Behavioral Genetics: Religion and Fear

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/behavior.shtml

That's a quick rundown of what Behavioral Genetics(BH) is all about. I bought into the notion as soon as it was explained to me. That page in particular has some great links to the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) which "contains bibliographic references and a summary of the scientific literature describing what is known about a particular gene, trait, or disorder." Some of the OMIM traits listed are 'Ability to move ears' or 'Ability to roll the tongue', which aren't the BH I'm interested in, though it's still neat. Instead, I'm thinking about the traits listed like 'alcoholism', 'homosexuality', and the most interesting one on that page 'Novelty seeking personality trait'. Essentially, BH states that the way we act is a mixture of hereditary and environmental factors, but before environment has a chance to influence us, the core of 'you' already exists. I'm no philosopher, but I'd imagine this research eliminates some branches of belief in free will.

In addition to the traits the link above lists, some recent research has scientists positing that a belief in God or the supernatural is also a genetic trait. This makes complete and total sense to me personally, solely because I never 'felt the spirit'. I promise you though, I really tried to. I wanted to be 'saved', I prayed at night, I wanted to 'witness' the spirit in church, but I never felt anything. At one point I thought there was something 'wrong' with me, as all the people in my grandma's church seemed to have this amazing ability to communicate with God. I was hoping that, open dialogue with The Lord would show up along with with my body hair, that it would be kicked off by puberty. Seeing how this never happened, I stopped looking at myself and started questioning the people around me. I had a kid tell me when I was very young, that his dad was Superman, and I completely believed him. I even argued with my dad about it. I mean, why would someone tell you such a crazy thing unless it was true?? My father's victory in that debate probably led me down the same path of questioning people's beliefs in those who are super-powered.

So, I gave up.

I remember asking my mom a question, that only a kid would ask "Mom....Will I go to Hell if I don't believe in God?" My mom replied "No! Of course not! You can believe whatever you want to believe Jimmy......Did your grandma tell you that??" No she didn't, but that's what church and the other kids tell you. I could never really rationalize my lack of a belief in God, because it was a gut feeling, or lack thereof. I didn't logically deduce that it was unlikely that God existed, I simply didn't feel anything, and had to look to my atheist friends and famous philosophers to explain myself. I found very often that atheists were the by-product of a very religious upbringing which they resented, and had incredible contempt for organized religion. I didn't feel that hate, nor could I relate to a religious upbringing since my parents were not religious at all, so I settled on 'agnostic'. To this day, that's still what I would label myself. Because face it - no one knows. Not Christians, Hindus, Jews etc. If you say you know, well then, you're lying, because you're not a ghost. If you were to ask me if I believe in God, I'll say no. Which is atheistic, and I'd like to point out, a belief system. Technically - scientifically - I'm agnostic, and if you're reading this, which is to say you're alive, so are you.

When I first met Michi and she linked me to articles about 'The God Gene'. It was as if a metaphysical rock hit me in the face. Or, maybe I dodged a metaphysical rock, because this made more sense to me than any philosophy I'd encountered yet, and I'm sure some would say it's a superficial approach with the least amount of thought involved. Well, it's not. It's simple and it makes sense. Instead of wondering "People feel God because they were raised that way, but how is it that they FEEL God? Are they liars??" Now I think, "Oh. Most those people feel God, because their brains are telling them to, and they don't have a choice really. Cool."

No, not cool.

If the God Gene is real, then I'm in a genetic minority on this planet, and that's just another note in the pile of notes that's been gathering all my life to tell me I'm an odd man out. When I see the religious conviction in the U.S., in the Middle East, and Buddhist riots in Asia, I can't help but sit back and think "What the fuck?" I've gotten to the point where I think of belief in a higher power as a form of socially functioning, mild insanity. To follow that, I think about how most people on the planet believe in a supernatural higher power and I say "Crap." It makes me feel like I'm living in a time which my genetics are not fit for. For some of the best examples of a person who is genetically unfit for a religious environment, I'll refer everyone to Michi Tsunoda. She has some great stories about her upbringing in a religious environment and trying to 'fake it' through the experience until she was old enough to be honest about how she felt. I specifically like her 'speaking in tongues' story. I'll save that tale for her to tell though.

What this has led me to believe in the past few years is a train of that would be labeled as 'immoral', 'pseudo scientific', and 'discriminatory'. What I'm getting around to expressing is the notion of how awesome the world might be if we could genetically engineer religion out of our brains. Yep. I'm a fascist I guess? But, hell, I'd say the history of tens of thousands of years of war, cruelty and oppression all due to what maybe a genetically dictated behavior might indicate things aren't working so well out as it stands. While we're at it, let's engineer out the over-amped human sex drive which has no place in our current world, until we colonize another planet. If people actually cared more about the technological progress of humanity, and less about whether or not Lance and Steve are playing grab ass against the wishes of The Lord, or when their own next sinful sexual liaison will occur, we'd possibly have taken a step towards a long term solution, which would allow crazy ass religious people to exist in their own areas if they so wish. I'm talking about MARS BITCHES!(thank you Dave Chappelle) Let them have Mars. Or course, thousands of years after Mars is colonized, 'Star Wars' would be a reality. Think Planet Islam versus Planet Mormon. I don't have a solution for this problem that's not immoral, physiologically brutal, or maybe even premature. However, the religious state as it exists is, in my opinion, immoral, brutal and full of outdated concepts. And yes, I like the idea of segregating myself away from religious folks. Screw it, give me and my kind Mars. Of course we'd also suffer planetary warfare due to the outrage of sinful stem cell research and abortion, all of which would be fully tolerated on Mars.

So yeah. I'm an internet, geno-xenophobic, armchair, pre-Hitler.

Anyhow, this blog came about due to a dream I had last night. I had a dream that I was on vacation and surfing, or about to surf, and I was on the East Coast. I was with Michi, and she was going to go somewhere else in the town we were in. I said "Bye" to her and she reminded me that this was the Atlantic, so I should watch out for sharks. I thought "Oh yeah", so I started scanning the water from above looking for sharks. Sure enough I saw one, and then I saw another, they were pretty big too, about 15 ft long. Then I saw another one, and then an.. - wait a minute, that shark is about 100 feet long. So is the next one! Then, a gigantic black stegosaurus looking dinosaur with flippers crawled out of the water on to the beach. It was about 500 feet long, and what's worse is that it could talk. What's even worse than that was that it spoke with a dude-bro surfer accent. The stego-flipper-saurus started chatting up another surfer on the beach who was checking out the waves. The surfer on the beach was also very dude-bro, and seemed to be acquainted with the dinosaur. He was listening to its stories and responding with the manner of someone who was intimidated, but wanted to be respected by the person(dinosaur) who was running the conversation. A small talk, yes-man, full of attention. So, when the dinosaur started speaking casually, about how proud he was that he'd helped his Komodo dragon brothers in the zoo kill those 8 people recently(dream headlines I guess), and the surfer was responding "Right on brah!" I was a little freaked out and woke up. The most notable element of the dream was how, upon seeing the stego-dolphino-don as it crawled out of the water, not only was I terrified, but I was repulsed. It made me think of spiders or really disgusting giant bugs. Scared and repulsed. That, in turn, made me start thinking about phobias, and how humans are naturally afraid of certain creatures, items and concepts, for good reason. "BH would make perfect sense out of these phobias" I thought:

Spiders- Spiders are poisonous, lethally so sometimes. They are also aggressive. Snakes - Same thing. They kill folk good. Heights - It's good to be scared to run up to a cliff, and instead approach it slowly and cautiously. No need to explain. Crowds - People are awful! Look at the soccer mobs in Europe. What a nightmare. Look at Mardi Gras when it's featured on COPS. Fear and disgust. Fear of open spaces - If you're out in an open field, well duh - a tiger can run you down, and you have no place to hide. Balloons - Okay, this is where I think fears start to get a little abstract. I see fear of balloons as either a fear of 'things that have a lot of pressure in them and can explode in your face' or maybe it's a metaphorical expression of fear of tense situations.

Then I stumped myself.

Clowns - a lot of people have a fear of clowns. What in the world of ancient genetic memory does this mean? Was there once a race of clowns who lured children into their tents and then eat them? Were there once animals that looked like clowns, who lured children away into their caves and then ate them? Did people once dress up as clowns and eat children? I have no idea, but all the scenarios I can imagine are really creepy.

Then I remembered this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=GjxOt2u2BGM

And I quit thinking about it, and decided to stick with explaining God.