The So Called "God Gene" Part One Revisited

The other day I noticed a comment by a poster that she was re-reading the fascinating book The Web Of Life by Fritjof Capra; I love that book and the other 'main' one , The Turning Point. Both are just mesmerizing, and should be taught to science classes starting in high school.
Thinking about these books, led me to think of Dean Hamer, the famous, or to some, the infamous Harvard trained geneticist rom the National Cancer Institute and his 'God gene' that we allegedly all have.
Monica Lewwinsky was once asked by a journalist, if her 'liaison' with Bill Clinton was sinful. ()
Monica, deftly replied: "I'm not very religious. I'm more spiritual." It has become a tired old cliche' to claim that you pursue spiritual depth free from the dogma and moralisms of organized religions. (Free thinking and amoralism of disorganized religions seem to be the menu of choice for many.) Still, most people assume that religious faith and spiritual enlightenment are both dependent on the existence of a divine being or higher reality...(presumably higher that Jupiter). Not necessarily so, argued Dean Hamer. In The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes, Hamer claimed that religious faith is a social habit we pick up from people around us. By contrast, the experience of self-transcendence(his stand-in for spirituality) is substantially determined by our genetic endowment. In fact, he contends that our ability to enter a spiritual state is a partially inherited trait, similar to musical abilities or athleticism.
If this were true, the advocates of materialism gained another foothold into religion's traditional territory.
There are reasons to distrust Hamer, as he classifies his subjects' self transcendence using a quiz with 20 true and false questions, such as "I love the blooming of flowers in the spring as much as seeing old friends again." (Huh?)
This is still very dubious approximation of 'spirituality'.
This 'God gene' itself is even more suspicious now than in 2005. At a point, Hamer admitted that the gene- which affects the transport of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine, has a 'marginally significant' linkage to test scores on his spirituality pop quiz...As many as 50 other genes, he wrote, may have a greater impact. By the next page he is back to trumpeting his alleged discovery of this 'God gene'. (Let's not forget that in 1993, Hamer claimed to have found a part of chromosome X that contained 'the gay-gene'...Of course he did. Several research groups have tried and failed repeatedly to reproduce his results.
Hamer's book still reads as an attempt to get a spot on the Tonite Show, or the Helen De Generes/ Oprah shows, rather than any serious scientific or even philosophical inquiry. Certainly he would be turned down by any Geneticist who would also happen to be a Roman Catholic Jesuit, or Franciscan , or other Orders if he thought that Religious reasons would work. Perhaps they would for any Fundamental-Evangelical member who would also be a geneticist, but there isn't such a thing..
This got lost in postings and had to be found.