of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a fellow in theology, told the Telegraph: "Religious belief is not just related to a person's constitution it's related to society, tradition, character-everything's involved. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking." You can't cut faith down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. He replied: "The idea of a God gene goes against all my personal theological convictions. John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, member of the Royal Society and Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, was asked for a comment on Hamer's theory by the British national daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. The question of the God Gene could be answered by experimental studies. Currently, there are several VMAT2 inhibitors marketed as drugs including deutetrabenazine, tetrabenazine, and valbenazine. However, Hamer notes that the importance of the VMAT2 finding is not that it explains all spiritual or religious feelings, but rather that it points the way toward one neurobiological pathway that may be important. Zimmer also points out that the God Gene theory is based on only one unpublished, unreplicated study. These, Zimmer says, can signify anything from belonging to the Green Party to believing in ESP. Popular science writer Carl Zimmer said that VMAT2 can be characterized as a gene that accounts for less than one percent of the variance of self-transcendence scores. But one thing it isn't is a 'god gene.'" Yes, it's important, and it may even be active and necessary during higher order processing, like religious thought. A teeny-tiny pump responsible for packaging a neurotransmitter for export during brain activity. Developmental biologist and science blogger PZ Myers argues: "It's a pump. VMAT2 transports monoamine neurotransmitters from the cytosol of monoamine neurons into vesicles. In the brain, VMAT2 proteins are located on synaptic vesicles. Hamer hypothesized that self-transcendence might provide an evolutionary advantage by providing human beings with an innate sense of optimism that gives people the will to keep on living and procreating, despite the inevitability of death, and promoting better health and recovery from diseases. These monoamine transmitters are in turn postulated to play an important role in regulating the brain activities associated with mystic beliefs. VMAT2 codes for a vesicular monoamine transporter that plays a key role in regulating the levels of the brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. In order to identify some of the specific genes involved in self-transcendence, Hamer analyzed DNA and personality score data from over 1,000 individuals and identified one particular locus, VMAT2, with a significant correlation. Similar conclusions were drawn from studies of identical twins reared apart. By contrast, specific religious beliefs (such as belief in a particular deity) were found to have no genetic basis and are instead cultural units or memes. Their work demonstrated that approximately 40% of the variation in self-transcendence was due to genes. The self-transcendence measure was shown to be heritable by classical twin studies conducted by Lindon Eaves and Nicholas Martin. Cloninger suggests that taken together, these measurements are a reasonable way to quantify (make measurable) an individual's propensity to be spiritual. The research uses the self-transcendence scale developed by psychologist Robert Cloninger to quantify spirituality using three sub-scales: "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading) "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe) and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things that remain unproven, such as ESP). JSTOR ( March 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Īccording to the God Gene hypothesis, spirituality has a genetic component, of which ( VMAT2) comprises one component by contributing to sensations associated with mystic experiences, including the presence of God and feelings of connection to a larger universe.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
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