The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes

nice,a must read book

A brillant study about spirituality and genetic. Presenting scientific results the author discusses how spirituality and religion may be directed by genes. Author also presents association between culture and nature. The final chapter is essential to understand spirituality under a scientific method.

A great read! Really insightful. The scientific approach as to why certain people are more spiritual than others has always fascinated me and this book answered almost all my questions.

Best book on the subject I have read to date. I was so impressed I bought two other copies for friends and also his other book "Living with our genes". These are books to change your outlook life.

this is a fascinating book meticulously researched and written. Creation and science don't have to be contradictory as this book teaches. It's only when people insist on believing in evolution as opposed to God creating everything do things become unstuck. Fossils do not prove a gradual evolutionary change in stone. All life forms are perfectly made and structured...far too complex to be random. This book belongs on everyone's shelf whether you are studying how everything came to be, or you already believe in a Creator God. We always look to something outside ourselves - even atheists look for reasons to believe in. We are hard-wired to look further than our temporary lives, in logic and reason, in greatness and the most-asked question of what's out there after our lives have ended? God's personal autograph is everywhere including our double-helix genetic code, and searching for answers is also hard-wired within us. This book is a wonderful adjunct to anyone's studies, and therefore highly recommended!

If you read this book carefully, you will not fall into the abyss of some of the negative reviewers who misquoted, and more importantly, misunderstood the hypotheses presented. These previous negative reviewers who accused this author of rewriting earlier texts, particularly citing Persinger, did not understand this author's point. Persinger's theory (and yes, his name IS mentioned in THE GOD GENE) was very broad and unrelenting. His book definitely had an agenda beyond presenting scientific results; and I find him today to be obnoxiously certain about the correctness of his view. (Many so-called "hard" scientists and MDs can fall prey to thinking in these "black and white" terms, when in fact, most intelligent scientists leave room for a little grey area that might be provided by later research.) Clearly, the author of THE GOD GENE is more the modern social scientist, and I, as a reader, appreciated having ideas suggested rather than being hammered by a self-righteous pedant. (Persinger's book is very old in scientific-literature years, the 1980s, and perhaps his approach to writing is also dated. He cited one area of the brain as the source of "irrational" human belief in "supernatural beings" or spiritual optimism which he also, incidentally, clearly sees as a temporary aberration wholly caused by changes in brain chemicals). This may have been ground-breaking research in the 1980's and earlier, but research since then has clearly outrun this first basic step. And gene research has a long way to go. If you are interested in this topic and have a mind that enjoys pondering interesting hypotheses, I highly recommend THE GOD GENE. Don't let the title dissuade you. The author has since admitted that it may not have been the best description of his project.