Word: genese
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Nowhere has that idea received a more intriguing going-over than in the recently published book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (Doubleday; 256 pages), by molecular biologist Dean Hamer. Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality...
To theologians in the 3rd century B.C., when Ecclesiastes is thought to have been written, that passage spoke to the idea that while all of us are divinely inspired to look for God, none of us are remotely capable of fully comprehending what we are seeking. Scientists in the 21st...
Hamer decided to use the data he gathered in the smoking survey to conduct a little spirituality study on the side. First he ranked the participants along Cloninger's self-transcendence scale, placing them on a continuum from least to most spiritually inclined. Then he went poking around in their...
Studying the nine candidate genes in DNA samples provided by his subjects, Hamer quickly hit the genetic jackpot. A variation in a gene known as VMAT2--for vesicular monoamine transporter--seemed to be directly related to how the volunteers scored on the self-transcendence test. Those with the nucleic acid...
Hamer is careful to point out that the gene he found is by no means the only one that affects spirituality. Even minor human traits can be governed by the interplay of many genes; something as complex as belief in God could involve hundreds or even thousands. "If someone comes...