Excerpts:
The loving, omnipotent, fatherly God we learn about today is the result of the longest and best "marketing makeover" in history – four thousand years of changes and improvements to Yahweh's image, from Abraham's time to today. Yahweh has evolved into the Almighty God, the God of everything, the loving, forgiving God, the only God. The Yahweh makeover is so complete that we just call him "God" now, with a capital "G". We don't have to distinguish God from the other gods, because most Westerners are monotheists.
Religion is a belief system, not a germ!" But in fact, when I use the phrase religion virus, I mean it in a very literal sense. The religion virus isn't a physical entity, with DNA and proteins and such, but in every other sense, it is a true virus. The parallels between the viruses that infect your body and the viruses that infect your mind are truly astonishing. By the end of this book, I hope to give you a detailed understanding of the infective, reproductive, parasitic nature of the religion virus and its effect on culture, society, politics, and the future of humanity.
The fittest religious ideas survive, and the unfit ones become extinct. And by "fittest" we do not mean the ideas that are true. Rather, these are the ideas that make people want to believe them, whether true or false, beneficial or harmful. An idea can be a survivor because it appeals to our hopes, our vanity, or the promise that Heaven awaits. But an idea can also be a survivor because it preys on our fears and prejudices.
The word "fittest" conjures up ideas of wholesomeness, athletic prowess, morality and other human values. Nothing could be further from the truth: Evolution doesn't care about human concepts like "right" and "wrong" or "good" and "bad." It's unfortunate that the word "fittest," which brings so many human moral and ethical connotations, is a keyword of Evolution Science. It's not "fitness" that matters, it's "reproduction." To put this in human terms, Mormons and Catholics are more "fit" than atheists and others, because they typically have more children.
The early history of America is largely a result of the Intolerance meme. The Puritans were a persecuted Christian minority in England, at odds with the "official" Christian Church of England doctrine, so they fled to America to establish their own Puritan town. Ironically, the Puritans, and other groups that followed, in spite of being victims of persecution, were no more tolerant than their former persecutors – once they arrived on the shores of America, they were quick to impose their own version of Christianity on everyone in sight.
But when the child grows into an adult, beliefs become entrenched. The wide open library of a child's mind, which yearns to absorb new volumes, seems to turn into a dusty, locked archive. Some new information can go in, especially if it agrees with the information that's already there, but most of a person's fundamental beliefs become almost unassailable by age eighteen. It is very difficult to alter an adult's opinions.
And the truth of these beliefs is irrelevant. "When you die, you're dead and gone," isn't nearly as attractive as, "When you die, you'll live on forever in eternal joy," regardless of which one is true. The Religion Virus today is made of the memes that we really, really want to believe.
The same principles that Darwin discovered for biological life can be applied to ideas and culture, and to religion in particular. The religions we know today are the result of a hundred thousand years of differential reproduction, mutation, and competition between millions of memes, most of which are extinct today.Of course, conservative Christians don't embrace Darwin at all so obviously will not approve of expanding his principles to the evolution of culture and religion. This book is singing to the choir, and a small choir it is, but for those of us who hear the tune, it is a sweet, sad one.
Afterthought. Idea for a Utopian novel. Progressives organize and work to become more "fit" by having more children. That is, they form communes all around the world and screw their brains out. Has someone already written this? Walden III: Lust and Survival. (We had Thoreau, Walden II was B. F. Skinner as I remember.)
A resource for those interested in religious questions is Iron Chariots:
Iron Chariots is intended to provide information on apologetics and counter-apologetics. We'll be collecting common arguments and providing responses, information and resources to help counter the glut of misinformation and poor arguments which masquerade as "evidence" for religious claims.The complexity of issues surrounding religion ensures that any proper assessment requires us to delve into a number of philosophical, historical and sociological topics. Our ultimate goal is to provide a robust and definitive resource for:
- apologists who feel that their "pet" argument is above reproach
- individuals of any philosophical ideal who have an interest in religious studies
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