Question: religion as a meme?

[SWPIGWANG]

Religion have great resiliance and individual ideas have survived from the era of brozne to that of silicon.

I think there is got to be more to this than "infectious stupidity." Monothestic religion have displace far too many ideas to be just that.
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I'm not saying that religion represents the "truth." I think that religion helps its believers survive and overtake more secular people. (as a whole, does not apply to subgroups of the moment) The most successful religions is more than a philiosphy but and idea that organize people into power structures (and perhaps other things) that give them an advantage at least in the transfer of the idea. I don't think individual religions could have survived so long if this is not the case.

On the other hand, one probably argue that the interpretation of a singular religion is so broad and have changed so much over time that they are little more than frameworks for thought, on a layer slightly lower than language.

thoughts?

[Darth Wong]

You know, it's almost impossible to eradicate racial prejudice too, but that doesn't mean it has any intrinsic merits.

[Metatwaddle]

I was able to find a good page on religion as a meme here. He's got ten components of a religion that is successful as a meme; I think he focuses on Catholicism in particular. The components are as follows: self-reproduction (from missionary spreading as well as child indoctrination), reward (heaven), faith as a virtue, reinforcement via rituals, punishment of nonbelievers, self-defense from logical attacks, self-righteousness (I'm right and God is on my side), "accepted" or "correct" scriptural interpretations, revenue, and a wide scope of possible beliefs (the sort that allows tree-hugging hippies as well as fundamentalist puritans).

I think the most important components this guy lists are reward for believers, punishment for nonbelievers, and maybe faith as a virtue. Of course, self-reproduction is the most important, but I'm not sure I'd classify that as a component of a successful religion-meme. It's more like an indicator of a successful religion-meme: a successful meme will, by definition, generate more followers, and a less successful one will die out by not having enough followers.

[Ariphaos]

You know, it's almost impossible to eradicate racial prejudice too, but that doesn't mean it has any intrinsic merits.

Well in the case of considering a person's race there certainly are medical merits - rickets for blacks, or simple bodily temperature management, for example.

Minor, yes, but the various 'races' adapted to certain environmental, pathological, and dietary concerns, shallow as the human gene pool is it still merits legitimate notation, or perhaps doubly so for shallowness (especially for the shallowest yet largest group, the L3 subgroup).

Monothestic religion have displace far too many ideas to be just that.

Monotheistic religions seem to take a lot of focus away from other persuits and thoughts... Not sure how to best put it. It feasts on single-mindedness and openly propogates more, we might even consider it a symptom of some mental disease eventually.

[mr friendly guy]

Religion have great resiliance and individual ideas have survived from the era of brozne to that of silicon.

I think there is got to be more to this than "infectious stupidity." Monothestic religion have displace far too many ideas to be just that.

You have some points

1) ability to organise itself into a group
2) The need to "spread the word".
3) It allows itself to spread the word by force
4) Stupid / ignorant people at the time the religion started (this factor is of course independent of the religion itself)

I think these factors help religion survive compared to a philosopy which doesn't have the first 3 factors.

[Talanth]

[quote="SWPIGWANG"]Religion have great resiliance and individual ideas have survived from the era of brozne to that of silicon.

I think there is got to be more to this than "infectious stupidity." Monothestic religion have displace far too many ideas to be just that.
[quote]
Are you talking about the evolution of ideas? In which case I have to agree with both you and Darth Wong. An idea that gives its believers an advantage over non-believers should be successfull in exactly the same way an advantage-giving gene is successfull, but with the added bonus that it can spread through the population much, much quicker. The idea doesn't have to be correct, or even sensable, but if the advantage is their then it should spread.

As an exampe just think of traditional chilldrens stories filled with monsters and goblins. The storys are wrong and sometimes rediculus, but the people who tell them to their children have a slight advantage over people who dont. (Don't stray from the path or the wolf will get you! don't go too near the bog or Jenny Green-Fingers will steal you away!)

[Vendetta]

Religion is too large and complex to be attributable to a single meme. It is a meme complex, a group of memes that replicate themselves well in each other's presence. Different religious behaviours are defined by different memes that can be extricated from religion and placed either seperately or in other memeplexes. For example, one key facet of religion is deference to the established power structure. The priest is a conduit through which the divine speaks, so if you do not wish to anger the divine, you should do what the priest tells you.

But that meme can exist in other contexts, it will also replicate itself well in feudal government structures, and can persist long after the structures themselves have collapsed (as happened in England and Japan).

If you want to develop this idea further, Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon explains how structured religions could have developed in early societies, and how they have developed into their modern forms. (he also explains how memes fit in)

1) ability to organise itself into a group
2) The need to "spread the word".
3) It allows itself to spread the word by force

I'd substitute "power structure" for "group". That's more important to the spreading of the memeplex. A small group of people in control of the "truth" helps it to defend itself against other memeplexes. Also, there's one you missed. Conditioning of the host vehicle to reject new memes contradictory to the memeplex. A memeplex that does not have that in a strong form will be reduced in the population by competing memeplexes supplanting it. (in the case of religion, that would be conversion to other religions or rejecting it entirely in favour of a fundamentally different memeplex like humanism or empiricism.)

[Johonebesus]

I notice again that the numinous experience is totally absent from this discussion. Why is it that so many attempts at analyzing religion focus on these "functionalist" explanations about power and structures and such, but ignore the physiological fact that many if not most humans have a part of the brain that can produce euphoric, spiritual sensations. It seems to me that religions came about to begin with and have survived to this day in large part because some people have weird experiences and seek ways to communicate and replicate these experiences. Successful religions are ones that, at least once upon a time, did a good job at arousing folks' spiritual faculties (in addition to other more materialistic factors, for no-one can deny that politics and personal whim played a huge role in the success of Christianity). Memes might explain why particular religious institutions won out over others, but not, I think, the origin on religion itself.

[Sriad]

You know, it's almost impossible to eradicate racial prejudice too, but that doesn't mean it has any intrinsic merits.

From the evolutionary standpoint of promoting your family's genes over those of people very distantly related to you, it is very meritous.

Morally and logically speaking, though, you're right of course.

[SirNitram]

You know, it's almost impossible to eradicate racial prejudice too, but that doesn't mean it has any intrinsic merits.

From the evolutionary standpoint of promoting your family's genes over those of people very distantly related to you, it is very meritous.

Inbreeding does not improve you evolutionary. The blending of multiple possible sources and mutations does. Ergo, racial prejudice is harmful, not helpful, from an evolutionary standpoint.

[Wicked Pilot]

Whatever beneift religion provided us in our evolutionary development as since been far outpassed by science. We should always remember religion and respect the power it can hold over people, but it's time to move on, we have better tools now.

[Surlethe]

Whatever beneift religion provided us in our evolutionary development as since been far outpassed by science. We should always remember religion and respect the power it can hold over people, but it's time to move on, we have better tools now.

If some people won't appreciate that, or can't, would it be ethical to play a sort of Missionaria Protectiva and create or manipulate a religion to control people?

[Sriad]

You know, it's almost impossible to eradicate racial prejudice too, but that doesn't mean it has any intrinsic merits.

From the evolutionary standpoint of promoting your family's genes over those of people very distantly related to you, it is very meritous.

Inbreeding does not improve you evolutionary. The blending of multiple possible sources and mutations does. Ergo, racial prejudice is harmful, not helpful, from an evolutionary standpoint.

Yes, that's true. All I'm saying is that by the biological imperrative "My genes should propogate and your genes should not" it makes sense.

[Vendetta]

Yes, that's true. All I'm saying is that by the biological imperrative "My genes should propogate and your genes should not" it makes sense.

Not even then.

Beyond your immediate family, no one person on earth is "better" for assisting copies of your genes to survive into the next generation.

In order to propagate your "own" genes (or copies of genes you are carrying) you need to ensure that yourself and your immediate family (at least full siblings and cousins) survive to breed. Whom they breed with outside of your immediate family and the risk of doubling up on an undesirable and unpleasant gene, is irrelevant.

[Wicked Pilot]

If some people won't appreciate that, or can't, would it be ethical to play a sort of Missionaria Protectiva and create or manipulate a religion to control people?

No, but I'm sure you could think up situations where using someone's stupidity against them is necessary to couteract something worse.

[Sriad]

Yes, that's true. All I'm saying is that by the biological imperrative "My genes should propogate and your genes should not" it makes sense.

Not even then.

Beyond your immediate family, no one person on earth is "better" for assisting copies of your genes to survive into the next generation.

In order to propagate your "own" genes (or copies of genes you are carrying) you need to ensure that yourself and your immediate family (at least full siblings and cousins) survive to breed. Whom they breed with outside of your immediate family and the risk of doubling up on an undesirable and unpleasant gene, is irrelevant.

Just to remain perfectly clear, I'm only arguing about WHY racism is stupid, not WHETHER. That's already a given.

Anyway, the flaw in your position is that it ignores The Tribe. If Zug's children survive (best outcome) they carry around half of his genes. (or, if you want to get nit-picky, half of the traits that differentiate Zug's genes from those of Yolanda, living comfortably on the opposite side of the globe.) If his brother's survive, they carry about 1/4. His cousin's will carry 1/8. Those assholes from the Brugen tribe next door carry around 1/1000, so they can FOAD, and if they're competing for the same resources, Zug will try to hasten that eventuality.

[Talanth]

Memes might explain why particular religious institutions won out over others, but not, I think, the origin on religion itself.

You could just as easily argue theat once humanity stumbled on the "trick" of organised power structures then the biology started to cach up. After all memes (I knew there was a name!) can spread through a population much quicker than genes.

But why is it that one has to cause the other? Surely if an evolutionary advantage is gained by them both working together then once they were both in existance they would advance together?

[Vendetta]

[If Zug's children survive (best outcome) they carry around half of his genes. (or, if you want to get nit-picky, half of the traits that differentiate Zug's genes from those of Yolanda, living comfortably on the opposite side of the globe.) If his brother's survive, they carry about 1/4. His cousin's will carry 1/8. Those assholes from the Brugen tribe next door carry around 1/1000, so they can FOAD, and if they're competing for the same resources, Zug will try to hasten that eventuality.

The nit pick you were looking for is "Half of his genes over and above the 99.9% he shares with the rest of humanity". The genes themselves are the replicators, the actual chemical structures themselves. "Traits" are merely their phenotypic expressions.

However, Zug's children will always carry 50% of his genes. Always. It does not matter whether the mother is in his tribe, the next one over, or someone from another continent. The degree of relatedness will always be the same.

And because degrees of relatedness drop off so very sharply outside of very close family, a family in the same tribe who have been separated for only a few generations from Zug's are statistically no more likely to be genetically similar to him than someone from a completely different tribe.

Tribes are memic structures, not genetic. "Our Tribe" and "Their Tribe" are arbitrary distinctions born out of geographical convenience, not genetic similarity. Any tribe that was too genetically similar would doom itself via inbreeding, and so a tribe would need either influx of new genes by intermarrying or a sufficiently large seed group of genetic families. That artificial distinction comes from human perception that all of the people living here are different from people living there and is transmitted memically by teaching children about "us" and "them" (and was often reinforced by rituals, most often coming of age rituals, that mark a person of one of "us".) It's easy to see one possible descent of religion from those tribal rituals, because the person who controls the rituals is in a postion to influence the tribe.

[SirNitram]

Yes, that's true. All I'm saying is that by the biological imperrative "My genes should propogate and your genes should not" it makes sense.

No it doesn't. Not at all. Unless you're a moron on genetics.

Diversity must exist, therefore the maximum number of genes must propagate and intermix. Anything which impedes this(Like, oh, NEVER DATE DEM BLAKS!) is a negative.

[Darth Wong]

I think one of the most important aspects of religious propagation is investment, ie- the amount of time and energy you've invested in it. In that respect, perhaps the asinine excess of pointless rituals in Islam (eg- praying five times a day, denying yourself all manner of things, etc) actually contributes to its survival. It may not be a great recruiting tool for outsiders, but if you've lived your whole life that way, you've invested way too much, sacrificed way too much, and denied yourself way too much to give up on this thing now. To admit doubt about the whole idea is to admit to yourself that you've been an idiot all these years.

[Surlethe]

I think one of the most important aspects of religious propagation is investment, ie- the amount of time and energy you've invested in it. In that respect, perhaps the asinine excess of pointless rituals in Islam (eg- praying five times a day, denying yourself all manner of things, etc) actually contributes to its survival. It may not be a great recruiting tool for outsiders, but if you've lived your whole life that way, you've invested way too much, sacrificed way too much, and denied yourself way too much to give up on this thing now. To admit doubt about the whole idea is to admit to yourself that you've been an idiot all these years.

Specifically, this is a reason, I think, why Christians, especially fundamentalist ones, get very emotional when they're confronted with opposition to the very concept of God: they've invested so much emotion and so much time in worshipping God, praying to God, and treating God like a best friend, that they simply cannot conceive of life without him; it reinforces the self-delusions.

[Sriad]

[If Zug's children survive (best outcome) they carry around half of his genes. (or, if you want to get nit-picky, half of the traits that differentiate Zug's genes from those of Yolanda, living comfortably on the opposite side of the globe.) If his brother's survive, they carry about 1/4. His cousin's will carry 1/8. Those assholes from the Brugen tribe next door carry around 1/1000, so they can FOAD, and if they're competing for the same resources, Zug will try to hasten that eventuality.

The nit pick you were looking for is "Half of his genes over and above the 99.9% he shares with the rest of humanity". The genes themselves are the replicators, the actual chemical structures themselves. "Traits" are merely their phenotypic expressions.

.1% of 3 gigabytes of genetic data is still quite a big deal.

However, Zug's children will always carry 50% of his genes. Always. It does not matter whether the mother is in his tribe, the next one over, or someone from another continent. The degree of relatedness will always be the same.

And because degrees of relatedness drop off so very sharply outside of very close family, a family in the same tribe who have been separated for only a few generations from Zug's are statistically no more likely to be genetically similar to him than someone from a completely different tribe.

Tribes are memic structures, not genetic. "Our Tribe" and "Their Tribe" are arbitrary distinctions born out of geographical convenience, not genetic similarity. Any tribe that was too genetically similar would doom itself via inbreeding, and so a tribe would need either influx of new genes by intermarrying or a sufficiently large seed group of genetic families. That artificial distinction comes from human perception that all of the people living here are different from people living there and is transmitted memically by teaching children about "us" and "them" (and was often reinforced by rituals, most often coming of age rituals, that mark a person of one of "us".) It's easy to see one possible descent of religion from those tribal rituals, because the person who controls the rituals is in a postion to influence the tribe.

All The Monkies didn't get together one day and say to eachother "Hey, let's be assholes" and then forward the memo to the ants, hyenas, and other social animals. Rather, tribalism in certain circumstances is emergent from properties of natural selection which are not in dispute.

Obviously, tribalism has some strong disadvantages, like potential for harmful degrees of inbreeding (usually balanced by picking up outcasts from other tribes, slowly diffusing genetic variations through the population) or everyone suddenly dying of exactly the same parisite, but these are outweighed by the advantages. Or else there wouldn't be many animals with these behaviors at all.

Widespread breeding is preferable, but unlikely to happen on it's own in territorial animals. Those animals that migrate widely (whales, caribou, birds, seals) do have highly competative mega-orgies for exactly this reason. Animals without pressure to move around a lot don't. (say, monkies living in tropical forests.)

Mankind has developed many (frequently harmful) memetic structures which reinforce this basic advantageous tribalism, among them religion and xenophobia (including but not limited to racism).

[Sriad]

I think one of the most important aspects of religious propagation is investment, ie- the amount of time and energy you've invested in it. In that respect, perhaps the asinine excess of pointless rituals in Islam (eg- praying five times a day, denying yourself all manner of things, etc) actually contributes to its survival. It may not be a great recruiting tool for outsiders, but if you've lived your whole life that way, you've invested way too much, sacrificed way too much, and denied yourself way too much to give up on this thing now. To admit doubt about the whole idea is to admit to yourself that you've been an idiot all these years.

Definately. Muslims I've spoken with have raved about the sense of structure and connection with the divine their rituals give their lives, and how they would NEVER give those things up.

[SirNitram]

Obviously, tribalism has some strong disadvantages, like potential for harmful degrees of inbreeding (usually balanced by picking up outcasts from other tribes, slowly diffusing genetic variations through the population) or everyone suddenly dying of exactly the same parisite, but these are outweighed by the advantages. Or else there wouldn't be many animals with these behaviors at all.

I guess the fact that our situation is not that of unintelligent animals is beyond you.

[Sriad]

Obviously, tribalism has some strong disadvantages, like potential for harmful degrees of inbreeding (usually balanced by picking up outcasts from other tribes, slowly diffusing genetic variations through the population) or everyone suddenly dying of exactly the same parisite, but these are outweighed by the advantages. Or else there wouldn't be many animals with these behaviors at all.

I guess the fact that our situation is not that of unintelligent animals is beyond you.

I've said from the start that I'm not defending racism.

Well, I can actually see how I'd give that impression. The discussion started based on the suggestion that racism has no merits whatsoever and I'm suggesting that it is an extension of an evolutionarily proven gambit. Humanity would be best served by getting the fuck over it's racial hang-ups, I whole-heartedly agree.