Nature or Nurture About our Belief in God Self-Transcendence 1. Self-Forgetfulness – the ability to get entirely lost in an experience. 2. Transpersonal Identification – a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe. 3. Mysticism – openness to things not literally provable. All this is what it feels like to be spiritual as science measures it. Dean Hammer – a molecular biologist, his book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. He said, that “he thinks we follow the basic law of nature, which is that we’re a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.” Spirituality is a feeling or a state of mind; religion is the way that state gets codified into law. Spirituality is intensely personal; religion is institutional. "A personal God"  vs. "God is in everything" (pantheism)