The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes

by Dean H. Hamer

Book Overview

LEADING GENETICIST DEAN HAMER CRACKS THE "CODE" BEHIND WHY WE ARE PREDISPOSED TO BELIEVE IN GOD. IN A BOOK THAT BRIDGES THE GAP BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE, HAMER BRILLIANTLY ILLUMINATES HOW OUR... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385500580
• ISBN13: 9780385500586
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 241 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

New Age Junk.

Seeing that no one has reviewed this book for fifteen years is a relief! What a pile ego. This book is a melting pot of new age spiritism - Buddhist monk and Hindu snippets and a bunch of science-y lies. Every time the author mentions something from the Bible, you can sense his snark as he says “according to the Bible” yet when mentioning Buddha or demonic Hindu gods or shamanic tribes, he never gives reference to any of their text. Very biased towards meditation, oneness, the New Age movement, love of self, and the universalists one world religion. Questioning why humans crave God and faith, the author never stops to mention that our Creator is written upon our hearts. Duh! But he does throw in how we evolved from “chimpanzees, gorillas and other creatures,” 300,000 years ago. *facepalm The author also uses the Bible to pinpoint certain people’s, places and times in ancient history when it suits his explanations, then turns around and questions the information written in the Bible. ??! Like how “apparently” Jesus was a healer. You can see his eyes roll as he typed that one. After reading the first chapter, I skimmed through the titles of the rest and scanned a through the Jewish DNA section before throwing this book in the trash. Had I read the authors bio, touting that he has been on Oprah and other mainstream false doctrine shows, I would have never bought this to begin with. Minions. The chapter about Jewish DNA was good - his science-y hypothesis of the Priesthood timeline probably not being feasible - was proven wrong, in his own words, by DNA testing the Jewish paternal lines. Aren’t you ready to accept the Bible as infallible truth, Mr. Hamer? Time is closing in...

Do You Have God in your Genes?

God has certainly made a comeback since the days when the death of God was on everyone's mind. There is much less hesitancy today for folks to prescribe just exactly how a person might go about finding God. I don't mean the preaching from Scriptures, which has always gone on. I mean the new ideas about God, the developments of science that suggest that God might exist, the developments in spiritual psychology that point toward activities that put a person on the path to experiences of God, and the general tone of the times that encourage thinking about God. An interesting development in materialistic science (that is, that domain of science that studies material objects) is the debate over "intelligent design." Researchers have discovered certain characteristics in living creatures that supposedly couldn't have developed through natural selection, but would have to have been built in "by design." These discoveries suggest to some a "designer." Another area where materialistic science has touched upon God is within the human brain. Researchers have found that there are certain parts of the brain that seem to be particularly active when a person is having an experience of God, such as through meditation. The suggestion is that the God connection, if not God itself, is found in the brain. Next up to bat is the idea that God is in our genes. I'm referring to the new book, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes (Doubleday). The author, Dean H. Hamer, Ph.D., is a respected geneticist at the National Institutes of Health. His previous book, The Science of Desire was a New York Times Book of the Year. This second book was anxiously awaited and now will receive plenty of attention. Has he found God? He writes that his research suggests that religion may not be a culturally invented and transmitted human activity. Instead, it may be an instinct, "hard-wired" into our brain. His research has focused on genetic structure, on the question of whether or not religious striving is in the human DNA. He believes he has identified a particular gene that makes a person prone toward seeking the experience of a higher power. The essence of his research has been to assess a person's spirituality by the use of a questionnaire. The questionnaire contains questions such as, "Do you feel a sense of unity with all the things around you?" or "Do you sometimes feel a spiritual connection to other people that can't be explained in words?" Many researchers have used this same questionnaire to explore the relationship between spirituality and health, so it has some standing in the scientific community. Using this measuring device to distinguish people with high spirituality from folks with little evidence of a desire for self-transcendence, Dr. Hamer believes he has identified the gene responsible for this difference. From such a finding, he argues, not for the existence of God, exactly, but that the tendency to believe in a higher power, or to have mystical experie

"...new discoveries..."

Of any science, quantum physics has so far come closest to explaining the concepts of spirit and spirituality, until molecular genetics. I love books that bridge the gap between science and spirit, and The God Gene is no exception. Hamer defines spirituality as something that "provides humans with a sense of purpose and the courage and will to overcome hardship and loss". He talks about new discoveries in both behavioural genetics and neurobiology that indicate that humans inherit predispositions that make their brains "ready and eager to embrace a higher power". Comparing DNA samples against a scale that measures spirituality, Hamer coined the phrase the "God gene" when he actually identified a specific gene that he says "the most spiritual of us share". Using awesome chapters such as "How the Brain Sees God" and "Evolving Faith" , Hamer works hard to make clear the difference between spirituality and religion. He claims that, although our genes predispose us to believe, they don't tell us what to believe in and that spirituality is universal while religion is based on culture and traditions. Hamer does not confirm or deny the existence of God but merely explains the "mechanism by which belief itself is biologically fostered".

Putting God Back in the Classroom

For most of recorded history, religion has been the central organizing force behind every society of every country in the world. And yet it is quite possible today to receive a "liberal" education without learning a single thing about religion. Not only is the subject avoided by scientists, of both the social and natural variety, but also by historians, sociologists, philosophers, and even "ehticists." Thus it was with some trepedation that I picked up this book about God by a molecular biologist who concedes up front that he is "agnostic". I am glad that I did. Dean Hamer does a superb job of weaving together the age-pld history of religion, the remarkable varieties of its expression, and the emotional power it has in peoples lives, with all the newest gimmicks of "genomics", brain chemistry, and the like. The result is a truly intriguing analysis of where religion - or at lest the private expression of it, aka spirituality - is derived from. Hamer is less convincing when he tries to explain away organized religion as the results of "memes", the definition of which remains far too fuzzy for my taste, and his attempts at philosophizing on the future of mankind are frankly painful. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that an academic scientist of Hamer's reputation takes religion as something more than superstition. We can only hope for more deep analysis of this sort in the future.

Thought Provoking

A very interesting and well researched book. Scientifically brilliant and surprisingly humorous. I really enjoyed Hamer's perspective and how he inspires you to think about your own beliefs.

Refreshing

Enough with the religious types, the atheists, and even the political wannabes who are abusing this space to promote their own ideas. I mean really - how did a rant against John Kerry get into a review of "The God Gene"? I actually read this book and found it refreshing. Hamer starts out with a question - why is religion still such a big part of peoples' lives? - and tries to answer it the way scientists do - looking at data. The chapters on twins and siblings were especially interesting. Some of the material on brain chemicals and genes were hard going, but every once in a while the good Doctor lightens things up with a zinger, like the one about Monica Lewinsky. The one complaint I have is the title. This book really isn't about God at all. It's about us humans and how we work.