> Does
>genetics have anything to do with spiritual awareness, or does it only
>confer the capability for spiritual awareness when certain genetic
>characteristics are present (in which case it takes a direct act of God to
>actually confer the spiritual awareness)?
I wonder if anyone else has been struck as I have at the profound
relationship between awareness and the structures of the brain. After
reading Oliver Sachs' Book _Anthropologist From Mars_ (He also wrote _The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_ , I'm sure that spiritual awareness,
is mediated through our brains, which in turn depends on a precise
genotype. Oliver Sachs describes a painter who has a stroke in a key part
of the visual cortex and becomes color blind. At first he uses the numbers
on the paint tubes to paint, but soon he looses interest in painting color.
In time, a year or so, he also seems to loose all awareness of color. There
have also been suggestions published that the Amygdala plays a key role in
one's experience of God. The configuration of neurons int he amygdala is
under tight genetic control, is it not?. In the Bible there is a Godly line
of Seth. Surely spiritual awareness is under genetic control-- it even runs
in families. If evidence of Spiritual awareness begins later in human
history it lends itself to a different interpretation, I would think.
Glenn says that the mortuary practices of the Sima de los Huesos people
dates to 800 kyr ago and
probably indicates some type of spiritual belief. He says the other
evidence of spiritual belief is not likely to be preserved. This seems a
trifle scant, is there more such evidence from the neolithic? Is it
possible that real religious activity doesn't "take off" as it were until
6000 - 10.000 years ago? Did Adam represent the introduction of a new gene
into the human gene pool?
Rob