NOTE: In case anyone has noticed, I haven't had time for blogging in the past few days. I don't know what I am going to do about it, but what follows has been languishing....

In a fascinating post last month, Randall Parker discussed scientific data showing a possible connection between "spirituality" and serotonin receptors in the brain:

Once it becomes possible to control what genetic variations people pass on to their offspring and once genetic variations are discovered that alter personality then at that point the average personality types born to people of different regions, countries, occupations, economic classes, and religious beliefs will diverge. People will make decisions to make their children more like what they want ideal children to be. Imagine religious believers choosing to make their children have personalities that are highly spiritual while at the same time scientists and engineers choose to have children who are highly rational and skeptical. This could lead to genetic religious wars.

If people in some regions of the world decide to make their children more spiritual and other regions make their children more rational and skeptical then one can imagine wars being fought as a result of conflicts of values that flow from fundamental differences in brain wiring. One can also imagine wars fought to stop the people or governments of opposing countries from creating offspring that are either seen as a security threat (e.g. a highly willing deeply spiritual suicide martyr personality type) or as a blasphemy against god.

I tend to distrust statistical correlations. There are always too many exceptions. I still haven't gotten over that study which showed statistical correlations between homosexuality and eye blinking. (I'd be willing to bet that men who masturbate blink at a different rate than men who don't -- and that there are additional physical as well as emotional differences!)

Purportedly, the study showed that serotinin "binding potential" (an "index
for the density of available 5-HT1A receptors")

correlated inversely with scores for self-transcendence, a personality trait covering religious behavior and attitudes

Self transcendance?

Here is the "scientific" definition:

Character

Self-Transcendence quantifies the extent to which individuals conceive themselves as integral parts of the universe as a whole. Self-transcendent individuals are spiritual, unpretentious, humble, and fulfilled. These traits are adaptively advantageous when people are confronted with suffering, illness, or death, which is inevitable with advancing age. They are disadvantageous in most modern societies where idealism, modesty, and meditative search for meaning might interfere with the acquisition of wealth and power. People who are low in Self-Transcendence are described as practical, self-conscious, materialistic, and controlling. Such individuals are expected to be well adapted in most Western societies because of their rational objectivity and materialistic success. However, they consistently have difficulty accepting suffering, loss of control, personal and material losses, and death, which lead to adjustment problems particularly with advancing age.

The authors of the religion-and-serotonin study seem to associate it with religion, but I would associate it with much more. But here is how the study authors describe it:

The spiritual acceptance scale measures a person's apprehension of phenomena that cannot be explained by objective demonstration. Subjects with high scores tend to endorse extrasensory perception and ideation, whether named deities or a commonly unifying force. Low scorers, by contrast, tend to favor a reductionistic and empirical worldview.

And how about the "practical, self-conscious, materialistic, and controlling" people who "consistently have difficulty accepting suffering, loss of control, personal and material losses, and death, which lead to adjustment problems"? Now, in the serotonin study they have been transformed into people who favor "a reductionistic and empirical worldview."

Like the test authors, perhaps?

Sorry folks, but this stuff ain't science to me. It strikes me as highly judgmental.

And, while I don't mean to defend spiritual people, I would wonder how they could even begin to define that. Why wouldn't a believer in an imaginary Communist Utopia be considered "spiritual" for having transcended ordinary mortal feelings?

The ability to transcend the self is at the core of Utopian thinking. Subordination oneself to the state (and forgetting about oneself in the process) has led to enormous self-sacrifice, as well as to sacrifice of others.

QUERY: Might not "the Good" itself involve self transcendence?

(See my previous post on Communism and Christianity: "We are killing to build a world in which no one will ever kill. We accept criminality for ourselves in order that the earth may at last be full of innocent people")

It occurs to me that "self-transcendence" is by no means synonymous with religious belief. Most of the religious people I know do not speak in terms of self-transcendance, out of body experiences, talking with God, or anything like that. People who've had LSD trips (and some of the Ecstacy crowd) sure. But religion is more a matter of belief than transcending the self. It's a bit like the old saying, "If you talk to God, you're religious. If God talks to you, you're crazy." I submit that very few of those who call themselves "religious" hear God talking to them, or leave their bodies.

I am deeply suspicious of the assumptions underlying the search for biological differences in the brain as an explanation of non-conforming thoughts, and I think it is entirely possible that these differences might beg the question as to whether they were caused by, and not a cause of, the self-transcendence under observation.

If I may illustrate by personal experience, I have noticed certain common patterns in the behavior of bad drivers. For example, I have seen that old men who wear hats often tend to drive much too slowly, and in the middle of the road. Might the wearing of hats have something to do with the behavior? Or does the bad driving cause the wearing of hats? Similarly, I have also noticed that drivers whose back window ledges are cluttered with stuffed animals are usually very unpredictable in their habits -- and should be given wide berth. Again, did the stuffed animals cause the bad driving? Might there be differences in the brain which account for the bad driving? Are studies needed?

This is not a new idea, of course. Brain receptor chemical changes have been noted in relation to the "runners high", the psychedelic drug high (receptors up!); and, of course, with the dream/religious/drug state. Are they all -- one way or another -- just naturally "turned on, tuned in, and dropped out"? Might daydreamers somehow be different too?

Wow. And how about PMS? (Or were these possibly religious PMS sufferers?)

Will science reach what Joseph Hertzlinger calls a "consensus"?

Mr. Hertzlinger also comments on Randall Parker's religion and serotonin post as follows:

"There are different ways of being spiritual. I suspect adherents of most traditional religions will be wary of the sort of spirituality that causes one to join the Cult-of-the-Month Club."

This, of course, begs the question, WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY? Looking for designer genes for something so ill-defined strikes me as about on the level of the search for the Holy Grail of Designer Gay Genes.

But such things are certainly considered fair game for politicians.

And recent remarks by Howard Dean begged the question of whether there might be "designer genes" for both God and gays!

Let's start with Dean's remark (that homosexuals were born that way):

The overwhelming evidence is that there is very significant, substantial genetic component to it. From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people.

Naturally, this created quite a stir among religious Christian bloggers:

I will make a bold, inflammatory statement: Any Christian who thinks it is vital to affirm that homosexuals are not born that way is severely deficient in his or her understanding of a vital Christian doctrine: Original Sin.

Question for those who argue that homosexuals are never born that way: Do you presume they were born innocent? Do you know what original sin means? Do you know in paedobaptism what the water signifies?

Because of original sin, we all are natural born sinners. And each of us is responsible for the consequences of his own sins, in spite of the fact that we are predisposed to commit them. Tough rules, but this is the only game in town. Of course, the gospel is the good news that shows the way out of the pit into which we enter the world.

The scientific question is really just a secondary-cause issue. God uses gravity to move the planets around. No doubt He could use our genes to encode original sin.

Christians who argue, in the face of evidence, that no homosexual is born that way display exactly the same ignorance regarding this basic doctrine of the faith (original sin) as does Dr. Dean.

God, being just, would not punish homosexuals for being born that way.

Yes he would. And He would also punish adulterers, coveters, liars, thieves, idolaters—in fact everyone on the planet for being born a sinner. There is only one way out: a saving faith in Jesus Christ. (Via Josh Claybourn.)

For what it's worth, I don't subscribe to the genetic theory per se. But even if it could be shown that every homosexual was "born that way" it would make no difference at all to matters of religious doctrine. This argument is a waste of time.

It comes down to whether or not people think a behavior is sinful. If that behavior is judged sinful by the human beings who claim to speak for God, then no amount of scientific evidence is relevant.

Let's move to something a little less sexually inflammatory; something more people can relate to. How about masturbation? Let us assume that a gene is found which creates a propensity for men (and women, for that matter) to masturbate. No one makes anyone masturbate, but let's face it; without a sex partner, most normal men will eventually yield to the temptation and BINGO! There goes their wad.

Let us further assume that masturbation is a sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that it is a sin. I don't know what the Bible says, but I think I recall something about spilling one's seed on a rock. Onanism or something like that. This would mean that God created the masturbatory gene just to tempt everyone into sin. You might say that this makes God an asshole, and then you might question the infinite wisdom of those who claim they know what's in God's mind. But the gene would change nothing.

Would the evidence that there is a gene for religion (or spirituality) make any difference? Might God have deliberately created people who are programmed from birth to be True Believers? Why not? It makes things easier, doesn't it? I mean "predestination" and all that stuff. To establish the right "kingdom" here on earth, all we need to do is manage the genes so that only the "elect" are born!

At last, science and religion merge!

What a wonderful utopia!

The problem is that I believe in free will, and I am not buying the gene stuff. Not even if they find the proper "statistical correlations."

Of course, I lied about masturbation being less inflammatory than homosexuality....

Yes, dear friends, yes! There is solid evidence that masturbation causes homosexuality. Almost 100% of homosexuals started with masturbation. I think if we can isolate the gene for that, we might be able to make some progress....

Might there be some correlation with tight genes?

NOTE: The above essay (along with many excellent posts on a variety of subjects) is also posted at BlogCritics.org.