In last weekend's New York Times, science writer Nicholas Wade argued that new discoveries in archeology and evolutionary biology might allow us to bridge the gap between religion and science.  Religion, he notes, has historically provided cohesion to help societies sustain themselves as well as conquer others.  He argues that religion may be hard-wired into our DNA, like the ability to learn language, and has evolved alongside major cultural developments like the shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture.  

Religion has been reduced to psychological dysfunction by Freud, a tool of social control by Marx and a by-product of social reality by Durkheim.  Wade reduces it to a function of evolutionary biology.  He suggests that in terms of its social value religion is neither positive or negative; rather, it is a neutral force that can be used by societies for either good or ill, like nuclear technology.  Yet, if religion is a function of biology—only the stuff of alleles and nucleotides—then there must be a genetic reason for it.  Does that eliminate the possibility that it could also be a reflection of something supernatural, or even divine?

The challenge of understanding religion is to explore it in all its complexity—as a phenomenon not easily reduced to biological hard-wiring, social mirroring or economic control.  What is lost in reductive analysis is the nuance and range of religious belief, practice, experience and institutional forms.  Religion is constantly being reshaped.  It provides a way to create links to the past and help believers in the modern world to make sense of their experiences.  Whether you believe in an otherworldly heaven or a this-worldly Nirvana, religious life is anchored in social reality, and its expression is shaped by the very values—whether beneficent or not—that it helps to determine and enforce.  The heart of the matter isn't that religion is either bad nor good but that it is both.  Exploring the relationship between religion and violence, resolving moral conflicts and negotiating competing ethical claims requires us to move beyond reductionism.

So finding a "god-gene" is unlikely to provide us with common ground between religion and science as long as the debate is fought among partisans who believe there can be only one correct answer to questions leading to ultimate truth.  Reconciliation, if it is possible, will only happen when we're willing to bridge the gap between truths that we think cannot exist simultaneously.

A recent piece by David Masci at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that Americans bridge this gap every day because we highly value both "religious commitment and scientific achievement."  This suggests a couple of questions that merit further exploration: What degree of cognitive dissonance can be tolerated by post-modern humans, both religious and irreligious?  Do all the pieces of the puzzle have to fall neatly into place, or have we evolved to a state where seeming contradictions can be appreciated without being resolved?  

Sometimes reporters need to pay attention to religion's function in a given situation, like the role religious institutions played in the Proposition 8 ballot measure in California.  Other times, they must take seriously religious belief, rituals and experiences as sources of individual identity and collective consciousness—and perhaps even ultimate meaning—beyond their mere social function. That's the ground where the richest stories can be mined.

Brie Loskota is Managing Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She also serves as the program officer for the CRCC Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, a program that seeks to spur new research on one of the world's fastest growing religious movements.