Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA26359 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 16 Jan 2002 19:30:58 GMT X-Sender: unicorn@pop.greenepa.net Message-Id: <p04320400b86b81d5de4e@[192.168.2.3]> In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20020116091527.02c45ec0@pop.cogeco.ca> References: <LAW2-F44UZxn6oZcohv00007b8b@hotmail.com> <LAW2-F44UZxn6oZcohv00007b8b@hotmail.com> <5.1.0.14.0.20020116091527.02c45ec0@pop.cogeco.ca> Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 14:27:03 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: "Francesca S. Alcorn" <unicorn@greenepa.net> Subject: Re: Has anybody read this book? Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>Do this long enough, give it enough of an advantage, and you get
>genes building a place in the brain to accept religious class memes.
>If you dig about in the literature the location (temporal lobe) is
>known. Seizures in this area are connected to extreme religious
>feelings and (for unknown reasons) to "hypergraphia," writing
>incessantly.
>
>http://pub63.ezboard.com/ftheologyfortodayfrm14.showMessage?topicID=86.topic
>
>It's a patch, but evolution is like that, patch upon patch.
>
>Keith Henson
Hi Keith,
But in the Nova program I saw with Ramachandran, he includes two
cases, one where there was damage to the temporal lobe, and the guy
was unable to "recognize" his own parents - sure they looked like his
parents, but they didn't elicit the emotional response, and so he
began saying they indeed *weren't* his parents.
The other guy had temporal lobe seizures which he experienced as
deeply religious and spiritual in nature - *everything* that he
looked at was meaningful, and deeply so.
So it seems to me that the religious experience may arrive out of a
meaning-attributing process, which may be part of a pre-verbal brain
structure.
Of course this is from seeing a show on TV, which I couldn't go back
to and look up to be certain that he was relating the two cases in
the same way I am, so I could be wrong. Now *he* is someone who
should write a book about the religious impulse.
Frankie
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