Page 151-152:
"While religious affiliation is strictly a matter of cultural inheritance, religious attitudes (e.g., social conservatism) and behaviors (e.g., church attendance) seem to be moderately influenced by genetic factors. The relevance of the brain's dopaminergic systems to religious experience, belief, and behavior is suggested by several lines of evidence, including the fact that several clinical conditions involving the neurotransmitter dopamine----mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and schizophrenia----are regularly associated with hyperreligiosity. Serotonin has also been implicated, as drugs nown to modulate it---like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, N,N-dimethyltryptamine ("DMT"), and 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("ecstasy")----seem to be especially potent drivers of religious/spiritual experience and temperol lobe epilepsy."
Page 157-158:
".....the criterion ("The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders" published by the American Psychiatric Association) that a belief be widely shared suggests that a belief can be delusional in one context and normative in another, even if the reasons for believing it are held constant. Does a lone psychotic become sane merely by attracting a crowd of devotees? If we are measuring sanity in terms of sheer numbers of subscribers, then atheists and agnostics in the U.S. must be delusional: a diagnosis which would impugn 93 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences. There are, in fact, more people in the U.S. who cannot read than who doubt the existence of Yahweh."
Page 159-160:
"Nevertheless, it is widely imagined that there is not conflict, in principle, between religion and science because many scientists are themselves "religious", and some even believe in the God of Abraham and in the truth of ancient miracle. Even religious extremists value some of the products of science---antibiotics, computers, bombs, etc.---and these seeds of inquisitiveness, we are told, can be patiently nurtured in a way that offers no insult to religious faith.
This prayer of reconciliation goes by many names and now has many advocates. But it is based on a fallacy. The fact that some scientists do not detect any problem with religious faith merely proves that a juxtaposition of good ideas and bad ones is possible. Is there a conflict between marriage and infidelity? The two regularly coincide. The fact that intellectual honesty can be confined to a ghetto---in a single brain, in an institution, or in a culture---does not mean that there isn't a perfect contradiction between reason and faith, or between the worldview of science taken as a whole and those advanced by the world's "great", and greatly discrepant, religions."
This is my final entry from Sam Harris' book, "The Moral Landscape". I don't want to spoil it by revealing too much, and I definitely haven't scratched the surface here with what I HAVE posted. Quite honestly, I would be basically writing the book in its entirety if I kept on posting segments from it. It's something you must read for yourself.
