Quote Originally Posted by BLUELINE976 View Post
I always figured some "religious experiences" could be explained by the effects of sleep paralysis (the ones that take place when a person is going to sleep, I mean).
That could be true for people who have religious experiences while they sleep, people could interpret any number of strange phenomena as divine in origin. I think this hypothesis pertains more to people who are awake. In particular he mentions people who have experiences while they are in churches or mosques.

Quote Originally Posted by Xei View Post
It was interesting what they said about the evolution of God; that the evolution of self-consciousness brought with it the evolution of the conception of death, and this necessitated some way of dealing with that conception.

It seemed just like speculation though, I'm not entirely sure where the science was there..?
I would think that too, but I've heard the same exact thing from a number of authors, so there must be something to it. The book The God Part of the Brain is built almost entirely around that premise.