Robert Rowthorn, a professor emeritus of economics at Cambridge University, published a study that models population genetics scenarios based on the observation that religious individuals have, on average, higher fertility than non-religious individuals. In an extreme example, Rowthorn cites studies that show Amish and ultra-orthodox Jews have fertility rates 3 to 4 times higher than the secular average. Rowthorn goes on to build mathematical models that show how religiosity can spread throughout the population. From the paper’s abstract:
The paper considers the effect of religious defections [i.e., abandoning one's religion] and exogamy [i.e., marrying outside one's religious denomination or marrying a non-religious individual] on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of ‘cultural hitch-hiking’, whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice.
This models assumes, of course, that there is some sort of genetic underpinning for religious belief or, as Rowthorn puts it “[b]elief in the supernatural, obedience to authority, and affinity for ceremony and ritual depend on genetically based features of the human brain.” Naturally, there is a lot of debate on the biological foundation of religious belief. A great place to start is Carl Zimmer’s review of Dean H. Hamer’s “The God Gene.”
What do you think? What are some of the problems inherent in this debate?
References
Hamer, D.H. (2005). The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes. Doubleday: New York.
Regardless of religious inclination, isn’t it inevitable that certain genes are going to be more prevalent within smaller ethnic groups? Maybe higher fertility has persisted within the Amish and ultra-orthodox Jews because of consistant innerbreeding. I find it difficult to believe that a cultural construction such as religion has manifested as a gene..
Increased fertility totally has nothing to do with the anti-contraceptive view that many religions (especially extreme groups such as the Amish) has. Nope. Clearly a gene.
Common sense tells me to dismiss this idea at the first suggestion of a gene that is said to cause and transfer religiosity. However, assuming that this gene does, or at least could, exist, one must also immediately ask a few questions:
How do you define religiosity?
The study’s response:
It is widely agreed that religion has biological foundations—that belief in the supernatural, obedience to authority or susceptibility to ceremony and ritual depend on genetically based features of the human brain [1–6] (Rowthorn).
The study is based specifically on Hasidic or Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Amish, both Judeo-Christian, monotheistic religions. The immediate implication of the above passage suggests that all religions can be defined by such criteria (criteria that is in some ways limited to Judeo-Christian thought).
Alongside of this issue, it is also important to point out that the topic of the study, high fertility rates in orthodox religious groups, cannot be randomly linked to religiosity. Relation does not equal causation. The survey groups are guaranteed to have a “high level” of religiosity, regardless of genes, just by being members of the sect. Other factors within their religiosity and their culture, such as diet regulations and hygiene regulations, regulations upon certain actions (such as drinking and smoking), and daily physical activity, also play a role in their fertility level. In addition to their lifestyles, both sects encourage high goals for procreation among their members and discourage or prohibit the use of contraceptives.
Furthermore, these societies are commonly characterized by marriage within their communities. This would mean, logically, that genes with higher levels of fertility would be transferred repeatedly among a small group of people, thus increasing the level of fertility within the group, especially with hundreds of years worth of natural selection.
Hamer’s book may also be… a bit odd…in its claims for a god-gene. It is based on very low, unsubstantiated test results. Beyond that however, this gene, VMAT2, would have to hold more than just tendencies towards observable religious behavior; religiosity is only one face of a larger whole. A belief system is not limited to religions (especially religion as it is defined by these scientists); an atheist may obey authority, feel connected to the world, enjoy ritual and ceremony, and “transcend the self” (whatever that means).
This is of course assuming we can claim that all humans adhere to some kind of belief system (consciously or not), or in other words, that everyone has the religious gene. If we can indeed claim this, then these genes would facilitate, presumably, tendencies towards beliefs and ethos outside of religion, since all people aren’t religious. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a gene for this, but rather, the scope of the study is too narrow to carry any value for determining the existence of this gene.
If not everyone has the gene for religiosity, one must ask the question of ‘why not?’ Which leads to the more important question of the origins? Another question raised, but not dealt with in the study. It mentions the two competing discourses: that of a specific part of the brain that creates religious experience and that of a specific part of the brain created by religious experience. But the article gives no verdict on this, nor does the author of the book The God Gene. However, even with an answer, if it is one the one of the sides shown above, it only proves that there is a part of the brain limited to religious experience, not that there is a gene for it.
To conclude, I think it’s safe to assume that these studies are going about finding this gene in the wrong ways. It seems much more like research carelessly gathered to prove a personal point. You will always find what you’re looking for. As the author of the review states, it would be more fitting to title the book “ A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study” (Scientific American).
I think it’s safe to assume there isn’t a gene that causes religiosity, or even belief in general, though some may argue that humans biologically gravitate towards culture, which entails beliefs. It’s certainly safe to assume, though, that being religious has nothing to do with fertility.
Very good response, and I would like to comment on the paragraph about everyone having a religious gene.
If everyone has this gene, how can we definitively say what it even does? I assume that because of ethics, there have been no studies in which this gene has been deactivated in order to observe the resulting effect on the individual. This isn’t exactly an experiment that can be done by proxy. How do you determine whether a rat is religious or not? If we can’t naturally view what the effects of having the gene versus not having the gene are, and ethics prohibit forcing this scenario in the lab, it seems to me to be highly unlikely that any specific function of the gen can be declared.
That being said, the existence of a gene that ubiquitous in humans can not be linked to a particular trait that is supposedly universal trait in exclusion of all others. And even if it can, we can’t say with current technology anything that specific about it. There may in fact be a gene that influences how obedient to authority we are. But as you’ve said, turning that fact into claiming existence of a religion/God gene is grossly misstating the nature of the gene itself. An analogy would be finding a gene that influences how likely you are to want to connect with other people (a plausible gene) and then claiming that you have found the Facebook gene.
This is a post compiled from comments made in UNCG’s Myth, Magic, and Religion class:
One of the major issues here is explaining why religious individuals tend to have higher fertility. Many ultra-religious groups are encouraged to marry (and thus have children) early, do not use contraception or practice abortion, and, particularly among groups such as the Amish, require large families as a labor force.
More fundamental, however, is how one defines “religion” or “religious.” There are many ways to believe in the supernatural, and not all of them fall under what is commonly viewed as “religious” (the latter of which is probably what the author of the study is limiting the analysis to).
How can I put this article into a opinion. Yeah, religion is part most human beings around the world not just the Amish. If you think about it most people likely to married someone who have the similar faith and culture background. There are many websites that promotes why people should married in the “same yolk.” Such as Jews married Jews because of the keeping the lineage of the Israel ( at least they are I think) which it affect the genes in the that specific group. Think about what type of mutations/ diseases in religion group. However religious gene just points out the small groups in the world, but you can have that understanding. It’s what I call semi isolation model.