Do you believe in dreams, Nicholas?
Many, many people do. There is cultural affection for understanding dreams in most societies.
The ancients thought they were visits from other spirits or premonitions about the future.
Dream Interpretation is still today believed to be a 'key' to one thing or another.
We know for a fact that the brain runs on biochemistry. There is no thought without brain activity whether the body is a living vegetable or corpus. There is absolutely no thought in those instances. EEGs will tell you that.
Much to everyone's shagrine who would like to believe that dreams are magical and bad ones mean something. Dreams are nothing more than a process that happens as the biochemistry of one days activity is cleared out for yet another day to awaken so we feel refreshed and ready to meet the challenge of yet another day.
Dreams happen in the late and light stages of sleep called the REM sleep. It is the time that occurs just before we wake up. So that is why we remember some dreams and not others.
The point here Nicholas is that you addressed a genetic link with spirituality as if somehow every person was born to be spiritual. I think that is dangerous because soon after the summit the NIH is holding there will be scientists that will be out there to prove exactly that and not only that but to prove the correct spirituality is Christianity.
Genes are genes Nicholas and DNA is an interesting study in understanding disease and it's potential cure but to seek specific genes for specific aspects of PERSONALITY is wrong. Just plane wrong. You are then confronted with nature vs. nurture and that isn't really proved out in twins. The 'twins' issue only proves both children were similarly limited. Genetic.
I personally like to understand spirituality as it is LIVED by people and what it means to them. One of the most fascinating spirituality is from the Native Americans.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/nataspir.htm
I think, that if one is to measure spirituality of Americans and assign a gene for the correctness of application for Americans we should first seek the purest of the native Americans and adjust all others to match that and bring America under one spiritual gene. I mean after all, Mr. Kristof, Christianity is not an American religion. It dates back to I think it was Darwin.
Or perhaps more correctly, the British Thrown before it was imported to America.
Paul Revere rode his midnight ride "One if by land, Two if by sea" not to continue the oppression of religion but to be freed of that oppression and practice at will. The Salem Witch trials were conducted in fear and not in enlightenment.
Spirituality, Mr. Kristof is an aspect of personality.
I believe what your editorial lacks is the question, "Which gene is the one that belongs to the SOUL?"
