Why did this show have no actual brain scientists to speak on behalf of science? They could have invited someone like Professor Steven Pinker from the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (a review of his book: "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature," Viking Press, 2002
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PAT BUCHANAN, MSNBC HOST: Is your religion determined by your DNA?
Buchanan starts out with a staw man: no scientist claims there is a Christian gene, or Muslim gene, or Hindu gene, or what have you. Rather, they say that predisposition towards superstition in partly inherited.
Regarding Dr. Dean Hammer's "God Gene": he claimed that his title was just meant to get the readers attention. Rather, he says that he found a gene that is associated with transcendentalism, which is a type of religious experience.
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Dr. Dean Hammer, an American molecular geneticist, compared more than 2,000 DNA samples and concluded that a person‘s capacity to believe in God can be reduced to chemical reactions in the brain.
Another straw man by Pat Buchanan. Hammer never claimed that belief in God is the result of chemical reactions, he simply claimed what I stated above. Pat Buchanan is an interesting fellow, he writes genius articles such as but then when it comes to scientific topics, he completely fails (he is a Catholic fundamentalist).
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I am a believer that every thought we think and every feeling we feel is the result of activity in the brain. I think we follow the basic law of nature, is that we are a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.
Is this not obvious? Where does thoughts and emotions reside? In the brain, and the brain is nothing more than chemicals and neural nets creating programs for various behaviors, like software in a computer. Ever seen a dissected brain? Were there any supernatural events occuring when the brain was cracked open, or was it just pure biology, and at a more basic level, simply mechanical processes?
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It denies the existence of love. It says that love is nothing but a trick
played on our genes in order to perpetuate the species. It denies poetry. It denies philosophy. It would rob the world of all its magic. Really, this stuff has been repudiated so long ago. It‘s amazing people still come up with this utter crap and nonsense.
Behavioral geneticists and Evolutionary psychologists don't deny the existance of love (emotional attachment), they don't say poetry and philosophy does not exist, and who has repudiated determinism? This Rabbi needs to back up his statements with scientific evidence.
Yes, science tries to do away with "magic."
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If reductionism behaviorism was correct, that God is nothing but a prediction of the brain, then we would be able to predict every human choice, because human beings would have no choice. We know how chemicals behave. We don‘t know how humans behave.
Some of the super-computers we have today can actually predict the exact action of every atom in a nuclear blast. It will take such a computer to predict exact human behavior as well. Once every synapses and chemical in the human brain is mapped and understood, accurate predictions of behavior based on physiological patterns in the brain will be possible.
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Hammer, he said that since God has been found in every culture throughout the world, it must, therefore, have a gene. No, sir, it‘s when people look at the infinite expanse of space, the infinite complexity of the human mind, the light tissue of the human eye, they decided that something that complex had to have a maker. If you walk into the studio...
Actually, what this shows is that humans have a tendency to explain things they don't understand in terms of supernatural events. Look at our own history: the Bubonic plague was thought to be a supernatural event of an angry God, but now no Christian would accept that: they know it was a bacteria (or virus, not sure).
What this also shows is that humans have an inborn psychological mechanism to give supernatural purposes to life to avoid the fear of death or to give them a reason for living and striving to advance and get things done. It gives purpose, and this must have been reproductively advantageous.
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This same guy came up with this idea of the gay gene. I remember when that conversation was going on. Gays were all of a sudden worrying if people would start aborting kids when they found out the DNA suggested the kid might be gay or God forbid, we‘d run out of little gay kids, so all of a sudden, they became pro-life. Now here we have a situation where some of the atheists, they may want to abort the kids if they thought, in fact, there was some type of religious inclined gene, God forbid, they might have a kid who believed in God.
Consider hermaphrodites: these are people born with both a penis and vagina and are often bisexual. Did environment cause them to have both genitals or was it a genetic defect? Homosexual is just that: a genetic defect, like Downe Syndrome, schizzofrenia, and mental retardation. Also, studies of twins raised apart show that identical twins are more likely to be both homosexual than non-twins. This indicates that homosexuality is at least part congenital.
Regarding the aborting of homosexual fetuses or superstitious fetuses, I have no problem with that. I sure would not want a superstitious homosexual offspring.
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DONOHUE: I agree with the rabbi on that. In fact, I will take it a step
further. There‘s this book by the Jewish couple, the Olanders (ph) called “The
Altruistic Personality” and they studied those people who went out of their ways to help Jews during the Nazi holocaust and risked their own lives. They were people who took their religion very, very seriously, be they Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, whatever they were. In other words, there is something called an altruistic personality. That‘s based on virtue. It‘s not gene driven. As a matter of fact, that statement you read about this guy, sounds to me he must have hung out with Timothy Leary and drunk some of that LSD moonshine when he was at Harvard University.
Altruism versus tough-mindedness is one of the Big 5 Personality traits:
Altruism versus tough-mindedness
Open-to-experience versus conventionality
Neuroticism versus emotional stability
Conscientiousness versus psychopathology
Introversion versus extroversion
These traits have a heritability rate of 50%, and this is one set of behaviors in which there is actually a consensus among all brain scientists. For the Rabbi and Buchanan to not know this indicates that they are definately not qualified to be debating human behavior. In fact, virtually all "talking heads" know nothing about what they are talking about. Big media is about politics, money, and power, not science or honestly.
Regards.
