"God's Gene"
Alexander Panchin, Novaya Gazeta, 06.06.2008
She believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works
thanks to the tiny people inside the receiver.
Woody Allen
What fuels society's propensity for mysticism? Why do psychics, fortune-tellers and astrologers not leave the pages of newspapers and TV screens? The teachings of homeopathy or torsion fields claim to be scientific, and supporters of traditional religions insist that creationism be taught on a par with the theory of evolution, and demand the introduction of religious education in schools. However, school education provides for familiarity with the scientific picture of the world, therefore, if the basics of religion or religious culture are taught in school from the point of view of believers, then it is reasonable and fair to balance them with scientific ideas about religion. Will supporters of religious studies like this approach and will they agree to include scientific research such as those listed below in a potential course of study?
Mystical beliefs are spread all over the world and are full of their diversity. Someone does not eat pork, someone prays to summon rain, someone symbolically eats the flesh of their God, believes in flying saucers, clairvoyance, astrological predictions or bad omens. It's no secret that many people tend to take such ideas on faith, without demanding strict evidence and justification, based on their own intuition and feelings. Another group of people is lost in guesses: where do such ideas about the world come from? These two groups of people can argue indefinitely, most often unsuccessfully. Although the questions of the existence of God or spirits are not strictly scientific, scientists of various specialties are trying to understand more mundane problems: why are some people inclined to believe, and others not? how could religions and beliefs arise? what contributes to their preservation?
Scientist Burhus Skinner studied pigeons. At one time, he developed a missile guidance system for the US Navy using these birds, but the project was soon abandoned due to the advent of more advanced developments. And few people were ready to entrust the rocket to a pigeon, despite the success of the tests. In addition, Skinner has conducted a number of interesting behavioral studies. He placed pigeons in a cage with a feeder, into which, from time to time, regardless of the actions of the bird, food fell out. At the same time, pigeons developed peculiar rituals: "one pigeon ran in circles counterclockwise, another beat his head against the corner of the cage, the fourth and fifth performed regular head rotations." It turned out that pigeons begin to repeat more often than usual the movements that they, by chance, made at the time of receiving food. This phenomenon has been called "pigeon prejudice" and is an example of how in the animal world there is an intuitive connection between two unrelated phenomena: hitting your head against the wall and getting food. Examples of this kind of prejudice in a person will be the establishment of a relationship between a black cat who crossed the road and misfortune, a shaman's dance and autumn rain, fortune-telling on cards and receiving a bonus at work, between taking a homeopathic drug and curing an illness. Of course, complex things like religion are not primitive prejudices, but human thinking is much more complicated than pigeon thinking.
In mentally ill people, prejudices can take extreme forms. Neurophysiologist Vilainur Ramachandran talks about how two patients were shown to him in one psychiatric clinic. One of them went out to meet the dawn and stood at the window until evening every day, claiming that he moved the sun across the sky. With the second power of thought, he regulated the flow of moving cars on the road near the hospital, "sorting out" the traffic jams that arise. They saw changes in the world and mistakenly considered them as a consequence of their thought processes, sincerely believed in it. Professor Ramachandran also gives another interesting example of absurd faith in a person with anosognosia. The patient, being in his right mind, is able to discuss any topic without problems, think logically, play chess, but completely denies the paralysis of his left hand caused by brain damage. "It's not my hand; it's big and hairy, so it's my father's hand," the patient may declare. Or: "The arm is not paralyzed, it is completely normal." When a patient is asked to touch his right shoulder with his paralyzed left hand, he does not hesitate to take his sick hand with his healthy right hand and executes the instruction: someone smart in his subconscious understands that the hand is paralyzed, but the person consciously denies the obvious facts, believes that the hand is fine. These are extremes, but maybe a mentally healthy person is not so far from such delusions in everyday life?
If serious brain disorders lead to the appearance of completely absurd beliefs and beliefs, could it be that the usual tendency to believe is also related to the peculiarities of the brain structure? Can these signs be inherited? The first answers were obtained thanks to studies on twins. It turned out that identical twins (genetically identical), raised separately, are much more similar in their attitude to faith in God than ordinary brothers and sisters. If the latter in adulthood often differ in their inclinations to believe in religious phenomena, adult identical twins are about twice as likely to retain the same views. This was the first evidence that "spirituality" is inherited. Soon the corresponding gene was found. In 2004, scientist Dean Hammer published the book "The God Gene: How Faith is Fixed in Our Genes", which describes a unique find. The gene encoding the VMAT2 protein is found in several variants (alleles) in the human population and, according to the study, is associated with a tendency to believe that does not require proof. VMAT2 is a protein that is a transporter of important neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and histamine. These substances provide communication between brain cells. The fact that the "God gene" is associated with the transport of these substances is not surprising: their impact on our perception and emotional state is extremely great. The idea of the "God gene" was accepted by theologians with hostility as an attempt to reduce the religious perception of the world to a banal feature of the functioning of the human body, although this discovery (like any scientific discoveries in general) has nothing to do with the question "Is there a God?". It was only about the fact that people are religious for quite physiological reasons related to their hereditary information.
Before moving on, we need to touch on another disease – epilepsy. In ancient times, it was believed that epileptics were in contact with higher forces, for example, with God, or, conversely, that they were possessed by the devil or an evil spirit. In some tribes, epileptics became shamans, often they were considered predictors of the future, sometimes they were afraid and kept in isolation. One form of epilepsy with a source of excitement in the temporal lobes of the brain hemispheres leads to a strange mystical experience: during and after seizures, it may seem to a person that he has learned all the secrets of the universe, saw "infinity in a grain of sand" or heard the voice of the Creator. After such seizures, people become especially religious. The above-mentioned Professor Ramachandran argues: different objects cause people to have emotions of different strength. The sight of dangerous animals or beautiful representatives of the opposite sex excites a person, while a bottle of water or a stone on the road have no emotional significance for ordinary people. This is very important for an adequate perception of the world. One can put forward a hypothesis: what if, because of seizures, everything begins to seem emotionally significant to a person, and the only explanation for this strange feeling becomes divine intervention?
Experiments have shown that the hypothesis is incorrect: epileptics are excited by danger, but they still do not care about everyday objects, such as a table or a chair. Moreover, unlike ordinary people, such epileptics are extremely weakly aroused by sexual images. But another fact turned out to be striking: as soon as the epileptic was shown an icon, a cross, the word "God", a star or another mystical symbol, a polygraph ("lie detector") measuring the emotional state went off scale, and the subject could detect increased activity of a certain group of nerve cells. As it turned out, it is with a group of cells located in the amygdala (amygdala), on the approaches to the emotional center of the brain – the limbic system, that religious visions of epileptics are associated, as well as their hypersensitive reaction to mystical symbols. It is the amygdala that is associated with determining the emotional significance of the observed objects. Some resourceful supporters of religion, who do not want to lag behind scientific progress, compared this area of the brain to an "antenna" that God put in people to communicate with them. According to Professor Ramachandran, the individual's tendency to believe in spirits, clairvoyance or in God may depend on how this center is arranged in an individual.
But that's not all. The most severe forms of epilepsy are sometimes treated with surgery, during which the corpus callosum is cut – a bridge connecting the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for studying people with disjointed hemispheres. During a series of complex experiments, during which it was possible to communicate with the hemispheres separately, it was found out that as a result of the operation, each of the hemispheres has its own personality, to the point that one hemisphere may turn out to be a believer in God, and the other does not. At the same time, a person does not have a real split personality, he is fully responsible for his actions, behaves like one person, not like two, adequately perceives himself and the world around him. Critics claim that the whole concept is wrong: one hemisphere, namely the speech hemisphere, has a consciousness (soul), and the other is a "zombie", but it is unclear on what basis they draw such a conclusion: the non–speech hemisphere is able to think and communicate with the experimenter on a par with the speech hemisphere, choosing answers to questions with a finger (it really does speak can't). These experiments touch on topics that previously belonged more to the sphere of religion and philosophy than to the natural sciences: is it possible to cut consciousness in half with a scalpel? In addition, a big theological problem arises: if such a person has two personalities, will both of his souls go to heaven, or can it be that the soul of the believing hemisphere will go to heaven, and the soul of the atheist will not?
Thus, some scientists have come to the conclusion: the propensity for religion, mysticism is largely associated with a feature of the functioning of the brain, which, in turn, is determined by genetic factors through certain neurotransmitters. This, perhaps, is the fundamental contradiction between people with rational and irrational types of thinking: they see the world differently due to the physiological differences of the brain, and therefore some are not able to understand blind faith, while others are not able to abandon this faith, no matter how strong arguments are presented to them. I would like to emphasize once again that neither Ramachandran, nor Hamond, nor most other scientists cite this as proof that there is no God: if God existed and was omnipotent, he could easily create people's brains so that they believed in him with one power or another. "It's not clear why God prefers to come to epileptics, and during seizures, but that's his own business," adds Professor Ramachandran.
It should be noted that the study of human morality from the point of view of neurophysiology also did not stand still. Religions definitely claim to be a reference point in the formation of human morality, but, for example, research data on prisoners in American and British prisons indicate a significant predominance of religious people among them, and not atheists and agnostics. There are many explanations for this phenomenon, but in any case there is no real reason to believe that religious views add any moral qualities to people. Here you can recall the crusades, suicide bombers, the Inquisition, the persecution of Old Believers and pagans, sacrifices and so on. But still, most people don't kill each other or rob each other. Why? Relatively recently, a curious discovery was made: the so-called "mirror neurons" were discovered. If we chew an apple, a group of mirror neurons is activated, and the same group of cells is activated if we watch another person chewing an apple. Mirror neurons allow people to imitate their relatives, put themselves in the place of another, for example, when we imagine or see the pain of another person (then we have unpleasant sensations). One can put forward a hypothesis: mirror neurons are a kind of built–in mechanism for maintaining the standards of the golden rule of morality in a person: do to another as you want to be done to you, put yourself in the other person's place. People whose mirror neurons don't work suffer from autism – it's harder for them to get along with people, it's harder for them to imitate others and put themselves in their place. Another study on twins showed that many aspects of behavior, for example, the tendency to forgive, to refuse revenge, are largely inherited. There is reason to believe that morality, like religiosity, is partly an innate feature of the brain, and if this is the case, then the question makes sense: why did such personality traits arise and survive in the course of evolution?
The question of the origin of morality is answered by Richard Dawkins, the popularizer of the theory of evolution, the author of the famous book "The Selfish Gene". With the help of "game theory" many life situations are modeled. One such game is the prisoner's dilemma. There are two players involved in this game. Each round, both players choose one of two actions: to share or not to share a certain amount of money (it is impossible to agree in advance). If both players share, both get 3 conditional dollars, if both do not want to share, 2 conditional dollars. If one divides, and the other does not want to share, the first gets only 1 conditional dollar, and the second gets as much as 4 conditional dollars. In a one-on-one game, if a player chooses the strategy of never sharing, he is guaranteed to receive as much or more money than his opponent. But if there are a hundred or two rivals? In 1981, Axelrod and Hamilton organized a computer tournament to play the prisoner's dilemma to determine the best strategy. There were a lot of programs at the tournament: aggressive, selfish programs, complex programs that calculate other people's moves, soft, "kind" programs, and all of them had to play in turn with each other, gaining points. The most successful program turned out to be very simple, it was called "you to me, I to you". In the first round, she willingly shared, and then banally repeated every previous move of the opponent. Simply put, this program was easily "offended", but just as easily "forgave" and willingly cooperated with other programs. When two similar programs met, they immediately began to "make friends", receiving $ 3 each, and due to this they won according to the final results. The idea that a benevolent program that easily forgives insults turned out to be the most adapted became an argument in favor of the fact that in society people who are able to cooperate and suppress their egoism can generally be more successful. In the life of animals, you can find numerous examples of cooperation that confirm this: big fish do not eat small fish that remove parasites from them, monkeys willingly clean each other, and vampire bats can voluntarily share the extracted blood with hungry comrades, and all this is at the level of genetic programs. Morality is an extremely useful acquisition, inherent in almost every one of us from birth.
The preservation and dissemination of religious views is also explained within the framework of the theory of evolution. In ancient times, religion could contribute to the consolidation of society and the maintenance of hierarchical order, which gave an advantage to religious tribes. In addition, non-believers could be repressed, which suppressed the spread of rational minds. Today, there is every reason for an increase in the number of atheists and agnostics, because there are more and more professions in which critical thinking cannot be dispensed with, professions where people with a religious mindset are not the best place. For example, 93% of the staff of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA do not believe in God, and this is not a simple coincidence, given that in the USA, according to surveys, atheists and agnostics make up from 3 to 9% of the population.
By analogy with genes, Richard Dawkins introduces the concept of memes. A meme is an idea that can be passed from person to person. Successful memes become part of the culture. Fashionable melodies, jokes, rumors and expressions are all memes. Philosopher Dan Dennett draws a parallel between memes and viruses: both require a carrier to spread. The only difference is that a biological virus is information recorded in the form of DNA and RNA molecules, and a meme is information in the form of words or actions linked into an idea or ritual. Useless and harmful memes can spread, but if a meme is useful to its bearer, its chances of spreading increase. Memes may have protective mechanisms for their preservation, for example, a meme may contain information that by doubting it, a person will anger higher powers or fail – then it is more difficult for the meme carrier to get rid of it. Dawkins also considers the history of religions as the evolution of memes that use people's propensity for beliefs to spread.
The volume of the publication does not allow us to consider in detail the application of meme theory and discuss a number of other studies related to the topic under discussion. For example, works on the statistical analysis of the effect of prayer on the recovery of patients, the identification of signs of epilepsy in saints, the neurophysiology of meditation, the role of placebo or comparison of astrological predictions with random predictions. It would be good to see such topics in a potential course of religious studies or religious culture. At such lessons in schools (and maybe in seminaries and Sunday schools), students would be able to compare different approaches to the world and nature and make their own choice. Although certain human inclinations are provided for by the structure of our brain and are partly programmed in our genes, upbringing and education are certainly decisive factors in the formation of a personality.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru16.06.2008