> "The Dolley Pond Church of God With Signs Following was founded in
> Tennessee in 1909 by one George Went Hensley. This former bootlegger took
> to the pulpit in a rural Pentecostalist community in Grasshopper Valley.
> One Sabbath, while he was preaching a fiery sermon, some of the
> congregation dumped a large box of rattlesnakes into the pulpit (history
> does not record whether they were angry or just bored). Without missing a
> beat, in mid-sentence, Hensley bent down, picked up a 3ft-long specimen of
> this most venomous of snakes, and held it wriggling high above his head.
> Unharmed, he exhorted his congregation to follow suit, quoting the words
> of Christ: "And these signs will follow those who believe ... in my Name
> ... they will take up serpents."
> News of Hensley's sermon spread through Grasshopper Valley; others joined
> him in handling snakes, and the practice caught on. There have since been
> around 120 deaths from snakebite in these churches, but most of the
> congregants tend to refuse medical help if they are bitten, preferring to
> believe that divine intervention will be more efficacious. Sadly, Hensley
> himself perished from a snakebite in 1955, and shortly afterwards the US
> government wisely acted to prevent the practice - although it is still
> legal in parts of the States.
>
> Today, snake-handling continues mostly in small communities in rural areas
> of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as pockets in other southern states.
> Participants feel that "the spirit of God" comes upon them as they open
> the boxes containing the snakes. Often lifting three or four of them up
> simultaneously in one hand, holding them high and allowing the creatures
> to wind around their arms and bodies, they praise God ecstatically.
>
> To many of us, religious or not, this type of activity seems little short
> of outright lunacy. And it's certainly the case that religion and mental
> ill-health have long been linked. The disturbed individual who believes
> himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a
> cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have
> associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.
>
> Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of anthropology at
> the University of Minnesota decided to put this association to the test.
> They studied certain fringe religious groups, such as fundamentalist
> Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers of West Virginia, to see
> if they showed the particular type of psychopathology associated with
> mental illness. Members of mainstream Protestant churches from a similar
> social and financial background provided a good control group for
> comparison. Some of the wilder fundamentalists prayed with what can only
> be described as great and transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious
> sign of any particular psychopathology among most of the people studied.
> After further analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can
> only be described as mental instability in one particular group. The study
> was blinded, so that most of the research team involved with
> questionnaires did not have access to the final data. When they were asked
> which group they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology,
> the whole team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were
> revealed, the reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the
> conventional Protestant churchgoers - the "extrinsically" religious - than
> among the fervently committed.
>
> A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the
> 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of
> religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two
> types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic
> religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes
> to church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of
> it. They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in
> their society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to
> church (or synagogue) becomes a social convention.
>
> Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a
> group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as
> an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became
> the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal
> experience. In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was
> more common in those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.
>
> The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be
> associated with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt,
> better adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand,
> extrinsic religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong
> to and prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased
> tendencies to guilt, worry and anxiety.
>
> It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the
> supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and
> advantages. Many anthropologists and social theorists do indeed take the
> view that religion emerged out of a sense of uncertainty and
> bewilderment - explaining misfortune or illness, for example, as the
> consequences of an angry God, or reassuring us that we live on after
> death. Rituals would have given us a comforting, albeit illusory, sense
> that we can control what is in fact ultimately beyond our control - the
> weather, illness, attacks by predators or other human groups.
>
> However, it is equally plausible that the Divine Idea would have been of
> little use in our prehistoric rough-and-tumble existence. Life on the
> savannah may have been in the open air, but it was no picnic. Early humans
> would have been constantly on the lookout for predators to be avoided,
> such as wolves and sabre-tooth tigers; hunting or scavenging would be a
> continual necessity to ensure sufficient food; and the men were probably
> constantly fighting among each other to ensure that they could have sex
> with the best-looking girl (or boy) or choose the most tender piece of
> meat from the carcass. Why would it be necessary, in the daily scramble to
> stay alive, to make time for such an indulgent pursuit as religion?
>
> Richard Dawkins, our best-known Darwinist and a ferocious critic of
> organised religion, notes that religion seems to be, on the face of it, a
> cost rather than a benefit: "Religious behaviour in bipedal apes occupies
> large quantities of time. It devours huge resources. A medieval cathedral
> consumed hundreds of man-centuries in its building. Sacred music and
> devotional paintings largely monopolised medieval and Renaissance talent.
> Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have died, often accepting torture
> first, for loyalty to one religion against a scarcely distinguishable
> alternative. Devout people have died for their gods, killed for them,
> fasted for them, endured whipping, undertaken a lifetime of celibacy, and
> sworn themselves to asocial silence for the sake of religion."
>
> It seems at first glance as if Dawkins is arguing that religion is an
> evolutionary disaster area. Religious belief, it seems, would be unlikely,
> on its own merits, to have slipped through the net of natural selection.
> But maybe that interpretation of what Dawkins is saying neglects some of
> the further benefits that religion might well offer in the human quest for
> survival and security.
>
> In his book Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology
> and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York state, says that
> religiosity emerged as a "useful" genetic trait because it had the effect
> of making social groups more unified. The communal nature of religion
> certainly would have given groups of hunter-gatherers a stronger sense of
> togetherness. This produced a leaner, meaner survival machine, a group
> that was more likely to be able to defend a waterhole, or kill more
> antelope, or capture their opponents' daughters. The better the religion
> was at producing an organised and disciplined group, the more effective
> they would have been at staying alive, and hence at passing their genes on
> to the next generation. This is what we mean by "natural selection":
> adaptations which help survival and reproduction get passed down through
> the genes. Taking into account the additional suggestion, from various
> studies of twins, that we may have an inherited disposition towards
> religious belief, is there any evidence that the Divine Idea might be
> carried in our genes?
>
> While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly
> some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a
> tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved
> are those which control levels of different chemicals called
> neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we
> know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be
> involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual
> experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action -
> incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way -
> is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight
> changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making
> up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be
> partly responsible for a religious bent.
>
> And it is easy to suggest a mechanism by which religious beliefs could
> help us to pass on our genes. Greater cohesion and stricter moral codes
> would tend to produce more cooperation, and more cooperation means that
> hunting and gathering are likely to bring in more food. In turn, full
> bellies mean greater strength and alertness, greater immunity against
> infection, and offspring who develop and become independent more swiftly.
> Members of the group would also be more likely to take care of each other,
> especially those who are sick or injured. Therefore - in the long run - a
> shared religion appears to be evolutionarily advantageous, and natural
> selection might favour those groups with stronger religious beliefs.
>
> But this is not the whole story. Although religion might be useful in
> developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite
> easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion. Psychologist
> Eliot Turiel observed that even three- and four-year-olds could
> distinguish between moral rules (for example, not hitting someone) and
> conventional rules (such as not talking when the teacher is talking).
> Furthermore, they could understand that a moral breach, such as hitting
> someone, was wrong whether you had been told not to do it or not, whereas
> a conventional breach, such as talking in class, was wrong only if it had
> been expressly forbidden. They were also clearly able to distinguish
> between prudential rules (such as not leaving your notebook next to the
> fireplace) and moral rules.
>
> This would suggest that there is a sort of "morality module" in the brain
> that is activated at an early age. Evidence from neuroscience would back
> this up, to a degree. In my last book, The Human Mind, I noted that
> certain brain areas become activated when we engage in cooperation with
> others, and that these areas are associated with feelings of pleasure and
> reward. It also seems that certain areas of the brain are brought into
> action in situations where we feel empathy and forgiveness.
>
> So religion does not seem to be produced by a specific part of our
> psychological make-up. Is it more likely, then, that religious ideas are
> something of an accidental by-product created by other parts of our basic
> blueprint, by processes deep in the unconscious mind that evolved to help
> us survive?
>
> Shared beliefs
>
> What identical twins teach us about religion
>
> In the United States during the 50s and 60s,it was considered best to
> separate at birth twins who were to be adopted. This led to a number of
> these children being brought up by families who did not even know that
> their adopted baby had a twin; and sadly, the children themselves were
> brought up intotal ignorance of their "lost" twin.
>
> Identical twins, of course, are formed in the uterus by the embryo
> splitting; so identical twins have exactly the same DNA.
>
> Non-identical twins -growing from two separate eggs fertilised by
> different sperm - do not have identical genes, but will just share many
> general aspects of their genetic inheritance, as do any other brothers or
> sisters in one family unit.
>
> Thomas Bouchard, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota,
> recognized that these twins, if compared with each other as they grew up,
> would provide an important way of measuring genetic and environmental
> influences.
>
> His groundbreaking work in the 1980s and 90s gave rise to some
> extraordinary insights into which aspects of the human condition are more
> likely to be due to nature, and which to nurture.
>
> In one study, Bouchard concentrated on72 sets of twins who had reached
> adulthood. He first established which of the twins (35 sets in all) were
> genuinely identical by genetic testing.
>
> These were then invited to complete personality tests.
>
> Such questionnaires, which are widely used by psychologists, pose
> questions in the form of statements, to which the respondents have to rate
> their level of agreement on a scale of one to eight. The following is a
> small sample of the many statements relating to religion:
>
>