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+ - Model Says Religiosity Gene will Dominate Society 3

Submitted by Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes "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."
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Model Says Religiosity Gene will Dominate Society More

Model Says Religiosity Gene will Dominate Society

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  • The idea that religion is anything except a learned concept is ridiculous. I am no more predispositioned to being a Catholic or Protestant than I am to like sushi or cauliflower or whether I like the Canadians over the Rangers in hockey.. or like hockey at all for that matter. What the huge boom in population of Amish people can be attributed to is the idea that all these children are being raised on a strict religious environment that is a lot harder to be breached by outside influence like the media.. Muc

    • than I am to like sushi or cauliflower

      this one is a wrong example as taste perception is tremendously influence by the genes go read about the supertaster [wikipedia.org]

    • I agree with this, I don't believe there is a "religiosity gene" that depicts whether someone will be religious or not. Following a belief system is a completely subjective decision. Some people may be brainwashed from birth, which could cause them to devoutly follow the religion for the rest of their life, but there isn't genetic programming that predetermines this or even a gene that makes someone more inclined to be religious. I also believe that organized religion is decreasing in popularity due to

WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair.

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