The best research I’ve seen on this is twin studies. Two studies suggest a nearly .50 correlation between twins reared apart on religiosity:
-Bouchard, Thomas J. Jr., David T. Lykken, Matthew McGue, Nancy L. Segal, and Auke Tellegen. 1990. “Sources of Human Psychological Differences: The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.” Science 223-228.
-Waller, N. G., B. A. Kojetin, T. J. Jr. Bouchard, D. T. Lykken, and A. Tellegen. 1990. “Genetic and environmental influences on religious interests, attitudes, and values: A study of twins reared apart and together.” Psychological Science 1:138-42.

Additionally, there is at least one article that supports Rick’s assertion that socialization does translate into a strong influence on adolescent religiosity but there is no correlation between emerging adulthood religiosity (young adults) and parental religiosity:
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen, and Lene Arnett Jensen. 2002. “A Congregation of One: Individualized Religious Beliefs Among Emerging Adults.” Journal of Adolescent Research 17:451-467.

In short, there may be something of a genetic component to religiosity, but it definitely isn’t well-understood at this point.

I have unpublished data on this from members of SSSR. I haven’t looked at the data from this for years (it’s circa 2004 and was used in my MA Thesis), but what I have says that in 2004 about 14% of SSSR members reported their religion as “None.”

As far as belief goes, 34% are either atheists, agnostics, or deists (mostly agnostics and deists). And as far as attendance goes, only about 8% rarely or never attend, while close to 70% attend very frequently.

Mike Nielsen was right – I meant PhD programs in Sociology as those are good Sociology PhD programs with prominent sociologists of religion.

(Sorry to be so late to the game. I followed most of this earlier in the week, but was swamped with classes and child care.)

OK, that’s the end of the commercial for MSSA. :-)

Most psychologists would not leap from research on the role of heritability and environment to assert that free will isn’t part of the human condition. But at the same time, most would agree that our range of options is constrained greatly by heredity and environmental forces. So, from an LDS perspective we may have free will, but it may not be as broad and unfettered as we believe it to be. And I think that most people would probably recognize this in their own choices; we see that our options are limited by our physical characteristics and our situation. The glitch is, that we don’t see such limitations in others.
http://www.wisegeek.com/in-social-psychology-what-is-fundamental-attribution-error.htm

The other thing I’d add is that finding a comfortable reconciliation between Mormonism’s materialistic view and the implications of the scientific research is not a simple thing. For example, you ask if premortals have genes. If genes are essential for distinguishing whether one is male vs female, and if the proclamation on the family is correct and gender (or sex, depending on one’s academic discipline) is eternal , then it would seem important to find a way to connect those areas of study. I don’t believe that anyone has accomplished that, although I’d appreciate being pointed in the direction of someone who has done that work.

So, I agree that the questions you pose are important ones. They don’t seem to me to have been answered very well yet.

What are the implications for Free Agency? If mortals are in some sense predisposed towards or against religiosity, what about premortals? Do they even have genes? If so, were they already hardwired not to have faith in God’s wisdom? Were these the ones who followed Lucifer?

Except that, according to “two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil” (1 Nephi 14:10), it would seem that every premortal (and mortal) actively believes something (for good or bad). Was there an implicit third choice (no church). or is the devil’s church nonbelief itself? If so, how is it that nonbelievers became mortal? If not, and some people are disinclined to believe anything they cannot see (e.g. Doubting Thomas), is this a form of spiritual blindness, akin to physical blindness, and if so, is this exculpatory before God? Assuming premortals got to choose the level of “challenge” they would face on earth (with promise of concomitantly greater rewards for greater challenges), perhaps I have overreached in choosing these genes? (But then, what would have been my incentive to do so?)

I am obviously no theologian (just a man with lots of questions), but it seems that this implications from this nexus of heredity and religiosity would be very important to believers. Ironically, it is of no particular importance to atheists, for whom it produces benign tautology rather than disturbing paradox.

Any thoughts?

I am talking mostly about the intensity of religiosity. Imagine that religiosity is normally distributed and ranges from 0 (completely irreligious) to 10 (completely devout). Imagine a new church seeking members that is so “greedy” that only 10s will freely assume the high cost of membership. If 1000 such people join, the mean religiosity of church members would be 10. But if these 1000 people intermarry and produce 1000 children, it is inconceivable that this second generation could ever have a mean religiosity of 10 when they become adults.

This is not to say that the religiosity of the second generation wouldn’t be profoundly influenced by the parents, but the parents are from such an extreme point on the religiosity curve that regression to the mean among the children is inevitable.