Ok now I will address the topic of my paper. When someone spends time in the wilderness, as we have seen, they often claim to have had enlightening experiences. In some cases, some even go so far as to translate these emotions into perceived evidence of divine existence. Aside from the individual's word alone, what other evidence do we have that these experiences are indeed indicative of God's existence? After having two biology courses and a human adaptation course, I have tried to make the argument in my paper that the human primate has spent the past hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years living in wilderness habitats. Our DNA is programmed for arboreal and hunter-gatherer survival and sustenance. Only since the domestication of plants and animals around 10,000 yBP has our species undergone the relatively sudden shift from that lifestyle to that which we have today: the contained communities of modern society in which all aspects of basic survival are provided for by the society. However, I argue that our genetic evolution has not kept pace with this lifestyle shift, which is why we so many problems today like obesity - many of us are simply taking in more calories than are bodies are genetically set up to handle. Thus, because of our ancestral DNA, it is no surprise that when modern homo sapiens return to the our own ancestral habitats of the wild that our instincts come alive again. The feeling of being at home, the feeling that life makes more sense in the wild is not a new or mysterious one - it fits with our genetic programming. So, given this information, do we continue to classify such experiences as "spiritual" or "instinctual?"
Ryan Wilson
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