The Faith Gene

[G-Roll]

I found myself with way too much time on my hands to sit around and think about faith. And I kind of compared it to homosexuality. The argument of is it a choice to be gay or is it embedded and decided for you in your genes.
I applied that to the “choice of faith.” My whole life I have never been able to grasp the concept of believing in a god or gods.  I have made honest attempts and made changes in my life style to greater inflame my effort. But it never worked out. While I watch some who seem cant help themselves to be anything but faithful.
Many a time I doubt people’s faith. Then after posting opinions/rants/and other random nonsense on sites and forums such as this one I found that people of faith often doubt my lack of faith. So both sides of the “argument” cant seem to come to grasp the others idea at the most elementary level.
I realize there are different and deeper levels of faith or even disbelief. And maybe that fact tears and rips this whole random drawn out thought apart. But for the truly fundamental/evangical or atheist could it be something more than just choosing what you believe?

[Renegnicat]

What are you saying, that people are genetically predisposed to believing?

It's probably more likely that the very rational intelligence that makes us so good at surviving (by explaining things, etc), misfires by taking too much control and wanting to explain experience itself. Reason sucks at explaining experience itself, so it generates relatively crappy explanations when compared to other kinds of explanations.

And then we simply cling to it.

So, probably the "gene" that we might be reffering to is really the sequence of genes that code for rational intelligence...hmm...

[G-Roll]

Interesting thought Regenicat.
Im not really saying anything. I placed this topic in the philosophy section because I have no evidence or backing. It was just a thought. I did however find this article
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m ... n13806525/

But spirituality isn’t rational or intellectual. Rather it is more emotional as the article pointed out. You “feel” spiritual, or spiritual encounters. Should that be used to explain the unknown you would have a stone age text book (the bible). I think that reasoning personal experiences in search of explanations maybe leads to emotional evidence. Which is again useless on a rational or intellectual level.
But that wouldn’t explain why people still have faith. There has never been evidence for the existence of god or gods. But people still buy into it. If we are hardwired to have faith or not to have faith or maybe some have the gene and some don’t it would explain a lot.
I was surprised to see scientist are already researching the idea of a god gene. Lol it made me feel smart.

[Renegnicat]

As far as I can tell, since reason sucks at generating any possible answer to explaining experience, there probably would have to be some input from emotional processes, as well as subconcious processes. But you're right in that that doesn't explain why people would continue to believe after no evidence surfaces.

The only guess I could give is that since the problem is fundamentally unsolvable, the degree to which we trust on faith correlates directly to the degree we are afraid of their being no answer. Certainly, some people are more genetically predisposed to be fearful of the unknown. Fear of the unknown is hardwired into us, so it would make sense that if we were gifted with a strong variant of the gene, we might be more likely to hold on for dear life, so to speak.

It's all really conjecture at this point. What do you guys think?

[Recusant]

Back in the spring of this year, I came across this piece in The Independent online.  It talks about a study that seems to show there is a common process going on in people's brains when they think on religious/ethical questions.  Whether there's a genetic aspect to it, I don't know.   Then again pretty much everything that we are, physically, and a sizeable portion of our mentality comes from our genetic heritage...

[BruceMegan]

I don't completely agree with the existence of a 'faith gene'. However I do think faith as a 'meme' is competitive in Darwinian  terms. We might be predispositioned to faith, but this is probably more cultural than intrinsic. However, one might have dispositions toward believing in easy explanations of the world around us rather than being content with ingnorance. This could be called faith.

[Ultima22689]

This is a little off topic but what is a Christian Atheist? Isn't that an oxymoron?

[buttercupbaby]

This is a little off topic but what is a Christian Atheist? Isn't that an oxymoron?

without the oxy

[BruceMegan]

Ultima22689 wrote:This is a little off topic but what is a Christian Atheist? Isn't that an oxymoron?

without the oxy

Hey, let's keep it civil. Christian atheism is simply a philosophical, non-deist view on Christ's teachings. Thomas Jefferson was probably one.

But, as Ultima22689 said, we're getting off-topic

[Kylyssa]

I've wondered if some people are predisposed to believe in God and other supernatural things.

I have at times wanted to believe in God.  The idea that my dead loved ones still might exist is enormously appealing but the not being real part always tripped me up.  I can barely experience suspension of disbelief watching a movie (much of the time I'm consciously watching a story and admiring the actors efforts and the art involved in movie-making) much less think that God is real.  God has a big PR department but movies have much better special effects.  

It's been suggested to me that I'm an atheist because I'm a high-functioning autistic.  I don't buy it.  I think it's mostly that I didn't get indoctrinated as a child so believing something that far out makes no sense at all.  But I think it's partly not getting indoctrinated as a child plus something else because my sister didn't get indoctrinated as a child either but she believes in God.  

My believer sister was a wild teen and very influenced by peer pressure whereas my brother and I were both self-motivated and relatively unaffected by peer pressure.  I have often wondered if there was a connection between her vulnerability to peer pressure and her belief.  My brother and I were both hyper-focused on hobbies and school subjects rather than on what our peers were doing.