This statement sparked a volley of contemptuous replications, which intimated examples of war in Bosnia and exhumed the Crusades to name a few. But in this altercation the prescence of goodness was complimentary to survival in terms of natural selection. As goodness is, ideally a part of religion, such a conclusion can be drawn.
Among these genetic discussions is the observation made by P.K.Wilson on children, whom he says are genetically predispositioned to ask questions that seem so very suited to the scientific method. Though he cites no major evidence for such an inclusive statement, nor does he make any definite conclusions, Wilson s argument is accentuated by a desire to reconcile our genes to science, and religion too. But even if we are genetically programmed to have these religious inclinations, are we genetically destined to believe?
Undertaking to exuviate some light on this question, John Burn, a geneticist himself, claims that some collective belief system may be requisite for our survival. If this is so, then not only are science and religion interconnected they are genetic relatives. Quoting the World Health Organisation which has declared that health is not merely the absence of illness. It is the achievement of physical, psychological and social well being. Burns begins his case for a inherited religious bsae. Using evidence from instances where a genetic deficiency has caused defective behaviour, Burns argues that it is viable for a gene to have an effect on personality and behaviour. The study he alludes to was based on girls with Turners Syndrome, who were disposed towards violent response. Similiarly he states that there is an intuition gene and that it lies within the X chromosone. Amidst the 50 000 gene types that are available for genetice formulations, Burns seems if not to be demonstrate that religion is definetly genetically based, then that the possibility that it could be should not be ruled out . After all, such a revelation would perhaps put quite a hold on thos who argue that science and religion are directly opposed. For if religion is genetic, science might be too.
Of the arguments for genetics, those from Eugene D Aquill seem the most, well founded. D Aquill s theories of biogenetic structuralism suggest that we are predestined to religion as we are towards learning a language. In an article by Andrew Brown who argues for the Spookist theory of personality over that of chemical influences and the like, Brown says
The way this is usually understood, there are two sorts of stuff in this world, matter and spirits, or ghosts and machines. The machine operates according to their own inexorable laws and the ghosts which vary in power from mere phantasms to the Holy spirit do their stuff in the interstices In a world where ideas matter partly because they are arrangements of matter then it becomes possible for religions to become scientifically important too, not just as delusions but as important ways of understanding the world and of conserving and transmitting these understandings.
So, conforming to such a view, most procedures to prove that religion has some sort of genetic basis are also exercises to proove that religion and science attest each other. In fact, that we can sense either of the two points to something real, something that our senses are responding to within the outside world. This line of thought is perhaps something that Paul Davies would agree with. The fact that we can come to know the laws suggests to me that our existence in the universe is not just merely an incidental quirk of fate, but is fundamental to the workings of nature . Davies, one who is an advocate of the possibility of eventually finding a unified theory which will serve to explain the whole of our existence is also an advocate of religion being fundamental to our existence.
But the more the universe is reduced to laws, numbers and statistics, the less room for god, or so we may be led to believe. For Newsweek, Sharon Begley writes that physicists have stumbled upon signs that the cosmos is custom made for life and conciousness . Both John Polkinghorne and Charles Townes, who is accredited with the discovery of the laser, affirm this with the latter saying that there are many who feel that intelligence must have been involved at some point in the creation of the universe. Figures such as Pi, have appeared in areas that have nothing to do with circles or geometry and Polkinghorne interprets this as pointing to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe , more so the human mind in it s ability to comprehend these notions.
Polkinghorne, whose work in particle physics has led him into the Lilliputian areas of the world, says that in the realm of quantum mechanics there is latitude for a force of some design, to determine what will happen to particles that have a half life . It is here, that assumptions are being made on partciles being able to be waves as well as particles, though there is little concrete proof to support such a notion, some interpretations lead to the assumption that Jesus Christ might have been able to be both wave and particle at once.
Such bizarre claims about particles and parts of the world that one never quite sees in ordinary life may at first seem to be part of a jargon file, cloaked in a mysterious language, but the implications are simple. The workings of science are able to proove religious claims, and religion is able to instigate scientific exploration. Thus in an area where religion and science are seen as war horses, movements that we have not noticed before are taking place.
These notions about the nature of science and that more and more attempts are being made to accommodate the two point to the fact that there is little conflict between science and religion although the two may often seem to be struggling for common ground on which to stand.
Science and religion are entering into a new phase of an old relationship that has not, does not and never will depend upon the by products of vicious conflict for their survival. If it is lack of information that has led us to believe that the two are pitted against each other by their eternal default settings then we should make time to realise their true relationship. If it is the general spirit between the two, that touches the imagination, the we should turn our attention to the benefits of such a union. If we are captivated by a God that exists in the supernatural zone of quantum mechanics then we should try to see the big picture; But we should always, as both science and religion entreat, seek the truth. And the truth is that science and religion are not at war.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats