From: Delvieron@aol.com
Date: Sat Feb 27 1999 - 05:34:54 MST
Spike and Tim,
I think it may be useful to differentiate between two concepts here. One
being the ecstatic, spiritual experience (or perception), and the other being
the meme or meme complex of God(s) and/or religion. The two are often linked,
indeed I believe often people who have had a spiritual feeling seek religious
memes, rightly or wrongly, to explain their experience and fit it into their
overall model of the world. However, they are not the same, in my opinion. I
would say that the memetic concepts of Religion and God are likely
learned/environmentally derived. I am not certain of the etiology of the
spiritual experience, however it would not be surprising for me if it were at
least in part genetic. One way to look to see if there seems to be a genetic
basis for spirituality would be to start with pedigree studies. For example,
in my family, my mother and myself seem to have strong spiritual experiences,
whereas my father, brother, and my sister do not. My mother and sister,
however, have the most strongly entrenched memes about God, with my father
having almost none, and my brother and myself somewhere in between. My fiance
does not have any spiritual experiences, though she has tried many times to.
Her mother, on the other hand, has had strong spiritual feelings. Her father
and sister seem more like my fiance in this regard. I think that having
feelings of spirituality is a strong predisposer to developing "Religious"
memes, but that it is not absolute in either direction. I too would be
interested in seeing if this is genetically based.
Glen Finney
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