Can a penchant for mysticism be inherited? What are "pigeon prejudices"? What are the evolutionary benefits of religious people? Read the answer in the article by journalist Alexander Panchin "The Gene of God".
What drives society's penchant for mysticism? Why psychics, fortune tellers and astrologers do not leave the pages of newspapers and TV screens? Teachings about homeopathy or torsion fields claim to be scientific, while supporters of traditional religions insist that creationism be taught along with the theory of evolution, and demand the introduction of religious education in schools.
However, school education provides for acquaintance with the scientific picture of the world, therefore, if the basics of religion or religious culture are taught at school from the point of view of believers, then it is reasonable and fair to balance them with scientific ideas about religion. Would religious scholars like this approach, and would they be willing to include research like the ones below in a potential curriculum?
She believes in God. But she also believes that the radio works thanks to the tiny people inside the receiver.
Woody Allen
Mystical beliefs are spread throughout the world and are full of their diversity. Someone does not eat pork, someone prays to call rain, someone symbolically eats the flesh of their God, believes in flying saucers, clairvoyance, astrological predictions or bad omens. It is no secret that many people tend to take such ideas on faith, without requiring strict proofs and justifications, based on their own intuition and feelings.
Another group of people is lost in conjecture: 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 the problems of more mundane: why are some people inclined to faith, while others are not? how could religions and beliefs arise? what contributes to their preservation?
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The 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 appearance of more advanced developments. And few people were ready to entrust the rocket to the pigeon, despite the success of the tests. In addition, Skinner has conducted a number of interesting behavioral studies. He placed the 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, the pigeons developed peculiar rituals: "one pigeon ran counterclockwise in circles, the other beat its 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 those movements that they, by coincidence, made at the time of receiving food. This phenomenon was called "pigeon prejudices" and is an example of how in the animal kingdom an intuitive connection arises between two unrelated phenomena: hitting the head against the wall and getting food. Examples of prejudices of this kind in humans would be the establishment of a relationship between a black cat crossing the road and misfortune, a shaman's dance and autumn rain, fortune-telling and getting a bonus at work, between taking a homeopathic medicine and curing an illness. Of course, complex things like religion are not primitive prejudices, but human thinking is much more complex than that of a dove.
In mentally ill people, prejudice can take extreme forms. Neurophysiologist Vilaynur Ramachandran talks about how he was shown two patients 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 moves 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 emerging traffic jams. They saw the changes in the world and mistakenly considered them as a consequence of their thought processes, sincerely believed in it. Professor Ramachandran gives another interesting example of absurd faith in a person with anosognosia.
The patient, being of sound 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. “This is not my hand; she is big and hairy, which means that this is my father's hand,”the patient may say. Or: "The hand is not paralyzed, it is completely normal."
When a patient is asked to touch his paralyzed left hand to his right shoulder, he, without hesitation, takes his diseased hand with his healthy right hand and follows the instruction: someone clever in his subconscious mind understands that the hand is paralyzed, but the person deliberately denies the obvious facts, believes that the hand in order. These are extremes, but maybe a mentally healthy person is not so far from such delusions in everyday life?
If serious brain damage leads to the emergence of completely absurd beliefs and beliefs, can it be that the usual inclination to believe is associated with the peculiarities of the brain? Can these traits be inherited? The first answers came from research 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.
While the latter in adulthood often disagree in their inclinations to believe in religious phenomena, adult identical twins are about twice as likely to maintain the same views. This was the first evidence that "spirituality" is inherited. The corresponding gene was soon found.
In 2004, scientist Dean Hammer publishes The Gene of God: How Faith Is Anchored 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 transports essential neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and histamine.
These substances provide communication between brain cells. The fact that the “gene of God” is associated with the transport of these very substances is not surprising: their effect on our perception and emotional state is extremely great. The idea of the "gene of God" was received with hostility by theologians 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?" does not have. It was only about the fact that people are religious for completely physiological reasons associated with 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 the devil or an evil spirit possessed them. In some tribes, epileptics became shamans, they were often considered predictors of the future, sometimes they were feared and kept in isolation. One of the forms of epilepsy with a source of excitement in the temporal lobes of the cerebral 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. Professor Ramachandran, mentioned above, argues: different objects evoke emotions of different strengths in people. 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 has no emotional significance for ordinary people. This is very important for an adequate perception of the world. One can hypothesize: what if, because of the seizures, everything begins to seem emotionally significant to a person, and divine intervention becomes the only explanation for this strange feeling?
Experiments have shown that the hypothesis is incorrect: epileptics are excited by danger, but everyday objects, such as a table or a chair, still do not bother them. 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 other mystical symbol, the polygraph ("lie detector"), measuring the emotional state, went off scale, and in the subject it was possible to detect increased activity of a certain group of nervous cells.
As it turned out, it is with a group of cells located in the amygdala, on the approaches to the emotional center of the brain - the limbic system, that the religious visions of epileptics are associated, as is their supersensitive reaction to mystical symbols. It is the amygdala that is associated with the determination of the emotional significance of the observed objects. Some resourceful religious adherents who do not want to keep up with scientific progress have compared this area of the brain to the "antenna" that God has planted in people to communicate with them. According to Professor Ramachandran, the tendency to believe in spirits, clairvoyance or in God may depend on how this center is arranged in an individual person.
But that's not all. The most severe forms of epilepsy are sometimes treated with surgery to cut the corpus callosum, the jumper that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize for his study of people with dissociated hemispheres in 1981. In the course of a series of complex experiments, during which it was possible to communicate with the hemispheres separately, it was found that as a result of the operation, each of the hemispheres has its own individuality, up to the fact that one hemisphere may 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, and not like two, adequately perceives himself and the world around him. Critics argue that the whole concept is wrong: one hemisphere, namely the speech hemisphere, has consciousness (soul), and the other has a "zombie", but it is not clear on what basis they make such a conclusion: the non-speech hemisphere is able to think and communicate with the experimenter on a par with the speech choosing answers to questions with a finger (it really cannot speak).
These experiments touch upon topics that previously belonged to the realm of religion and philosophy rather than natural sciences: can a scalpel cut consciousness in half? In addition, a big theological problem arises: if such a person has two personalities, will both of his souls go to heaven, or is it possible that the soul of a believing hemisphere will go to heaven, but the soul of an atheistic one does not?
Thus, some scientists have come to the conclusion: the propensity for religion, mysticism is largely associated with the peculiarities 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 a rational and irrational type of thinking: they see the world differently due to physiological differences in the brain, and therefore some are not able to understand blind faith, while others are not able to give up this faith. no matter how strong the arguments are presented to them.
I 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 the brain of people so that they believe in him with that or some other force. "It is not clear only why God prefers to appear to epileptics, and during seizures, but this is 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, data from studies of prisoners in American and British prisons indicate a significant predominance of religious people among them, rather than 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. Still, most people don't kill or rob each other.
Why? More recently, an interesting discovery was made: the so-called "mirror neurons" were discovered. If we gnaw an apple, a group of mirror neurons is activated, and the same group of cells is activated if we watch another person gnaw the apple. Mirror neurons allow people to imitate their relatives, to put themselves in the place of another, for example, when we imagine or see the pain of another person (then we also 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 with another as you want to be treated with you, put yourself in the place of another person. People whose mirror neurons do not work have autism - it is more difficult for them to get along with people, it is more difficult for them to imitate others and put themselves in their place. Another study on twins showed that many aspects of behavior, such as the tendency to forgive, refuse to take 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 so, then it makes sense to ask: why did such personality traits appear and persist during evolution?
The question of the origin of morality is answered by Richard Dawkins, popularizer of the theory of evolution, author of the famous book "The Selfish Gene". Many life situations are modeled with the help of "game theory". One such game is the Prisoner's Dilemma.
This game is played by two players. Each round, both players choose one of two actions: to share or not to share a certain amount of money (you cannot agree in advance). If both players split, both get 3 conditional dollars, if both do not want to share - 2 conditional dollars. If one shares, and the other does not want to share, the first receives only 1 conditional dollar, and the second receives as much as 4 conditional dollars. In a heads-up game, if a player chooses a strategy to never share, he is guaranteed to receive the same or more money than his opponent. But if there are a hundred or two rivals?
In 1981, Axelrod and Hamilton hosted a prisoner dilemma computer tournament to determine the best strategy. There were many programs at the tournament: aggressive, selfish programs, complex programs calculating other people's moves, soft, "kind" programs, and they all 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 opponent's move. Simply put, this program was easily “offended”, but just as easily “forgiven” and willingly cooperated with other programs.
When two similar programs met, they immediately began to "be friends", receiving $ 3 each, and due to this they won in the final results. The idea that a benevolent program that easily forgives grievances proved to be the best fit has become an argument in favor of the fact that in society, people who are able to cooperate and suppress their selfishness can generally be more successful.
In the life of animals, you can find numerous examples of cooperation confirming this: big fish do not eat small fish that remove parasites from them, monkeys willingly clean each other, and vampire bats can voluntarily share their blood with hungry comrades, and all this is laid on the level of genetic programs. Morality is an extremely useful acquisition inherent in almost every one of us from birth.
The preservation and spread of religious beliefs 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 a 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 more and more professions are emerging in which critical thinking cannot be done, professions where people with a religious mindset are not the best place. For example, 93% of the National Academy of Sciences employees in the United States do not believe in God, and this is no coincidence given that in the United States, according to polls, atheists and agnostics make up between 3% and 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. Trendy tunes, anecdotes, rumors and expressions are all memes. Philosopher Dan Dennett draws a parallel between memes and viruses: both require a carrier in order to spread. The only difference is that a biological virus is information recorded in the form of DNA and RNA molecules, while 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 are increased.
For their preservation, memes can have protective mechanisms, for example, a meme can contain information that by doubting it, a person will anger higher powers or fail - then it is more difficult for the bearer of the meme to get rid of him. Dawkins also views the history of religions as the evolution of memes that use people's inclination to belief to spread themselves.
The volume of the publication does not allow considering in detail the application of meme theory and discussing a number of other studies related to the topic under discussion. For example, work 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 nice to see such topics in a potential religious studies or religious culture course. In such lessons in schools (and maybe in seminaries and Sunday schools), students could 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.
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