Faith/God/Prayer...genetic, maybe?

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So again have you any evidence, you have already stated that you wish the theory was yours, so where is your evidence. You post this ''I've long suspected certain brains have a predisposition for religious or spiritual thinking, while others have a the framework that cannot believe" you then support your 'suspicion' with a tale that smacks of indoctrination, rather than genetics, and get all upset because I tell you to stop being daft.

Well it is daft, there is to my knowledge NO SUPPORTING evidence, all the evidence goes the other way - that it is social conditioning. When you and your father both turned to prayer most likely (given the evidence) your desperate situation allowed the engrained societal indoctrination to surface.

For a while they thought a 'religious spot' in the brain had been found. The god spot if real, may have given some credence to the idea of neurotheology but it is being debunked. I find this 'blog' interesting http://neurowhoa.blogspot.com/2009/03/no-more-god-spot.html

Oh and BTW I did not mistake your 'opinion' for some kind of 'dissertation', It was you "I only wish I could call it my theory" after reading magnus" link on neurotheology

About 2 percent of the population is able to go into altered states of consciousness.

Autistics seem to lack this religious aspect more so than normal people. Schizophrenics have a hyper sense of this. Normal people have mystical experiences. People with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy have them all the time. It can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you interpret such things. People who fast and go without sleep can induce seizure activity which causes mystical/religious experiences.

Read the Imprinted Brain, it explains why people's neuro wiring allows for some to experience such religious experiences.

Vilayanur Ramachandran has done some fascinating research in this field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran

Just to offer my own life experience - when I was about say 19 or 20 - while I was feeling well divorced from my Catholic roots, I was trying to find out which religion was true or held the most grains of truth; at that point the possibility of there being no soul, no deity, no broader existence past this one - wasn't even on the table of options. It took until my mid 20's to even be able to consider all the implications of atheism let alone take the possibility even remotely seriously.

Given that though, the core of the way my nervous system functions is still mostly the same - the thought of being nothing more than animated meat and chemicals is rather numbing, seems to steal something from me - a part of me that I see as almost my best self and what I have best to offer the world - when I really think of myself in that way. I don't know that its daft or stupid, it seems like everything I'm built to be doesn't compute well with an idea that its all hopeless, that I'm nothing, was nothing, and return to nothing. I don't even know that I'd call it wishful thinking; I'd look at it more like this - my nervous system, like many peoples, is built in such a way where it finds optimal success on one or maybe two very closely associated paths, ie. using and persuing the development of a couple brain regions in particular that I accel with.

My ability to really find spirituality in music, in emotion, in sort of a visual sensory connection with the depths of aesthetics - that may be very well linked to being an introvert with a huge internal world that I even feel like I barely scrape the surface of in my conscious life; its why I'm more curious to read Jung now - knowing that his psychology is something like a Fubu for creative introverts.

Where this takes my on religion and spirituality - anymore I just don't care. Its as irrelevant if there is a God or is no God, for me to try to jettison the best of myself really means that I'm left being half a man or even less, ie. - I'm left impotent as a human being; there's little left once that's gone. I think that's why I'll continue to seek spirituality and seek to find better and better spiritualistic concepts, explanations, etc. for my existence, the meaning for my existence, the meaning for what I go through on a day to day basis from my highest hopes and dreams further down to my irritations with idiots sitting at green lights in front of me all the way down to the many times where my worst nightmares and fears in life have come true and which have ultimately - not defined me - but defined what my life is contained in and where I'm literally not free to go. For someone like my self its just necessary and, if when I die I simply cease to exist - the only thing that matters then is pain and suffering during my life vs. actually using my adaptive skills to make this existence as enjoyable as I possibly can.

tech, you might have some form of synesthesia when it comes to music and emotion. Technically, we should hear music, not feel it so, we all have some form of synesthesia. Most people are able to feel emotions through music, but I guess you are hyper sensitive to it.

Just because you don't have these experiences, doesn't mean other people don't. Just because it can't be proven to you, doesn't mean they are lying.

I don't know if it's a curse. Most people seem to get much meaning out of their spiritual experiences. Some people have claimed it has caused miracles. There is some evidence that shows that when we believe something, it manifests itself into reality. See the placebo effect.

Pan's Labyrinth is one of my favorite movies.