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by throwaway41968 2312 days ago
I don't think genetic means what you think it does. In the field of genetics, a trait is said to be genetic when a genetic mechanism has been identified leading to the expression of that trait. Please, tell me more about the genetic mechanism behind religiosity, let alone 'everything'. Which genes are involved, how does the epitaxis play out, which pathways are influenced?
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>Please, tell me more about the genetic mechanism behind religiosity, let alone 'everything'. Which genes are involved, how does the epitaxis play out, which pathways are influenced

I've seen people here claiming that Asians are more conformists they've been selected for conformity from the time where your books were burnt if they were not allowed by the Chinese empire.

>Which genes are involved, how does the epitaxis play out, which pathways are influenced?

We know tall stature is genetic trait and we've many genes which correlate to tall strature. We don't know pathway which causes tall structure. So can you tell me which pathway makes a person tall? Should we stop believing tall strature is a genetic trait even if partially?

Similarly, there are gay or transexual people - we don't know pathway, are you going to claim that its cultural? There are many gay in Muslim countries or India where they were not socially accepted for long time.

There have been experiments on mouse where when they injected q mouse with testosterone, they became more dominant and fought more fiercely against the bully.

Similarly, there are accounts of trans people who went from female to male - and became more competitive, aggressive, dominant.

It's not far fetched to think there are hormones which turn depend on genes or environment which make a person more "individualistic"

In psychology, we know of this disorder Borderline Personality Disorder which sometimes is genetic and sometimes not. It's a very individualistic disorder and person suffering from it finds it hard to keep meaningful relationships for long term.

We don't know if it's caused by hormonal imbalance or genetics or some brain anomaly.

Similarly, depression is contender for genetic trait yet we don't know any pathway.

So what's my point? Asking for specific genes or pathway is not going to invalidate the hypothesis that a particular personality trait might have genetic basis

I'm using genetic here as a poor slang term to mean heritable (not shared environment). As in, if you take identical twins reared apart, if one of them is religious, odds are the other one will too, and vice versa.

I have no idea which specific genes are involved or by what pathways, but neither do I know which genes control height and that still seems readily apparent.

Here is the Wikipedia article on the proposed gene ("VMAT2"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene

Here is an article on phys.org which describes my idea: https://phys.org/news/2011-01-religiosity-gene-dominate-soci...