Genes, Intelligence, & Religion

People in other countries think we Americans are crazy.

Big surprise.

Specifically: They think American parents are crazy.

And they may have a point.

In the last forty years American parents have been schooled in a form of parenting that worries endlessly and obsessively about the minutiae of how their children are treated. Now: Don’t get me wrong! Parents have always obsessed about their offspring. That’s nothing new. But the lengths that American parents carry things are out of synch with how parenting has been done in world history, in other cultures today, and even in America prior to about forty years ago.

One may argue that this is a good thing, that parents have found a better way. But the other side of the question should also be considered. I entertain a personal suspicion that the obsessiveness is partially driven by the fact Americans aren’t as fertile as they once were.

They have fewer children than they once did, meaning they don’t have to divide their attention among as many young ‘uns, giving them more liberty to obsess. They also know that have fewer shots to "get it right" than they once did. If you have ten kids and two of them are duds as adults then that’s sad, but nowhere near as sad as if you have two kids and two of them are duds.

There may even be a little displaced guilt about abortion and contraception in the mix.

The impact of the two-income household also likely is generating some displaced guilt and separation anxiety, leading to parental obsessing and things like that phoney-baloney "quality time" attempt to assuage parental guilt fad of a few years ago. As well as more spoiled kids whose parents will not stand up to them or discipline them in a consistent manner.

American parental obsessions start right from the beginning, with attempts to stimulate the child’s mental and linguistic development at ages where such efforts are almost certainly futile. (People in other countries don’t make the elaborate efforts American parents do to teach their kids words at fantastically early ages, but their kids end up learning to talk just fine.)

Now, if I were a parent, I’d probably engage in such futile efforts on the off chance that they might have some benefit, too, but I’d recognize that such efforts are unlikely to have any effect.

One factor fueling the craze of obsessive parenting is an imbalanced perception of the nature/nurture debate. For the last century or more, a certain segment of American academia has been fixated on the idea that nurture (how a child is raised and taught) is everything and that nature (genes) has next to no impact on the outcome.

In some circles any hint of genes affecting personality and success outcomes is considered tantamount to heresy–or is regarded as actual heresy.

But the science is there on it.

Studies of identical and fraternal twins raised together and apart have provided significant evidence that a lot of how smart a kid ends up is based in his genes rather than the way he is raised. Sure, he needs good nutrition and a good educational environment to be able to tap those genes, but the genes play a far larger role than many have been prepared to admit in recent years.

What’s more: The effects of the genes increase with age. Early efforts by parents and teachers to give children a "leg up" intellectually tend to only have temporary results that fade with time. By the time the kid is an adult, the genetics of intelligence become more and more important to how smart he ends up.

There have been a significant number of studies on these points, and the science has held up pretty well, even though it is quite unpopular in Messianic "perfectability of man" circles.

But here’s a new twist:

RELIGIOSITY MAY WORK THE SAME WAY.

In other words: Genes may play a role in how religious people are. New Scientist is reporting on one study suggesting (not proving) that genes may account for up to 40% of how religious a person is–and that the effect of the genes may become more important with increasing age.

You’ll note that I said religiosity "may" work the same way, not that it does. The science is way too early on this point. Reading the New Scientist article I wanted to cross examine the study (no pun intended) several different ways–and sharply.

I’m not happy with the self-reported nature of the research, about the participants’ memories of what their families were like religiously, about the nature of the sampling, or about the researcher’s (unstated) conception of what counts as religiosity. From what I can tell from the story, some of what they were talking about seemed to be more a question of whether a person stuck with the religion they were raised, but that ignores the fact that sometimes converts–people who don’t stick with their religion of origin–can be the most passionately religious.

But I can’t rule out that there may be genes disposing certain people to be more religious than others. In a species where so much of its life is run by intelligence, and where intelligence is significantly driven by genes, it would be almost expected for some genes to have an affect on some aspects of religious life.

How God’s grace plays across those genes is an entirely other matter. While we can potentially acknowledge that genes may play a role in predisposing certain people to greater piety, fortitude, prudence, knowledge of the Lord, or any other aspect of religious life, any person with the gift of reason can be reached effectively with the gospel by God’s grace, and any person at all can be saved.