Mind Viruses and Memes
  by Phil Stahl

One of the more fascinating aspects of religiosity was brought to light by Richard Dawkins in his book, "The Selfish Gene." In that monograph he greatly refined and developed a concept originally advanced by bio-chemist Jacques Monod: that the human brain is susceptible to infection by mind-viruses. The most general and ubiquitous example is the meme. This is defined as a unit of transmission for cultural customs, rituals, icons and especially - beliefs! Just as genes occur within a changing gene pool, memes occur within an evolving meme pool. In this pool, their survival is directly related to their appeal to diverse human brains.

Amongst the most powerful and insidious memes are those dedicated to the spread of religious beliefs or faith. Their infectious power can be assessed on the basis of three main attributes:

1) Performance value: What change does the meme or meme complex bring about in behaviors? (For the person or group that adopts it.)

2) Propagation Value: How far and wide is the meme spread, and what means are employed to achieve this? (i.e. Islam in the past has used beheading of infidels and other punishments; Christians have burned heretics.)

3) Infectious Value: How easy is it to infect other brains? What attributes of the meme facilitate this infection?

In the case of the faith meme, part of its appeal resides in automatically warding off too close rational scrutiny. It achieves this by either insisting reason is "inferior to faith" or that any scintilla of doubt must emanate "from Satan - the ultimate unbeliever."

Having debated Christian ministers (in Barbados) I can attest to encounters with the faith meme.

I recall one particularly memorable debate when my opponent actually asked the audience: "How can we be certain that he isn't possessed by Lucifer and doing Lucifer's bidding? I am supposed to be here to debate a human lecturer - but of course I can have no chance against an agent of Satan." Another referred to me as "arrogant" because I was prepared to argue vigorously against his delusions. (I believe I had referred to calculations disclosing the number of demons that would have to be created per second to tempt each human in an ever burgeoning human population.) He warned the audience that he could not "be responsible for their immortal souls" if they listened to me.

In each instance, of course, what we behold is the operation of a mind virus that has efficiently parasitized a brain. Now, while it can't be scientifically proven that god doesn't exist, the burden of proof is on the believer to support his insistence on adding to physical reality. Since we already have relatively satisfying naturalistic hypotheses -- on everything from the origin of the cosmos to the origin of life to whatever order we see-- all supernatural hypotheses become redundant. It is incumbent upon the religious believer to demonstrate why his particular version merits being an exception.

In light of its mind-virus origins, religion cannot be regarded as a wholly beneficent phenomenon based on some non-linear "reason" or insight. If all religion is ultimately based upon a god meme, then it is totally subject to rational scrutiny and criticism. The sooner that we recognize this, the sooner we can liberate humanity from its superstitious baggage.

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