[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth

[CurtAdams at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/1/03 19:20:32, aperick at centurytel.net writes:

>
>CurtAdams at aol.com wrote:
>
>>Second, religious belief is very strongly influenced by genes, more so
>>than any other human behavior I'm aware of.
>
>Really, where did you come up with that? I am aware of stupid genes, is
>that all that you are referring to? You make it sound like more than
>that. Please continue. 

It's not "stupid genes".  I'll try to find the reference when I'm back at the 
University Monday.  Basically somebody did the classic twin study, measuring
degree of religious belief.  I think it was 3 levels; something like devout,
churchgoing, and unchurched.  Identical twins raised separately had about 
an 80% concordance while fraternal twins had only about 50%.  Specific
religious beliefs were not particularly correlated.  The large differences 
between
identical and fraternal twins indicates that genetics makes a big difference 
in
the degree of religious belief.