metatron:
Instinctive knowledge in animals - It makes no sense to me to think that specific complex behaviors are actually programmed into the genome.
And yet the evidence suggests that they are. Not all scientific ideas make sense at first glance.
Rupert Sheldrake discusses this in his books, such as A New Science of Life.
Sheldrake's ideas are not science. A better perspective on the subject might be found in Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype
Many animals gain these abilities apart from their parents training , as shown when they are raised separately.
This is compatible with the behaviour being genetically programmed, as well as your supernatural model.
About a hundred years ago, Vivekananda wrote a book called Vedanta - Voice of Freedom, in which he criticized the scientific ideas about heredity, wanting to know where these behaviors as well as the forms of complex animals were actually kept.
He was probably unaware of the existence of the genetic code. If he were writing today, he would have no excuse for asking such a question.
His questions seem all the more relevant today, now that Celera has declared that the human genome "is not a blueprint" - words that resonated in my ears.
"Not a blueprint" - no, more like a recipe where the actual manifestation of the organism (the phenotype) is constrained by the genotype, but not entirely dependent on it. (e.g. Someone with "tall genes" needs to eat enough nutritious food to reach their potential height.)
Maybe Plato was right all along and we're just watching the "shadows in the cave".....
In some sense we are, and we're just arguing about what casts the shadows.
If you ask some mothers, much of the personality of children seems already set at infancy - stubborness, shyness, curiosity and so on.
Again, this is perfectly compatible with the prevailing scientific belief that a great deal of our personality is genetically determined.
I also think that reincarnation would explain homosexuality, if a soul/spirit/thetan can return as the other gender.
It would, but it's far more easily explained by a combination of genetics and environment (including but not limited to the womb), a theory that is well supported by a great deal of evidence.
I will be interested to see if future stem cell treatments could restore the memories and abilities of Alzheimers patients. If memory seems to be "holographic", across the brain, then the functions and memories could still be there, just lost at the moment. The "whole" would be retained.
Memory doesn't seem to be holographic, unfortunately. While individual memories can be stored in various locations in the brain, it does not seem to be the case that each cell or region of the brain contains the entirety of the memories or functions of the brain.
I also strongly recommend all the books written by ex-CIA psychic spies beginning with The Infinite Mind by Russell Targ. The phenomena demonstrated by remote viewers suggests that, consistent with some physicists theories, consciousness might be unitary, that is, there is only one universal consciousness accessed by all minds! Scientists who lean towards Buddhism seem comfortable with this view - and it would explain a lot of paradoxes.
OK then, what number am I thinking of? My consciousness appears to be contained inside my brain, and independent of the consciousness of any other. I'm sure it's "consistent with some physicists theories" but an idea has to be more than consistent to be worthy of consideration. Biologically, consciousness, while poorly understood, appears in every way to be a function of the individual brain and not connected to other consciousnesses in any meaningful sense.