BattleOfValmy
"PhysOrg reports on a study by Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor at Cambridge University, that predicts that the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion are currently "hitchhiking" on the back of the religious cultural practice of high fertility rates and that provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread. For example, in the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture's high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing. In the model, Rowthorn uses a "religiosity gene" to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion, whether remaining religious from youth or converting to religion from a secular upbringing. Rowthorn's model predicts that the religious fraction of the population will eventually stabilize at less than 100%, and there will remain a possibly large percentage of secular individuals. But nearly all of the secular population will still carry the religious allele, since high defection rates will spread the religious allele to secular society when defectors have children with a secular partner."
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/01/29/2350217/Model-Says-Religiosity-Gene-Will-Dominate-Society
Very interesting. I wasn't aware that there are "various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion."
Also, some interesting comments from slashdot's users:
We have religious conservatives arguing that homosexuality is a choice, and we have university academics arguing that religious leanings are genetic.
The funny thing is that I thought academics would lean towards the free will argument, but I guess sometimes they take "there must be an explanation for everything" too far and convince themselves that human behaviour is easily explained with statistical models with ridiculously weak premises.
Nonsense. Nobody is saying that Catholicism is a Mendellian trait.
Just that there are inheritable personality aspects that make on more likely to stay in a religion if you are born into it, or even to join a religious group in the right circumstances.
Homosexuality is complex too. It would not be shocking to suggest that effeminate men are more likely to be gay and vice versa. This can be related to hormone levels in the womb during brain development. Which is far more inheritable than a matter of "choice".
Anyway, what is choice but a product of our genes and environment? "Free will" just means we cannot see the mechanism that produced it.
So there's an evolutionary advantage to not believing in evolution? Whoda thunk it?