Gene that makes you believe religion

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As you may remember, about three to four years ago there came out the news that scientists had found a gene that impulses you towards “religious” experiences. This followed an earlier story that scientists had found an area of the brain that responds strongly when one is having a “religious” experience. The press had a field day with both stories back then. It did not matter that their stories were somewhat exaggerated from what had actually been said. Nor did it matter that many philosophers and scientists and theologians argued that there could easily be alternate explanations to that which had been proposed by the group of scientists who had done the research. The stories certainly caught on and are still cited to this day.

But, sometimes, it takes a comedian to better communicate the absurdity of some arguments. The video above is one such case. It is pithy; it is short; and it quickly destroys many of the arguments that were being made at that time. You see, the problem is the same as the people who argue that we believe in Jesus because we need a psychological fix. It took a few years for the Christian community to stop debating pseudo-psychologists and to point out that it could easily be argued that those who refused to believe in Jesus did so because they were compensating for some psychological trauma that they were feeling.

You see, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Unless a scientific argument is based on repeatable facts that are interpreted in the same way by a community of scientists, then there is no real science being done. Having said that, there are those today who have gone to the other extreme and refuse to believe something, even when it has been demonstrated in experiments over and over and over. There is a need to avoid either extreme.