The God Gene Hype

Although the study of the genetics of psychological states, some of them 'mystical', is of great interest, the whole subject, as in this book, verges on incoherence. Questions of religion and spirituality are hopelessly vague because the words themselves have no simple meaning. To say that 'faith' represents religion in the sense of monotheism simply restricts the definition altogether excluding those who protest that 'faith' is a substitute for 'gnosis'. To equate or even compare this then with the enlightenment of the Buddhist, certainly not a proponent of faith, reverses the entire discourse, still under the rubric of religion. Enlightenment for the Buddhist is release from the round of rebirths, certainly something different from a psycho-genetic state. And so the confusions mount up in Hamer's account. In fact, the confusion was present in E.O. Wilson's early attempts as sociobiology to fix 'religion' as a construct of evolutionary biology. It won't work because 'religion', and the evolution of religion, are something altogether different from adaptational evolution. Such a statement can be made entirely from a secular viewpoint. Has noone considered the implications of the Axial Age? We see how religions evolve, and that has nothing to do with genetic. There's a story of a sufi teacher beating a student over the head, "Aren't you sick of mystical states--yet". These mystical highs, thus, to some are merely the rubbish at the doorstep.
Back to the drawing board on this one.