The Biological Roots Of Religion-Is Faith In Our Genes Analysis

Morton Hunt, the author of the article – “The Biological Roots of Religion- Is Faith in Our Genes” summed up the socio-biological theory of the roots of religion as: “genetically built into early human beings was a set of mental, emotional, and social needs that caused culture to develop in certain ways, including the development of various religions, and caused culture reciprocally to favour and select for evolution those human traits that provided socio-cultural advantages to the individuals possessing them”. Morton wrote the article by posing a fundamental question – why are unbelievers so different from the overwhelming majority of their fellow human being? In response, he stated that throughout civilized history, a small minority never
Perhaps unbelievers do not reject the religious needs and impulses of the human race in realistic and humanistic terms, but replacing the fairy tales of conventional religions by the more intellectually demanding tales, provided by modern science, of natural laws and of the demonstrable, replicable evidence of cause-and-effect relationships. Perhaps for unbelievers scientific humanism offers deeply satisfying answers to all those profound and troubling mysteries that religion purports to answer, and unbelievers are comfortable with those answers although they are incomplete and, no matter how our knowledge increases, will remain so, with new discoveries always raising new and more complex questions about reality
There isn’t one part of the brain dedicated to processing the divine, as the pineal gland was once thought to be the seat of the soul. Instead, according to recent research, religiosity is dislocated and strung out along a neural network comprised of the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. Decreased parietal lobe activity, for example, has been linked to some religious experiences, while the decision-making and social aspects of religion seem to interplay in the frontal lobes. It is the temporal lobes that have been the focus of significant recent interest for their connection between epilepsy and religious visions and conversion. Epileptic seizures, and the brain chemistry at work between seizures, leads in some patients to a “gradual personality change which disposes them to mystical and religious thinking”, says neurologist Oliver