God Gene

Welcome to the Wikiversity discussion group for the idea that there might be a biological basis for spirituality or genes that predispose people towards religious belief.

Does the God gene exist?

Discussion topics and readings

'God gene' discovered by scientist behind gay DNA theory By Elizabeth Day in the LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

"Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, asked volunteers 226 questions in order to determine how spiritually connected they felt to the universe.The higher their score, the greater the person's ability to believe in a greater spiritual force and, Mr. Hamer found, the more likely they were to share the gene VMAT2."

Additional readings

• Is God in Our Genes? by Jeffrey Kluger. TIme Magazine. Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004.
• God gene - article at Wikipedia

Can the God gene interact with a spiritual existence?

Pseudoscience

"Pseudoscience, astrology, eugenics, quackery, the occult, and superstition, is any subject that appears superficially to be scientific or whose proponents state is scientific but nevertheless contravenes the testability requirement, or substantially deviates from other fundamental aspects of the scientific method." - Pseudoscience as defined by Wikipedia

See also

• Collaboratively Building Concepts - re-examination and exploration of fundamental concepts
• Science and the nonphysical - Can there be a science of the nonphysical?

External links

• Neurotheology - Wikipedia article about the study of the neural basis of spirituality.
• Twin study - Wikipedia article about the study of twins as a way to estimate the strength of genetic predispositions.