In this post, I’m going to address what Richard Dawkins specifically says about what he calls “religious memes.” If you don’t know what a “meme” is, I encourage you to read my previous post. Dawkins concludes his chapter 5 in The God Delusion by equating religious ideas with the concept of memes. A “meme” is Dawkins’ made-up word that refers to the transmission of ideas and beliefs in a society. Just like genes transmit biological information, memes supposedly transmit “idea and belief information.” It doesn’t take too long to realize that this scientifically-sounding concept of memes has more logical holes in it than Swiss cheese.
But before I explain why, let me first summarize Dawkins’ comments. He writes:
“Some religious ideas, like some genes, might survive because of absolute merit [ability to survive in a gene pool]. Some religious ideas survive because they are compatible with other memes that are already numerous in the meme pool—as a part of a memeplex. The following is a partial list of religious memes that might plausibly have survived value in the meme pool, either because of absolute ‘merit’ or because of compatibility with an existing memeplex:
- You will survive your own death.
- If you die a martyr, you will go to an especially wonderful part of paradise where you will enjoy seventy-two virgins (spare a thought for the unfortunate virgins).
- Heretics, blasphemers and apostates should be killed (or otherwise punished).
- Belief in God is a supreme virtue. If you find your belief wavering, work hard at restoring it, and beg God to help your unbelief.
- Faith (belief without evidence) is a virtue. The more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you are. Virtuoso believers who can manage to believe something really weird, unsupported and insupportable, in the teeth of evidence and reason, are especially highly rewarded.
- Everybody, even those who do not hold religious beliefs, must respect them with a higher level of automatic and unquestioned respect than that accorded to other kinds of belief.
- There are some weird things (such as the Trinity, transubstantiation, incarnation) that we are not meant to understand. Don’t even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it. Learn how to gain fulfillment in calling it a mystery.
- Beautiful music, art and scriptures are themselves self-replicating tokens of religious ideas.”(232-233)
There you have it. Religious ideas are really nothing more than “genetic ideas” (i.e. memes) that survive within society because, however wrong they may be, they help the societal cohesion and promote the on-going health of that society. Therefore, religion and religious ideas are really just a product of natural selection, and they, since they are so stupid and primitive, will one day “evolve away” out of the human gene/meme pool. And since this is true (at least according to Dawkins), this should cause us to look at religions in a different way. Enter Dawkins:
“Roman Catholicism and Islam, say, were not necessarily designed by individual people, but evolved separately as alternative collections of memes that flourish in the presence of other members of the same memeplex.” (233)
“Organized religions are organized by people: by priests and bishops, rabbis, imams and ayatollahs. But…that doesn’t mean that they were conceived and designed by people. Even where religions have been exploited and manipulated to the benefit of powerful individuals, the strong possibility remains that the detailed form of each religion has been largely shaped by unconscious evolution.” (233)
That’s right, on the very same page, Dawkins says (A) “religions are not designed by people” and (B) “organized religions are organized by people.” In Dawkins mind, a person can organize something, but not design it. Religious “genetic tendencies” are designed by…evolution? But “organized religions” are organized by evil, twisted, manipulative priests, bishops, rabbis, imams, etc. With that, Dawkins confidently states, “Given this background, memetic natural selection of some kind seems to me to offer a plausible account of the detailed evolution of particular religions” (233).
Now, My Thoughts
Let’s cut to the chase and state the obvious: There are no such things as “memes.” They do not exist. They are a fiction. As creative and scientific-sounding as Dawkins’ “Meme Theory” appears, we must not lose sight of the cold hard fact that it is a complete pseudo-scientific farce. It has as much scientific credibility as Ken Ham’s young earth creationism and Ken Ham’s claim that Noah had access to advanced technology like flux capacitors, and that he hired thousands of workers to build his ark. (For that matter, I’ll at least give this to Ham: his fictions at least involve human beings, and human beings exist–not the ones Ham is talking about, but at least his fictions are based on things that do exist, unlike Dawkins’ memes). All this is to say, Dawkins’ “meme theory” has no scientific credibility whatsoever. There is not one shred of evidence for the existence of “memes,” period. There’s no other way to say it.
Genes are something that are transmitted without any choice or intention of an organism. My son looks exactly like me. Why? Because he has my basic genetic make-up. I will not teach him to look like me, he just will—because of genes.
Ideas, on the other hand, are not genetic, no matter how much Dawkins might try to convince us otherwise. People can change their minds on certain ideas, learn other ideas, etc. To label human ideas and teachings as “memes” is really nothing more than a pathetic attempt by men like Dawkins to reduce everything—even the distinctive human trait of ideas, self-reflecting thought, etc.—into a philosophic-materialistic evolutionary box.
And it just doesn’t work. If we can label human ideas with a scientifically-sounding name like “memes,” we can then proceed to treat human ideas like nothing more than genes, and hence we can justify explaining them in purely naturalistic-materialistic terms. Such an attempt is a parlor trick—smoke and mirrors. It can’t be done.
If there is certainly one thing you cannot do is reduce human thought, language, and ideas to “just another thing” we see in nature. True, humans pass on their genes, just like monkeys, plants, fish, and pretty much everything else in the natural world. But humans are uniquely distinct from everything else in nature in one incredibly important respect: our ability to form ideas, and then communicate those ideas through various ways like language, art, music, and poetry. That distinctly human characteristic is what Dawkins is trying to label “memes” so he can lump it in together with the rest of the natural world within a philosophic materialistic worldview.
To do such a thing in intellectually dishonest. Not only is it dishonest, but the way in which Dawkins tries to categorize “religious memes” within a “memeplex” is just mind-bogglingly nonsense. Just look again at the bullet-points above and ask yourself, “What reasonable person—scientist, theologian, or otherwise—thinks that that is a responsible and accurate portrait of all religious thought? Of course it isn’t. Dawkins’ false caricature of religion has as much credibility as Ken Ham’s false caricature of evolutionary theory.
Elvis?
Dawkins even goes so far as to suggest that, given this “evolution of religious memes,” he would not be surprised if religious cults that focus on figures like Elvis Presley and Princess Diana might spring up over the next few centuries, due to this “phenomenon” of “memetic evolution” (239). The reason why Dawkins says is to try to explain how Christianity could have gotten started. “Look, over 100 years, we might have a religion of Presley! This is how Christianity started!”
Well, news flash, that’s not how Christianity got started. It didn’t “evolve” hundreds of years after the historical Jesus of Nazareth. After Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers began publicly proclaiming his resurrection within 50 days after the fact, at Pentecost. This was not a result of “memetic evolution” over the course of centuries. Furthermore, the gospels themselves were written merely 30-40 years after the fact. By contrast, Elvis has been dead for about 40 years, and I don’t think any religious movement is, or will ever, arise centered on him as a resurrected messianic figure. Princess Diana has been dead for 20 years, and although she is still loved, people still, and will always, remember her as a wonderful, but tragic figure. As far as I know, there is no one traveling throughout the world right now, claiming she is the “image of the unseen goddess,” or anything of the sort.
My point? To even try to equate Jesus and the early Christian movement to Elvis or Princess Diana is just silly at best.
Much more could be said about Dawkins’ “meme theory,” but why should I bother? I’d much rather discuss things that actually exist in reality.
I will say this, some of the internet memes can be rather funny…
The idea of a “meme” only begins to make since once you study neurology in detail. Neural connections are formed when neurons increase the myelin sheath around their axons in order to facilitate easier travel of electrochemical signals in that direction, and strengthen bonds between neurons. This is why you always remember an image when you smell something; the sensations for both travel along similar pathways. Myelin sheaths also degrade without use, which is why you forget things if the memory is not reinforced. A “meme” is not just a pseudoscientific concept; it’s an actual structure in your brain that uses the function of your nervous system to reproduce itself, in the same way that a virus’ genetic information infiltrates and uses a cell’s DNA replication machinery to copy itself. Like a virus, it isn’t a living entity, but like a virus, any miscommunication of the info, like brains and DNA polymerase often make, will lead to a new version, which could possibly end up being better at spreading itself. If you’ve ever played a game of “telephone”, you’ll know what I mean. The message keeps on getting altered until it becomes something that is easier to state and understand, and there it will likely stay. No one was consciously designing it, but it was still organized by the people.