The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [93]
VMAT2 is an integral membrane protein that acts to transport monoamines—an amine containing one amino group, such as the neurotransmitters dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin—from the fluid inside the neuron cell body to the synaptic vesicles at the ends of neuronal dendrites. These dendrites reach out to almost (but not quite) touch one another. Hamer thinks that the one variant of the VMAT2 gene that is associated with increased self-transcendence leads to the production of more of these little transporters, and thus more neurotransmitter substances such as dopamine are delivered into those narrow synapses, thereby boosting such positive feelings as self-transcendence.
Hamer’s studies have been strongly criticized by his fellow scientists—which is the norm in this profession—and admittedly identifying genes for this or that behavior or belief can be problematic. Nevertheless, the fact that dopamine is involved in this belief, as in so many beliefs, supports this book’s thesis that there is a belief engine in the brain associated with specific areas that generate and evaluate beliefs across a wide variety of contexts. One role of this engine is to reward belief of all putative claims, including and especially belief in God. In other words, it feels good and is rewarding to believe in God.
Comparative World Religions and God
The comparative study of why people believe in God and adhere to a religion has generated a wide variety of theories over the past century.15 Although these theories vary considerably in their details about the origins and purpose of religion, all have in common the belief in supernatural agents in the form of God, gods, or spirits as integral to religion, and it is this aspect of belief that we are exploring here. That is, I am less interested in why people believe in this or that god or join this or that religion, and more interested in why people believe in any gods or join any religion. To that end, I want to pull back and look at the bigger picture of history. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation within an order-of-magnitude accuracy, we can safely say that over the past ten thousand years of history humans have created about ten thousand different religions and about one thousand gods. What is the probability that Yahweh is the one true god, and Amon Ra, Aphrodite, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithra, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus, and the other 986 gods are false gods? As skeptics like to say, everyone is an atheist about these gods; some of us just go one god further.
There is, I believe, compelling evidence that humans created God and not vice versa. If you happened to be born in the United States in the twentieth century, for example, there is a very good chance that you are a Christian who believes that Yahweh is the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe who manifested into flesh through Jesus of Nazareth. If you happened to be born in India in the twentieth century, there is a very good chance that you are a Hindu who believes that Brahma is the unchanging, infinite, transcendent creator of all matter, energy, time, and space and who manifests into flesh through Ganesha, the blue elephant god who is the most worshipped divinity in India. To an anthropologist from Mars, all earthly religions would be indistinguishable at this level of analysis.
Even within the three great Abrahamic religions, who can say