Where Does God Fit In?

Brandon Keim of Wired Science reports: "A self-assembling molecule synthesized in a laboratory may resemble the earliest form of information-carrying biological material, a transitional stage between lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life.

"Called tPNA, short for thioester peptide nucleic acids, the molecules spontaneously mimic the shape of DNA and RNA when mixed together. Left on their own, they gather in shape-shifting strands that morph into stable configurations.

""The molecules haven't yet achieved self-replication, the ultimate benchmark of life, but they hint at it. Best of all, their activities require no enzymes — molecules that facilitate chemical reactions, but didn't yet exist in the primordial world modeled by scientists seeking insight into life's murky origins.

""There have been many test tube experiments of evolving chemical sequences, but there hasn't been a system that on its own can form under enzyme-free conditions," said Reza Ghadiri, a Scripps Research Institute biochemist. "We satisfy some of the requirements of the long-term goal of having a purely chemical system that is capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution."

"Among the co-authors of the paper describing tPNA, published Thursday in Science, is the late Leslie Orgel, a pioneering biochemist who hypothesized that DNA evolved from RNA, a simple information-carrying molecule that today forms the genomes of viruses and facilitates protein manufacture in organismal cells.

"The so-called RNA world hypothesis is widely accepted among scientists, but requires several critical steps that have been satisfactorily explained in a laboratory only recently, if at all. One such step is the formation of RNA's chemical precursors. Another step involves their accumulation into RNA, which despite its relative simplicity, has resisted the attempts of scientists to synthesize it in primordial conditions.

"A experiment published several weeks ago in Nature, in which a cycle of evaporation and condensation distilled a mix of primordial chemicals into several key RNA ingredients, has provided a plausible early answer to the problem of precursor formation. And the tPNA molecule in the current study may illuminate, at least in principle, how RNA might have emerged from these ingredients: in multiple stages, through a process of evolution.

"It's the pre-RNA world. There's a hypothesis that says RNA is so complicated, it couldn't have arisen de novo" — from scratch — "on early Earth," said study co-author Luke Leman, also a Scripps Research Institute biochemist. "So you need some more primitive genetic system that nature fiddled around with and finally decided to evolve into RNA."

"Other researchers have tried to manufacture a similarly proto-genetic material, but their efforts have proved inefficient and relied on the chemical reaction-enhancing presence of enzymes which probably did not exist in Earth's early conditions. But according to the researchers, these experiments assumed that RNA — which resembles one-half the spiraling ladder form made famous by DNA — would assemble block by block, with each segment containing a fully-formed rung-and-backbone piece.

"Instead, the researchers searched for a complete chemical spine to which the rungs, or nucleobases — A, T, C and G in the genetic code — could then attach. Rather than using the sugar-and-phosphate backbone found in RNA and DNA, they identified a peptide, or a small molecule composed of primordially present amino acids, that also functioned as a backbone.

""In terms of prebiotic chemistry, this is a conceptually different way of forming that genetic polymer," said Leman.

"The nucleobases automatically adhered to the peptide in a loose fashion, detaching and attaching themselves until stable. When mixed with single strands of DNA or RNA in water at room temperature, the tPNA molecules arranged themselves in complementary strands, perhaps echoing the eventual ability of those genetic materials to duplicate themselves.

"Ghadiri cautioned that tPNA shouldn't be seen as a direct analog of early life, but as demonstrating the plausibility of a similar system. "If you're thinking that at some point these types of molecules are going to hand off to the RNA world, they should have cross-pairing interactions, and be capable of interacting with RNA," he said. "We show both."

"Antonio Lazcano, a National Autonomous University of Mexico biologist and expert in early Earth chemistry who was not involved in the study, called the work a synthetic biology breakthrough, but repeated Ghadiri's caveat that chemical bridges between the pre-RNA and RNA worlds are "completely unknown and can only be surmised."

"According to University of Manchester organic chemist John Sutherland, who co-authored the Nature study showing how RNA's ingredients could have formed, the new research is less important in providing primordial insight than in furthering the eventual creation of life in a laboratory.

""Ghadiri's important and highly innovative new work potentially relates to the origin of life as we don't yet know it," said Sutherland. Life's emergence took billions of years, a process now being compressed into the passage of a few human generations. "The possibility that humans could come up with an alternative biology that outdoes that which produced us is a mind-freeing and mind-bending concept," he said.

"The researchers are now searching for different types of peptide backbones that could support more complex and stable genetic structures.

""The next phase is to see whether these molecules are capable of self-replication," said Ghadiri. "That's another two or three years of work."

"Asked how long it would take before fully synthetic life could be coaxed from an inert chemical mixture, Ghadiri said, "Soon. If not in our lifetime, then the next. In my opinion, it shouldn't be longer than that."

This transitional stage marked by the clear distinction between the inorganic and the organic would seem wholly appropriate for a God moment to be interjected to cause the state of lifelessness to achieve the complexities necessary for life to come into being. Once scientists learn how to achieve self-replication of the synthetic life forms the reliance on God for the conversion from the inorganic to the appearance of life will introduce the question of where God fits in to be asked; and for the first time in human history, humankind will have to face the likelihood that there is no God moment necessary for life to begin.


"Citation: "Self-Assembling Sequence-Adaptive Peptide Nucleic Acids." By Yasuyuki Ura, John M. Beierle, Luke J. Leman, Leslie E. Orgel, M. Reza Ghadiri. Science, Vol. 324 Issue 5933, June 12, 2009."

"Image: Science"

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The Human Brain and the God Spot

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Steve Connor reports in the March 10th issue of The Independent that: "A belief in God is deeply embedded in the human brain, which is programmed for religious experiences, according to a study that analysis why religion is a universal human feature that has encompassed all cultures throughout history.

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Scientists searching for the neural "God spot", which is supposed to control religious belief, believe that there is not just one but several areas of the brain that form the biological foundations of religious belief.

"The researchers said their findings support the idea that the brain has evolved to be sensitive to any form of belief that improves the chances of survival, which could explain why a belief in God and the supernatural became so widespread in human evolutionary history.

""Religious belief and behavior are a hallmark of human life, with no accepted animal equivalent, and found in all cultures," said Professor Jordan Grafman, from the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, near Washington. "Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and they support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary-adaptive cognitive functions."

"Scientists are divided on whether religious belief has a biological basis. Some evolutionary theorists have suggested that Darwinian natural selection may have put a premium on individuals if they were able to use religious belief to survive hardships that may have overwhelmed those with no religious convictions. Others have suggested that religious belief is a side effect of a wider trait in the human brain to search for coherent beliefs about the outside world. Religion and the belief in God, they argue, are just a manifestation of this intrinsic, biological phenomenon that makes the human brain so intelligent and adaptable.

"The latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved analyzing the brains of volunteers, who had been asked to think about religious and moral problems and questions. For the analysis, the researchers used a functional magnetic-resonance imaging machine, which can identify the most energetically-active regions of the brain.

"They found that people of different religious persuasions and beliefs, as well as atheists, all tended to use the same electrical circuits in the brain to solve a perceived moral conundrum – and the same circuits were used when religiously-inclined people dealt with issues related to God.

"The study found that several areas of the brain are involved in religious belief, one within the frontal lobes of the cortex – which are unique to humans – and another in the more evolutionary-ancient regions deeper inside the brain, which humans share with apes and other primates, Professor Grafman said.

"There is nothing unique about religious belief in these brain structures. Religion doesn't have a 'God spot' as such, instead it's embedded in a whole range of other belief systems in the brain that we use everyday," Professor Grafman said.

"The search for the God spot has in the past led scientists to many different regions of the brain. An early contender was the brain's temporal lobe, a large section of the brain that sits over each ear, because temporal-lobe epileptics suffering seizures in these regions frequently report having intense religious experiences. One of the principal exponents of this idea was Vilayanur Ramachandran, from the University of California, San Diego, who asked several of his patients with temporal-lobe epilepsy to listen to a mixture of religious, sexual and neutral words while measuring their levels of arousal and emotional reactions. Religious words elicited an unusually high response in these patients.

"This work was followed by a study where scientists tried to stimulate the temporal lobes with a rotating magnetic field produced by a "God helmet". Michael Persinger, from Laurentian University in Ontario, found that he could artificially create the experience of religious feelings – the helmet's wearer reports being in the presence of a spirit or having a profound feeling of cosmic bliss.

Dr Persinger said that about eight in every 10 volunteers report quasi-religious feelings when wearing his helmet. However, when Professor Richard Dawkins, an evolutionist and renowned atheist, wore it during the making of a BBC documentary, he famously failed to find God, saying that the helmet only affected his breathing and his limbs.

"Other studies of people taking part in Buddhist meditation suggested the parietal lobes at the upper back region of the brain were involved in controlling religious belief, in particular the mystical elements that gave people a feeling of being on a higher plane during prayer.

"Andrew Newberg, from the University of Pennsylvania, injected radioactive isotope into Buddhists at the point at which they achieved meditative nirvana. Using a special camera, he captured the distribution of the tracer in the brain, which led the researchers to identify the parietal lobes as playing a key role during this transcendental state.

"Professor Grafman was more interested in how people coped with everyday moral and religious questions. He said that the latest study, published today, suggests the brain is inherently sensitive to believing in almost anything if there are grounds for doing so, but when there is a mystery about something, the same neural machinery is co-opted in the formulation of religious belief.

"When we have incomplete knowledge of the world around us, it offers us the opportunities to believe in God. When we don't have a scientific explanation for something, we tend to rely on supernatural explanations," said Professor Grafman, who believes in God. "Maybe obeying supernatural forces that we had no knowledge of made it easier for religious forms of belief to emerge."

Scientists Ponder: Is Religion A Biological Accident, An Adaptation or a Combination of Both?

Researchers are beginning to consider that individuals who think about whether or not God exists; does not "require divinely dedicated neurological wiring."

"... brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."

Cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the National Institutes of Health.

"Though scientific debate about God's existence has transfixed the public, Grafman's findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."

"Some scientists think it's just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren't present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."

"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."

The argument over the existence of a supernation power "breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps," many experts believe.

Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion believes; "Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,... but once in place, they're pretty handy."

Grafman's approach to exploring the cognitive neuroscience of religion "started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God's perceived level of involvement in the world, God's perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."

Grafman's questions involved queries such as "God protects one's life" or "Life has no higher purpose" activated brain activity in portions of the brain associated with understanding intent. Statements of God's emotions — such as "God is forgiving" or "the afterlife will be punishing" — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as "a source of creation exists" or "religions provide moral guidance," were asked questions that "activated linguistic processing centers."

Scientists conjecture: "Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

Researchers agree: "just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."

Scientists agree: "Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring.

"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals.

"You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality," said Barrett, "and maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced."

"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it.

"It could be that when you're in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking," he said: "Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust."

"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them.

"It's tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level," he said. "But there's a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That's not true in this case."

"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties.

"The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on," he said.

"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God.

"He, or She, didn't come in for the evaluation," he said.