The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes by Dean Hamer

“I believe our genetic predisposition for faith is no accident. It provides us with a sense of purpose beyond ourselves and keeps us from being incapacitated by our dread of mortality.” – Chapter 8, pg. 143

“Historically, each time religious controversy has touched science, it has been burned. In the sixteenth century, the church taught that the sun circled the earth; astronomy proved it to be the other way around. In the seventeenth century, infectious diseases were seen as punishments by god; microbiology taught us their true origin. In the nineteenth century, spontaneous generation was accepted dogma; it took Pastuer to show that life comes only from life. A literal reading of the Bible teaches that the universe, the earth, and all its flora and fauna, were formed in six days just a few thousand years ago, that man was created in the image of God. Scientific evidence, on the other hand, shows that the universe was created billions of years ago, that life gradually arose by the process of evolution, and that humans have evolved from other species.”
– Chapter 11, pg. 209

“Science can tell us whether there are God genes, but not whether there is a God.” – Chapter 11, pg. 211

So those were some of my favorite book quotes from The God Gene.
I don’t have many because this book was disappointing. When an

author admits his own title is misleading, you know something is sketch. He probably figured the book would have flopped if it had been called Spirituality Monoamines. The atheist in me just can’t wait for scientists to study the VMAT gene’s protein further and decide Hamer’s studies are irreproducible. Didn’t the same thing happen when some harebrained scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality on the X chromosome? Wait, now who was that harebrained scientist? Oh, that’s right. Dean Hamer.