The contradictions, ironies and mysteries of life provide a significant basis for religious conviction. The study of science - and the more we learn about human development - may provide understanding that extends and deepens such beliefs.
In the 'nature versus nurture' debate, it may be that the answer is different depending on what age one studies. Children may be shaped more by the environment in which they live (religious or not) but adults' continued adherence - or not - may result from genetic predispositions.
This would appear counter-intuitive. It is assumed, by those who subscribe to such views, that children are born into a state of grace. The fall, if it happens, comes later. It may well be, however, that family and community influences are stronger for the unformed young, while more deeply seated drives emerge later when the personality is more fully formed. The underlying issue could well be that the human inclination to form or join groups is based on a deep-seated survival instinct. As more study is conducted, the larger point is that we remain open to learning, however contrary or challenging, so that we better understand and reinforce our choices for the good of ourselves and the societies in which we dwell. JL
Vassilis Saroglou reports in Scientific American:
A deep question pervades the debates surrounding religion—whether God exists, sure, but that one is mighty difficult to answer. Instead we can ask a related, more approachable query: Why does God exist for some of us but not for others? Theologians and ministers preach that faith is preeminently a matter of personal choice. Is it, really?
Not everyone is a believer, of course, nor do we all maintain allegiance to a single belief system throughout the course of our life. Almost half of American adults, for example, have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lifetime, and most do so before age 24, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Although religious affiliation may be fluid, once people enter adulthood they tend to stick with one category, retaining either faith in God or the absence thereof.
For the most part, people are either religious or atheists because they were raised that way. Parents, classmates and other trusted figures impress their views on children and introduce them to a set of rituals and practices. Later in life those influences hold less power. Several forces can diminish a person’s religiosity—frequently cited reasons include the absence of social pressures to be religious or a desire to distance oneself from one’s family. Personal crises can also spur a change, prompting some people to convert and others to abandon religion.
Recent research suggests, however, that this is not the whole story. By studying the correlations among thousands of individuals’ religious beliefs and measures of their thoughts and behaviors, scientists have discovered that certain personality types are predisposed to land on different spots of the religiosity spectrum. Genetic factors account for more than half of the variability among people on the core dimensions of their character, which implies that a person’s feelings regarding religion also contain a genetic component. By analyzing twins, some of whom share the same DNA, psychologists have begun to collect evidence for the genetic roots of religiosity. These studies are starting to explain what makes some of us believers, whereas others end up rejecting supernatural notions.
Bringing Up Believers
The search for a biological basis for religion has gained wide appeal as the tools to probe our internal makeup have improved. Numerous brain-scanning experiments have sought to pinpoint one or another brain region as being important to the religious experience, prompting occasional claims that humans are equipped with a “God module,” a part of the brain that causes us to have religious beliefs. In 2004 a much hyped book called The God Gene proposed that a particular gene, VMAT2, was linked with religiosity. The data supporting that claim, however, were never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and other scientists never replicated the purported results.
Discerning how genes lead to behavior is one of biology’s toughest tasks. Genes make proteins, and figuring out how those proteins give rise to behaviors, let alone beliefs, pushes at the edges of our scientific knowledge. What is clear is that genes are not a blueprint; instead they interact with environmental influences in many complex ways, twisting fate at every turn. One way to examine the question is to look at personality characteristics: genes predispose a person to particular traits, which can manifest as certain behaviors.
The study of personality began almost a century ago, when pioneering psychologists working in the 1920s and 1930s became inspired by biology’s orderly classification systems and set out to codify personality. They started by scanning the dictionary for all the terms that captured some aspect of a person’s character, producing a list several thousand items long. Factions of psychologists debated over which descriptors, and how many of them, were needed to capture the essential dimensions of personality.
More recently, psychologists have rallied around “the big five,” as psychologist Lewis Goldberg of the University of Oregon called them in 1981. These five traits—extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness—have been shown to be independent of one another and to remain stable throughout most of life. In work published in 1987 Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa of the National Institutes of Health verified the five factors by administering questionnaires and collecting self-reports and peer ratings from thousands of people. Subsequent surveys in many languages and countries have contributed to the dominance of the five-factor model in personality psychology today.
According to this model, the ways in which individuals’ personalities differ from one another can be organized along five main dimensions. People differ in extroversion: extroverts are dynamic, gregarious and socially warm, whereas introverts are timid and reserved. Neuroticism refers to a person’s tendency to be anxious, depressed and generally emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to emotionally stable and positive. A third facet is agreeableness, which captures whether a person is empathetic, helpful and trusting of others, as opposed to mean, individualistic and arrogant. Conscientious individuals are methodical, self-controlled, and willing to establish goals and work toward achieving them, whereas those low in conscientiousness tend to be impulsive and disorganized. Finally, we can differ in openness: whether we like novel, challenging and complex ideas, experiences and feelings. Less open individuals prefer to stay within their comfort zone.
What these studies conclude is that shared environment—namely a family’s approach to religion—plays a great role, especially during childhood and adolescence. After that, the picture shifts, the early environment becomes less potent, and a genetic influence emerges between the ages of 18 and 25 years.
Let us look a little more deeply at one of these twin surveys. In a 2005 study by Laura Koenig, then at the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues, for example, the researchers analyzed reports on the religiosity of twins in adolescence compared with adulthood. The intent was to calculate the relative importance of genetic factors versus environmental influence at those two stages of life. The scientists used a statistical model to determine which factor is most important in adolescence versus adulthood. For adolescents, they learned that genetics—in other words, dispositions for certain personality traits—accounted for only 12 percent of their religious identity, and a shared upbringing contributed 56 percent to the outcome. (If you include a third category, which captures all the unique events that shape a twin’s life, these three numbers add up to 100.) Conversely, 44 percent of adults’ religiosity could be attributed to genetics, and 18 percent had to do with their environment.
These results are in line with personality theory. Personality traits are already present in early childhood. Later in life they heavily shape social attitudes, values and identities. It thus becomes clear that rather than religion making people agreeable and conscientious, it is personality that determines religiousness.
If further research, especially in Eastern cultures and religions, confirms this pattern, we may have psychological evidence in favor of some of the universal functions of religion. Scholars have long suggested that because religion fosters social cohesion, it may have played an important evolutionary role by enabling larger groups of people to band together. These findings on personality traits support that idea. Agreeableness and conscientiousness together denote a preference for social harmony and personal order—in other words, stability.
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