It's interesting because the guy who is saying this doesn't seem to be into reductionism: ie he's not saying that because he thinks there is a genetic predisposition to faith, that faith is just an expression of a gene and has no reality. In fact one might actually be able to argue the reverse; since adaptttions better equip an organism to deal with its reality ...
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see also http://www.stnews.org/edit_could_1204.html
2 comments:
Very intersting stuff in the linked article. Thank you. On the basis of it, it does indeed seem that the evidence is less than 'hot'. However, my main point is the philosophical one; if such a gene existed, how would it affect our apologetics and theology? It's a question we need to be prepared for because, as material beings, we are likely to come up against all sorts of determinitivist stuff whcih we need to deal with well. That's not to say the facts don't matter, but it is to say that the facts may not demonstrate what someone says they may. I guess the most interesting issue would be what it would say to those who do not believe/ have transcendental experiences. I suspect that this would/could be analogous to the position of a blind person: their blindness doesn't mean that light waves don't exist or that there are not things to be seen; merely that they have to take such things more on trust and on indirect evidence. Ditto the 'spirit-blind' person; they may have to deal with indirect evidence etc. In fact I think I know people like that ...
I'm glad you find the spirit-blind analogy helpful. As a genaral strategy when dealing with this kind of thing I find it helpful to translate into more material analogues and see how they look; this is a csse of that strategy.
Your thoughts about the need for response are pretty much the kind of thing that lay behind what I wrote earlier. The worst-case scenario you outline is in fact, I think, the analogue of other reductionist arguments from psychology [Freud] through need-projection [Feuerbach] to Marx's socio-economic superstructure. Al of them are hoist by their own petard, of course; they prove too much by providing the unavoidable grounds for their own disproof [eg one can be as much disbelieving in God because trying to avoid a father figure as believe in God to find one].
I think there may be a difficulty with your first response though. However, not an irrecoverable difficulty. spiritual encounter affecting brain chemistry seems to me fair enough however, it would not immediatly issue in changed brain structures for descendants [Lamarckianism] becuassse the germ-line issue; it's not an inheritable characteristic. However, I suspect that it is possible to make the argument over generations where apprpriate brain structures for tuning into God become more frequent through 'selection' because such structures have survival value. This is what you would expect if there is a God who is 'part of' reality in some way and where living on the basis of transcendence gives advantages [such as group survival because of increased sense of care for ewach other, for example]. I think that is what Hamer is actually arguing. If you see what I mean.
Your response 2 is spot on I think: pretty much what I was getting at in saying "the facts may not demonstrate what someone says they may".It's an implication of the stuff about deterministic reductionism being a two-edged sword; both proving and disproving the reductionism.Am I determined to believe or disbelieve and whichever way it might be it only shows I was determined, not that the belief corresponds significantly to reality or not.
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