Elder Packer's Statements To Helen Whitney Regarding

[solomarineris]

So do you think that all facts are equally important and equally useful for all purposes?

Well DP,

none of the fact are ueful for your purpose, for advancing your theories.\Therefore you water them down to an insignificance until some people give up.

But it is hard to refute the hard copy.

[Daniel Peterson]

How about saying something with at least some slight connection to reality?

Just a thought.

[LifeOnaPlate]

Well DP,

none of the fact are ueful for your purpose, for advancing your theories.\Therefore you water them down to an insignificance until some people give up.

But it is hard to refute the hard copy.

wow. just wow.

[Greg Smith]

I've read a bit about it [the God gene]. I'm not sure that I buy it (and, apparently, from what I hear, others are beginning to weigh in more skeptically, too), but, even if I did, I'm not convinced that it would say anything one way or the other about the truth claims of religion. (One could argue, I suppose, that, if a "god gene" were really a product of evolutionary development, that would confer a kind of Darwinian "seal of approval" on religious belief in opposition to Freud's claim that religion is pathological and a mental illness.)

Indeed, such skepticism began almost immediately upon the book's publication by Dean H. Hamer (The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes).

That notorious apologetic rag Scientific American reviewed it in October 2004 here, by Carl Zimmer.

Interestingly, Hamer has been down this road before:

In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer...But given the fate of Hamer's so-called gay gene, it is strange to see him so impatient to trumpet the discovery of his God gene. He is even eager to present an intricate hypothesis about how the God gene produces self-transcendence.

Zimmer's closing quote is a great zinger:

The God Gene might have been a fascinating, enlightening book if Hamer had written it 10 years from now--after his link between VMAT2 and self-transcendence had been confirmed by others and after he had seriously tested its importance to our species. Instead the book we have today would be better titled: A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.

For now, such things remain unproven, and pretty dicey. It is fun to watch some atheists fall all over themselves to seize on this as having "explained" religious belief, though.

Of course, to a Mormon, having a brain-level function involved in spiritual things would be expected, and not surprising, since to Mormons spirit isn't "other," nor is it "non-material." Arguably, even to a traditional Christian view of spirit, if spirit is to have an influence in the material world (us on our bodies, or God upon us) then it must have some physical way of interfacing with the material world.

As Nancey Murphy, of Fuller Theological Seminary said: “f we recognize the brain does all the things that we [traditionally] attributed to the soul, then God must have some way of interacting with human brains.” [Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: WH Freeman and Company, 1999), 65.]

For Mormons, body [brain] + spirit = soul, and no surprise.

Best,

Greg

[LifeOnaPlate]

Indeed, such skepticism began almost immediately upon the book's publication by Dean H. Hamer (The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes).

That notorious apologetic rag Scientific American reviewed it in October 2004 here, by Carl Zimmer.

Interestingly, Hamer has been down this road before:

Zimmer's closing quote is a great zinger:

For now, such things remain unproven, and pretty dicey. It is fun to watch some atheists fall all over themselves to seize on this as having "explained" religious belief, though.

Of course, to a Mormon, having a brain-level function involved in spiritual things would be expected, and not surprising, since to Mormons spirit isn't "other," nor is it "non-material." Arguably, even to a traditional Christian view of spirit, if spirit is to have an influence in the material world (us on our bodies, or God upon us) then it must have some physical way of interfacing with the material world.

As Nancey Murphy, of Fuller Theological Seminary said: â??f we recognize the brain does all the things that we [traditionally] attributed to the soul, then God must have some way of interacting with human brains.â? [Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: WH Freeman and Company, 1999), 65.]

For Mormons, body [brain] + spirit = soul, and no surprise.

Best,

Greg

Excellent.

[urroner]

The God Gene might have been a fascinating, enlightening book if Hamer had written it 10 years from now--after his link between VMAT2 and self-transcendence had been confirmed by others and after he had seriously tested its importance to our species. Instead the book we have today would be better titled: A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study.