The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes by Dean Hammer
I picked this book up on the table at the Lehigh Bookstore a few months ago. Reading the flyleaf I decided that it would make an interesting read. I brought it home, placed it on the “to be read” pile and forgot about it. Last week I had worked my way down to it and have been reading it for the last few days.
Basically the book makes a circuitous argument that spirituality is genetically based and is passed from one generation to another. It’s circuitous because the author, who is a well qualified scientist, chooses to present the argument in narrative form rather than as a formal exposition. I suppose the point of this choice was to make the material more accessible to non-technical readers, but I’m not sure that it is successful in that goal. If I were writing such a book I would have attempted instead to convince my technical colleagues first and then encouraged a gifted technical reporter to translate the scientific terms into lay language. But I’m neither the scientist that he is nor a gifted technical writer – so take my advice for what it’s worth.
The argument in a nutshell proceeds thusly: spirituality as an intrinsic quality can be measured by means of “self-transcendence”, self-transcendence can be shown to statistically significant levels to be passed genetically from parent to offspring and then a case is argued for why spirituality can be viewed as a evolutionary advantage.
The text of the book takes each of these points and chapter by chapter explains what they mean and how the statistical studies are done and interpreted. The author tries to break the flow of technical exposition by occasionally introducing vignettes that illustrate the scientific points that he is making.
The last section of the book is a discussion of the relationship between Science and Religion (as both are understood at this moment in history.) Despite the title of the book there is no real discussion of the person of God or of how God might be present in the mechanism the book is trying to explain.
The logical core of the argument is that the psychological trait of “self-transcendence” is a good measure of spirituality. Self-transcendence is defined in the book as the ability that people have to feel “at one” with the environment they are experiencing. A Buddhist might describe this as Nirvana, a Christian as the Beatific Vision a Shaman as a waking dream walk. The state is experienced in different levels of intensity and with different frequency by various individuals. For some it is a common and profound experience while for others it is a relatively rare and passing moment. The author argues that personality aptitude tests which ask subjects about their ability to think and feel empathetically is a good way to quantifiably measure this trait.
If I was going to raise an objection to the work it would be in this particular. I’m not trained in psychology and I do not have a background in genetic research so I’m not well qualified to judge the argument that the author makes once he claims the above assertion. Given that he seems more than competent as a scientist I would imagine that what he does with the assertion is sensible. But I’m not convinced that the identification of self-transcendence as the root spirituality is justified.
My experience of spirituality both personally and as a priest is that it is something much more varied and complex than could be measured by a simple personality test score. I expect the author would agree – and would counter that while this trait is not a measure of spirituality in its fullness, it is at least a measure of a part. My response would be that I’m not convinced that the part he is measuring can be directly correlated to the whole. But that would be another book.
It’s a good read if you find that you’re interested in this sort of material. I just don’t think it is the slam-dunk argument that I’ve heard others claim it is.
-Nick+
