The God Gene

(First published in Bali Advertiser, April 27, 2005)

Skeptic – n. 1. One who believes in skepticism as a doctrine or employs skepticism as a method; specif., a member of one of the ancient skeptical schools. 2. One who carries a critical or incredulous attitude into his inquiries, or who is given to doubting. 3. One who doubts, or disbelieves in, Christianity. – Syn. Unbeliever, doubter. See INFIDEL. (Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 5th Edition, 1946)

If there is a so-called “God gene,” a genetic code that predisposes belief, I’ve got it. The Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the National Institute of America says VMAT2 is such a gene and gives people a greater ability to believe in a higher spiritual force (www.telegrahp.co.uk, 22/03/2005). It is a troublesome gene for a skeptic to have.

Almost everything I was told or read as a child made my eyes go wide. Christmas was an annual two-month fantasy of gifts no skeptical child would have asked of the jolly fat man. When my belief in Santa Claus began to waver, my older brother told me Santa no longer used sleigh and reindeer. The world had too many people, he explained. Modern Santa employed teams of commando elves that dropped onto roofs from helicopters. I spent that Christmas Eve trying to stay awake to hear chopper blades.

Santa can be construed only marginally as a spiritual force. I’m assuming, though, that any genetic predisposition for belief in higher powers signals a general credulity. Maybe that’s why nations are always trying to weld their causes to God, gods and religion. I certainly believed everything a Midwestern missionary’s son was supposed to believe growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Taiwan – I mean stuff in addition to standard Christian doctrine. I believed Chang Kai Shek was a great American ally and champion of democracy; that communism’s dominoes would fall one right after another if America didn’t prevail in Vietnam; that John Wayne had helped America win every war; that Roger Stuabach, Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys were the pinnacle of athletic achievement; that America was the epitome of all that is good, right and true. Doubt only began to creep in when I left home and went away to university. My professors, Harrison Ford, Terry Bradshaw and the Pittsburgh Steelers began to strip me of my illusions.

The trouble with a tendency to believe is that it can lead to a mere bouncing from one belief system to another. People forsake Christianity for Buddhism, Buddhism for a New Age hodge-podge, the New Age for Amway, Amway for alcohol. And the tendency can surface in men and women who swing from one eternal soul mate to another, in travelers for whom each destination is a new paradise, in ever shifting reliance on the next diet, the next oil boom, the next dot.com bubble, the next tourism rush.

People like the solidity and certainty of “truth.” When one belief proves false, they look around for the next new thing to cling to. It is difficult to convert people to systemized doubt. Doubt is watery. You can’t hold it in your hands. It gives no comfort in times of grief or stress. It gives no possibility of assistance in sickness and death. Without belief, people are alone. Worse for them to contemplate, so are their children. Skepticism doesn’t dispel the notion that there are monsters under the bed.

In 1999, Jesse Ventura, former professional wrestler and then the governor of Minnesota and a U.S. presidential candidate, was castigated for challenging religion in an interview with Playboy magazine. “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers,” he said, assuring that his dim presidential hopes would come to nothing.

His statement is inaccurate and, at the same time, doesn’t go far enough. Organized religion can be support for the ignorant or lazy minded. It doesn’t have to be. Also, anything – money, status, a social group, booze, exercise, drugs, a husband, a wife, a self-image - can be a crutch if it is relied on unquestioningly and unexamined. And what does one do when the support fails?

Bali, perhaps because of its faded reputation as “the last paradise,” attracts more than its share of the credulously inclined. We’ve got stargazers and crystal gazers, astrologers and aromatherapists, meditation artists, yoga instructors, gurus, healers, and telemarketers. As a reformed believer, I often feel I’m the odd one out in a room full of kooks.

(Note to the kooks: That is a subjective statement about how I feel, not an objective statement about your kookiness.)

Bali needs a dose of skepticism, for the Balinese, for the tourists, for long-term expatriates. It just can’t live up to its billing. No place could. I say that as a person who intends to continue living here, build a home here and raise a family. I say that as a person who cried over a lost Eden on my first trip to Bali in 1998 when I read about the massacre and mass suicide of the Badung royalty in 1906. That VMAT2 gene still bites sometimes.

Bali can be magical, yes. But so can almost any place. It does no good to let the momentary magic blind one to dog excrement in the streets and trash in the rivers. Bali needs a reality check. It needs less credulity.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi