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The San Diego Union-Tribune

Author makes case for a gene-spirituality link


November 4, 2004

'The God Gene: How Faith Is Hard-Wired Into Our Genes" asks why spirituality is such a powerful and universal force. Why do so many people believe in things they cannot see, smell, taste, hear or touch?

Dean Hamer, a molecular geneticist, argues persuasively that genes predispose humans to believe that "spirituality is one of our basic human inheritances," and that, indeed, there is a specific individual gene associated with faith. "I propose," he writes, "that spirituality has a biological mechanism akin to birdsong, albeit a far more complex and nuanced one."

Genes, Hamer adds, do not tell the whole story. Humans' genetic predisposition for spiritual belief is expressed in response to personal experience and the cultural environment, and it is shaped by them.

But the genes, he says, "act by influencing the brain's capability for various types and forms of consciousness, which become the basis for spiritual experiences."

In other words, an inclination toward religious faith is no accident.

What captured Hamer's attention was a gene, called VMAT2, that controls the flow of mood-regulating chemicals called monoamines in the brain. Crucial to making the connection was a scale called "self-transcendence," which, the author writes, "provides a numerical measure of people's capacity to reach out beyond themselves – to see everything in the world as part of one great totality."

Convinced that the brain chemicals controlled by the "God gene" influenced spirituality by altering consciousness, he studied DNA samples from volunteers, trying to identify sequences of DNA that might be involved in the degrees of spirituality observed from one person to the next.

Hamer is best known for a 1993 study linking male homosexuality to a region of the X chromosome. Other researchers tried to replicate the findings in 1999 but were unable to do so.

Hamer writes that while he found an apparent association between VMAT2 and spirituality, the gene is not the only one to affect spirituality.

"It plays only a small, if key, role," he writes. "Many other genes and environmental factors also are involved. Nevertheless, the gene is important because it points out the mechanism by which spirituality is manifested in the brain."

Needless to say, many geneticists are skeptical. When Hamer told his former boss at the National Institutes of Health that he was writing this book, her suggestion was, "Wait until you've retired."

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