Abstract
Our body harbors hundreds of microbial species and contains many more bacterial than human cells. These microbes are not passive riders but rather a vital component of the organism. The human microbiota affects our health in multiple ways, both positively and negatively. One of the new attractive directions in microbiome biology is the “microbiome-brain axis”. Several groups of researchers have described the ability of the gut microbiota to communicate with the brain and thus modulate human behavior. These limited experimental data became the foundation of the “biomeme hypothesis” of possible microbial origin of some religious rituals that has recently appeared in Biology Direct. Here I propose a critical analysis of this hypothesis. I conclude that there is no evidence of the microbial origin of religious practices but there are strong indications of their psychological and social roots.ReviewersThis article was reviewed by Eugene Koonin, Neil R Smalheiser, Etienne Joly.
Highlights
There seem to be no “sacred cows” for scientific inquiry anymore as essentially any entity, phenomenon or process can be dissected and quantitatively investigated with modern technologies
Today, using large quantitative data sets from hundreds of genomic and proteomic screens available in open access databases, scientists can generate a variety of novel hypotheses and full-fledged theories without even running “wet” experiments [1,2,3,4,5]. In line with this scientific paradigm, Panchin et al [6] posed an interesting question: what if some microbes might subtly manipulate human brain toward certain religious rituals that are beneficial for the propagation of the given microbe(s)
In the concluding remarks the authors suggest that additional types of behavior might be influenced by microbes but some religious rituals are the best markers of such effects because participation in them provides no apparent benefits to anyone but the hypothetical microbes
Summary
There seem to be no “sacred cows” for scientific inquiry anymore as essentially any entity, phenomenon or process can be dissected and quantitatively investigated with modern technologies. Under this hypothesis microbes do not induce religiosity as such but rather incline individuals toward particular religious rituals.
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