to think religious discrimination/name calling is every bit as bad as racism or homophobia?

[IceBeing]

I hadn't realised how far the understanding of the genetic component of spirituality had gotten. It seems that (as with everything) whether or not you believe in god or are spiritually inclined is a mixture of nature and nurture but predominantly nature.

So if being either religious/spiritualist or atheist is predominantly not a matter of choice but one of genetics then that makes religious discrimination look pretty similar to any other discrimination based on genetic factors like disability, homosexuality, race etc.

This cuts both ways...there is rather more talk of people who believe in god as stupid and just need to get over it on MN than there is talk of people who are gay as being stupid and just needing to get over it.

But then there is also rather more discrimination against children of atheists in the state funded education sector than there is against children of homosexual couples...

Does it change anyone else's view of religious discrimination to know that the level of spirituality it is a predominantly genetically determined factor?

But we are then really poor at extrapolating to think that those who do believe do some how have the choice not to.

Some of us might be. I don't think I necessarily think that people who are religious have made an active choice.

My mum is a lapsed catholic. She doesn't go through the motions of being religious any more, and I think she would be very glad to shake off her belief in God and leave it behind her. But she can't. I don't know if that's the influence of her genes or simply down to her upbringing, but I think she'd be a lot happier if she could just walk away.

sorry didn't mean to generalize....you do see some pretty aggressive woo-bashing on MN..which leads me to believe I am not alone in making this mistake...

Well, let's be clear about one thing: most of the discrimination that goes on against religious people is by people from other religions - Muslims discriminating against Christians, Protestants discriminating against Catholics (and vice versa), Hindus discriminating against Muslims etc etc. When I say "discrimination" that often in practice includes verbal and physical abuse.

So the whole genetic component of "spirituality", if it exists, is neither here nor there.

Agreed hackmum. But what these threads usually mean, is that we should all respect religious beliefs and never mock them.
Bollocks to that.

Certain beliefs within certain religions absolutely deserved to be mocked - and challenged, and called out for the racist, bigoted, sexist things they are. Absolutely, imo.

Ego - When someone tells me they believe I am disabled because my parents were bad and that God was punishing them, do you really think I should react with respect?

I can't believe that anyone thinks that religion and spirituality are the same thing. In some cases they are actually opposites. I think the op is stretching it to say that a limited test for a genetic predisposition to spirituality therefore means religious discrimination is like racism.

I have no idea what you mean by the genetic component of spirituality.

I don't actually think there is one.

If you think about it, there's a genetic component to every personality trait. Most people are the way they are because they are born that way, whether it's meanness with money or being spiteful or jealous or whatever. In an ideal world I guess we'd all be wonderfully tolerant of each other's personality defects. But that would mean all of us having the genes for tolerance...

I tend to the idea that genetics is the largest single influence on our personality, spirituality, sexuality, etc. but I certainly don't think it is the only influence. Everything from upbringing to trauma experienced with affect all of the above too.

I can't read the original article, but it sounds like bumph to me. For one thing, and you this quoted everywhere you google this topic, what does a "40 to 50% genetic component" even mean? I have my interpretation, but haven't read a clear statement of what it meant. If anyone can find the original article and post it, that would be nice.

in any case, it is still more of choice than race.

ego but on the plus side maybe one day there will be a genetic therapy for rapist's that actually works....

red I agree it would still be more of a choice than race or skin colour (unless you count oompah loompah orange as a skin colour choice) but it would be about the same amount of choice as sexuality (which also tends to get quoted at the 50% genetic influence level).

I agree it would still be more of a choice than race or skin colour (unless you count oompah loompah orange as a skin colour choice) but it would be about the same amount of choice as sexuality (which also tends to get quoted at the 50% genetic influence level).

I don't understand what this "50%" means as I don't have the article (or access to it). can you explain it? Does it mean that if we weight the two factors, nature and nurture, nature accounts for a half?

it's hard to discuss, because I don't have access to the article in question.

if it were true then no doubt it would be mentioned in the bible

Egosumquisum: "Doesn't environment affect people's personality as well?"

That's the $64,000 question, isn't it? I think environment does affect people's personality, but difficult to say how much or how it interacts with genes. I think most of us who are parents see our children as having their own unique personality from babyhood. The time you most often notice environmental influence is when it's negative - so a child who is abused will become angry or mistrustful.

But if a predilection towards religion is genetic how does it turn out that all the power of religion lies in the hands of men?

How come women in religions get treated on a sliding scale of, ooh let's say from not-quite-as-good-as-men to less than the shit on men's shoes?

How does that work, genetically speaking?

If there is a genetic predisposition towards being religious then how do children of religious children become (or remain) atheist? How does religion die out so quickly in families?

With any genetic trait it is possible for one or both parents to have phenotype (an observable trait such as brown hair or cystic fibrosis) that none of the children have or vice versa.

If a gene is dominant then you just need one copy to produce the corresponding phenotype e.g. brown eyes are dominant to blue eyes so someone with blue eyes must have two copies of the blue eye gene but someone who is brown eyed could have either one or two copies of the brown eyed gene (eye colour is a bit more complicated than that but it's close enough to the truth). A blue eyed child can be born from two brown eyed parents if they both have the recessive blue eye gene. The 'religion gene' could be similar - two religious parents could each only have one copy of the religion gene and so produce non-religious children. Or if the 'religion gene' was recessive then you could have two non-religious parents that produce religious children.

Most genes don't result directly in a particular phenotype though. Human height, for example, is thought to be influenced by many different genes that each have a very small effect e.g. having a particular variant of one of those genes might make you 0.1cm taller than if you had another variant. Height is also massively affected by your diet as a child, what your mother ate while she was pregnant and possibly even what your grandmother ate when she was pregnant with your mother. This last effect is down to an effect called epigenetics where genes are switched on or off due to the environment and this is passed down for several generations.

I think that if religion has a genetic component then it is more likely to be like height than eye colour with many different genes at play as well as environmental factors. I wouldn't be surprised if we discovered an effect along the lines of children of women who hadn't had enough to eat were more likely to be religious as people who share a religion are more likely to help each other out. With food being more plentiful in the West these days the religious genes could be switched off as they weren't needed.

Anyway, be wary of any headline that says they've found a gene for anything. If asthma, homosexuality, religiousness, height, obesity, intelligence etc had one single gene that was responsible for more than about 5% of any reasonably common trait then it would have been found by now. When they find an 'intelligence gene' what they've actually found is a gene that makes you one or two percent smarter than if you didn't have it.