Religion as a mind virus -- anyone got a vaccine? Seriously, Dawkins doesn't intend his memes as a metaphor but a real entity subject to evolutionary processes. Although I like Dawkin's ideas on evolution, I don't see that there's any evidence for this whatsoever. How could one prove such a thing anyway? It's possible to argue retrospectively for the selective advantage and spread of religious ideas as a way of promoting social survival -- so then why don't these ideas simply become extinct when no longer of value or even when a positive disadvantage?
there are good chapters on memetics in both _Selfish Gene_ and in _Blind Watchmaker_. His lecture "Viruses of the Mind" was printed in Skeptical Inquirer and Free Inquiry, and in some British Humanist magazines as well. It was the Voltaire Lecture of 1993 or 4.
He is simply applying Darwinian ideas of evolution and natural selection to the realm of culture and thought. For a further expansion of the full implications of *this* see Dennett's _Darwin's Dangerous Idea_.
Evolutionary thinking provides a robust explanation as to why ideas that have no basis in reality maintaint themselves in the "ideosphere" of human culture. Viruses reproduce by passing from host to host in sneeze droplets, or infected blood, or sperm, or fecal matter in the drinking supply. Human beings have selected some species to favor, and others to extinguish. Some species of ants kill the queen of another species and then the workers of the "conquered" nest end up serving the purposes of the "enslaving" species. The point is that reproduction is not always straightforward and simple. Likewise, as we have noted with the QWERTY keyboard, there are other factors besides utility that influence reproductive success, such as incumbency.
Understanding how the ideas (memes) of afterlife, hell, faith, punishment for doubt, original sin and grace complement and reinforce each other, is a powerful tool for understanding how religion works.
Seriously, about the vaccine: one good vaccine is studying cults and religions in the making. I really enjoy Martin Gardner's books on cranks, crackpots, and cultists. Knowing the completely idiotic things that people have believed, means that some people will believe anything, and so, the fact that someone believes something means nothing at all. The second vaccine is an understanding of scientific history, understanding how people in the past proposed theories, tested them, and eventually came up with the answers we have today. Isaac Asimov often presented his essays on science in this manner, and many of Stephen Jay Gould's also concern the history of scientific ideas.
Every creationist should read and comprehend the facts of the great debates that went on between evolutionists and the churches in the 19th century. Then, we wouldn't have to do it again.
Third vaccine is cultural anthropology, and understanding the many different ways that people can live. Also seeing how cultures change over time, and getting a glimpse into why they change. Basically, the more you know about the real world, the less likely you are to accept the limited vision of ignorant nomads as a coherent explanation of the universe.
See also what I said (under the address of godfree@magi.com) on skeptic-l.
-- "Mankind shall not be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest." Diderot <<Dithyrambe sur la fete des rois>> Greg Erwin: ai815@freenet.Carleton.ca VP, Humanist Association of Canada godfree@magi.com "Ask me about excommunication"